Politische Arbeit. Maryam Aras spricht mit Maha El Hissy über “Dinosaurierkind”. Tanasgol Sabbagh liest

Dinosaur children are the children of Iranian parents who have dedicated their lives to political work. Maryam Aras is such a dinosaur child herself and has now written one of the most important books of her generation with her debut. It is a manifesto for the recognition and continuation of this political work. But it is also the book of a daughter and a father, so tender and respectful in tone, so united and independent in thought that this alone gets under the skin and into the heart.

But it is not just any political work that Maryam Aras tells with the biography of her father: Dinosaurs is the name given to Iranian opposition figures who have been working since the 1950s, first in Iran, then from exile, for a different Iran, the very one that seemed conceivable during the brief phase of democratization under Mossadegh. A phase that was ended by a covert action by the USA with the participation of other states. So it is also about colonial crimes and questions of complicity, including that of the German state. And it is about the political work of a dinosaur's child, who forever anchors the significance of the Iranian exile opposition for the German 1968 movement in the cultural memory here in Germany.

Maryam Aras talks to Maha El Hissy about a work of remembrance that today can only be a shared and multi-perspective one. Poet and performer Tanasgol Sabbagh opens and closes the evening and joins the conversation with her own and other texts.