On Iran

Image via the Boston Globe's astonishing collections of protest photos

To this day, my father gets angry at the very mention of Kent State. Now, Dad is no longhair hippie burnout eternally reliving his protest day (he works for the Man!), nor is he a Kent State grad. But one day I ribbed him a little for being overly sensitive, and what he told me has stuck with me for years:

"You don't understand what it was like. We were doing the same thing. Those kids weren't any different from us. And to have your own government turn against you....they shot at us, Cate. They shot at us."

As I've poured over the images coming from Iran and read the panicked Twitter feeds of students barricaded in their dorms, I have a better understanding of what my father must have felt. The rooms, with their spartan furniture made more for enduring tough living than offering comfort, the computers surrounded by junk food wrappers, the much-abused carpets, the mini fridge shoved under a bed to save precious space, the decorations on the walls...they look just like my old dorm rooms and my students' dorms today. And these young people's political engagement in this election seemed so much like my own, sharing a determination to make the world a little less angry and dangerous. Only they are much braver.

I'm a seasoned global catastrophe voyeur. I read accounts of wars and uprisings and learn enough to choose a side and cluck cluck self-righteously while pronouncing to no one in particular "what they should really do" and half-heartedly wring my hands until I feel I've done my civic duty as a bleeding heart. But it is always at a distance. These are the wild and exotic parts of the world, with people so foreign as to be alien. Besides an awareness that it probably heartily sucks for everyone involved, I never care all that much about the victims of political violence. They are so very far away.

This time I feel different. I feel closer. Rather than the usual vague self-congratulatory sympathy, it's a stronger identification. And I would guess, from the reactions of the blogosphere, that I am not alone. Surely a great deal of ink will be spilt on the question in the coming months. Whether it is because this is the first movement fueled by people of my generation, because of socioeconomic similarities and access to new media technologies, or the sizable Iranian diaspora meant that many of us went to school with Zahra, met Reza at a party or swapped jokes with Mahmood, it has made the violence in Iran feel more real. Maybe it's because I actually thought hard about whether or not I would ever walk onto a college campus again if my government had sent armed men to beat and kill my students and I could do nothing to stop them...if I could never feel fully at home again.

In a small way, I understand better the terrible bitterness in my father's voice. There are some things you cannot ever fully forgive and forget. For Dad, Kent State still represents a betrayal that can't be undone. I can only imagine what the young people of Iran must feel.

They're shooting at us.