Fariba Adelkhah: "I don’t have the soul of a war veteran and I want to move on"

Interview with Fariba Adelkhah, who reflects on the last nine months since her return to France. She tells us about her daily life, scientific freedom, her book to be published by Seuil and the Iranian presidential elections that have just taken place (on 28 June and 5 July).

You have just been awarded the Medal of the National Order of Merit by Prime Minister Gabriel Attal. How did you feel when you read the letter?

Receiving a hand-signed letter from such a high official is always very unsettling! You have to look at it twice to make sure you’re really the person it’s addressed to! Even though I truly believe that my detention in Iran as a scientific prisoner is the reason for this letter and medal, I felt very honoured and, above all, I felt reintegrated into French society and still supported.

How is your return to France and in particular your return to work going? How did you manage to get back on your feet, deprived of the field and of some of the research you had carried out over the last thirty years?

Without hesitation, I’d say very well. When I came back, the director of Sciences Po at the time, Mathias Vicherat, gave me the best present of my life: he gave me my Sciences Po card. I’ll never have the words to thank him. I am sincerely grateful to him, and to his predecessors Frédéric Mion and Bénédicte Durand, who never abandoned me, as my support committee informed me while I was still detained in Iran.

As for my documentation, most of it had already been used in my publications over the last thirty years. Only the documentation for my current research on religious itineraries between Afghanistan, Iran, and Iraq—a project funded by Sciences Po’s Scientific Advisory Board—has been irretrievably lost. This is obviously a considerable loss. But what concerns me most is the police interference in both my professional and personal life: in my email exchanges, in my photos, in my address book, in the notebook in which I jotted down my thoughts as I went about my fieldwork. Unwillingly, I may have harmed some of the people I spoke to and helped to deny them access to Iran. For example, Jean-François Bayart, with whom I have worked a great deal since the 1990s. We even had a book in progress that we have had to completely reinvent since my return to France, but without him being able to return to Iran.

Do you think, do you wish (we imagine) to return to Iran? As you wrote: “What will Iran be like if researchers are afraid to go there for fear of being imprisoned?”

I left Iran legally and I hope to return in the same way. In any case, I like to think that I have the right to.
I won’t feel truly free until I resume my professional activities in this back-and-forth between Iran and France that I’ve been doing since I arrived in Strasbourg, then Paris, before the 1979 revolution. It was like a pendulum movement. I didn’t have to choose one or the other. I’ve said it all too often. Iran and Paris. Iran forever, because I was born there and it’s my parents’ homeland. Paris for love, because that’s where I learned my job as an academic and discovered what a society based on principles and laws is all about. I’d quite simply like to complete my projects, to continue my anthropology of travel now that my institution has honoured me by reinstating me—which has not been the case for all my foreign university colleagues, particularly North Americans, who have undergone the same experience as me.
I find it hard to imagine my life today, at the age of 65, being any different from what it was before my arrest.

You said on your return to France: “My fight is not over and the new one is beginning”. What can you tell us eight months after returning to Paris and your desk, about your work as an academic?

Indeed! My fight to protect scientific research has only just begun, with the help of my support committee and many friends and colleagues who have responded in a very supportive and encouraging way. This fight is the fight of researchers in many countries, and I hope we can go far together. You are right to remind me that I can no longer conceive of research outside this battle, which is a pure and simple demand for our rights to exchanges between countries, between peoples, and between researchers.

Since your return to France, you have written a series of chronicles for Eurojournalist, an online press that supported you throughout your captivity, and you are about to publish a collection of chronicles on this period of your life. Would you say a few words about this forthcoming book published by Seuil?

Of course. In fact, Eurojournalist reported on me throughout my period of deprivation of liberty, every 16th of the month, written by Jean-Marc Claus, with the support of its editor-in-chief, Kay Littmann. When I came back, I was, as I’ve just said, particularly moved by the mobilisation of all of you around the theme of academic freedom. I’ve always wondered how you managed to stay with this fight, despite your busy professional lives and during this difficult period of the Covid pandemic. Work, family, confinement—none of this has prevented you from remaining admirably united in supporting, through me, this cause of scientific freedom “without borders”, since borders only mark contingent periods in the history of nations. They should not prevent or stigmatise the relationships, particularly academic and scientific, that we are forging.
I felt I had a duty to all of you who have supported me for over four years. A duty to tell you in very simple terms what my life was like during those years, to let you into the black box of Evin Prison, often the subject of all kinds of fantasies—and to let you come out of it, rest assured! I owe it to you, but also to the former inmates I left behind. In doing so, I am also returning to my job as an anthropologist, or perhaps more accurately as an ethnologist, by describing the facts as I experienced them.
By writing to the readers of Eurojournalist, I am in fact speaking to all of you. Vincent Casanova, from Editions du Seuil, showed interest in my little stories in the form of my thousand and one nights in Evin Prison. Their collection, enriched with several previously unpublished stories, will be published next October. Your support throughout the publication of these stories has enabled me to move forward and to turn the page. I don’t have the soul of a war veteran and I don’t want to abuse whatever former prisoner’s allowance I may have.

I cannot end this interview without asking you about the presidential election that has just been held in Iran following the sudden death of the Head of State, Ebrahim Raissi, in a helicopter crash. It’s the first election you’ve been able to take part in for five years, and also the first you’ve been able to work on, as election observation and analysis has always been at the heart of your work. What can you tell us about this election?

There was a presidential election when I was in Evin, in 2021, and like any other citizen I asked for the right to vote, but unfortunately I wasn’t given my birth certificate, so I was prevented from voting. But of course, I went to vote on Friday 28 June for the Iranian presidential election, then for the French legislative elections two days later, then, a week later, on Friday 5 July for the second round of the Iranian presidential election and on Sunday 7 July for the second round of the French legislative elections. So, I did my duty as a citizen, and even as two citizens! Voting was very important to me.
The Iranian presidential election is an election without choice, to use Guy Hermet’s words to describe the electoral tradition in authoritarian regimes. In the first round, Iranian society clearly rejected the most conservative candidates or those most closely associated with the clergy. It was expected to be a presidential election with little at stake other than control of the state as the succession of the Leader of the Revolution approached. Massoud Pezeshkian’s victory came as a surprise to those who inevitably expected one of the conservative candidates to win.
Pezeshkian was careful not to develop a reform-oriented programme, remaining deaf to the demands of this section of the political spectrum. He even boasted... that he had no programme, preferring to consult with experts and wanting his campaign to be open to everyone, all factions included.
The apparent naivety of the new President of the Republic and the feverish electoral debate on social networks have left some major issues unaddressed: The role of financial institutions, guilds, and the Chamber of Commerce and Industry; the activities of golden boys and experts in the Middle East and on the international stage; the growing convergence of the vote of Iranians living in the country and that of the diaspora; the ecological disaster threatening the country as a result of the predatory behaviour of certain actors (e.g. farmers and small drilling companies).
The presidential election, both in Iran and abroad, was first analysed through the prism of the nuclear issue, the international sanctions regime, Iran’s shift toward Russia and China, and its possible rapprochement with the West. Masoud Pezeshkian himself stressed the obstacles facing Iranian businessmen and the country’s economy as a whole as a result of the sanctions. He has shown a willingness to return to the negotiating table, without being too specific about the limits of his voluntarism, particularly if Donald Trump is re-elected in November. Nevertheless, unlike some of his rivals, he did not promise the Iranians anything of the sort. Realpolitik has prevailed in this impromptu election and it has supplanted the Madhist hope (i.e. the belief in the return of the twelfth imam in Islam) of a rosy future.
In the end, the only real winner of this election is the principle of the ballot box, behind which everyone pretends to step aside and negotiate rather than engage in a confrontation between factions, even if abstention is an important form of mobilisation in Iran, where abstentionism is equated with rejection of the Republic. Turnout was low despite a very lively campaign on social networks, which was exhausting for the Clubhouse (social audio app) organisers. Abstention was almost even more massive in the second round than in the first. At 6pm on 5 July, turnout was significantly lower than in the first round. The closing time of the polling stations had to be extended, almost to midnight in the major cities, in order to obtain a higher turnout in the end (49% compared with 40% on 28 June), as the cool evening air encouraged Iranians to go to the polls. It is interesting to note that massive turnouts are characteristic of the most authoritarian regimes in which citizens are forced to vote. In Iran, they at least have the right to stay at home.

Interview by Corinne Deloy

Cover Photo: copyright Fariba Adelkhah
Photo 1 : copyright Eli Sh

Lire les analyses de Fariba Adelkhah dans La Croix
En Iran, avec l’élection de Massoud Pezeshkian, la Realpolitik s’est imposée
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