July 2009

I am not young. I am a 66 year old American woman schoolteacher, retired. I wanted to add my comment in support of freedom in Iran, as I believe it is not just the youth who would stand for freedom, but the elders as well. We love you who are fighting for freedom in Iran. We pray for your success, God willing, in achieving democracy in your country. God be with you. God bless those who have died in defense of freedom. God Bless the women who have courage to stand---and die.

--Posted on The Boston Globe's website by Eleaner Morgan June 22, 09

We’re sporting green, up on the hill. No, not just the gardens—although they’re looking lush and verdant with all the rain and cool weather—but as a show of support to those protesting in Iran. We listen to reports on NPR each morning as we drive to work, anxious to hear if the demonstrators have won any ground, or if they’ve been beaten back by riot squads. When D was a student in Paris during the 70’s, he met a Persian woman who had left Iran with her family to escape the dictatorship of the shah. Now, a generation later, this woman’s children could be back on the streets in Tehran, protesting their lack of freedom under the current regime. These daily protests are, in a way, a bookend to all those purple-inked pointer fingers we saw on the news after the first popular elections in Iraq, following the overthrow of Saddam Hussein. A reminder that democracy doesn’t necessarily equal freedom.

So, we carry around in our thoughts the green that has become the symbol of this Iranian citizens’ uprising. We give small signs of support to the Persian family that runs our favorite take-out pizza place, asking them about the green ribbons they wear on their wrists, talking with them about their family back in Iran, commenting on the Iranian soccer team’s green armbands at a recent World Cup qualifying match. Whether Mousavi would a better or fairer ruler than Ahmadinejad is anyone’s guess, but that the hundreds of thousands of marchers in Iran each day want change is unquestionable.

Now that the summer sun lingers so long in the sky, we get up early and stay awake late. D walks every morning before work, for exercise, while the dog and I sit on the porch or out in the garden, for a different kind of exercise: soaking in the blue of the sky and the green of the garden. As I sit, my mind goes repeatedly to the luxury of living under a government that allows freedom—to speak, to live, to be. While we don’t always agree with government leaders and their decisions, and are sometimes the financial victims of botched policies and extravagant taxes, we are, nonetheless, essentially free.

At night, after the dinner dishes are put away and the day’s chores finished, we sit out in the inky darkness, content to be still and silent for a while before bed. Although we don’t see as many stars in the night sky as we used to before all of the commercial development in Robinson township, we still see enough to set the imagination wandering—through time and space, backward and forwards, remembering and dreaming. Maybe it’s because of the vastness overhead or simply to effects of too much wine at dinner, but I find myself again thinking about the big issues of life, rather than the quotidian. These perfect early summer mornings and nights almost demand that we think higher thoughts than what items to add to tomorrow’s shopping list or when to schedule an oil change before the car’s engine falls out onto the parkway.

Lately, though, when I look up at the stars, or out at the morning sun hitting the trees, I think about millions of unknown people—people we’ll never meet—who see the same sun and the same stars, but under conditions that they find unacceptable, and I wish them luck—the same luck that I had, being born into a loving family in a country that protects the civil rights of all, even if imperfectly. And I send up a silent prayer that those unknown millions will one day live in a community that has a yearly parade to celebrate its Independence Day.