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Kindly translated by Roger FergusonFor thirty years, the Franco-Iranian anthropologist hasbeen examining the changes in Iranian society. Imprisoned in June 2019 withfellow researcher Roland Marchal, now cleared of the charge of spying, sheremains charged with breaches to state security and continues her hunger strikein Tehran Evin Prison.For years, Fariba Adelkhah has been working in Iran whilst walking on atightrope, a suspect and watched by Iranian security services, but stilltolerated. Aged 60, this specialist of the Shiite world at the Centre forInternational Research CERI of Sciences Po, is looking into the &#160;anthropology, and therefore over the duration,the changes of Iranian society under the Islamic Republic. This is a highlydangerous activity, and now impossible for a foreign researcher. Women,underprivileged classes or cross-border trafficking are indeed very sensitive subjectsin her research that the regime does not like to see examined too closely."Despite the general opinion of the moment, &#160;the researcher is not an intelligence officer,nor is she a James Bond or a dealer. The result of her work is different fromthat of the secret service and she works on a face-to-face basis. She puts herresults at the disposal of all ", wrote the French-Iranian researcher in2009 in an open letter after the arrest of Clotilde Reiss, a young Frenchreader at the University of Isfahan. Clotilde Reiss was accused ofparticipating in demonstrations against the regime, and was held for ten monthsin Iran before being sent to France after the payment of a fine of 230 000euros.Adelkhah's research has been a reference standard for morethan thirty years. This did not prevent her arrest on June 5, 2019 on the sameday as her colleague and friend Roland Marchal, East Africa Specialist at the Mohammadiwho came to visit her in the Iranian capital. On December 24, she started ahunger strike along with an Australian University cellmate, KylieMoore-Gilbert.The main charge against her, which carried the deathpenalty, was dropped on 6 January. A positive signal. However, she remainscharged with " attack on national security " and " propagandaagainst the Islamic Republic ". She can now receive visits from her familyand lawyer, but the authorities do not recognize her dual nationality. She hasnot, &#160;so far, benefitted from FrenchConsulate assistance, unlike Roland Marchal.Working on Iran is not easy, and not just because of the dietof paranoia. Fariba Adelkhah has her convictions, but she is not an activist.She never claimed herself as an opponent. " I have always defended theindependence of my profession from politics. For this, I have been attackedfrom all sides, in Iran and outside the country, by men of power andintellectuals. All because my writing is considered to be a little Islamic bysome fundamentalists or not lay enough by those who say they are supporters ofdemocracy ", she wrote in her open letter of 2009 announcing the giving upof her research in Iran. She did not resume her work until after the electionto President Hassan Rohani in 2013.Unlike many of the Iranian diaspora, Fariba Adelkhah knowsfrom the inside the very religious and conservative world of small Iranianmiddle classes. Her very religious father believed in instruction and did nothesitate to give the most motivated of her three daughters the money patientlysaved for a pilgrimage to Mecca, so that she could go to study in France.The intellectual journey of Fariba Adelkhah is in many waysatypical. The demands of truth and justice of Ali Shariati (1933-1977), aphilosopher immersed in the Shiite mystic, and also one of the inspirers of the1979 revolution was quickly condemned by the new regime. This deeply marked her,as did the reading of the Second Sex, by Simone de Beauvoir, discovered at universityin a Farsi translation. &#160;"I havealways tried to be a bridge between my country of origin and my hostcountry", she likes to remind us. Fariba Adelkhah, after four years ofsociology in Strasbourg, began her research in Anthropology at the École des HautesStudies in &#160;Social Sciences (Ehess).Voluntary and well-tempered character"She doesn't mind not thinking like everyoneelse", says her former thesis director, Jean-Pierre Digard, now retired,who prefaced the thesis under the title The Revolution Under The Veil; Islamicwomen of Iran (Karthala, 1991). Based on numerous interviews with Islamicrevolutionary women, she showed that veil was also a way to invest "in amoral and religious way" in public. "The veil as an access to sociallife", she sums up. " she went to the coal face, she spent a longtime in these associations of religious women and understood how, at the time,for the latter, the chador was both a prison and a passport to go out on thestreet, to study and to play a political role ", explains BernardHourcade, research director distinguished at the CNRS, one of the great Frenchspecialists of Iran.With her &#160;analysis contraryto the views of many Iranian opponent refugees abroad, Fariba Adelkhah’s bookreceived a mixed welcome, especially in France, where the question of wearingthe Islamic scarf remains a political marker. Thought provoking, she does notmake friends on every occasion. " How would you feel if someone told youthat never many of Iranian women have been as free, autonomous and dynamic assince the 1979 Revolution? (...) probably by calling the speaker of theseclaims a defender of the regime ", she wrote in 2007 in a long article ofthe magazine Politix, entitled " Islamophobia and discomfort inanthropology ". She called for women " Not to react sometimes in amechanical and unconscious way, almost " pavlovian ", to the simplemention of the Iranian situation, rather than thinking about it ".She has always kept herself well away from public denouncingof the regime but, book after book, it raises the dead ends like changes."Trying to understand is not justify", says Bernard Hourcade. Beingmodern in Iran (Karthala, 2006) shows how a living and diverse civil societyhas confirmed itself with real dynamics also expressed in the polls despite anelectoral process that remains under trusteeship. In the thousand and oneborders of Iran (Karthala, 2012), Fariba Adelkhah studies Iran in its regionaldynamics, beyond the middle east but also on its steps to the Kurdish, Arab orBaloch Cross-border populations.The Franco-Iranian researcher never hesitates to pay fromher own resources, visiting, despite the Taliban presence, the Hazara, Shiitesliving in the heart of Afghanistan. Her friends highlight her voluntary andwell-tempered character. In Evin prison in Tehran, despite the improvement ofher conditions of prison, she continues her hunger strike to demand to bereleased but also on behalf of " all academic and researchers unfairlyimprisoned in Iran and the middle east ".&#160;&#160;&#160;&#160;&#160;&#160; &#160;&#160;&#160;&#160;" Scientists are less protected thandiplomats whose arrest causes a serious crisis, and they have less awarenessthan journalists; they are low-intensity hostage, useful to put pressure onwestern capitals or as an issue in rivalries between the different groups inpower in the Islamic Republic ", says Jean-François Bayart, formerdirector of the INST and professor at the Institute of High International Studiesand Development and a pillar of her support committee. He calls for"suspension of scientific cooperation" with Iran. So far, this matterhas not progressed.Marc Semo, Le Monde, January 13, 2020https://www.lemonde.fr/idees/article/2020/01/13/fariba-adelkhah-chercheuse-emprisonnee_6025647_3232.html