Muses lift their voices for Iran

From the house we built

With blood and soil

To the road on which

The moonlight procession

Flies forth on their boat

Of shooting stars

It is a pity you did not wish

To stay here with us

The poet had crafted those words so long ago. Flush from the victory of a People’s Revolution in Iran that ousted a repressive monarch for a bearded cleric who spouted promises of freedom and quality, Partow Nooriala all too soon came to believe that the Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini had deceived them.

Ever so briefly, the poem mourns, Lady Liberty had arrived at her oppressed homeland of Iran in 1979. But, within a year after the revolution, she had vanished. The ayatollah banned opposition parties and shut down newspapers. His theocracy ordered women into the hijab and enforced Islamic family law that gave men greater rights to divorce, marry and hold custody of children.

So Nooriala and her family eventually left, bringing their dreams to California instead.

Now, nearly three decades after that people’s movement, she and her daughter Shahrzad Sepanlou have become overseas heralds of another one. Nooriala, a poet, and Sepanlou, a singer, are lifting their voices in the diaspora to support their people’s freedom once again.

“I could never think that in my lifetime I would see people come out into the streets twice,” Nooriala says over Persian tea in her tidy Studio City condo.

Farzaneh Milani, a professor of women’s studies and Persian literature at the University of Virginia, said women have long been a force of resistance against Iran’s repressive governments and male dominance. The most famous artistic voice in Iran today is female poet Simin Behbahani, but amid the Iranian diaspora in the United States other female poets and writers, working in both Farsi and English, have emerged, she said.

“There is a long history of Iranian women resisting and asking for their rights,” Milani said. “Partow is an important part of that. The tenacious strength of her work makes her a voice to be listened to.”

Nayereh Tohidi, head of the department of gender and women’s studies at Cal State Northridge, said Nooriala and Sepanlou represent a wave of Iranians who endured the revolution that overthrew Shah Reza Pahlavi, came to the United States and are bridging the two lands through their work on behalf of women and human rights.

“They are part of a growing number of artists inside and outside Iran who are mobilizing to support the movement,” Tohidi said.

Nooriala, 62, works out of her condo, decorated with richly hued Persian carpets and photos of family and famous Iranian poets, including Behbahani. Lively and candid, her words punctuated with frequent laughs, Nooriala pours out stories of a tumultuous life even as she jumps up to bring out watermelon, sandwiches, cucumbers and coffee. Her blond hair has darkened with age, but she still favors red in the stripes of her shirt and accents in her kitchen -- a bold color she embraced after divorcing her husband, who preferred more muted hues.

She writes daily blog posts, attends a whirl of poetry conferences and gives frequent interviews about events in Iran to international news outlets, including Voice of America. She has published nine collections of poems, literary critiques and short stories -- almost all of them written in California after escaping the censors of Iran.

Her work is included in several anthologies, including “The Poetry of Iranian Women” due out next year. In February, she was honored with a certificate of recognition from state Assembly Majority Whip Fiona Ma.

Nooriala has written about the failures of the Islamic revolution, erotic love and such taboo women’s subjects as abortion and menopause. She recently posted a piece dedicated to Iranians protesting the country’s presidential election.

I have seen your nightmares in my dreams

I have kept your sorrows in my heart

I picked a dandelion flown about by the wind

Bringing me news, anxiety and trembling hands

If you are tied down

I shall be your wings

If you are at war

I shall be your armor

Your voice

will fly through the blue sky again,

And your free hands

will weave through the sun again.

A few miles away in Encino, her daughter spends five or six hours a day furiously sharing information, videos and commentary about events in Iran on Facebook. Never overtly political before, Sepanlou says she, like many young Iranian Americans, is consumed by the drama in her homeland.

As she led a visitor into her bedroom office, she apologized for the children’s toys and box of baby wipes on the carpeted floor of her spacious home.

“I haven’t cleaned or grocery shopped. I haven’t paid my bills. I feel I’ve been a terrible mom,” says Sepanlou, dressed in jeans and casual ponytail in contrast to the glamorous looks of her publicity stills.

Sepanlou, 36, garnered local celebrity as a singer with Southern California’s first all-female Persian pop group, Silhouette, formed in 1994. A solo artist since 2000, Sepanlou has released two albums that feature a mix of Mideast instruments and Western pop rhythms, and recently finished a third with songs in English, Farsi and French.

She is known for favoring music with a message. In a re-recorded 1979 song, for instance, she sings in metaphors of ancient trees and young branches, representing those who died pursuing freedom for their homeland.

“I just wish there were a day when these songs don’t apply anymore,” Sepanlou says. “It’s a never-ending nightmare.”

Her Facebook page contains video clips of an Iranian Basiji paramilitary officer hitting a child, a grief-stricken man sobbing over a dead friend’s pool of blood, a BBC news clip about a threatened government crackdown, an international petition to investigate Iran’s Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei and her own televised interview with Voice of America.

Last month, she was especially shaken by the street shooting of Neda Agha-Soltan, the young woman who has become the face of Iran’s public protests. When Sepanlou first saw the gruesome video of Agha-Soltan’s death, she says, she was overcome with nausea and tears. She has posted that video on her page, along with a tribute.

“You close your eyes and see these images of blood on the streets,” Sepanlou says. “It’s very traumatic.”

Sepanlou has posted some of her music and video clips on her website, shahrzadmusic.com. A fan, meanwhile, recently put together a video for YouTube featuring her song “Azadi,” or “freedom,” with clips of the Iranian demonstrations.

She says she has received hundreds of messages from people inside Iran, thanking her for sharing information and for letting them know they are not forgotten. Angry messages have accused her of fomenting the unrest.

For both mother and daughter, the unrest has stirred a sense of deja vu. Nooriala, whose father was an Army general and mother a teacher, supported the 1979 revolution over their objections. Mohammed Reza Shah Pahlavi and his father, they told her, had modernized the country from a backwater of dirt roads, polluted water and repressive religious traditions.

But there was also repression by the Pahlavi regime and its notorious secret police, SAVAK. Many of Nooriala’s writings were banned -- including one poem about red wheat that the government interpreted as support of communism. Nooriala’s then-husband, also a poet, was jailed for a time.

As resistance to the monarchy grew, Nooriala’s young family joined in the massive street demonstrations. They defied 9 p.m. curfews and clambered atop rooftops, chanting “Allahu akbar.” A grainy photo of Sepanlou portrays a grinning 6-year-old flashing a victory sign in one hand and holding a tambourine in the other.

“We were not for a fundamentalist regime,” Sepanlou says. “We were for people to be free.” Within 18 months of the Islamic revolution, Nooriala says she realized it had all been a terrible mistake.

Sepanlou noticed the change too. Schools were suddenly segregated. She had to cover herself from head to toe -- even when swimming. A photo of her at the Caspian Sea shows her dripping wet while fully veiled and clothed, “a terrible feeling,” she recalls.

“I have a vision of a colorful Tehran up to 1979,” Sepanlou says. “After the revolution, everything became black and white.”

In 1986, the family immigrated to the United States. To make ends meet, Nooriala obtained a data processing certificate and went to work for the county court as a deputy jury commissioner.

Sepanlou graduated from UCLA in sociology, married an Iranian American radiologist and had two daughters, now ages 4 and 10 months. Beyond her blogging and singing, she helps her husband, Amir Fassihi, promote nonviolence in Iran; he has recently completed a book on the topic. On a recent Sunday, the couple gathered about 50 Iranian Americans in their home to discuss ways to get the message of nonviolence to protesters in Iran.

Over the weekend, Nooriala read two poems at a candlelight vigil at UCLA for the Iranian protesters. She views her 1981 poem “Lady Liberty II” as her most prescient.

In it, Nooriala laments the loss of freedom under the Islamic regime. But she ends with a vow that the people of Iran will someday rise again to reclaim it.

Until they do, the women say, they will continue to offer them their poems and songs of support.

And in tomorrow’s ruins

A phrase will be written

Which today

Is being repeated

In the depth of our memory

Over and over and over again

--

teresa.watanabe@latimes.com