For the Sun After Long Nights Quotes

“In one, thousands of young high school students look forward with angry eyes. In another, women tied their hands together as a sign of solidarity. One photo attracted more attention than others. In it, Golestan captured a woman standing on top of a car wearing a flowy cape and facing a mullah, or Islamic clergyman, in front of her. Her finger is raised in a sign of warning, and her mouth is half open, seemingly mid-shout. That woman became known as the Joan of Arc of Moshtagh Street, named after the woman fighter who was honored as a defender of the French nation. Journalists and women’s rights activists found her, but instead of the iconic woman in the protest picture, they encountered a woman who doesn’t remember much of that day. She was Maliheh Nikjoumand, an actress who had to wear a hijab to act in TV series after the revolution.”
― Fatemeh Jamalpour, For the Sun After Long Nights: The Story of Iran's Women-Led Uprising

“While I was still an employee at The New York Times, a wave of L.A.-based Iranian actors and influencers called out the paper for a news story in the early protest coverage that focused on the economic reasons driving the uprising. This story had a line that infuriated many Iranians. It stated that most Iranians wanted a return to the nuclear deal, a failed agreement between Western nations and Iran to curb its nuclear program in exchange for sanctions relief.”
― Fatemeh Jamalpour, For the Sun After Long Nights: The Story of Iran's Women-Led Uprising

“The largest and most organized dissident group operating outside Iran is the Mujahideen-e Khalq (MEK), a Marxist group now based in Albania that was one of the first groups listed by the United States as a foreign terrorist organization (FTO). It has a well-established track record of cultlike activities such as ideological cleansing sessions, forced divorces, and the separation of children from their parents. This group enjoys no support in Iran, partly due to its role in the Iran-Iraq War, in which it fought against Iranians on the side of Saddam Hussein’s Iraq, launching attacks that killed its own people. After”
― Fatemeh Jamalpour, For the Sun After Long Nights: The Story of Iran's Women-Led Uprising

“For those of us watching this unfold from far away, the possibility that the Islamic Republic might fall carried with it the possibility of return. Maybe we could all soon safely visit home. Anyone who wasn’t posting about the uprising or publicly showing solidarity with our sisters and brothers in Iran was seen as holding us back from a collective freedom.”
― Fatemeh Jamalpour, For the Sun After Long Nights: The Story of Iran's Women-Led Uprising

“As more people posted online, I started to see something turn. Iranians began evaluating and opining about who was or wasn’t posting about the uprising. It turned into a sort of intense desperation that lashed out in flames. Our diaspora is at its worst when we see unrest in our homeland. It activates and agitates us toward judgment and mistrust of one another, and many of us feel retraumatized seeing the violence that those who remain are experiencing. I spoke with one Iranian friend who grew up most of his life in California. “It’s almost like everyone’s looking at this moment as the last days of the Islamic Republic. And anyone who’s not falling in line with the messaging or posting on social media is going to ruin the momentum for all of us,” he said to me over a long phone call during which we were trying to understand the digital finger-pointing that was going on.”
― Fatemeh Jamalpour, For the Sun After Long Nights: The Story of Iran's Women-Led Uprising

“A person who fights knows that revolutions will take a long time, but she does not fail. Standing for freedom is more beautiful than freedom itself. The person who fights is yesterday’s child. She knows that if she doesn’t taste freedom, today’s children will. A person who fights knows that revolutions will last, but she will not fail.”
― Fatemeh Jamalpour, For the Sun After Long Nights: The Story of Iran's Women-Led Uprising

“For the imprisoned elites For feeling at ease For the sun after a long night For all the nerves and insomnia pills For Woman, Life, Freedom For Freedom For Freedom For Freedom —Shervin Hajipour, “Baraye”
― Fatemeh Jamalpour, For the Sun After Long Nights: The Story of Iran's Women-Led Uprising