Journey from the Land of No

In her book Journey from the Land of No: a girlhood caught in revolutionary Iran, Roya Hakakian writes of her experiences as a Jewish girl growing up in Iran. Born in Iran in 1966, she witnessed the Islamic Revolution when she was twelve years old and left her native country five years later in 1984. She begins her book with a dedication.

Between 1982 and 1990 an unknown number of Iranian women political prisoners were raped on the eve of their executions by guards who alleged that killing a virgin was a sin in Islam.

This book is dedicated to the memory of those women.

A speech given by a female school monitor, installed after the Islamic revolution, given to Roya's classroom of Jewish schoolgirls demonstrates the regime's new attitudes towards women.

My dear sisters, daughters of our great revolution! It's now time for you to learn about the delicious topic of corporeal sin. Yes, my sisters. Young and innocent as you are in your pubescent splendor, you are also diabolical. Diabolical and no less. Duty compels me to warn you of the perniciousness you all possess. You do possess it and don't even know it. Abomination lurks beneath your innocence.

......In the West, in that superficial, artificial, morally corrupt country called America, where they know not of God, where they live by the rules of Satan, where they drink alcohol instead of water, consume an animal as filthy as a pig, and lead promiscuous lives, where women walk naked in the streets, fornicate in public, and conduct orgies in their homes ---- there, the headmasters train their students for insignificant trials, for an emergency such as fire. They conduct fire drills in their schools. But we! We, my sisters, daughters of our great revolution, we're not afraid of earthly threats. We fear only one fire: the eternal fire of hell.