Iran protests over Mahsa Amini death in morality police custody support all women
Protests over Iran morality police death of Mahsa Amini and internet shutdown 2022 remind us the Iranian Revolution is going strong. Women need protection and rights.
In my early 20s, with the wild, uncertain hope that the country of my birth held something for me, I moved to Iran from Los Angeles two decades after my family fled the rise of the Islamic theocracy in the 1980s. The apartment where I lived in Tehran sat beside a mosque. From my window, I could see its rooftop and the gilded dome. On religious holidays, the mosque would festoon the streets with stringed light bulbs, and believers would gather to worship.
One such afternoon, on the anniversary of the death of the prophet Mohammed’s daughter Fatima, after the commemoration ceremony had commenced and the voice of a man singing the praises of Fatima’s virtues was met by followers beating their chests, I heard a girl screaming in the streets below. Her voice carried above the percussion of chest-beating through my open window.
The year I spent in Iran, young and wild and hopeful, I lived in the shadow of fear.
I didn’t want to register that sound. I was expecting a friend for lunch and, busy with preparations, I told myself it was just a girl laughing in the street. She must be playing a game. Tag, perhaps, given how raucous her cries were. The doorbell rang and I opened it to find my friend, trembling, pale, leaning against the frame for support. “The police outside,” she whispered, “they’re beating a girl in the streets.”
A month later, that same Iranian friend was arrested at a party with 12 other young adults for the crime of socializing with boys. She was detained for three days. I paid her a visit during her convalescence. Her eyes bruised, a large purple bump on her head, she refused to talk about what had happened to her in those three days. We sat together in silence as I held her.
Rating: 5