No Land’s Song — A film by Ayat Najafi
I had the fortune of being able to watch and absorb Ayat Najafi’s documentary yesterday, thanks to the wonderful people at Goethe-Institut, Kolkata, followed by a brief post-screening session with the director himself.
Iran, has been, for many reasons (and for many seasons), a name that evokes a sense of a home away from home. There is something about the stories, the music and the people that makes Iran a place very familiar in all its sensibilities to someone who has grown up in India. My initial introduction to Iran might have been through Majid Maijidi’s brilliant films which engulfed me as a teenager, but later on, it was Mehdi Aminian’s music or perhaps the masterful films of Abbas Kiarostami which tightened the grip on me. There was a scene in the film where Sébastien Hoog started tearing up listening to Parvin singing. This, and the excerpts from their live performance kept reminding me of a 2017 concert titled “Quieter Than Silence” led by Mehdi Aminian where the vocals had the same effect. I had a friend who once shared how he cried while watching the episode on Iran in Anthony Bourdain’s Parts Unknown.
What is it that makes us one with Iran if not the immense grit and the courage of our people in the face of the abject abuse and indifference meted out by our respective ruling dispensations?
When the shadow of a dictatorship looms large, it is often not the shadow of a single person but deadlier still, the shadow of an idea — political, religious or social. The idea initially manifests itself under the garb of a revolution or an indispensable social change only to change its course and shift its form, baring its fangs for a targeted group, often religious minorities or as is the case for almost every single modern country, developed or developing, women.
In “No Land’s Song”, it was the documentation of how Sara Najafi fought back the Iranian regime which had imposed a ban on female soloists from performing on stage.
When we do not share the same reality, wrong and unjust things might appear very obvious to us. However, if we just start acknowledging the Ayats in our own countries who have always been holding the mirror right at our faces, we might start recognizing the injustices back home as well. The inconvenient moral positions previously oblivious to us partly due to our guarded existence and partly due to the propaganda served as rationality by the people pulling the strings.
When we learn about how Sahar Khodayari had to die for something as simple as wanting to watch a football match in her country or how Mahsa Amini was murdered for not dressing modestly enough for the male members of the society, we often delude ourselves into thinking that we are much better off in our country. Who are we kidding?
I have grown up in a society where as a child, I used to often find elder women discussing in hushed tones how blasphemous it was for a woman to be wearing jeans after marriage or how liberal it was for her in-laws to allow her to wear salwar kameez. In all honesty, I feel sari is not any less revealing and hence, forcing women to wear them points to another disturbing possibility.
With the rabid audacity with which the current dispensation in my country functions, a functional head of state, with an air of nonchalance, can now comment in a public gathering on how women wearing ripped jeans is akin to destruction of our otherwise glorious culture. I find girls in the news, butchered, often by her own family, for choosing to be with someone without their approval. And if not for anything else, the marker of how the members (overwhelmingly male) of the society perceive women and their life choices, can be found from the comment sections across social media platforms. And not all of them are bots or anonymous accounts.
Absurdities are almost always unbelievable (and borderline funny) for people unaffected by it.
In the film, the Islamic clergy in an attempt to justify why women must not be allowed to perform solo, starts mentioning about how certain frequencies (no specifics) in a woman’s singing voice can lure men, which is forbidden. He goes to the length of explaining how all the femininity had been extracted from Adam to form a woman.
Talking to people like the clergy can be draining as we find Sara zoning out between his replies. Been there, done that!
On being cross-questioned by Sara if it will not be the case for a man singing as well, he hilariously responds how a male voice can never be stimulating. I wish it was true, but then you have someone like Cohen who had an effect on women (and men) across all ages. Damien Rice articulated this feeling with finesse in his song “Back To Her Man”.
Sara, in the initial part of the film joked how it seemed to her that the only solution to the problem was to stop all male singers and performers from going on stage. However, while interacting with the ministry in all seriousness and being suggested that the concert be only attended by women, it was Sara who replied how it would be a pity if the men were not allowed. It is this spirit that guides her and should guide us in our common strife against darkness. Unlike Sourav Ganguly’s remark, “Let them fight their battle” regarding the wrestler’s protest, which makes it clear about who he is in cahoots with.
The notion that only people directly affected by a cause should participate and anyone else who joins is there for an ulterior motive, reeks of being a ploy being used by the authority being questioned.
The film is marvelous in this sense that it captures the reality of how every movement moves with time through its myriad crests and troughs and the emotional journey that it takes all its participants through, irrespective of the time and geography.
The first approach that any authority takes towards putting out a protest is to eventually wear it down if they can’t browbeat them to silence in the first place. The priority for the protesters then obviously switches to keeping the flame burning. It is never meant to be a sprint but a marathon and so, it is all the more necessary to not give in. If anyone needs a reference, our farmers did just that in the national capital.
In Sara’s case, the Iranian authorities tried their best to discourage Sara and her team and after a point it seemed to work in dampening their spirits. Edward Perraud in one scene breaks away from the meeting, overwhelmed by the uncertainties of their visit, only to be comforted and encouraged by Emel by words which apply to almost all the chances we give up in the fear of failing —
“It will never be the right time.”
“It will always be difficult.”
The last and perhaps the most potent bite comes at the very end from any authority when it pretends to soften its stance and in the process tries to cajole the protesters by giving them an offer, way beneath their sense of dignity. By then, the protest is usually in its last frontier.
This is exactly where the disillusionment begins for the people who have been holding the fort for so long. Elise Caron, brought out the genuine frustration and the hurt when she exclaimed how it was better for women to not be born at all, to stop existing altogether and only then the indifference and the injustice would cease to exist. We find Sara breaking down and Ali Rahimi being profusely apologetic to his French peers for how close they came and yet could not perform due to the rules laid down by his country. It was the guilt in Ali’s voice that pierced through the grim silence.
We have all been in Ali’s place, helpless and unable to reach out. We are forced to sit apologetically with all the bones and the tissues in our body revolting at the thoughts of people being treated in a manner not fit for any human. And so we sit with our heads hanging in shame as we find humans with a body, a soul and perhaps a handful of hope, being treated as collateral for our progress and national development.
The pandemic brought to us visuals of humans being treated like vermin and being sprayed with disinfectants, humans dying on the streets walking to their homes, human mothers dying on railway stations with their human babies tugging at their saris.
Things unfolded the way they did due to the absolute lack of empathy not only on the part of the lawmakers, but because we failed them too, with all our urban aesthetics which could not make space for them. Not a space in any Indian billion dollar news obituary. In a blink human lives were reduced to lumps of flesh disposed of hurriedly on riverbanks and hidden in data points with no names.
It is not only in exceptional worldwide calamities that the can of worms gets splayed for display. During the aftermath of a protest in the national capital against a discriminatory citizenship law, people were being lynched and their last moments being captured gleefully by the security forces where they were asking the injured to sing the national anthem before torturing them to death. All in the name of nationhood, a mythical beast that eludes us all.
It is only when humans are pushed to the extremes that they end up doing something essential, a primal response that ends up shaking the tree of tyranny.
In Ayat’s case, it was the ingenious idea of backing off (while not backing off essentially) from the concert and communicating the same to the ministry. It was only when Sara stated that she and her team would only perform as per their own terms and in the process would not sell their souls to the ministry for $4000, even if that meant cancelling the show, the ministry buckled under and let them have the show.
We were left with a black screen while the hidden recordings of the conversations between Sara and the ministry officials were being played out. It was as if to show how “awaz” (meaning “sound/voice” across many languages, viz. Persian, Hindi or even Bangla) from the ministry was being used to trample on the awaz of Sara and her team and how Sara’s firm awaz finally helped them to get it back.
While the film ends on a high with the band finally being able to perform in public, it has been ten years since the performance and judging by the current state of turmoil, things have hardly improved in Iran for women and for the general human rights scenario all over the world.
The following exclamation by Sara made during the show, seemed to echo long after the film was over —
“I hope from now on it will be easier to hear the female voice more often!”
The post-screening discussion
While the last few scenes had a smiling young Ayat in frame, the image soon dissolved to take us back to reality with a little sunken (but still smiling) Ayat joining us live after the screening. The effect of the film was so immediate that the real Ayat felt like a messenger from the future who was telling us to keep our enthusiasm in check and to be wary of our celebrations as this long-drawn war is far from over.
The session was a grim reminder of how in this day and age of digital advancement for a few, basic liberties for many are still something of a luxury. It is painfully simple to realize how ideas have always been turned on their heads like how “democracy” has been used as a tool to kill democratic ideas and to justify the vilest forms of tyranny.
Every subsequent regime in Ayat’s Iran had tried to wipe away all the history, culture and the documentation of life before their regime, pretending how Iran started having an identity only after they came to power. Does this sound familiar with what is happening in India? It should.
We, as humans, lack the necessary collective memory and hence, find ourselves in similar perils with the same initiation-growth-obscurity phases after every few decades, if not years.
Ayat mentioned about how their motive was never to get over with the concert for the sake of it and be personally validated in the process. The audience was as important as the idea that it was being done officially and was all out in the open for the general citizens to partake in and seek strength from. He also revealed how there was a person placed inside the ministry who helped them in getting the permission and how there are always good people even inside the most stifling of institutions.
In spite of all the painstaking bite-sized victories we would love to revel in, it is clear that the war is slowly but surely, only going to get more difficult. While the conservatives are keen on being liberal in growing their numbers, the liberals are busy gate-keeping, alienating themselves from the masses and limiting themselves to highbrow (yet occasionally passionate) debates and seminars with the customary clinking of glasses with and without the single malt.
