During the Iranian revolution, people were imprisoned for a number of reasons such as communism, treason, supporting the old regime and even for religion. Dalia Sofer’s, Septembers of Shiraz, focuses on a Jewish man, Isaac, who is imprisoned during the revolution for having a successful life under the Shah’s regime. While reading this book I remembered Roohizadegan’s Olya’s Story. Olya’s Story is an autobiographical account of a Baha’i woman who was also imprisoned around the same time as Isaac was in prison. I noticed a couple of similarities and differences between the two characters’ accounts of the time they were in prison.
The biggest difference between the two characters is that Isaac is a political prisoner whereas Olya is imprisoned for merely being a prominent Baha’i. Although Isaac is Jewish, he is not pressured into recanting his faith while in prison. Baha’is are not allowed to participate in politics so their imprisonment is somewhat astonishing. In her book, Olya explained that the reason behind the persecution of Baha’is was because “there were some 450,000 Bahai’is in Iran, which makes Baha’is larger than the Christian, Jewish, and Zoroastrian communities combined. We were regarded, whether we liked it or not, as a threat” (Roohizadegan, 17). The difference between the treatment of these prisoners stem from the Muslim’s belief that Baha’i is a deviation of Islam. Muslims believe that Muhammad is the last prophet so they do not recognize Baha’i as a religion. Since Judaism came before Islam, they recognize it as a religion in its own right. It is unclear why the Islamic regime feels so threated by the Baha’i community since they are not allowed to participate in politics. During her stay in prison, Olya was pressured into recanting her faith by means of torture, alienation and emotional distress. At one point while in prison, she was brought to court while her children were present and told that if she recanted, she was free to go home with her children. Isaac’s only encounter with pressure to convert to Islam was when he tried to join in the evening prayers with the Muslim prisoners. When the guard realized what Isaac was attempting to do, he told him “Nice gesture Brother, pretending to be Muslim. But it will not change a thing. Unless Brother, you wish to convert” (Sofer, Ch. 4). While it seems as though conversion to Islam is more of a sideline in Isaac’s predicament, it is the main event in Olya’s case.
Septembers of Shiraz reminded me of Olya’s Story because of the similarities regarding their lives in prison and the torture they had to endure. When I read about Mehdi’s feet lashings in chapter two of the Septembers of Shiraz, I remembered a passage I had read in Olya’s book that talked of an old woman of eighty years old who had been thrown in the cell along with Baha’i women. She was a Muslim and was the sister of a famous tribal leader. Olya stated that “she had over eighty lashes on her feet, and they were terribly swollen although not bleeding” (Roohizadegan, 89). The similarity in this torture technique made me connect the two books as being from the same time period and about the same revolution. Other similarities I noticed in the treatment of the two characters is that both were put into solitary confinement, forced to endure hours of harsh interrogation and both are psychologically tortured by having a gun shot right beside their head. These two characters from two different books, both non-Muslims, endured much of the same treatment during their time in prison, however, the Baha’i and not the Jew was pressured into conversion to Islam.