For over a year during the Covid Lockdown, Zari was the only person outside of Dawn's house that she spoke to in person. Chats in doorway turned to coffee on the patio - turned to tea at her kitchen table - which eventually became whiskey on the couch. More than once she found myself at 1o’clock in the morning awash - not just in the Makers Mark Zari pours so generously - but in her captivating tales of her life in Iran.

Dawn recorded with Zari for a few sessions over two days and what is compiled here focuses primarily on the history of the Iranian Revolution and how it wove through the events of Zari’s life to this point. 

---EPISODE BREAKDOWN---

00:10:00 - After Dawn and Zari bring the listeners up to speed on how they met and grew so close - Dawn begins to give the very early broad strokes of the seeds of the Iranian Revolution, and where Zari was at the time. In 1961, for example, in an unlikely turn of events, Zari finds herself at 15 entering a Catholic School in London - she is Muslim, speaks no English and has never seen a nun. 

00:16:30 - At the same time that Zari is in London, the Shah Pahlavi - the divisive and socially progressive King of Iran - is advancing what is known as the White Revolution. This is generally an investment in a modernizing - and particularly Westernizing and secularizing - of Iranian culture. Its most vocal critic is the Ruhollah Khomeini (later the Ayatollah Khomeini) who is eventually sent into exile in Iraq, but continues to remain very present in Iranian dissent. 

00:25:24 - When Zari graduates and returns to Iran in 1968, she gets married and has a son - later divorces, amicably- and is beginning her career in education. Not long after, the real build of the revolution begins: The Cinema Rex Fire as well as other violent and deadly events are happening with more regularity and the tide of revolution is beginning to become clearer. 

00:44:37 - By November, 1978, the Revolution is building and increasing numbers of people are taking to the streets every week. The Shah makes a series of televised concessions and capitulations which only seem embolden his critics and weaken his position. As allies also begin to falter in their support of the Shah, many begin to see how the return of Khomeini would mean violence and chose to flee. Zari, her parents, and her 7 year-old son got on a crowded flight on Dec. 7th, 1978 and go to London. 

It is from London that they witness the Revolution take a dark turn.

--BREAK--

00:52:51 - Dawn and Zari begin Part 2 with a clink of whiskey glasses and jumping into some of the ugliest days of the return of the Ayatollah to Iran. Dawn references the story of author, Shirin Ebadi in her book Iran Awakening - in which she relays how it felt on the ground. Ebadi has a very different perspective than Zari because she was a Leftist Revolutionary who was among those in the streets protesting the Shah. She believed the government could be made more representative, and didn't believe a bigger monster lay beyond the cause. 

01:01:41 - Zari watched events like the Iran Hostage Crisis (1979-1981) from her new life in New York. Again, the critical timeline aligns with hers and Zari and her son find they are fortunate enough to have secured their passports on the same day that Jimmy Carter revokes all Iranian Visas. 

01:14:20 - In 1997, with her son happy and established, Zari is determined to return to Iran to see if she might be able to reclaim any portion of her family's previous estate. She finds it to be a country both totally unfamiliar, and exactly the same as she left it. The manner of dress and the fear are new - but under it all the same kindness and love her countrymen always displayed. 

01:28:27 - Zari gives a dose of some of her gracious optimism. She sees no comparison to what happened in Iran happening here, in the US in the present day. According to Zari, the USA is insulated from such a religious coup because the number of people devoted to the same religion is not comparable. 

The two sign off with mutual declarations of hope and love. 

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NEXT EPISODE: July 6th, 2022 - LESBIANS with Rachel Scanlon [AKA: THE LIVE SHOW!]