Fifty years is only a brief act in the drama of a land whose history extends across thousands of years. Yet this half-century was the useful span of two generations. A third generation still has the future before it.

This half-century is the historical price of awakening. This is how an ancient land builds collective historical memory and shakes the ashes of centuries from its body.

What gives meaning to the historical suffering of Iran’s contemporary generations is a truth that the German philosopher Jürgen Habermas, during his visit to Iran more than two decades ago, is presented here as having expressed well:

Iran is emerging from a corridor of darkness that none of its neighbouring countries has even entered—a dark corridor beyond which, in the illumination of another light, cultural and historical awakening and a new world await.

Tonight I opened Hafez at random and found these verses:

When you see the figure of sorrow from afar, ask for wine;
we have made the diagnosis, and the remedy has been prescribed.

Why should we turn our heads away from the threshold of the Elder of the Magi?
Fortune is in that house, and opening lies at that door.