Voting to Speak, Speaking to Vote

When a relative of mine in Tehran, I'll call her Maryam, told her best friend last Thursday that she wasn't voting, it almost blew up their friendship. The best friend begged Maryam to reconsider. “Only illiterate apathetics don't vote,” she snapped at her, before putting her husband on the phone, to make his own pitch for the urgency of voting. Maryam refused and hung up. Fifteen minutes later, the phone rang again. It was the best friend's mother calling from her town near the Caspian, using her social weight as an elder to make the same argument: that voting was essential, that it meant reclaiming the electoral process and taking a symbolic stand against extremism; that black and white thinking, while perhaps emotionally satisfying, had never taken a citizen very far.

In the aftermath of Friday's staggeringly high turnout, a whopping 72 percent when everyone expected closer to 50-60, I'm struck by how many variations of this story I've heard. Stories of those who decided to vote making it their personal business to convince others in their circle to do the same, making their case pointedly and passionately on the phone, over dinner with friends, even to complete strangers on the street. This one-on-one politicking is something very few expected, given the deep scars of 2009 and the years that followed, and it's perhaps one of the less remarked upon aspects of the last few days. As a friend in Tehran observed: “the election ended up being a chance for young people especially to get engaged in politics again. It broke the deadly atmosphere of fear, silence and cynicism that we've lived with since the crackdown.”

Regardless of whether Hassan Rouhani manages to free the Green leaders from house arrest, regardless of whether the West greets this moment by slapping down another round of sanctions, this shift in atmosphere is perhaps a great victory in itself, brought about by people themselves, demanding the right for some space to talk. Many of the people I spoke to in Iran said they didn't have high expectations, they didn't expect dramatic change fast, or even later. But their voices seemed less heavy for a change. They saw this as an opportunity to express themselves, to speak up and scold their best friends, to start having conversations again.

All of the bitter talk I read on Twitter about this election being a farce misses such nuances entirely, and this is a pity, because it seems to me that what was startling about Friday begins and ends with people's decision to vote en masse. People became convinced of the need to make a statement, and that statement was a resounding rejection of extremism, in both foreign and domestic policy. Those who say people voted simply to improve the economy are missing an important point – the economy's freefall is now so closely intertwined in the public eye with botched nuclear diplomacy that the issues have become one.

How tedious are the people who keep repeating ad nauseum that the Supreme Leader controls everything in Iran and that elections are a joke. The millions of people who voted on Friday weren't even certain their votes would be counted, and they showed up at the ballot box anyway. That says fascinating and important things about Iranian society and its determination to shape its future. Why not remark upon that instead?