Sandra Mackey, “the mandate of hejah wrapped every woman,
Muslim and non-Muslim, in layers of dark clothing, and strict
sexual segregation descended on the whole society from schools
to parks to the beaches of the Caspian Sea.”^52
Iranian art and media were placed under new controls. “The
themes of love and eroticism, present for centuries in Persian
poetry, disappeared, replaced by verbal images of religion and
revolution,” Mackey wrote. “The same applied to prose and to
painting. In the filmmaking industry, controls clamped on by the
Office of Islamic Guidance slashed production in 1981 to only
seven movies, which were all made in one genre—the heroic
Muslim male standing firm against corruption and injustice in the
name of the revolution.”^53 Universities throughout the country
were closed for more than two years while censors purged them
of unholy textbooks and allegedly misguided faculty.
Damaging effects of the revolution would continue to hamper
the film industry when, years later, cinema again became widely
available to the public. During the revolution, terrorists had
targeted theaters as symbols of Western intrusion. Approxi-
mately half of Iran’s movie houses had been destroyed or taken
over by the clergy.
Meanwhile, the country was mired in its war with Iraq. By
1988, more than a million lives had been lost—three-fourths
of them Iranians. The Iraqi Army, with support from other
countries that their President Hussein had arranged, possessed
better weapons. Iran, however, had several times the population
of Iraq. Numbers alone weighed heavily in the outcome. Gradu-
ally, Iran reclaimed all its lost territory and even went on the
offensive, striking targets on Iraqi soil. Hussein, realizing his
hopes for supremacy in the region were lost, made overtures for
peace with Iran.
Khomeini was of no mind for compromise. He laid down
extreme conditions for peace—billions of dollars to repay Iran for
war losses. These included oil industry and farming disruptions
and the destruction of more than a thousand Iranian villages,
towns, and cities. Khomeini even demanded that Hussein’s72 AYATOLLAH RUHOLLAH KHOMEINI
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