Aziz\'s Notebook: At the heart of the Iranian Revolution

In 2004, Chowra Makaremi discovered the notebook written years before by her since-deceased maternal grandfather, Aziz Zarei. The notebook recounts the tragic destiny of Aziz’s two daughters in the Teheran of the 1980s: the first one, Chowra’s aunt, was arrested and executed, despite being 8-months pregnant in 1982. The second, Chowra’s own mother, was arrested in 1981 and was imprisoned and tortured for 7 long years before she was finally killed in the mass-murder of political prisoners in Iran’s prisons during the year 1988. Written by an ordinary, pious man and a desperate father, this notebook brings to life those tragic years in general, and in particular the ‘prison massacre of 1988’, when personal tragedy joined History in the making of a country which has yet to find peace with itself and with the world.

Chowra Makaremi was born in Teheran in 1980 but escaped very young to Paris with her brother and father when her mother was imprisoned. She studied political science and anthropology in Paris.