As “Pari” sipped from her coffee at Whyte Avenue’s Block 1912, she used the same word over and over again.
“Erased.”
Iranian people? Erased. Thousands of years of culture? Erased. Irreplaceable historic buildings and sites? Erased.
Pari and her family came to Edmonton from Iran in 1978. She was nine at the time, and her mom had just started studying at the University of Alberta. Back in Iran, the Shah would soon be deposed, replaced by a radical government which has sustained to this day, even though the leaders have changed over the years.
Today, she’s scared for not just the relatives who are currently in Tehran, but the entirety of the Iranian populace.
Pari asked not to disclose her full name not because she fears for her relatives back in Tehran, but based on the blowback she’s received from the local Iranian community when it comes to her views on the war.
There have been several public demonstrations in Edmonton before and after the joint Israel-U.S. attack on Iran. The demonstrators, for the most part, called for the installation of Shah Reza Pahlavi, who has been living in exile, as head of the Iranian state. They called for American action before the invasion, and supported it since the attacks commenced. She said these loud voices aren’t kind to anyone who doesn’t see things their way.
Pari’s views aren’t binary. She said while she wants to see the current Iranian regime brought down, she doesn’t think U.S. President Donald Trump or Israel President Benjamin Netanyahu want to do anything but bring the country to its knees and take its oil. So, she’s worried she’s going to be attacked by members of her own community for not seeing it as a one-or-the-other situation.
“My loyalties lie to the innocent civilians that are caught in this 100 per cent,” she said. “What I want to talk about is the human cost, and that is what keeps me up at night, is worrying about my family, worrying about the outcome of this, because it is escalating so freaking quickly. Trump and Netanyahu really, really scare me, because I know what their end goal is. And I’ve been to Iran, the regime is also very scary, and it is not only depriving people of basic internet rights. They’re harassing people on the streets there. It’s a total like lockdown because they see it as an existential threat, right?”
She’s texted and communicated with her uncle, aunt, cousin and friends in Tehran. Because they’ve been blacked out from the internet by the Iranian government, they get no advance warning of missile strikes. They feel like sitting ducks. They’ve been ordered to stay indoors and they wear masks to help deal with the heavy smoke that even seeps into closed areas.
Her family said there’s anxiety because water desalinization plants have been hit and food is running low.
“My family can’t sleep because of the bomb — the bombs are very, very intense,” said Pari. “People can’t breathe because of the smoke. These are war crimes. You don’t blow up a refinery in a city of 17 million people (latest estimates peg Tehran’s metro population at 16.8 million). And so my loyalty lies to those people. They’re sandwiched in between three monsters who don’t care about their lives. They’re being used as tools for these agendas. There’s multiple agendas happening. And so that is why I’m here, because I don’t want to be silent. I want to be the voice for those innocent people that don’t have internet and don’t have a say in this.”
As for the U.S. and Israel, Pari feels they will eventually try and divide Iran, a country of more than 90 million people, along ethnic lines. They want to take control of the oil in a region. And she doesn’t believe that Israelis or the Americans have any interest in giving the Iranians the freedom of self-determination.
“I know the end game for Netanyahu and Trump, and that is to balkanize Iran. And they all fight for the water, because there is a severe shortage of water in Iran, and there will be civil wars, unending civil wars. And that terrifies me, because that means more people are going to die.”
What also scares Pari is that so many people in Canada and around the world see Iran only as a theocratic dictatorship, and discount the thousands of years worth of history. It’s home to historic palaces, mosques and archeological sites. The first recorded human rights charter, the Cyrus Cylinder, is traced back to the 6th Century B.C. And she said each bomb that drops on a historic site is a blow against human history. There are gardens dedicated to some of Iran’s most famous poets.
“I just want people to realize that that is the cradle of civilization. Backgammon originated in Iran. Mathematics, right? The Persian carpet, the intricacies of the Persian carpet. So many things originated from that part of the world that are stunning, like like the palaces, the mosques, A lot of readers will be angry at that, because they hate Islam so much, but it’s the Islam they were taught by the regime. The regime weaponized religion, just like Trump is using the coming of Jesus for this war.”
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