Government Newspaper? What Government Newspaper?
An interview with journalist Lily Farhadpour

Lily Farhadpour is a 38 year-old publisher, writer and journalist. She has worked for six of the reformist newspapers which have fallen victim to the ongoing conservative crackdown: Jame'e, Tous, Neshat, Asr-e Azadegan, Akhbar-e Eqtesad, and Gunagun.

More recently, Ms. Farhadpour published Zanan-e Berlin, a book on the "Berlin incident": Last spring, a number of reformist intellectuals were invited to a conference in Berlin, which was disrupted by expatriate Iranian activists. Once back in Iran, a number of them were charged with conspiring with the demonstrators (cf. The Berlin Incident in brief). Zanan-e Berlin is a book abou the lives of the women who were arrested, and a fictionalized account of events, from their perspective.

Mahsa Shekarloo: What are you working on at the moment?

Lily Farhadpour: I still work as a journalist, but at my own home, in a room that I've turned into an office. That's where I go first thing in the morning. I don't set foot anywhere else in the apartment, because I have the feeling that if I did, I'd instantly turn into a housewife, which is something I really want to avoid. Particularly the kitchen — I only go in there to get my tea.

I have a lot of work at the moment; I'm working on three or four different projects at the same time, one being a book on the lives of woman members of parliament, another on prisoners in Iran, then there's the work for newspapers and magazines. And yet, ever since those other papers shut down, I have this feeling of being out of work.

Tirdad Zolghadr: You've also worked on a book on Berlin.

LF: You see, when the papers got shut down, although it was hard, it was a chance to start working differently, more thoroughly. We were so busy running the newspapers that we would barely get a chance to write anything at all. During that whole period I was chief editor of arts & culture, and I wrote very little.

Then the Berlin incident happened, and Shahla Laheji and Mehrangiz Kar were arrested. This happened at the time when they closed down about ten different newspapers, it all happened at once. And many of my friends were concerned by the fact that Laheji and Kar weren't getting much support, that everyone was focussed on figures such as Akbar Ganji. It's worth mentioning, by the way, that the Berlin organizers had invited a very wide range of reformists, and it's a shame we haven't had a conference of that kind in Iran.

After much debate, I realized that I wanted to write this book, and that the main motive was precisely the lack of support. The women's movement in Iran was splitting up, between the religious activists, the liberals and the secularists. The three had come very close to one another, and this had been good for the women's movement as a whole. In conversations with my friends and editors, we started asking ourselves whether the women's movement could take a division of the kind, or whether it would be a heavy blow.

I decided to do research on the women whose lives had been most affected by the Berlin conference. I consulted all the women who were at the conference, and also spoke to the female family members of the men who had attended.

I learned a lot while I was working on the book. I went through months of deep fear. When I would go to people's houses to interview them, I'd have a private taxi take me to their very doorstep, and then back to my own doorstep. I made ten copies of everything I wrote, and stored them in ten different computers. I wished I could communicate by telegraph, rather than by phone.

Once, I was visiting Mehrangiz Kar's family, when the phone rang, and it was Ms Kar calling from prison. I had said to everyone that I didn't want them to mention I was there, and everyone played along, especially since it was a prison telephone line. But then, one member of the family takes the phone, a very gentlemanly, polite man, who cannot help but refer to the honor of my visit. Kar later said she had a heart attack when she heard this, that she immediately understood why I was there - and it's why she immediately said "Oh, how nice. How is Lily's mother doing?". That way, I sounded like a family friend.

TZ: We can't print this, can we.

LF: Of course you can. My book is full of stuff like this. It's all been published.

The problem is that, if you know when and by whom you're phone's being tapped, you can act accordingly. But you don't know when they're listening to you, or watching you. Nor do you know who is doing it. You don't know whether it's the Information Ministry, the Ministry of Culture and Islamic Guidance, the Department of Justice, or groups like those who did the serial killings two years ago, or the ones who have kidnapped reporters.

And you see, I'm not trying to say we have a police-state atmosphere [ faza-ye polisi] in Iran. Because in the end, nothing happened. But it is the feeling I initially had. And it's hard to evaluate these things until you've gone through them.

The most difficult part of the book was the fact that some of the characters were close friends. When it came to those I didn't know very well, I could write everything they or their families had told me, because I learned all those things specifically for the purpose of publishing them. But when it came to what I knew about my friends, I never knew how much I could give away.

In any case, what was important was to say that these women were human beings like you and I. They aren't aliens from planet Mars, who come down here, do their job and fly back again. Everyone keeps repeating the story of their arrest, their release, etc. But there are also the human, personal, and emotional aspects. You see, people really think they're from wonderland, that to do the work they do, they must be something completely different to everyone else. And that's precisely why they keep getting accused of things such as spying, or of being backed by the West in some mysterious way.

MS: You said the three groups were the believers, the liberals and the secularists. Could you explain what you meant by that? What's the difference between a liberal and a secularist?

LF: "Liberal" has become a negative term, a political insult. It's used for someone whose idea of democracy is basically the current type of government in the West. A "secularist" is known to specifically advocate the separation of State and Religion. Secular does not, however, mean the same thing as "lay" [ laiik] , which for some reason implies that you are against religious believers in general.

These classifications are vague, and they are not used by the groups themselves. They're the names that others use to categorize them. People don't have the courage to call themselves "liberal", nor "lay", although recently, secularists started to openly refer to themselves as such.

TZ: Did you come to a conclusion — can the women's movement afford to split up into religious and secular factions or not?

LF: No, it cannot. Traditionally, the secularists and their ideas had only ever reached a small segment of the middle class. They shouldn't forget that it was thanks to the religious activists that they got into touch with a mass audience. It was the secularists who benefitted the most from the alliance.

And it is the movement as a whole that will suffer if the split occurs. Zanan magazine is a good example. It wouldn't be where it is today if it weren't for a collaboration.

TZ: Tell us about your background.

LF: I started studying journalism at the age of 29.

I've wanted to be a journalist since the age of nine. But I only fulfilled that wish when I turned 31.

MS: What memories do you have of the revolution?

LF: I was in high school. During the entire year of the revolution, we went to school for two months, no more. The schools were either shut down, or we would skip class to join the demonstrations.

MS: You married around that time.

LF: Yes, I married a political prisoner who had just been released. I thought he was a real hero. I was sure I had become the wife of the future prime minister. The poor kid turned out to be a good man. And no hero.

Then the universities were shut down, and by the time they re-opened, we had children.

MS: It seems the closing down of the universities was tough on many women. Many say it had a huge impact on their lives.

LF: That's true. We were a group of five friends who all pursued our studies only once our kids had reached a certain age.

When I finally went to university, I was studying, working, and raising two kids on the side.

TZ: What about your family background.

LF: My father is a regular, middle-class sort of guy. When it comes to newspapers, he doesn't even know the names of the ones I've worked for. When he buys a paper, he makes sure it's the cheapest and the largest. The larger the better, since you can use them as spreads and wrappings.

My parents have separated. My mother is in a completely different world to my father. She has a doctorate in Economic Development Studies, and teaches at the SOAS University in London [ School for Oriental and African Studies] .

TZ: I've heard you being accused of working for "government newspapers". And I know that Iranians abroad are likely to make the same accusation.

LF: Look. It's not as if we didn't know what we were doing. It's obvious the changes in the Iranian press are linked to political developments. Among the newspapers that were shut down, most of them were run by politicians, not journalists. They were run by "critics from within". And when we were shut down, it was the journalists who took the blow, not the politicians. Our whole trade took a blow.

But the issue is: what is a "government newspaper"? A newspaper that gets financial support from the State? Well, none of us did. A newspaper that is officially backed by the [ reformist] government? None of us were. As a matter of fact, it was us who were backing the government. If it wasn't for our backing, the government wouldn't have made it.

We didn't need any support. Especially not monetary support. The papers made good money from advertising, but also from the sales — from 150'000 to 200'000 copies upwards, they would make a profit from the actual sales, too. And the investors knew from the very beginning that they would be making a profit, they simply had to deal with the fact that the paper could be shut down at any moment.

"Government newspaper" doesn't mean anything here. So perhaps the people at the head of these papers were active in politics, rather than journalists. As if this wasn't the case everywhere else.

MS: Whenever a newspaper was shut down, you kept on working.

LF: Yes, we would try to remain together as a team, and base a new paper on the same framework as the previous one. But one of the very last laws that were passed by the old parliament intended to stop this from happening. If a team that worked in a banned newspaper founds a new paper, it runs a big risk of being taken to court.

But in any case, I'd say our team was the only one that really had its own, distinct identity. We were the only ones saying, as a group of professionals, "if you would be so kind as to invest, we'll publish this paper for you". We tried to stay together and make sure that every one of us could get back to work. But in the end, we split up. A few of us wound up working for the weekly Gunagun, like myself.

MS: Gunagun was shut down after three issues.

LF: Yes, and not only was it shut down — they sealed off the whole office building. As they had already done to Jame'e three years ago. When it happened the first time, we'd forgotten the office notebook in the building, with all the names and phone numbers, the names of our sources and so on. But I showed up the next day, and convinced the man at the door that I'd left some personal belongings inside. I don't know what he was thinking when I left with that enormous volume, but I got it out of there.

The second time they came to seal off the office, at Gunagun, I immediately told everyone to collect all the books, all the photographs, and all the written material. So everyone started walking out the door with these heaps and heaps of photographs and notebooks. And when the officials would object, we'd say, "but Sir, these are our personal belongings!". In the end, the men had to leave everything there, but the women could take stuff with them. The officials couldn't touch the women, they couldn't do anything about it.

It's awful to get shut down like that. A newspaper is an extremely lively, hectic place. And when the order arrives to stop publishing, everything stops in its tracks, all at once. The reporter doing an interview puts down the phone, the designer puts away the layout for the next issue, the typist stops typing. And the government officials show up and start putting down everyone's names, so you tell them you're not working there, that you're only there to pick someone up from work or something like that.

MS: What about the political differences within the paper?

LF: You could say the people who worked for the arts section tended to be more secular than those who did the political pages.

One of the artists that I featured was a very conspicuous woman, with heavy make-up, and hair sticking out everywhere from under her hejab. At one point, a colleague from the political section came over and said, "do us a favor and don't publish that provocative picture of your friend again". I said "fine, if you don't publish the picture of your own friend, the guy with that awful unkempt beard of his. You think she's ugly, well I think he's really ugly". These little, teasing jokes would turn into heavy arguments, and we actually started growing apart.

When things became difficult, we grew closer again, because of our collective misery. We were all going through the same thing. But at one point, we realized that some of us weren't getting invited to participate in new projects, and that people weren't printing our articles any more. We became very worried we'd been banned from writing altogether [ mamnu'-e qalam] .

When we were invited to found the newspaper Jahan-e Eslam , we took hope once again. It was to be run by a prominent supporter of President Khatami, and owned by Hadi Khamenei, who also owns the reformist Hayat-e no. We were overjoyed, because we realized we would be working together again as a team. It took us two weeks to get everything prepared. Every single thing was ready and waiting, from the photo archives to the very last detail of the first issue which was to be released the next morning— when we learned that Hadi Khamenei had changed his mind, and had decided against it. That was the toughest blow we'd ever been through. Because it now looks like we really are banned as a team. Some of us can work individually, in different papers, but we can no longer work as a group.

TZ: We suggest you come work for Bad Jens, all of you.

LF: [ being sarcastic] How nice of you. Thank you.

What's funny is that, after three years of insisting on a woman's page, three years of arguing, debating, and pushing, of people telling me there were more important issues to deal with, I had finally persuaded them to include a woman's page in Jahan-e Eslam. It would have finally worked.

I've often wondered whether the woman question is that thin red line you're not supposed to cross, but I've never gotten a straight answer from anyone. Generally, the more conservative the newspaper, the less women you have working there. But even in the more well-known, reformist newspapers, I've heard from many women that, when there is talk of hiring a new journalist or a new editor, they openly say a man would be better. And this is because the separation of the sexes which supposed to be practiced in office spaces is impossible to enforce in journalism, where you work very closely together, until late into the night. And a woman who's a journalist cannot be meek and demure. She has to ask uncomfortable questions, and raise hell if need be. She can't exactly be your ideal gentlewoman.

But in spite of this, we had a majority of women in our team. Our staff always had the highest number of women, and we were the only ones to have several chief editors who were women.

There are far more competent female journalists than male ones. This is because journalism is not a lucrative profession. Men who want to make a living go somewhere else. So it's a place where women can pursue their careers more easily. What's more, journalism is a respected profession. A woman can easily justify being away from home if she's a journalist. You can't justify that with any sort of job.

MS: Compared to the West, Iranian newspapers have more editorials, polemics and analyses, as opposed to news reports. But women seem to be doing the actual news articles.

LF: That's right. But it's the news that's important. You can't put an editorial under a front-page headline.

transl.: TZ

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