Who am I? What do I do? Why do I do it?  I dedicated my book Living in Hell to all people who have endured pain and humiliation in being abused physically, emotionally, mentally and politically.   Iranians are subjected to abuse daily and to the incredibly unjust justice system of the Islamic government of Iran.

 

Ghazal Omid is one of the boldest Iranian political authors who speaks her mind and cherishes the greatness of Persian culture but lives in the present, not the past.

An outspoken woman, politically inclined since her youth, she has long stood up to the government of Iran because she believes in humanity and women’s rights. She insists on equality for men and women under a secular democratic regime which does not persecute people for their beliefs, as long as they keep it separate from the state.

She says the first question she gets from her readers and radio/TV hosts and listeners is: Why she wrote this book and why she called it Living in Hell? Her stock answer is the Edmond Burke quotation, “The only thing necessary for the triumph of evil is for good people to do nothing.”

She tells people that if they have something to say, it shouldn't be just a desire to hear their own voice but a humane duty and responsibility to help others.

Born in 1970 in Abadan, Iran, minutes from the Iraq border, Ghazal is the youngest of eleven siblings, many of whom she doesn't know. She is the only daughter and the youngest of four children borne by the second of her polygamist father's two wives. She grew up both rich and poor at the same time. Her father, a multi-millionaire Ebenezer Scrooge, neglected both of his families, abandoning them to hide in the US to avoid the danger of the revolution. When he married Ghazal's mother, he did not mention that he had another wife and seven kids. A man with dark secret; this was the least of his inhuman acts.

Her interest in history, politics and writing began at age eight. Instead of playing with dolls and toys, she was reading the news as her mother helped her understand her country's past and present. She witnessed the Islamic revolution up close and, even at that age, questioned Khamenei's motives.

As a child, her dream was to become a doctor. However, her passion for writing, Persian literature, history and politics came naturally and was obvious to everyone except herself. Her first step to becoming a writer was her second grade teacher telling her that one day she would become a great writer. Her first published story was at age 14. Her poetry writing began out of despair in her teen years because she couldn’t communicate with her mother any other way.

Ghazal lived in the city of Isfahan most her life. She miraculously survived the eight-year Iran/Iraq war despite her home being located in a primary target area for Iraqi bombers. Surrounded by death and destruction daily, her family faced near starvation in freezing conditions; inspiring her soul searching for answers to her questions about religion and politics. She started religious studies at age seven, reading both the Koran and the Bible. Although her abusive life caused her to lose her faith at age thirteen, it was restored by her pilgrimage to Mecca where she came to understand God in her heart; not based on the teachings of the Iranian regime. She especially resisted the pressure to hate other nations, their people and their faiths for no reason other than the blind hate preached by the brutal Khamenei and his mullahs who, posturing as Messiahs, through daily morning prayers in schools across the country, brainwashed kids and adults alike.

Graduating high school as the war ended, her curriculum was aimed at medical school. However, despite high scores on entrance exams, she was denied enrollment in medical school or any public university because of her record of non-conformity to arbitrary non-Islamic dictates by the regime. Despite financial difficulties, she enrolled in a private university, studying French Literature to prepare for a law degree. At university, her low-key defiance in speaking to other students about the indefensible dictates of the government mullahs caused her to be continually watched and harassed by faculty spies. In retribution for daring to quietly defy petty rules, she was abducted by the secret police. Escaping by jumping from the kidnapper's speeding car into a busy street, she was seriously injured but was temporarily rescued by the crowd. Although she was the victim, she was rearrested and avoided prison on trumped up charges, which typically resulted in a rapid death sentence, only by agreeing to non-disclosure and signing away her rights to pursue the case. Seeking redress, despite the agreement, she took advantage of bureaucratic inefficiency and carried her case to the Supreme Court of Iran where it was dismissed as a 'misunderstanding'.

After being threatened for taking innocuous pictures of university classmates, Ghazal was publicly condemned as the "American Patriot" in national Friday prayers by Iran’s leader, the self-titled Ayatollah Khamenei.

Soon after the kidnapping episode, on a trip to Abadan to renew her birth certificate, another incident emphasized the urgency for her to leave the country. Riding with her mother in a taxi, Ghazal asked the tour guide/taxi driver to slow down so she could photograph the abandoned oil refinery where her grandfather had been chief of security. Instead, the driver, an under cover policewoman, pulled out her ID and threatened to arrest her as a spy if she tried to photograph the rusting junkyard of pipes; all that remained of a majestic refinery that fifty years ago was the largest in the world.

Realizing the government had marked her and her life was in danger, she hid among the chador clad female students in university while sympathetic university and embassy contacts arranged a visitor's visa to Europe where she obtained a black market passport that she used to board a plane for Canada. On landing, she threw herself on the mercy of Canadian Immigration. After a nine-month delay, she was granted permanent status and is now a Canadian citizen.

Fluent in three languages, despite being belatedly diagnosed as bi-polar and dyslexic, Ghazal continues to work toward her PhD and on future books.

In writing about her disabilities, she knew she would be vulnerable to critical remarks but decided to include those chapters, not to earn pity, but because, in studying psychology, she discovered many bright young men and women deal with disabilities but don’t seek help in fear of being marked as crazy or incompetent. Eventually, their pain is so great it can lead to suicide attempts.

“Being bipolar, dyslexic or depressed doesn’t make me any less human or talented than others. What doesn’t kill me; makes me stronger. If perfection is other’s perception of normal, how do they define physically challenged people who amaze us with their remarkable performances?

I define talent my way because I know physical pain is avoidable but suffering is optional and I refuse to live with the idea that I am any less than anyone else because I know better….”--- Ghazal Omid