Ebrahim Nabavi - Satire and Journalism Career

Satire and Journalism Career

Nabavi started his satire career in the Soroush magazine in serial articles on cinema titled "andar hekāyat-e rešte va sar-r derāz va …" and continued it in the Gozaresh-e Film magazine (which he co-founded and worked as the magazine's first editor) with "rāport-hā" (reports). After leaving Gozaresh-e Film, Nabavi helped Kioumars Saberi Foumani start the Gol-Agha magazine, where he later wrote for.

While working at Gol-Agha, Nabavi started writing also for the Hamshahri monthly magazine, where he suggested establishing the Hamshahri daily newspaper, which later became very popular. Nabavi left the Hamshahri Institute three months after the resignation of Ahmad Sattari, the daily newspaper's then editor. After leaving Hamshahri, Nabavi found tried various random jobs, including designing crossword puzzles.

Nabavi later "escaped" to Isfahan in 1996, as a reason for which he has mentioned the tighter restrictions on media imposed during the ministership of Ali Larijani and Mostafa Mirsalim in the Ministry of Culture and Islamic Guidance. In Isfahan he later became active in the presidential campaign for Mohammad Khatami, after his election he moved back to Tehran. He later moved into self-imposed exile, settling in Belgium sometime in 2003 or 2004.

Nabavi became famous after starting his daily column sotūn-e panjom (Fifth Column) in the newspaper Jame'eh, which he continued in several newspapers (under different variations of the title) after the newspapers were banned one after another. He also helped Fa'ezeh Hashemi in the founding of the newspaper Zan. In August 2009 he released the video "The Confession: Ebrahim Nabavi", where "dressed in striped pajamas and wearing bandages," he "confesses to meeting with a C.I.A. agent, importing green velvet, and having affairs with celebrities ranging from Marilyn Monroe and Sophia Loren to Carla Bruni and Scarlett Johansson" in a parody of defendant confessions at the 2009 election protesters show trial in Tehran. The video had over 120,000 viewings as of February 10, 2010.

He has also written several books of satire, interviews, prison diaries, and research on the history of Iranian satire. By 2006 he was writing for the online newspaper Rooz and the BBC News in Persian.

Nabavi was arrested and jailed two times for his political satires, where he wrote sālon-e šomāre-ye šeš (سالن شماره ۶; Corridor No 6), translated to French as Couloir n° 6 : Carnets de prison (ISBN 2-7427-5161-0).