The two earliest signs of the tragic future awaiting Iran in the aftermath of the 1979 Islamic Revolution were a poem and a photograph. Iranians were still euphoric from that year’s upheaval when, in July 1979, Ahmad Shamlou—one of the nation’s most important poets—published a poem titled “Strange Times, My Dear.” Its opening lines captured the unease already creeping into daily life, as revolutionary police, the Basij, set up check points to enforce the alcohol ban:
They sniff your mouth
Lest you have uttered the words I love you
They sniff your heart.
These are strange times, my dear.
