Alice Fisher

The Iran-Iraq war lasted from 1980 to 1988, impacting an entire generation of Iranians and Iraqis, regardless of ethnic background.  In addition to its impact on people at large, artists faced great amounts of repression as the new government heavily censored their ideas. However there were still those, like director Bahram Beyzāʼi, who tried to share their perspectives. In this film his film Bashu, the Little Stranger, the main character, a young-Arabic speaking Afro-Iranian boy, flees the war zone and becomes lost in a Gilaki-speaking town in Northern Iran. Eventually, Bashu is taken in by Na’i, a Gilaki woman who learns to respect him despite her initial prejudice toward him. Beyzāʼi highlights the racism and ethnic divisions within Iran, as well as the damage war inflicts. The latter, especially, is an idea that the government feared would undermine the national war effort. Despite efforts to ban the film upon its release, Beyzāʼi created a story of unity during the chaos of war to try and overcome the struggle of ethnic division faced by those in the country.

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Bashu, the Little Stranger came out at a time when art was heavily censored. The main conflict of the film begins with Bashu’s displacement as a result of the Iran-Iraq war. The first scene shows Bashu’s hometown being attacked. His sister disappears into the smoke, his mother burns in the fire, and his father falls through the floor (Beyzāʼi). The Iran-Iraq war happened at a very pivotal moment for the Islamic Republic government, which was not even a year old when the violence started (Milani). The new government had to either define itself as a power in the region or fall and be replaced by one of the many other revolutionary movements vying for control. This political volatility caused the push for censorship to secure their place as the government in charge. Films had to promote Iranian unity and pride. (Milani). Beyzāʼi did promote an idea of unity, seen when characters like Bashu give statements such as, “Iran is our country, we are all from the same land, we are the children of Iran,” in response to a fight with fellow children (Beyzāʼi). However this idea of unity was in the context of “we are currently divided and must become more unified”, not “we are unified and together fighting outside invaders”. As a result the government considered the film to be undermining the war effort. Beyzāʼi’s film was therefore not released until three years later after finishing production.

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With the eventual release of the film, Beyzāʼi was able to use his platform to bring attention to the ethnic diversity and inequality within Iran. As of 2002, fifty-one percent of Iranians identified as Persian. This is barely over half the nation. The other forty nine percent of the country belongs to other ethnic groups, often with their own dialects and languages (Crane). To understand scenarios in the film, like the use of Persian as the common language of the schoolboys, one needs to know about policies dating back to the Pahlavi dynasty. In the 1930s under Reza Shah Pahlavi there was a widespread effort to unify the country under one language and national identity. This was done through standardizing education, shifting it away from local languages towards a universal Persian education. Additionally, the Persian Language Academy was formed to reduce the usage of Arabic loanwords and replace them with traditional Persian words of the same meaning (Abrahamian). This emphasis on ethnic Persians and Persian culture led to neglect of minority communities, with repercussions for generations. A study from 1990 found that those living in Persian areas had the lowest rates of adult illiteracy and infant mortality in the country. Every other region had higher rates of illiteracy and infant mortality than the Persian areas, including Arab and Gilaki communities, where the main characters of Bashu are from (Crane). Beyzāʼi knew about these inequalities and sought to bring these communities to the forefront of the minds of the Persian majority, even if he did not explicitly present these issues within his film.

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In Bashu, Beyzāʼi seeks to make his audience relate to their countrymen of different backgrounds. He does this by making all of his characters ethnic minorities who don’t speak Persian as their first language. Na'i is a Gilaki woman who speaks limited Persian and Bashu is an Afro-Iranian boy who speaks formal classroom Persian (Beyzāʼi). This causes the audience to empathize with their non-Persian-speaking neighbors in two ways. First, through giving this group a face and personality for the audience to grow to connect with. The characters have goals that are easy to empathize with. Bashu wants to process the grief of losing his home and find belonging while Na’i wants to support her family, which is torn across the country (Beyzāʼi). Living in a country that had just experienced war and lost hundreds of thousands of soldiers, many viewers could relate to the struggle of grief and separation. This likely made the movie far more relevant in the cultural consciousness than it would have been without these themes. Another way Beyzāʼi makes his audience connect with ethnic and linguistic minorities in Iran is through the lack of Persian dialogue. While it does exist, specifically as the common language Bashu finds with his new community, the majority of the film is in Gilaki, making the audience rely on subtitles to view the movie. He puts the audience in a space that was not built for them, much like what ethnic and linguistic minorities experience navigating Persian Iranian society (Rahimieh 251). This role reversal also creates ground for the audience to feel more connection to linguistic minorities within Iran.

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Beyzāʼi goes further than just presenting the need to respect ethnic diversity within Iran. He also subtly challenges the domination of Persian culture in the country. This is specifically done through how the character of Na’i alternates between her native Gilaki and Persian when speaking to Bashu. Persian is the one language Na’i and Bashu both have in common. However, when they speak it to each other, their speech is not identical to when they are speaking their native language. Bashu’s Persian is very stilted and formal from classes at his old school. When Na’i uses Persian, it often adopts a demanding tone compared to her statements in Gilaki. As Nasrin Rahimeh stated in her piece “Marking Gender and Difference in the Myth of the Nation: a Post-Revolutionary Iranian Film”, when Na’i speaks Persian she is much more authoritative than when she speaks Gilaki. For example, when Bashu sleeps outside, in Gilaki first she says “Why are you sleeping here? Don’t you have a place, you wretch? Get up and go back to your bed” (Beyzāʼi). While worded harshly, she does show a form of tough love, asking him why he is outside, saying that he has a place to sleep, and telling him to go to it. In Persian she gives the much shorter, more authoritative command, “Get up, go to sleep in your own bed!” (Beyzāʼi). Rahimeh states that the usage of Persian to convey authority and formality reflects the role the language plays in the lives of linguistic minorities. It is a language associated with education, the government, and power. It is only used to convey necessary ideas and demands. It is not used to convey care and compassion, which is reserved for their mother tongue (Rahimieh 248). This impacts the audience, who must go through the barrier of a subtitle for the more emotional lines, but can hear and understand the harsh commands right away. This presents the Persian language, not as the default, but as the book language of authority. It challenges the norm that Persian is the “default” that everyone knows, while minority languages are just localized additions. Instead, Beyzāʼi reflects how often a people’s native language is where much of their art and emotions are expressed, and how that art and emotion can not truly be accessed without taking the time to learn their language (Bowman).

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Beyzāʼi’s film Bashu, the Little Stranger shares his idea for a more unified Iran during the chaos of the Iran-Iraq war. Specifically, he does this by trying to bring awareness to the ethnic and linguistic minorities in Iran, and the sense of ostracization they face despite being fellow Iranians. However, his message of improving the social atmosphere for unity and decrying the evils of war was seen as unpatriotic and sowing division by the government and therefore was censored, preventing the movie’s release for three years. Despite this, when his movie was released in 1989, he used his platform to promote unity toward the end of war to try and overcome the struggle of ethnic division the country was facing.