Amir Gudarzi on language and violence: When people want to be gods

Author Amir Gudarzi connects Mesopotamian myths with European reality. A conversation about new drama, religion, Nazis and democracy.

Author Amir Gudarzi during the taz discussion in Berlin in June 2024 Photo: Wolfgang Borrs

wochentaz: Mr. Gudarzi. You recently performed at the Authors’ Days at the Deutsches Theater in Berlin with the production of your play “When the Gods Were Men”. When were the gods human?

Amir Gudarzi: A good question. I didn’t experience that time. I take up an ancient Mesopotamian myth in which the gods had to work first and therefore created humans. Then they made them work for them. It’s a bit of a game with it.

So in the game the gods were initially human. But when did they become gods?

From the moment they no longer had to work. And then gained a lot of power over others. They could occupy each other’s time and ultimately decide matters of life and death. There are different levels in the piece. Past present Future. Today’s gods also seem a bit more powerful to me than the earlier ones.

What motivated you to connect millennia-old creation myths with current human phenomena?

I have been working on these origin claims for a long time. Where does what come from? The Epic of Gilgaman is about 2,000 years older than the Old or New Testament. Much older than the Koran. And the Atraḫasis epic is even older than Gilgamensch.

The Atraḫ
asis epic is a tradition from the pre-ancient period of Mesopotamia?

Precisely. I was interested in what stories existed before the ancient and religious myths. The Epic of Gilgaman was in some sense based on the Epic of Atraḫasis, and the Old Testament in turn was based on both. There was much more exchange with Europe in this Middle Eastern region of the world than long believed. National boundaries did not exist and human history was seen as a whole.

Could “When the Gods Were Men” be considered a kind of religious classic rewrite?

Rather not. I translated the epic from English into German, then let it speak for itself, combining the original quotes with passages I wrote.

How involved were you in staging the play on stage?

Initially only for the conception test, then no more.

Isn’t it painful to deliver an idea and text and then have to withdraw as an author?

You have to take yourself back. But I was in contact with dramaturge Franziska Betz. The production is directed by FX Mayr.

The production works with pop culture elements, revue-like and uses different media. Was the video with Elon Musk your idea? Was AI, artificial intelligence, used for the video?

With the help of AI, he speaks a mix of my theater text and passages from the Old Testament. Of course, the entire theater laughed at this scene. But the performance is almost a bit too personified for me, it’s about a general tendency and less about him as an individual. The all-powerful man who looks back from space on the flood and the past of the earth.

The actors’ costumes reminded me of Austrian Krampus figures, Alpine demons from pre-Christian times.

I also had this association with the Krampus, their rustling certainly produces an interesting sound.

You fled Iran in 2009 at the age of 24. Before that you attended the country’s only theater school in Tehran. What is the current state of affairs in Iranian theater art?

If the regime had had its way, there should have been no art after the 1979 revolution. However, Tehran still had a large city theater and several stages. After 1979, theater continued to be performed in many major Iranian cities.

What theater languages ​​did you initially focus on when you were young?

Of course in western theater languages. The Fajr Festival used to bring very good international guest performances to the country. Nowadays theater in Iran is as good as dead. From an artistic point of view, there is almost only uncritical private theater; this is usually of little importance.

Is there a tradition of popular puppet theater in Iran, such as in neighboring Afghanistan or Egypt?

We had the shadow theater. But that’s all gone. “Incompatible with Islam.”

The Iranian underground is known for not prohibiting dancing and partying. What was it like for you and the theater scene?

For example, we retreated from the city to the remote desert and organized buses for our events there. But that was very complicated. Later we performed and celebrated it privately in a large parking garage in a high-rise building. But we couldn’t let more than 40 or 50 people in there.

In the novel ‘The End is Near’ you write about the uprisings against the Iranian theocracy and your arrival in Austria after your escape. The book was published last year and received a lot of attention. They originally wrote it in German, why not in Farsi, Persian?

Every language has its rules in which you can express yourself differently. Changing language also brings a certain degree of freedom. In German I behave a bit like a fool. I got rid of certain chains, was able to gain distance, about the limitations I experienced in Iran. It was a linguistic escape from where I came from.

In your novel you also talk about the perverse desire of patriarchal men to commit sexual violence against women, men and children.

There is an evil, violent tradition. It is older than the current Islamic regime. It is manifested in the rigid separation and division according to gender stereotypes. This reinforces prejudices and suppresses human needs. And erupt into violent actions. But Iranian society has changed somewhat recently. She is against the regime pushed through some freedom rights.

Why these rigid moral concepts?

There is a perversity in these supposedly religious people. At first glance they reject anything sexual. Everything that has to do with lust. But actually they are very focused on it. That’s a bit morbid. How they go through the world and associate everything with sex and sexuality. This runs deep in everyday life. An example: a woman can sit on the bus or subway. She stands up and a compulsive thinking man quickly sits down on her chair to be aroused by the warmth that is still palpable.

In your novel ‘The End is Near’ you talk about your character A. also how an oppositional intellectual from Iran, a secularist, is transformed back into an Easterner by a racist environment upon arrival in Austria. In addition, in the refugee camp, A. is confronted with all kinds of people from all kinds of regions and are locked up. Some beat him and robbed him. As a figure of the conscious political refugee, does she seem a rather lonely figure?

The composition of the refugees is very different. Democratically oriented political opposition members and members of sexual minorities are certainly in the minority compared to war refugees from all social classes. And there are always some difficult individuals among them, especially if there are four or five of you in a small room. Hell on earth is still being prepared by man for man. I wanted to show that there is one idea dem refugee does not exist. Not black and white. They are individuals with very different biographies and motives.

You live in Austria. There too, the partly extreme right-wing FPÖ won a quarter of the votes in the European elections. How do you think we should respond to the rise of the far right across Europe?

First of all, we must open our eyes wide and realize that democracy worldwide is actually in danger. The Chinese, Russian and Iranian regimes are in attack mode. And in the US, Donald Trump is threatening to become president. The European Union and its values ​​are under pressure both from within and without. The left must stop tearing itself apart in trench warfare. The Identitarians or the FPÖ in Austria repeatedly deliberately introduce ethnic provocations. ‘Remigration’ is one of themor the talk of ‘concentrating’ refugees in certain places.

Or that the Nazi SS was not a criminal organization. Which AfD exponents in Germany then take over after they see how successful the FPÖ is in Austria.

In reality, they are seeking a historical shift and apparently ethnic cleansing. What a cruel thought, especially against the background of European history up to 1945.

As an antidote to ethnic ideas about cultures and nations, the philosopher Jürgen Habermas repeatedly puts forward the concept of “constitutional patriotism” as a democratic anchor. Enlightened citizens therefore define themselves through laws and rights that apply to everyone. And not about ethno-biological assumptions about their origins. Does that sound too businesslike, or can you get something out of it?

I can really do something with it. In any case, I can be very positive about the democratic constitution. Iran has been fighting for such a system for more than a hundred years. Before the mullahs, the monarchy ruled there. Such countries have never had the luxury of a democratic constitution. It’s worth defending here.