Journalists Nilo Tabrizy and Fatemeh Jamalpour discuss the political legacy of women in Iran in “For The Sun After Long Nights”
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Courtesy Electric Literature. |
by Bareerah Y. Ghani, Electric Lit
For The Sun After Long Nights is an unflinching record of Iranian women’s resilience and strength against their country’s oppressive regime. The authors, Nilo Tabrizy and Fatemeh Jamalpour, are Iranian journalists who corresponded and—in Jamalpour’s case—reported from the ground as the largest uprising in the history of the Islamic Republic unfolded.
The book centers the revolutionary moment when the “Woman, Life, Freedom” movement erupted in 2022 after a young Kurdish woman, Mahsa Jîna Amini, was arrested and beaten to death by the city’s morality police for not adhering to Iran’s hijab rule. Suddenly, at least two million Iranians, led by young women and members of Gen Z, took to the streets to express their outrage. These young women, Jamalpour included, exchanged notes with poetry and slogans that fueled the resistance even as the regime cracked down with arrests, tear gas, and rubber bullets. Miles away in self-imposed exile, Tabrizy started covering the protests for The New York Times, analysing video and images shared by Iranians on social media. Caught in the cascade of events, Jamalpour and Tabrizy started exchanging emails despite the risk to Jamalpour, who could be imprisoned for communicating with a Western journalist. Together, they bore witness to young girls and elderly women standing up to police; young women cutting their hair; Iranians chanting “Death to the Islamic Republic.” This book captures that moment and then expands outward, recounting stories from the authors’ lives and those of the women who came before them. Together, Tabrizy and Jamalpour unveil the role of women in Iran’s revolutionary past, and deftly illuminate the blurry line between the personal and political.