SPEAKER_05: Hi! This is Dovar Ardalan at National Geographic with a gripping story today from our friends at ESPN. For more than four decades, women in Iran have been banned from attending soccer games in stadiums. In ESPN's latest podcast series Pink Card, Peabody award-winning producer and host Shima Olayai tells the tale of women who dare to defy this man from protesting at the gates to sneaking in under disguise. They risk their lives to take back their stadium and their joy in the game. It's a high-stakes drama, a fascinating history on Iran and women's rights, and I'm excited to share the first episode with you today on Overheard. You can find all four episodes of Pink Card right now in ESPN's 30 for 30 feed. There's a link in your podcast app. Here's the first episode of Pink Card with
SPEAKER_02: a look.
SPEAKER_09: I grew up playing soccer. My mom hated when I called it that. She called it football.
SPEAKER_09: It's Christmas Day. I'm nine, and I can't get the ball past my mother. She does not care that I'm a kid. My mother played on club teams in Reno, Nevada for the past 40 years. I remember her coming home after matches when I was in middle school, telling us in Farsi that she scored a goal. In my family, our love for soccer was constant and clear, but
SPEAKER_09: living in America and being from Iran, that was more complicated. We always sang two birthday
SPEAKER_09: songs, one in English and one in Farsi. I often felt like that, split in two. At school, I was ashamed of telling people where my family was from. It's not like I was fully aware of what was happening in the world, what the Gulf War was, the Iranian hostage crisis. But growing up in the 90s in Reno, Nevada, I knew being from the Middle East wasn't something to be excited about. But I remember when Iran played the US in the 1998 World Cup. Suddenly, for a few hours, my family was transported. The hyphen in our identity dropped. We were fully Iranian again. That day, I was clear which side I was on. In our tiny living room,
SPEAKER_09: a portal had been opened and there were no rules. When a goal was scored, whoever had the remote would flip to the Spanish channel to capture the energy of each goal. Pillows would be thrown, my brother would scream, Shema! We would tackle each other. We'd both be sent for periods of time to cool off in our rooms, but even my parents would be cussing and shouting and cheering. Soccer was our greatest sense of national pride, our way to beat the big guy, the US, who was so intrinsic to our exile. And then we went back to reality. I was an Iranian American girl again. When I think about all of the keepsakes my mother could have taken with her from Iran and passed down to me, the language, the history, the stories of her life, why was soccer most important to her? That question has led me to some of the most dedicated soccer fans in the world, all Iranian women. And we're going to start with the story of one girl. Hi Zeinab! That's my mom! Can you say your name? Zeinab Sahafi. This tape is from the summer of
SPEAKER_09: 2020. I'm on Skype with Zeinab Sahafi and my mom is translating. Zeinab, put your phone on airplane
SPEAKER_10: mode. Mom, Farsi. Or trying to. That's kind of English. Shema, it's working. We're going,
SPEAKER_10: we're good. I'm going to pour myself some coffee, I'm so happy. Wait, okay, let me give you one minute.
SPEAKER_09: No, I'm good. Go ahead. I can multitask. Okay, I'm ready to go. Zeinab, my mom and I are thousands of
SPEAKER_09: miles away from one another the first time we meet. I'm in New York, my mom is in Reno, and Zeinab is in Turkey. It's seven o'clock at night where she is. On my video screen, I can see Zeinab sitting on the floor, leaning against a large white wall. Over her head hangs a fluorescent light. She's wearing bright red lipstick and a bright red soccer jersey, the color of her favorite team. Persepolis. Zeinab has several piercings across her lips. The right side of her head is shaved, but the rest of her hair is so long it falls past her knees. Zeinab tells me she grew up in a
SPEAKER_06:
SPEAKER_09: religious family. They didn't own a TV, so she would go to her grandmother's house to watch games. One day, one of her uncles asks her if she wants to go see the players in person. With your mother's brother?
SPEAKER_09: They wouldn't be going inside the stadium to watch a game, though. In 1981, long before Zeinab was born, women and girls were banned from watching soccer games at stadiums in Iran. So her uncle would drive her to greet the national team at the airport, and they'd ride alongside their bus all the way to the national stadium, waving at the players and screaming out their window. She tells me that at 12 years old, she stood at the gate watching the men go in. She saw the excitement on all the boys' faces painted bright colors and radiating happiness. At that moment, Zeinab knew that following the players to the stadium entrance was not enough. For the next game, she would be watching from inside the stadium. It was that desire to see a game up close in person that changed her life and the lives of so many other girls.
SPEAKER_09: Today, Zeinab lives in exile. She's recently been joined by her mom, her stepdad, and her little brother.
SPEAKER_06: Zeinab's dream as a kid was to be a tattoo artist. These days, when she's hopeful,
SPEAKER_09: it's to be a singer. But right now, Zeinab's life is on hold. The Iranian government has called her an enemy of the state. At this point in the three-way, Zeinab lights up a cigarette. She looks tired. She's only 22. Zeinab, if you went back to Iran now, what would happen to you? The exhaustion, the exile, the government threats, all of this for wanting to watch soccer.
SPEAKER_11: I'm Shimal Yain from Shirazade Productions. And from 3430 Podcast, this is Pinkheart, episode one.
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SPEAKER_09: Modern soccer was imported into Iran 100 years ago. The game arrived through a port called... Abidjan is a teeming place where a quarter of a million people live,
SPEAKER_03: dedicated to one single proposition, the refining of 25 million tons of oil every year.
SPEAKER_09: The British had set up a colony in Abidjan in the early 1900s. They made a deal with the Iranian government, but it wasn't really a deal. Iran's corrupt elite got a small amount of bribe money and the ability to remain in power. And the UK received almost total control of Iran's abundant wealth and natural resources. Later, the Brits would be pushed out, but soccer would stay. And its popularity across Iran, the Middle East and the world would only grow. As of today, 211 affiliated associations are members of the multi-billion dollar institution that is FIFA. FIFA estimates that more than 5 billion people watch the World Cup. That's more than all the living Christians, Muslims and Hindus combined. And in 2022, for the first time ever in its history, the World Cup is taking place in the Middle East, in Qatar. But 40 years ago, Iran looks set to host the first World Cup in the region, at its national stadium. When it was built in the early 70s, that stadium was the largest on the planet. It was surrounded by a rowing river, indoor volleyball courts and an Olympic-sized swimming pool. The stands held 120,000 people. It was called Aryanmer Stadium and got the nickname Bee Swarm because the stadium's design amplifies sound like a swarm of bees. The stadium was built by the Shah, who had been the reigning dictator of Iran for 30 years. And the stadium was a perfect symbol for his vision of Iran on the global stage. Modern, lavish and imperial. Frank Sinatra hosted a concert there in 1975. If you can imagine, at that time, the stands were filled with women and one of the songs he sang was the Lady is a Tramp.
SPEAKER_11: Sinatra's presence highlighted the growing shift away from the old customs of Iran. And soccer
SPEAKER_09: playing at the time was seen as part of the country's quote unquote modernization, right alongside women's rights. The Shah's love-hate relationship with the West would become clearer as his reign continued. The Western countries are just not used to thinking of Iran as a major world
SPEAKER_08: power. You're right, but they will have to cope with this development soon. But it was confusing.
SPEAKER_09: The Shah made guest appearances at Disneyland, riding the Matterhorn with his wife. He imported the sewing machine and other Western domestic devices. He broadcasted American TV programs like Bewitched and Country Westerns all across Iran. But as the Shah grew with age, he realized that these old oil contracts with Western countries were asymmetrical and unfair. In the early 1970s, because of his policies to increase oil revenue, Iran became economically very powerful. And so he became less diplomatic, started essentially standing up to the outside forces that had always tried to have a piece of Iran. The brown-eyed
SPEAKER_03: peoples are teaching the blue-eyed peoples something. The blue-eyed people have to wake up.
SPEAKER_08: Wake up to? From this torpor in which they put themselves by taking maybe too many sleeping pills. The Shah had great ambitions for Iran, but under a dictator, the people still suffered.
SPEAKER_09: His secret police detained, tortured, or murdered those who might threaten his rule, including his own citizens. Forces inside and outside of Iran collided. Iranian citizens, young and old, rose up and forced the Shah to flee. Women stood side by side with the men facing the military's tanks. Today, we call it the 79 revolution. It happened just three years after that big Sinatra concert. It exploded, and the country turned upside down. The Islamic clergy saw a moment to take advantage of an empty ruling throne. They jumped in and usurped power.
SPEAKER_11:
SPEAKER_09: At that time, my mother was a freshman in college in Iran. She was one of the teens on the front lines of the revolution protesting for change in her miniskirt. When her university shut down and the national army switched allegiance to the clergy, my mom's family put her on a flight out of the country. She left January 16, 1979,
SPEAKER_10: the same day that the Shah also left Iran. She arrived in Reno, Nevada, the only city
SPEAKER_09: where she knew anyone in America. When she went to register for her university classes, I saw this guy with a beige kind of puffer jacket and some slippers who totally looked American.
SPEAKER_10: Huge afro hair, and he was kind of blondish, so didn't look like typical Persians with the dark hair. My parents fell in love with each other for their American-ness. Daddy watched lots of
SPEAKER_10: Clintus Wood movies, shows like the Wood Bad and Ugly, and he thought he'd come here and have a horse. He thought he'd be a cowboy. Yes. My dad told me he fell for my mom because she reminded
SPEAKER_09: him of Barbara Eden from I Dream of Jeannie, which he had watched as a kid growing up in Iran.
SPEAKER_09: Eden actually speaks Farsi in the pilot episode.
SPEAKER_09: Until the American astronaut makes his first wish.
SPEAKER_03: That's all I had to do was say I wish. My parents came into America thinking the West loved them
SPEAKER_09: back, but it didn't take long for them to realize this love was unrequited. The special report that
SPEAKER_01: we planned to bring you tonight was about domestic politics, but we think the crisis in Iran is more urgent right now than the campaign here at home. There was the hostage crisis of course. There's several hundred
SPEAKER_09: young people, mainly students at Tehran University, have taken over the embassy. All the Americans have
SPEAKER_00: been hostages ever since. But even beyond that, most of the Western media about the Middle East
SPEAKER_09: was so hateful that being from Iran became a point of shame. One of the top grossing films of my childhood was True Lies with Arnold Schwarzenegger and Jamie Lee Curtis. I remember watching it with my grandma who was visiting at the time and getting excruciatingly embarrassed as the film dragged on. My parents did their best to block what was happening in their country from their minds and from me. They were even somewhat relieved when upon entering grade school, I lost my ability to speak Farsi, just like Barbara Eden in I Dream of Jeannie, which is why my mom is translating for me now.
SPEAKER_10: Shima, it's almost three hours. How much do I get paid? Thank you.
SPEAKER_09: As I reported this story, I mostly wanted to understand why Zeinab and my mother, both now exiles, held onto memories of soccer as if it were their homeland itself.
SPEAKER_09: Zeinab says there is always hope in soccer.
SPEAKER_09: Even in the weakest moments, there is always that sliver of hope and possibility that we could win the match.
SPEAKER_06: And this has kept the love of soccer alive and hurt to this day.
SPEAKER_09: There are times when I feel like the game is over, but in fact, it is just getting started. In this series, we are going to meet three generations of Iranian women who fought millimeter by millimeter for every bit of freedom unfolding in Iran today. Over 40 years ago, these women were banned from stadiums in Iran, banned from standing side by side as equal Iranians, banned from leading the world in Iran, banned from the joy, the exhilaration, the love in watching a game. This is the story of how the women took their stadiums back.
SPEAKER_11: Next episode, I'm going to take you inside Iran.
SPEAKER_09: I was running because I was afraid that something happened.
SPEAKER_09: I'll show you the diabolical way the women who led the revolution were forced into submission overnight.
SPEAKER_04: What is the meaning of that?
SPEAKER_10: I think it's the meaning of the word.
SPEAKER_09: Pink Card was created and hosted by me, Shimo Oliayi, and our associate producer is Helma Serabi. Audio mixing and original music is by Ramtin Aribuhi. Editing by Sarah Quevedo. Our production coordinator is Marissa Bravo. Did you learn it from someone?
SPEAKER_10: You're doing English.
SPEAKER_09: Oh, I'm sorry.
SPEAKER_10: I'm sorry. I'm sorry. I'm sorry. I'm sorry. I'm sorry. Thank you to my awesome mom for translating.
SPEAKER_09: We had additional help from Diva Motesham. Megan Rapinoe and Sue Bird are executive producers. Thank you to Nina Ansari, Mariam Shojaee, Minky Warden, Hadi Gayemi, Ramin Golbang, Moya Dodd, Huchang Chehabi, Gloria Vetsimosa, Melinda Romero, Jasmine Ramsey, and everyone at the Center for Human Rights in Iran. For 30 for 30 podcasts, Marsha Cook is executive producer. Eve Tro is senior editorial producer. Kath Sankey is line producer. And Gus Navarro is associate producer. Licensing support from Jennifer Thorpe and director of development is Adam Newhouse.
