I have often mentioned that I grew up and met adulthood during one of the darkest times of the Modern Greek history, during the seven years of the military dictatorship. And I have often said that it is very difficult to describe how it is to live during dark times like those even to younger Greeks that have enjoyed total democracy and freedom of speech and expression. Actually, during times like that you learn to appreciate freedom of speech and expression and you realize how much the lack of them can influence your every day life.

To give you an example, during the first years of the secondary school - I think it was the second - we had to learn Sophocles and to be precise Antigone, probably his most famous play. To be honest when you are forced to learn something, especially when it becomes a lesson with homework and exams, there is no joy and in the end you have no idea how beautiful that play might be, the only thing you care about is learning the lesson and making the right point. And that’s exactly what most of us did. If somebody had asked me at that time what I thought about Antigone my most likely answer would have been …boring!

The story is about Antigone and her will to bury her dead brother despite the dictator’s objections, in this case Creon. The dictator wants to bury one of the brothers, Eterocles with army honours and prayers while leaving the other brother, Polyneices to the wild animals. During this magnificent drama and over the dead body of her brother Polyneices, Antigone is talking with her sister, Ismene in long monologues she talks about the power of the individual and the weaknesses of the state, she’s talking about women and their role in family and society and in one very small part of a whole scene she mentions …democracy!

This small sentence where Antigone prays for democracy, in a book written nearly 2,500 years ago, became the reason over night for the play to be forbidden from the military dictators and their bowdlerization. A book that made over four generations and thousands of Greek kids yawn during the lesson in one night became a bestseller.

It is a book that very few have read after school times yet it became a must on every bookshelf. I still have my copy and I’m very proud of it. Much of the play learned by heart and when the dictatorship was over Antigone became one of the most popular plays in the ancient theatre of Epidaurus. The event continues today as a joke and an example of stupidity of how far a dictatorship can go and how ridiculous they can make of themselves.

I remembered all that while reading on the news that the Iranian religious dictators printed a list of moral vices that the police are targeting giving them the right to suppress ‘decadent’ books and films. Of course, they have added to those make-up, hats, instead of headscarves, women wearing trousers and any un-Islamic behaviour. Oh yes, the Greek dictators did the same, they just called it …un-Christian behaviour, you see it was the sixties and mini skirts were in fashion.

The seven-year dictatorship left hundreds dead and thousands tortured, exiled and dying from wounds, so who knows what is the cost of the decades of the dictatorship in Iran. Thirty-five years after the end of the dictatorship in Athens we can laugh at their stupidity but who knows how long and how many more tears will it before Iran will be free of all the parasites inland and abroad that milk the Iranian people using religion as their excuse.