The “longing for a normal life,” (hasrat-i yik zindigi-yi ma'muli) as lyricized in what became the Woman, Life, Freedom (Zan, Zendegi, Azadi) movement's favorite anthem, has been front and center in the recent wave of social protests that has rocked Iran from September 2022 onward.1 At the same time, the movement's frame has been crystal clear in aiming for the rarest and most disruptive of social events—a revolution. Revolutions never foster normalcy; neither do they comfortably settle into something “normal” in their later phases. Whatever normal is, it is quite certainly not the authoritarian rule into which most social revolutions have historically lapsed. Can the pursuit of normalcy be revolutionary in any sense? In this essay I analyze the central role of normalcy in the Woman, Life, Freedom movement and discuss how it helps us understand the movement's past and imagine its potential revolutionary futures. I first allude to the struggle of some Iranians to find a semblance of normalcy under abnormal circumstances in past decades, and suggest that Mahsa (Zhina) Amini's death determined the futility of this struggle for normalcy in the minds of many Iranians. I then analyze what it means for the movement to strive for “a normal life” and a revolution at the same time.

I had completed two months of exploratory dissertation research in Tehran in the winter of 2015 when I was called in for questioning by two men who declined to provide me with their names or that of the office they called from. We met in an unmarked building adjacent to the Ministry of Foreign Affairs in downtown Tehran. They were middle-aged and sat on opposite sides of a table with a framed picture of Ayatollah Khomeini. When they offered me tea, I declined, remembering my cousins’ hurried advice an hour earlier. “God forbid someone puts something in your drink and they take you away to a different location,” he had said.

The prospects are considered of deploying batteries and fuel cells in order to reduce the carbon emissions from various modes of transport. It is proposed that the government has not done enough to advance these technologies and that Britain is lagging behind other countries. The adequacy of Britain’s future supplies of energy is called into question.

The global confrontation between the Axis and Allied powers during World War II accelerated decolonization in the Middle East. Axis propaganda supporting certain nation-state aspirations pushed the British to support nationalist Lebanese and Syrian leaders’ claims to independence from the French. After declaring independence, the leaders of the new Lebanese and Syrian governments sought to further secure their national interests by asking the Soviet Union and United States for help, establishing diplomatic relations with both countries in 1944. This calculated move proved effective. Josef Stalin, at the Potsdam Conference in July 1945, opposed the continuously privileged status France enjoyed in the region and, in 1946, Soviet representatives advocated in the UN Security Council for the removal of French and British troops. US representatives also supported Syrians’ right to determine their government, but in more moderate and cautious ways.

SOAS (School of Oriental and African Studies, University of London) Library is one of only five National Research Libraries in the UK and one of the most important academic libraries for the study of Asia, Africa and the Middle East. The African Language Collection at SOAS is unique in the UK and Europe in terms of its linguistic span and significance. The Library seeks to acquire material in and on all languages present on the African continent, not just those taught and researched at SOAS. The range of material within the Main Library collection and the history of the collection will be briefly evoked, before I bring the focus back to the items about African studies and/or from Africa that are held in the Special Collections of the Library. Those collections include archival collections, rare books collections (including discrete sub-collections of published material such as libraries from missionaries’ societies and/or academic scholars) and manuscripts in African languages. After briefly describing those collections, I point to ways of accessing them. I conclude this short overview by highlighting a few of the challenges of curating publications and manuscripts in African languages.