Episode 134: The Jewish Girl Who Joined the Islamic Revolution [Transcript]

Narration is in bold. 

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Nahanni Rous: Welcome back to Can We Talk?, the podcast of the Jewish Women’s Archive, where gender, history and Jewish culture meet.

Guita Sazan grew up in a Jewish family in Tehran in the 1960s and 70s. For decades, Iran had been ruled by the Shah. His regime was friendly toward western governments and Israel, tolerant of Jews and other minorities, and liberal when it came to women’s rights. But he cracked down brutally on political dissent.

In 1974, when Guita was 12 years old, the regime broadcast a military tribunal on television. A group of political dissidents were charged with the death penalty for the crime of conspiring against the Shah. Guita and her family watched the show trial on their black-and-white TV.

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Guita Sazan: One of the accused, you know, was a very handsome young man and he was on death row at the time. And the reason was he was fighting for the right of people who were not well off economically in Iran, and his name was Khosrow Golsorkhi.

Nahanni: Guita describes the trial as the beginning of her political awakening.

Guita: I was only 12 years old. I'm having chicken soup, you know, on Shabbat evening. And I'm looking at this program and I'm becoming aware that there are drastic differences in a society, that there are people who are poor, there are people who cannot even talk about the injustice that exist in the society. And here is this young man willing to give up his life in order to bring democracy, in order to bring equality, in order to bring a fair economic distribution of wealth.

Nahanni: Just days after the trial, Guita’s father came home with the news that Golsorkhi had been executed by firing squad. 

Anti-government sentiment grew over the next few years and boiled over into a popular uprising known as the Iranian—or Islamic—Revolution.  Guita was 16 in 1979, when the Shah went into exile and the Islamic Republic of Iran was established.

Her parents, like most Iranian Jews, were wary of Islamists and Marxists destabilizing a country where Jews were relatively safe. But Guita was inspired by the struggle for liberation. 

As time went by, though, the new regime became more and more repressive—to Jews, to women, even to other revolutionaries who didn’t fall in line with the regime’s radical Islam.  Finally Guita realized her own life might be in danger. 

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This time on Can We Talk?, Guita Sazan joins us to discuss her new memoir Mirrors on Fire: A Jewish Girl Seized in Pursuit of Jihad. She talks about how she adopted Shia Islam’s political ideology and practice, found an unlikely love, and eventually fled the country to begin a new life in America. She begins by describing how she perceived life under the Shah as a teenager and what inspired her to join the revolution.

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Guita: As the time went on I became more and more aware of how the Shah of Iran, the King of Iran, would arrest, torture, and execute people who were against him. And those whispers, you know, became louder and louder inside my head. And I became more and more exposed to the atrocities that the Shah of Iran was committing towards his own people. 

It started with cutting people off from freedom to speak their ideas, freedom to write about their disagreements or disappointments towards the Shah’s regime.

And I became more and more aware of that disparity in the society. Again, remember, I'm still very young. I'm still trying to form an understanding about not only the idea of social justice, but also on a deeper level, questioning the purpose of life. What am I gonna do with my life? What really has value in life?

Nahanni:  When you were a teenager you were really drawn to the ideas of the revolution, you were drawn to the social justice aspect of it, to the democratic aspect of it.  It also seems to me you were actually drawn to the Islamic side of it. I mean, I remember a scene of you praying on the roof. And your father says, "Why are you praying like a Muslim?" So what was that all about? 

Guita: Yes. First of all, I always believed, and I still believe, that I always remained Jewish in my heart. At the time when the Islamic Revolution was taking form in Iran, Islam was presented to me as a political ideology, as an ideology that had a solution for the economic disparity, for the social injustice. And for bringing a society that had a layer of spirituality, a layer of justice, a layer of true identity of Iranian people. So I became very interested in Islam in that way. And when I started, you know, to become more and more familiar with those ideas, the curiosity also grew in me in [of] what it is like to pray like a Muslim, what it is like to have that kind of connection with Allah.To me, Allah, Hashem, God, Khodah, as we say in Persian, were all the same entity. 

You see, I wanted to be connected with the revolutionary forces. I wanted to be one of those people who fought for dismantling the Shah’s regime, and at the time, I chose to line myself up with the Islamic side of that revolution. 

The Iranian revolution did have a socialist side, did have, did have a nationalist side, did have a communist side. You know, these are all different factions that were at play while Islamic Revolution was forming. But my curiosity connected me with this spiritual part of it too, because I really wanted to be—I wanted to be pure. I wanted to be a true, real revolutionary.

Therefore I do everything that my Islamic sisters are doing. You know, I covered myself in Islamic attire. You know, my head was covered. At times. I would wear a black chador, which is a cloth that covers women from head to toe, only the face and hands are exposed. You know, I wanted to belong so badly.

Nahanni: How did your parents react? 

Guita: Of course they were horrified. Of course they were ashamed. Of course, they could not raise their head up amongst their other Jewish friends, family, and in the community forever. They had to explain this betrayal that their daughter had created. 

Nahanni: So you moved out of your parents' house at some point…

Guita: Not quite, I never moved out. You know, I moved to a room that was on a different level of the house. So I moved there for a while. Because I wanted to really leave like a yogi. I wanted to live on the floor. I wanted to eat just bread and water and maybe a little cheese. I would not allow myself to eat fruits or any kind of food that poor people could not afford. I wanted to be truly a fighter for the rights of the people who were deprived.

Nahanni: And at this point you feel like, as a young woman, you can fully participate in this revolutionary fervor. Did it feel liberating even as a woman? I'm wondering where the gender piece fits in at this point, because obviously later it becomes very repressive.

Guita: Absolutely. When the revolution came to fruition in 1979, all the schools were closed, high schools were closed, universities were all closed, because the new government wanted to bring in a cultural revolution. So the only opportunity I had in order to continue my education was to become a teacher. So that was liberating to me because now at 18, I had a career. In addition, soon after the revolution there was a war between Iran and Iraq so I had the opportunity to become a nurses' aid, tending to the wounded soldiers at a hospital. And that was also very empowering to me as a woman. So that was my purpose, because I could make a difference. And in that way, you know, I was completely committed to my revolutionary self. 

Nahanni: How uncommon was it for a Jewish person to be in support of the Islamic Revolution at that time?

Guita: It was very uncommon. However, it was not impossible, because there were socialist factions of the Jewish community that had actually fought against the Shah, but none of them were really connected to the Shia angle of this revolution. I don't know anyone that has had the audacity to step on a path that I chose at the time.

Nahanni: Or she didn’t—until she met Kiu. Kiu was a young Jewish man who was also a revolutionary.  And he had also become a practicing Muslim. Kiu’s cousin, a family friend, invited them both to a meal. Kiu and Guita sat opposite each other. Out of modesty, she tried not to look directly at him.

Guita: The energy that I received from the other side of the room was a warm, intense energy. And I sheepishly—I actually looked at his face, beautiful green eyes, wonderful locks of golden brown hair, chiseled face, gorgeous teeth. And I think when I glimpsed his face, and I had never had a feeling like this in my life. Remember, I was just a 19-year-old modest Persian girl who had never even held a guy's hand.

But at the moment, I felt that my entire being was on fire. I didn't know what it was. You know, in that sea of innocence. I still can't talk about it. Because that was, I think, my first experience of love.

Nahanni: Hmm. 

Guita: I got up to leave and he followed me, and as I was putting on my army boots, he said to me, "I know you are a committed person to the Iranian Revolution. I know that the Jewish people do not understand you, but I am in complete support of your path because I, too, have traveled this path."

Nahanni: It sounds like you felt like you found the only other one who was like you.

Guita: You see, I never believed that I would ever get married, because if I would marry a Jewish person, all the Muslim comrades or revolutionaries that had allowed me to be part of their movement would never trust me again. And if I would seek a Jewish person to get married to, that was close to impossible, because there was not one Jewish guy who would value the revolutionary path that I had stepped into. The majority of the Iranian Jews were about to leave, Iran. They felt persecuted, they felt insecure. They did not have any confidence that the new Islamic government will actually protect their rights.

Nahanni: And then, your father wouldn't give permission for you to get married. And you needed your father's permission. And why wouldn't he give you permission? 

Guita: In fact, you know, Kiu and his father came in the traditional ceremony that is called Khastegari, which is asking for the daughter's hand in a marriage. They came, they visited our house, they brought gifts, they brought pastries, they paid their respects. And my father, after [he] heard the requests, essentially kicked them out of the house. He said, I will never agree to this.

Nahanni: According to Iranian law, Guita needed her father’s permission to get married, and he refused to give it, because Guita and Kiu did not want to be married by a rabbi.

Guita: Kiu at the time called several Ayatollahs because at the time—look, remember we are, we are Jewish in our hearts, but we are practicing political Islam. So we are thinking we need to ask an Ayatollah what to do. And none of these Ayatollahs, or none of the clergy, had an answer for us. Nobody would marry us.

So, after my father essentially kicked Kiu and his father out of the house, Kiu said to me, "Meet me at a shrine of a Muslim saint in the north of Tehran." These shrines are called imamzadeh. People go there so that their wishes are granted and they're very much holy sites. I met him there and again, him and I are talking about the impossibility, the impasse that we had encountered in order to get married. And all of a sudden Kiu says, "You know what? I'm going to call the office of Imam Khomeini myself."

Nahanni: This is Ayatollah Khomeini, this is, like, the leader of the Islamic Republic of Iran.

Guita: Correct. The leader of the Islamic Revolution, the leader of the Islamic Republic of Iran. The man who millions of millions of people would essentially be willing to give up their lives if the leader Imam Khomeini had said so.

So at the time Kiu says, "Nobody has an answer to our quest. I'm going to ask him." So I thought, that's impossible. Khomeini is not going to talk to you. What are you talking about? He said, "No, no, no. You don't understand. The office of Ayatollah Khomeini has an inside line, and I have the number to that inside line.

So he calls the office of Ayatollah Khomeini, and I'm sitting by myself in the courtyard of that shrine—you know, that holy saint, looking at the pigeons thinking, I don't know if you're going to get an answer. But Kiu comes back after a few short moments and he said, "Ayatollah Khomeini says, 'They can come to me. I will marry them. I will marry them myself.'"

And that's how we proceeded. That's how our connection, our union, was sealed. 

Nahanni: So let's jump to the next part of your story. Once the Islamic Republic was well established, what were some moments that stand out for you when you began to understand that the revolution was not—had not actually built what you had hoped would be built? 

Guita: One of the most pivotal moments was one afternoon when my mother came to visit me and Kiu. Kiu was not home at the time. It was a few months after we had gotten married. My mother was forbidden by my father to visit me, but she still did. She came to her house. She was wearing all black. Her eyes were so red, bloodshot because she had been crying apparently for hours. She came in hunchbacked, broken. And she said to me that her cousin, a Jewish guy, a business Jewish man, was executed by the Islamic government for the sin of having, in the past, before the revolution—his crime was having a relationship with Israel. 

That execution of that innocent Jewish man tore me apart. And I began to see that we are not safe. However, I was still hoping that these were just radical factions of the Islamic Iran. 

Nahanni: Let me just understand: The execution of your mother's cousin was really your first notion that this was actually becoming a terrifying repressive regime.

Guita: It was that and also, around that time, the government started to crack down on other factions that were very instrumental in bringing the revolution into fruition, people who believed in more of a different kind of social order, you know, or socialism. o the government started arresting a lot of young people. The government banned them from any kind of demonstration or freedom of speech.

So yes, my mother's cousin's execution was the first shock. And then I heard the news coming in, in terms of the arrest, in terms of hearing that people were being tortured. Many people were just arrested, tortured, and executed because they were not supporters of the Islamic government of Iran.

Nahanni: Three years into the revolution, Guita was thrown into a crisis. In an attempt to remind herself of what had inspired her to join the revolution, she visited the Muslim cemetery of Tehran.

Guita: I wanted to reflect on my own path. I went and I looked at graves of the people, the revolutionaries that had given up their lives to bring justice, equality, and democracy in Iran. One of them was Khosrow Golsorkhi, the person that put in the first sparks of awareness in me at the age 12. He laid there. He gave his life because of his belief. 

And there were others, his comrades, and there were people who died during the 1979 revolution. They were shot at, on the streets, you know, by the Shah’s forces.

I am looking at all of this history of bravery, commitment, absolute love for a society that is democratic, that is fair, and all these people who were laying in that cemetery who wanted to bring in that kind of order in Iran.

As I was in that cemetery, for a moment, I lost my way. And I essentially got lost in a part of the cemetery that was very barren. There were no graves there, there were just little bricks sticking up with no names, just numbers. And it turned out that that part of the cemetery was used to bury people who were executed by the government, people who were deemed to be the anti-revolutionaries or the anti-Islamic government. And I encountered, you know, an older woman sitting on the dirt and grieving, you know, at the grave of her daughter, who was only 17. And she told me that her daughter was executed because she belonged to one of the Marxist groups. She also told me that her daughter was raped prior to the execution, because apparently in Islamic law, a virgin cannot be executed.

And that was the other jolt in my soul. How could the revolution that I fought for with my heart and soul, that I fought for, despite all the shame and pain and terror that caused my family, how could this revolution now create this kind of inhumane atrocity against the people of Iran? [sighs]

Nahanni: So you begin to have doubts, and at some point, you express these doubts to some of your friends, and at that point you realize that if they suspect you of not being fully committed, that you and your family could be in serious danger as well.

Guita: Absolutely, because the Islamic law clearly states that if anyone becomes Muslim, and practices Islam, they cannot turn away from that practice. The people that I had lined myself up with made it clear to me that if you ever lose your head cover or if you ever say anything or do anything against the Islamic Iran, you could be seriously hurt. You could be arrested. They would talk to me about incidents where people were executed and they would imply that this can happen to you, this can happen to your family. And then the terror started to take root in me.

Nahanni: Did you leave Iran because you were afraid for your own safety at that point? Or did you leave because Kiu wanted to study?

Guita: It all came together at the time. My mother was afraid for my safety. My mother had already prepared a passport for me. My mother always wanted me to leave Iran. She always felt—and she was always right, you know, she was always right—she had the vision. Her belief was if you leave Iran, you will be out of harm's way. If you leave Iran, you will open your eyes and you will see, and you will be saved.

Nahanni: Guita and Kiu left Iran in 1982, and moved to Berkeley, California so that Kiu could study. They had a daughter shortly after they arrived. But their marriage was starting to unravel. Kiu claimed that Islam permitted him to have many wives. He became neglectful and abusive. Guita left him, stopped wearing a headscarf, and through a cousin in San Francisco, reconnected with her family and the Jewish community. She eventually remarried, had two more children, and became a clinical psychologist.

Guita: I identify as a very self-affirming Jew. I have raised a Jewish family. I take pride in it. Judaism has gifted me a strong sense of identity, a strong sense of purpose, a strong sense of joy and connection.

Throughout the years, I have also been able to mend my relationship with my family of origin. We are connected. We celebrate, you know, many holidays together. We’re deeply involved in each other's lives, you know, with my sister and my brother and my mother—my father passed away some years ago. But that part of me is very much alive.

Nahanni: Do you still have family in Iran? 

Guita: I do. I do have some family in Iran. I have cousins who have children and grandchildren, and they still live in Iran. But living in Iran as a Jew, one needs to keep a low profile in relation to any contact with Israel. Or anything that is related to Israel-Palestine.

Nahanni: What have you learned from your experience living under repressive governments? Are there things that you're especially alert to or wary of?

Guita: Yeah, absolutely. When, you know, corruption comes into the political practices, social practices, the laws that are being bent and explained away. This is how oppressive regimes, you know, operate. 

And we need to stay open in order to understand what is really happening here. Because it is possible that layer by layer, law by law, the promise of fairness, equality, and democracy can get dismantled in the US.

You see, when democracy is lost in a society, it doesn't happen because some big thing happens overnight or there is a political earthquake. It really doesn't happen that way most of the time. Most of the time, you know, the new governments who had promised democracy come in and then layer by layer, day after day, month after month, law after law, they take away, they chisel away at the promise of equality and freedom of speech and freedom of journalism. Equal rights for different genders, equal rights for different ethnic groups, religious groups, so on and so forth. You know, it all happens very, very slow. And that's what kills democracy in the end.

Nahanni: What made you write the book when you did? 

Guita: I felt that I had an awareness, an understanding that could help a lot of young people, young women and men who value their passion for seeking the truth, even if it leads them down a complicated path.

I felt that I was indebted to my children and maybe my community to tell the story this way. Because this is, in some ways, this is a story that is very controversial. What are you? Are you Jewish? Are you Muslim? Are you a revolutionary? Are you a freedom fighter? What are you? And what I can tell is life is messy. Life is complicated with so many opposing truths and realities, and it's up to us to discover that truth through this muddy existence.

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Nahanni: Guita Sazan’s new memoir is called Mirrors on Fire.  It’s available on Amazon. Visit MirrosonFire.com to learn more. Thank you for joining us for Can We Talk?, the podcast of the Jewish Women’s Archive.

Our team includes Jen Richler and Judith Rosenbaum. Our theme music is by Girls in Trouble. Find us online at jwa.org/canwetalk, or wherever you get your podcasts, and sign up for our monthly newsletter at jwa.org/signup.

I’m Nahanni Rous. Until next time.

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