From An Iranian Metamorphosis. © 2012 by Editions çà et là / ARTE Editions. Rights arranged through Nicolas Grivel Agency. All rights reserved.
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From An Iranian Metamorphosis. © 2012 by Editions çà et là / ARTE Editions. Rights arranged through Nicolas Grivel Agency. All rights reserved.
From An Iranian Metamorphosis. © 2012 by Editions çà et là / ARTE Editions. Rights arranged through Nicolas Grivel Agency. All rights reserved.
It all started with a roach. Every cartoonist in Iran knows the day will come, but no one could’ve believed that it would start this way . . .
Find out how Neyestani became a cartoonist in an interview with The Comics Journal.
Then watch Neyestani draw, and listen to him tell the story behind “Metamorphosis,” in the film below. (In Persian, with English subtitles.)
(Watch on YouTube)
Listen to pronunciations of the Persian terms in this story, read aloud by Mandana Naviafar.
(Listen on SoundCloud)
Iran is far from the only place where there are controversies over children’s literature! Watch an American Library Association video featuring the “Top Ten” most challenged books in the US.
Next, listen to a panel on National Public Radio discuss “What people miss in the conversation about banned books.” The panelists point out that comics are often among the most frequently banned books in U.S. schools. (We suggest starting around 12:55.)
Finally, hear from writers in an ABC News article: Authors of color speak out against efforts to ban books on race.
Iranian writer Amir Ahmadi Arian
Scholar Amir Arian provides some historical context for this work in the introduction to Iranian literature on WWB Campus:
In 2006, Mahmoud Ahmadinejad was elected president. Under his direction, the Ministry of Cultural Guidance soon reversed the relatively tolerant policies of the Khatami years and put in place a brutal censorship regime. Once again, a generation of writers, those who had come up under Khatami, simply stopped writing or migrated elsewhere. However, by this point, thanks to the reformist movement, censorship rules had been irreversibly eased. Despite the heightened risk under Ahmadinejad, cartoonists and humorists returned to the press after a long absence and boldly took on politicians as well as the values of Iranian society, making themselves vulnerable to public outrage or persecution. Mana Neyestani’s “An Iranian Metamorphosis,” in this collection, is an extreme example of how this increased room for maneuvering put the artists’ and journalists’ lives at risk.
Tabriz university, where protests against Neyestani’s cartoon first began. By Meisam, 2006. CC 3.0 license.
Shoghie, Neyestani’s Azeri cellmate, explains that “Only one cartoon or one newspaper is not the issue. The problem is the history of ignorance” and prejudice against Azeris.
An article from a non-partisan Washington think tank contains some factual errors but makes the same point, suggesting that protests against the cartoon reflected a larger issue: “resentment in Iranian Azerbaijan about the region’s economic and social difficulties.”
The article goes on to note that Persian attitudes towards Azeris are “well captured in the phrase ‘Torki khar’ (Turkish donkey), used by Persians in reference to Azeris, whom they regard as the ‘muscle’ of the Iranian economy to be dominated by Persian ‘brains.'”
You can read the entire article: “Iranian Azeris: A Giant Minority” on the Institute’s website. However, please note that there are serious errors! For example, the article calls Neyestani an “ethnic Azeri cartoonist.”
Iranian novelist and essayist Salar Abdoh, whose work also appears in this unit, writes of Azeris in Iran:
Perhaps out of every three Persians I know, at least one is somehow related to an Azeri, man or woman. The Azeri/Persian relationship is complicated, seeing that save for the last dynasty, most of the royal lines going back a very long time have been Azeri Turkish. Therefore, it is not as cut and dried as that between Persians and other ethnicities. Also the economic might of Azeris in Iran sets them apart. They occupy high levels of power in government and business and therefore are a deeply integral part of the structure of the country.
You can read more about “Iran’s Ethnic Azeris And The Language Question” in an article from the Radio Free Europe (a U.S. government-funded media organization).
“The Islamic Republic says that the Azeris are happy in the Iranian state,” but is that actually true? Learn why fully answering this question is so difficult, and find out more about the perceived “threat” of Azeri nationalism, in an article from the Middle East Institute.
Why was Neyestani personally targeted? In the early aughts, entire newspapers were shuttered in Iran, but by the mid-aughts, the BBC found that the government was focusing instead on “individual journalists and executives . . .” You can find out more about the media landscape in Iran during the era of this story in this article from the Council on Foreign Relations. (The article starts with a discussion of the mass protests and repressions following the 2009 election.)
After he is put in prison, Neyestani’s interrogator asks him to “write about the Iranian cartoonists that you know”—that is, to report on other cartoonists. In the next panel, at the bottom of page 18, Neyestani seems to be sitting at a dinner table with his colleagues—a reference to the famous Leonardo da Vinci painting The Last Supper, of Jesus eating with his disciples, one of whom has betrayed him to the Roman authorities.
Leonardo da Vinci’s painting The Last Supper. Public domain. For more on the painting, visit the Web Gallery of Art.
In his own story, Neyestani tries not to be a “Judas,” writing only unimportant information about the other cartoonists.
New to learning about Iran? Read the country’s profile from encyclopedia.com (scroll down for more information about modern Iranian history).
Iran Jomeh: Jomeh means Friday, the day of the Muslim week-end. In Iran, Friday is a non-working day for most people.
Azeri: A dialect of Turkish spoken in the country of Azerbaijan and in the province of Azerbaijan in Iran. “Azeri” can also refer to people of Azerbaijani Turkish origin.
Ministry of Information: The primary intelligence agency of the Islamic Republic, empowered to make arrests and close newspapers or magazines.
General Custer and the Sioux: General George Armstrong Custer was a U.S. army officer in the so-called “Indian Wars” of the 1860s-70s, battling the Sioux and other indigenous armies. He was eventually killed by the Sioux in a battle known as “Custer’s Last Stand .
Neyestani’s translator Ghazal Mosadeq is herself an author. Read her short story Ney Boulevard, about Iranian immigrants in Paris.
Habibe Jafarian, journalist and author of “How to Be a Woman in Tehran.”
Read Habibe Jafarian’s memoir of growing up as book-loving girl in Iran’s most religious city: For the Love of the Books.
Read another “Kafkaesque” story about Evin Prison: Photo of Smiling Political Prisoners in Iran’s Evin Prison Lands One in Prison Known For Harsh Conditions.
Then, hear from the prisoners’ families who “set up a protest camp outside the prison,” in this New York Times article.
Neyestani’s cellmate complains about a “history of ignorance” about Azeris. Learn about Azeri culture and “the two Azerbaijans,” one an independent republic, the other in Iran, in this dated but still helpful article: Azerbaijan.
Then, read a BBC Persian article about the protest and the Iranian government’s response, which included tear gas.
Finally, listen to a song by Davod Azad, a popular Azeri musician.
Neyestani began as a political cartoonist, but as Iran’s government became more oppressive, he switched over to children’s cartoons because they seemed “less risky . . . Boy, can I be wrong!”
Eighty years ago, Russian writers living under the murderous leader Stalin tried this strategy, too. Watch a video of poet and artist Vladimir Mayakovsky’s children’s book What Is Good and What is Bad?
According to the book, it is good to “keep no secrets,” avoid walking in thunderstorms, and brush your teeth. (Watch on YouTube)
Then, find out what happened to Mayakovsky and the other Russian poets and artists who, like Neyestani, “turned to writing for children” in this Guardian article.
Neyestani’s cellmate Shoghie tells him: “We have no personal problems with you or other journalists but on the way towards the ideal there’s a good chance some people get crushed under the train of vicissitudes. ”
In post-Soviet Russia, people described their lives with the same metaphor. Read an oral history of a man who spent his teenage years in the Gulag, one of millions of innocent people “thrown from the moving train.”
To find out more about what happened between General Custer and the Sioux leader Crazy Horse (which was very different from what happened between Neyestani and his cellmate Shogie!) watch this long-form BBC documentary.
In the memoir, a colleague advises Neyestani to “hide any alcohol.” Alcohol is officially banned by the clergy in Iran, but people still find ways to obtain it, and alcoholism remains an issue.
Read a New York Times article about alcoholism and drinking culture in Iran.
Neyestani connects “An Iranian Metamorphosis” to an earlier story, the Czech-German writer Franz Kafka’s “Metamorphosis.” Most people who’ve read Kafka’s story in English remember it being about a man who transforms into a cockroach. But was it really? Unravel the mystery in this article from openculture.com.
*For Teaching Idea 1
On WWB Campus:
Elsewhere: Blending fact and fantasy:
Elsewhere: Breaking the fourth wall:
*For Teaching Idea 2
On WWB Campus:
Elsewhere:
*For Teaching Idea 3
From An Iranian Metamorphosis. © 2012 by Editions çà et là / ARTE Editions. Rights arranged through Nicolas Grivel Agency. All rights reserved.