Author Roya Hakakian spoke to the Adath Israel Women’s League in Lawrence last week.
By: Lea Kahn
Despite Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad’s pledge to wipe Israel off the face of the earth, Jews have lived mostly peaceful lives in Iran for 3,000 years the Hakakian family of today, being among them.
Author and journalist Roya Hakakian, who was born in Iran, said her family had lived there since the 15th century. Ms. Hakakian’s three brothers immigrated to the United States in the late 1970s to study in American colleges, and she and her parents moved in 1985.
The author of "Journey From the Land of No: A Girlhood Caught in Revolutionary Iran," Ms. Hakakian read some passages from her 2004 book to Adath Israel’s Women’s League at its March 25 spring brunch at the Greenacres Country Club, on Lawrenceville Road.
When the Iranian revolution occurred in 1979 and the Shah of Iran was overthrown, most young Iranian Jews welcomed the change, said the 40-year-old Ms. Hakakian, who now lives in Connecticut. They were hoping for a democratic country, she said.
"We believed things were going to improve (after the revolution)," Ms. Hakakian said. "When did it become clear to me, when did I realize things were going in the wrong direction?"
She realized there would be changes when the bell rang at the Jewish high school that Ms. Hakakian attended and a woman in a black veil, worn by devout Muslim women, walked into the room and announced herself as the school’s new principal.
"The new principal gave us a speech and tried to convince us to convert to Islam. (But) whoever appointed her to the task must not have auditioned her," Ms. Hakakian said, because the principal failed to convince any of the Jewish girls to convert.
Nevertheless, the Iranian Jewish community felt relatively safe, she said. Representatives of the Jewish community approached the Ayatollah Khomeini, who assured them they would not be harmed. He made the distinction between "our own (Iranian) Jews" and "the blood-sucking Zionists" who populate Israel, Ms. Hakakian said.
President Ahmadinejad cannot be bad to Iranian Jews because his mentor, the late Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini, made that promise to the country’s Jewish community shortly after the 1979 revolution, she said.
Many wealthy Jews left Iran in the 1970s and 1980s for economic reasons, and the middle class followed them, Ms. Hakakian said. The Jewish community that remains about 20,000 people is "really wedded" to Iran, she added.
However, during the early 1980s, there was a ban on Jews leaving the country, Ms. Hakakian said. When she and her mother applied for new passports, the documents were confiscated. There was an emigration quota, based on religion.
Ms. Hakakian said that she and her mother, through some bribery, received permission to leave Iran by posing as Armenian Christians. Mr. Hakakian was smuggled out of the country into Pakistan, and the family made their way to the United States.
For more information about the work of Roya Hakakian, visit www.royahakakian.com.