Efforts to Inform the Villagers

Translated by M. B. Khoshnevisan

2024-2-19

Nasrin Barkohan: “We were a group that all of us had a direct relationship with Mr. Mehdi Foroudi; the meetings, trainings and courses we had, all of these were done in Mr. Foroudi’s house...

For example, we used to distribute some of the Imam’s leaflets here and there... with Maryam Foroudi and one of the other guys, we went to the villages and did some propaganda, we talked with the villagers. Because we believed that the masses of people should be informed... We thought that the villagers are more suffering, deprived and more susceptible, so we decided to use the atmosphere that existed in the villages. Of course, we didn’t merely go there to visit, we collected a lot of clothes and took them there to help them. I don’t remember exactly the villages now, where they were probably one of them was near Ferdows. The villagers were very hospitable, very kind. We even entered their house with empty hands, as soon as they saw a stranger entering, they greeted and welcomed them. We sat and chatted very easily. We did not analyze politics for them, we just chatted: “What do you have, dear mother?” How do you support yourself? So why like this? “In the form of a sympathetic conversation, we would tell them that your conditions should not be like this, you can demand more than these, you deserve more than these things, and at the same time, we realized that it was very interesting for them; that is, maybe they were treated less like this.”

 Source: Zowghi, Somayyeh, Rooz-e Azadi-ye Zan: Tarikh-e Shafahi Ghiyam 17 Dey Zanan-e Mashhad (Day of Women Freedom: Oral History of 17^th of Dey Women’s Rise of Mashad),Tehran: Rahyar Pub. Co. 1398 (2019), pp. 28-29.