Note the next to be hanged waiting in the trucks for their turn to die.
Posted on 08/11/2002 5:41:45 PM PDT by Pokey78
Garage rock is big in Teheran. In earlier times and different circumstance, garages, heavily padded for sound, might have been used for secret printing presses to churn out samizdat papers or revolutionary literature, but not in Teheran today. If heavy rock is your thing, find a garage.
Here, in the Islamic republic, heavy rock is officially considered moral pollution. So it goes underground. Blasting at their drums and electric guitars, the heavily sweating crew from Sokoote-e Shargh, which means Oriental Silence, meet three times a week to practise in a sound proofed room inside an underground garage.
They are not alone. There are scores of other underground bands of all types across Teheran. Technically, playing in an underground garage, provided there are no unmarried girls and boys dancing together or drinking, may not be illegal.
But no one is really sure what is legal or not in Iran any more. The band once got permission to play a small concert at an arts college, but they would never be allowed to sing in English or legally distribute a CD.
The noise is ear-splitting, but Payam Eslami, 25, says simply: "We just want to play the music we love."
Before the reformist Mohammed Khatami became president in 1997 clean-cut, middle-class youths like these would almost certainly never have even dared to practise in a sound-proofed garage.
Now they are working hard because they are convinced that, sooner or later, Mr Khatami's reforms will mean they can come out into the open and play whatever they want.
And yet, reform in Iran has been stymied. Conservatives led by Ayatollah Khomeini's successor, Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei, have been fighting back.
They have been blocking reform and even trying to turn back the clock. This is no simple struggle for power between a small elite of reformers versus hardliners, rather it is an issue that touches the lives of all Iranians.
Ordinary people are angry, especially since Mr Khatami came to power with 70 per cent of the vote. The reformists believe that, unless they succeed, the whole edifice of the Islamic republic could come crashing down.
They believe that reform is the only way to save the system because it no longer fits a changing Iran.
Indeed a social revolution is taking place. In the wake of the Islamic revolution of 1979 and the attack on Iran by Saddam Hussein in 1980, the mullahs urged women to produce a new generation of Islamic martyrs. But their project has gone horribly wrong.
Today two thirds of Iran's 70 million people are under 30 and, like Oriental Silence, chafing at the restrictions imposed by the state.
Satellite television including broadcasts from several Iranian exile stations in America, has opened a new world to young Iranians. Satellite dishes are illegal, but the rule is flouted.
Today 1.75 million Iranians also have access to the internet, but in five years that figure is expected to grow to five million. Wherever there are computers you can see girls wearing the officially prescribed Islamic dress.
But every Iranian has a public and a private face. Peer at what they are doing on the internet and it is as if they are the inhabitants of a parallel nation.
With headphones clamped over their headscarves and chadors they are bobbing about while happily downloading music by the rapper Eminem or internet chatting with their boyfriends across town.
There are now more girls than boys at university in Iran and education has been solid here. The result is a young, literate population that wants more freedom, if not a revolution.
Hossein Ghazian, the director of the polling firm Ayande, says his research points in the same direction. He says he has found that, while 66 per cent believe in the present regime, they also want change, with 23 per cent seeking a radical change or revolution and 11 per cent saying everything is all right.
As to religion and the state, he has found that while 36 per cent believe religion should be a private affair, 54 per cent disagree, but the latter figure has plummeted from 70 per cent a decade ago.
In the past two months the hardliners have been flexing their muscles. Several papers have been shut down and a fleet of new Land Cruisers with aggressive morality enforcing policemen inside have made their presence felt.
Also, in mosques across the Teheran and the rest of the country, young men from the Basij, a militia loyal to Mr Khamenei, swear they will defend the Islamic revolution until death.
If reforms stay stalled then one day they may yet be called upon to do so.
Note the next to be hanged waiting in the trucks for their turn to die.
A fairly sure sign of a regime in collapse.
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