Disclaimer:
I would like to begin by addressing the fact that I am a white person and that since I will be discussing events that are happening in a culture that I do not have lived experience of I recommend that listeners seek out own voice educators for more information.
No offence is intended towards people of any faith or none.
Mahsa Amini was a 22 year old Kurdish Iranian. Her Kurdish name was Zhina. She was going to attend University with the goal of becoming a lawyer. On the 13th of Sept 2022 she was visiting Tehran with her family. She was arrested violently by ‘The Guidance Patrol’ for a perceived breach to the hijab head covering rules. Her family were told that she would be released in an hour after ‘re-education’ by the Moral Security agency. Women that were held with her have reported that she was severally beaten and verbally abused while detained. She was moved to Kasra Hospital 2 hours later. She was in a coma for 2 days before dying on the 16th of Sept as a result of injuries sustained in police custody.
This act is being held up as an example of the violence that the state commits against Iranian women on a regular basis.
Wind Up Doll
By Forugh Farrokhzad
Translated by Sholeh Wolpé
Even more, oh yes,
one can remain silent even more.
Inside eternal hours
one can fix lifeless eyes
on the smoke of a cigarette
on a cup's form,
the carpet's faded flowers,
or on imaginary writings on the wall.
With stiff claws one can whisk
the curtains aside, look outside.
It's streaming rain.
A child with a balloon bouquet
cowers beneath a canopy. A rickety cart
flees the deserted square in haste.
one can remain fixed in one place, here
beside this curtain... but deaf, but blind.
With an alien voice, utterly false,
one can cry out: I love!
In the oppressive arms of a man
one can be a robust, beautiful female-
skin like leather tablecloth,
breasts large and hard.
One can stain the sinlessness of love
in the bed of a drunk, a madman, a tramp.
One can cunningly belittle
every perplexing puzzle.
Alone, occupy oneself with crosswords,
content with unimportant letters, no more than five or six.
One can spend a lifetime kneeling,
head bowed,
before the cold altar of the Imams,
find God inside an anonymous grave,
faith in a few paltry coins.
One can rot inside a mosque's chamber,
an old woman, prayers dripping from lips.
Whatever the equation, one can always be a zero,
yielding nothing, whether added, subtracted, or multiplied.
One can rot inside a mosque's chamber,
an old woman, prayers dripping from lips.
Whatever the equation, one can always be a zero,
yielding nothing, whether added, subtracted, or multiplied.
One can think your eyes are buttons from an old ragged shoe
Caught in a web of anger.
Once can evaporate like water from one's own gutter.
With shame one can hide a beautiful moment
like a dark, comic instant photo
rammed deep into a wooden chest.
Inside a day's empty frame one can mount
the portrait of a condemned, a vanquished,
a crucified. Cover the gaps in the walls
with silly, meaningless drawings.
Like a wind-up doll one can look out
at the world through glass eyes,
spend years inside a felt box,
body stuffed with straw,
wrapped in layers of dainty lace.
With every salacious squeeze of one's hand,
for no reason one can cry:
Ah, how blessed, how happy I am!
Martin Chulov
In Martin Chulov’s article for The Guardian he asserts that this death may have triggered a groundswell of popular revolt. While the state is suppressing digital attempts to raise awareness by shutting down the internet, there are many in the Iranian Diaspora who are speaking out, at personal cost.
The story presented by officials was initially that Mahsa Amini had died from a combination of a heart condition and an epileptic fit. Her family have stated that she did not have either condition. Later officials stated that ‘conspirators’ were responsible for her death and that the subsequent protests were organised by outside forces. These excuses have been used before to explain other suspicious deaths.
Nightmare
By Asieh Amini
My home
My room
My bed
My lips
Even the frame of this shut window
Smell of gun powder.
How many times have I told you:
"Don't come to my dream with a gun?"
Nasrin Parvaz
Nasrin Parvas explains that this movement has been joined by people across the generational and class boundaries.
These protests are the result of pent up fury towards the regimes systematic suppression of women’s rights. For older activists it also carries the weight and trauma of previous uprisings.
Nasrin Parvaz has first hand experience of the ways that the state treats protesters after she was arrested and tortured in 1982. After horrific treatment and her death sentence being commuted she fled to the UK in 1990.
She asserts that these traumas experienced by Iranian women are present in this new struggle for freedom.
Demonstrations began in Tehran on September 16th. These included women burning their hijabs and cutting their hair.
The protests have spread and include University students and children that left school to attend. The chant of “Woman, Life, Freedom!” is frequently heard.
According to Patrick Wintour Protests began in the Kurdish regions on the 17th of Sept after Mahsa Amini’s funeral.
Nasrin Parvaz goes on to tell us that the regime have responded by killing protesters, including children. Others have been brutally detained and arrested. Their families do not know where they have been taken. Some bodies have been returned to their families with evidence of extreme violence.
Many of the protesters know that if they gave up and turned back there would still be another massacre and they would be killed anyway.
Take Care of Yourself
By Elham Malekpoor Arashlu
Then I thought I am holding a knife
I thought it’s the same knife stabbed on my back
It would be good if it was my father’s blade
There was not a hair separating us
When he pulled out my eye
I found I could live a meeker life with only one eye
Even two eye is not so odd
With the next move he was a tribal traveller
.
One single body could be the answer to all of my questions
The sky, of course, was blue
But she/he didn’t wash his hands so smeared in me
I checked his pockets
To scratch him I pulled on hippo skin
Said
Friendship is a sorrowful affair.
Said it’s not possible at all that out of water
Biting into the sandwich alone, over the bench, could transform us into a bed
I promised to not utter a word of that knife
I won’t
When I looked I thought my father has no hair at all
So it could be razor
It shook in my hand
But I was determined
To think of the next accident
.
the Girl that I am I am somebody’s son
Maybe when its memory returns
Now, even though the hair
Wherever there is life within hands
A wholesome woman sings lullabies on my son’s side to lull him to sleep
She’ll see that same thing playing behind her back now is within her hands, throwing a game
When I think of it, she was with a white horse
A mountain in the mid of her eyebrows
When over her body . . . .
There was the yellowish of the daytime
There was the red rim around my eyes
There was grass so we don’t have to sit on the bench
There was the slot
Then an incident happened
I was a wholesome woman
I was the foam over the beer
I was Adidas sinkers
.
Egg yolk was soft
I was strong, I’d lasted long
Rana Rahimpour for the BBC highlighted the striking similarities between the female led protests of 1979 and those happening now. Their cause has remained the same despite the many years between these groups of protests. The women of 1979 were protesting the, then recently imposed strict dress code. It was not only enforced legally but by social pressure with shops requiring women to wear headscarves. It was the beginning of the government stripping away their liberty.
Women have since demonstrated subtle resistance in everyday life by wearing the scarves loosely, allowing their hair to show. In 2018 women began publicly taking their headscarves off and waving them like flags. These were individual and important acts of courage. The waving of headscarves has remained a symbol of defiance.
It is not just this new generation that takes issue with these mandates. They fought against their loss of rights then and the recent atrocities have galvanised that fight again now.
Patrick Wintour
Patrick Wintour tells us that as of the 10th of October the protests have begun affecting the oil industry, with more than a thousand workers at Bushehr and Damavand Petrochemical plants going on strike.
Many Medical experts and Lawyers have issued statements appealing for the state to demonstrate restraint when handling protesters.
The British and US governments have announced sanctions against the Iranian Morality Police and the National and Tehran Commanders.
5.7 By Sheena Kalbasi
I don't care if you are you and I am I. I am not some exotic flower. Whatever coat you have on, I will put it on to warm me... and the shoes however small... I will walk in them to balance our height difference. You don't need to convert for me; I have already converted to you. You see I never had a religion to begin with. I was born naked from all religions but your love.
I know that was not the point. I know there is no conversion. There is no coat, no balance, no shoes but the naked truth of me finding you first, not you finding me. You, whom will never know who I was when I was sitting on the white sheets.
Y o u, not b e s i d e m e.
And the words that are already written. The words that are already said, are already felt, and are already gone.
And I try to take them back into my empty bowl of hands. To put my hands on the chest. The chest into rest. The rest in to the heart. The beat back to the soul. The soul, back to what it was before you.
Alas! I am 5.7
Ways that you can help
When things like this happen it can be hard to know what to do. Solcyre Burga writing for Time and Roya Backlund for Style Caster had some helpful recommendations.
There are several organisations that you can donate to including:
The Centre for Human Rights in Iran (CHRI)
Or The Abdorrahman Boroumand Centre for Human Rights in Iran.
Or The Iranian Diaspora Collective
If there is a protest near you then you can show support for Iranian women by attending.
Since the Iranian government is limiting its citizens access to social media you can help by educating yourself and raising awareness of these protests and the reasons for them.
Our Tears are Sweet
By Simin Behbahani
Translated by Farzaneh Milani and Kaveh Safa
Our tears are sweet, our laughter venomous.
We’re pleased when sad, and sad when pleased.
We wash one hand in blood, the other we wash the blood off.
We cry as we laugh at the futility of both these acts.
Eight years have passed, we haven’t discovered their meaning.
We have been like children, beyond any account or accounting.
We have broken every stalk, like a wild wind in the garden.
We have picked clean the vine’s candelabra.
And if we found a tree, still standing, defiantly,
we cut its branches, we pulled it by the roots.
We wished for a war, it brought us misery,
now, repentant, we wish for peace.
We pulled wings and heads from bodies,
now, seeking a cure, we are busy grafting.
Will it come to life, will it fly,
the head we attach, the wing we stitch?
Nasrin Parvaz states that she is afraid for her fellow Iranians, but hopeful that they will succeed in overthrowing the abusive regime.
I will end with a message that was shared with me.
‘Don’t let people like Mahsa think that they are once again alone in their struggle for freedom.”
This has been a Yorick Radio Production