Leila Dena Perfectly Describes Youth of Iran’s Green Revolution
In her Seven Days in Tehran piece for GQ, Leila Dena inadvertently arrived to an uprising where she hoped to reconnect with her roots and expose her people’s obsessions with Versace, plastic surgery, Lost, and pretty much every other indulgence the youth in the West enjoy.
What Dena ended up with however, was an article that painted an incredibly vivid image of the frustration, anger, and lies that brought millions Iranians – young and old – to the streets:
“See them over there?” my aunt says, pointing to two girls on the balcony across the courtyard. They’re about 16 and look completely bored as they smoke their way through a pack of cigarettes. “They stand out there all day, smoking and talking. What else do they have to do? Nothing.” I will hear this repeatedly whenever people describe what young Iranians do with their time. They study unbelievably hard, only to graduate into an economy that has no jobs for them, leaving them trapped inside their parents‘ homes, secretly dating around until they find someone to marry at the age of 22 so they can move into an overpriced apartment in the city that their paycheck—if they‘re lucky enough to have one—barely covers; so to escape the stress of their growing debt, they meet up with friends at the local coffee shop, but that won‘t last long because all of those friends are applying for visas to get the hell out of Iran so that they can afford to live a life, any life, better than this one. So what‘s left for the people who stay? Nothing.
The voices are spreading. Allahu Akbar. It’s a game of telephone. You hear Allahu Akbar, you say Allahu Akbar. Pass it along. Allahu Akbar. Say His name. Allahu Akbar. Use His name as a way of saying everything you can‘t. Allahu Akbar. That you‘re hurting. Allahu Akbar. That people are being hurt. Allahu Akbar. That what is being done to those people isn‘t okay. Allahu Akbar. That the government is not okay. Allahu Akbar. That no matter how hard they try to shut you up, they can‘t stop these simple words, Allahu Akbar, Allahu Akbar, Allahu Akbar.
I fall asleep to the sounds of people calling out in the distance, on and on into the night.
SEVEN DAYS IN TEHRAN [GQ]
