November 4, 2004, marked the 25th anniversary of the hostage crisis in Iran. A quarter-century after reactionary students seized the U.S. Embassy in Tehran and held 52 Americans hostage for more than a year, I am again reminded of my own all-too-early introduction to hate, xenophobia, and violence.
On November 4, 1979, I was five years old. While I was walking home from school in a suburb of North York, with my sister and two female cousins, a group of older boys from the local junior high surrounded us and began yelling, “You eye-ranian’s took them hostage…now we’re gonna take you hostage!”
Newly arrived from Iran, we could not figure out what these boys were talking about, but we knew that they were becoming more agitated by our silence and confusion. My sister began shouting in French at one of the boys, who was now pulling rope out of his hockey bag, “Nous n’avons pas fait, imbecile! [We did not do it, stupid!]”
The boys were not bilingual, and, to make a long story short, and we were tied up to the fence in the back of our apartment building for about three hours, before my uncle spotted us from the balcony. All the while, my sister, who was ten years old, kept trying to explain to us that the American embassy in Tehran had been taken over. I was not even listening to her; I had begun sobbing as soon as the boys had left. I could not stop myself.
I could not understand what was happening to us, to Iran. Being able to theorize about the event, decades later, does not help my continued feelings of bewilderment and anger. I continue to try and process these events, and I continue, along with many other Iranians, to pay for the crimes of our so-called government.
While recently entering the United States, I was fingerprinted and had my picture digitally scanned. Once again I was reminded of how citizens bear the overwhelming weight of the actions of their leaders. This is analogous to the crimes against humanity that occurred on 9/11.
In Canada, I could not have been more removed from the hostage crisis of 1979, and yet I was made to feel the repercussions of what those Iranian reactionaries did. The hostage crisis not only took 52 Americans hostage, it took the Iranian psyche hostage and solidified the zealots’ stranglehold on the country.
When BBC News recently interviewed Ebrahim Asgharzadeh (a transcript of which is available on their website), one of the masterminds behind the takeover of the embassy, and asked what the aim of their plot was, Asgharzadeh replied, “we neither thought of the aspects of this move, nor its implications.” After a quarter century, can’t we say the same about the implications of the Iranian revolution itself?
