Baraye

For dancing in the streets

For our fear when kissing loved ones

For my sister, your sister, our sisters

For the changing of rotted minds

For embarrassment due to being penniless

For yearning for an ordinary life

For the child laborer and his dreams

For this dictatorial economy

For this polluted air

For the dogs, innocent but banned

For all these never-ending tears

For never experiencing this moment again

For the smiling faces

For the students, for the future

For the feeling of peace

For the sunrise after long dark nights

For the stress and insomnia pills

For man, motherland, prosperity

For the girl who wished she was born a boy

For woman, life, freedom

“Baraye” means “because of” in Farsi (Persian). This song has become the anthem of the protests all over Iran. Even as Tehran’s leadership tries to blame the United States for spawning and fomenting these protests, this time we know it comes from the hearts, minds and fears of ordinary Iranians, especially young women. The explosion of mass protests was born of the threat to every woman in Iran, ordinary women just living their lives, of being arrested, tortured and killed by the morality police, given more power recently with the “election” of harder line politicians sanctioned by the Ayatollah Khamenei.

Writing for the October 12th Los Angeles, Times, Omid Khazani and Sarah Parvini explain where it began and how this anthem, receiving over 40 million views within a single day after being posted on social media on September 28th, became the rallying cry to Iranians everywhere: “Iran’s widespread protests were sparked by the death of 22-year-old Mahsa Amini after her arrest and brutal handling by Iran’s morality police for allegedly failing to cover hair properly and wearing pants that were too tight. But the cry for the rights of women and girls quickly morphed into something much bigger…

“As crowds poured through the streets of Iran last month to demonstrate against the government, an up-and-coming 25-year-old singer named Shervin Hajipour began working on a new song… For the lyrics, he drew on tweets by his fellow Iranians explaining their reasons for joining the rapidly expanding protests. There were many… The government responded by arresting Hajipour, and soon the song was removed from his Instagram page.

“But it was too late to suppress it. The protest movement, led by women and young people, had unified a discontented nation across socioeconomic lines, geographic regions and ethnicities. ‘Baraye’ was now its anthem…. Videos posted online show young schoolgirls dancing in a circle and singing the anthem in protest. It blasts from inside apartments and from cars driving past women walking without hijab in quiet defiance. [Hajipour was released on bail a few days later.]

“The singer wrote that he loved Iran and that he wanted to stay there ‘for my country, my flag and my people’ and continue singing… But in a sentence that led fans to speculate that he was being coerced by Iranian authorities, Hajipour also suggested that his song had been co-opted and used in a way that he never intended: ‘I’m saddened that those outside the boundaries of Iran, with which I have no relationship, misused my song after its release for political reasons.’...

“‘I got goosebumps,’ said a 26-year-old woman in Tehran, describing her experience of listening to the song. ‘All around me, people were listening to it, feeling misery and pity.’… Like others, she gave only her first name, Armita, for fear of retaliation by the government. People around her — teachers, mothers, young girls — play the song constantly… In Karaj, near Tehran, protesters played the song and chanted ‘Death to the dictator!’ and ‘Woman, life, freedom!’ In an Iranian classroom, students wrote the lyrics to ‘Baraye’ on the wall.”

There have been protests in Iran before, over living conditions, economic disarray caused by Western sanctions, repression, etc., etc… but this one is different. It is continuing. It is forceful. All across the land, women are cutting their hair in protest, tearing down not only the ubiquitous pictures of their Supreme Leader, the Ayatollah Khamenei, but desecrating the even more prevalent pictures of the theocracy’s founder, the Ayatollah Khomeini. Protestors have been shot, arrested, as injuries and deaths mount. Almost 200 are known to have died, including at least 19 children.

Will this seething protest bring down the regime? Or will brutality prevail? We need more oil to counter price-gouging shortages imposed by Putin’s war and the recent OPEC+ cutback, but while Iran is one of the few significant alternative sources, are we willing to release our oil embargo (and some of the bigger sanctions) to get that oil out (and inflation down)… and fund that repressive regime? Have ordinary Iranians, most of whom are weary of their repressive theocracy, suffered enough as their leaders live well? See also my October 5th Loud Angry Women, Speaking Truth blog. Is repression by severe autocrats, even in the United States, our inevitable future… or are the protests in Iran a bigger sign of a bigger desire of people to be free to government themselves and live their lives their way? Ukraine! Iran! And in growing pockets everywhere.

I’m Peter Dekom, and there is a growing social media effort to nominate “Baraye” for an American Grammy in the Recording Academy’s newest special award category, which honors a song promoting social change.