Stage 1:

The flick of your thumb across the slick screen brings the headline screaming forth – a young Iranian woman beaten to death. 

The rejection is a reflex; you’ve worked a long-ass day as a teacher, mother, wife. This you-time is meant to be mindless phone scrolling. Not this. Not now.

 

My country, I will build you again, if need be, with bricks made from my life.

 

Stage 2:

You have curated a group of active, empathetic friends, and soon their texts pour in. Their concern warms you, but also heightens the shame of wanting to avoid the news in the first place. Here they are diving into the story while you attempted ignorance. But, there’s no ignoring it. 

Gingerly, you engage, skim details because the information is wool against a sunburn. 

You want to say how dare they kill this woman. 

You want to say how dare they kill more women. 

You want to say Mahsa is not the first nor the last.

But she is the now that should not be.

 

That which you wanted to evade, floods. All your female relatives there in the thick of the danger. They are young; they are educated – they will join the resistance.

 

I will build columns to support your roof, if need be, with my own bones. 

 

Stage 3:

Please, whatever else happens, please just let my family be safe, be okay.

_ _ _ _ _ _

 

From 7000 miles away, her voice is harkened by electronic dings.  Zahra is okay; the family is okay. Emotion is a deluge streaming down your face.

 

Once more, the darkness will leave this house. And I will paint my poems blue with the color of our sky.

 

Stage 4:

What is oppression more than the absence of choice? Women are penned in by the governance of our (restricted) choices. What we wear. How we pursue pleasure. When, and if, we breed. How quick Westerners are to condemn this backward Middle Eastern country, to hold ourselves in such high esteem, when many of our legal and social choices corral our own women with obstacles too.

Mahsa’s death was brutal and unjust. The women of Iran know they’re living in the frying pan, but we Western women? Well, maybe, we’re in the pot.

 

My poems may be drenched in blood but you shall make me strong.

 

Stage 5:

In the weeks that follow, Zahra’s communication is sporadic. At times, she is so hopeful her optimism is like the sunshine in January, undaunted by the task of burning all that snow. At other times, the reports of violence come in such flurries she confesses she’s frozen to emotional numbness. It’s in these moments that your heart is ice in your throat. Words are useless – what to say when you have the luxury of distance? When you empathize to the core of your being, but you’re not there. You don’t truly understand the fear, the fight, the frustration.

So you cling to her optimism, repeat it back to her in hopes that she can find a hold in it too. Perhaps Mahsa will be the catalyst for change. The youth of Iran have a history of engaged resistance. Maybe this time the world will let Iranians correct the generation’s long fallout of Western meddling on their own. Maybe this time the swell of Persian voices will silence those dusty robed, archaic mullahs. 

 

I will build you again with my life, however meager my means.

*Italicized text taken from My Country, I Will Build You Again, a poem by prominent Iranian poet Simin Behbani