by Marianne Peel
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| Illustration by Roshi Rouzbehani for The New Yorker, October 9, 2022 |
“…it is the conscious articulation of time.” —Hans Richter
I. Rahumpour, who lived in Iran from age six to sixteen,
remembers the panic she felt as a child. Gusts of wind
pulled her headscarf down, exposing her hair. A frenzied rush
to adjust the fabric. To hide her hair beneath the hijab.
II. Hadis, a child of twelve, is taken into custody. A few wisps of hair
had escaped from her headscarf. Three women covered in heavy chadors
spit a lecture in a dark room downtown: you have sinned, you have
not learned the lessons of the Quran, you will go to hell. She is instructed,
educated, to pull out a string of hair. If that hurts, imagine getting hanged
by your hair for all eternity. School dismissed.
III. Mahsa Amini, twenty-two, is arrested by the Morality Police
for improperly wearing her hijab. In custody, they beat and bruise her
into a coma. Corpulent blows to the head. Skull fractures embroider
her x-ray. Official government cause of death: heart attack.
Photos of Mahsa weigh down the internet. Lying in a hospital bed.
Tubes and wires all over her body. Blood pooling from one ear.
Rivulets of blood tattoo the starched, white pillowcase.
Her mother cries: I am her mother. I am dying from grief.
Her father cries: Everything is a lie. No matter how much I begged,
they wouldn’t let me see my daughter.
IV. In the public square of Kuma, a young masked woman balances
atop an electrical box. She lowers her head to one side. Slices off
her long locks with sheers. A ritual sacrifice, this self-shearing. A denial
of ancient poetry where hair guarantees immemorial beauty, chains of binding
love, shrouds of truth. Now women walk around uncovered, brandishing
shorn heads in the lethal sun. A beautiful, proud wound.
V. Schoolgirls with backpacks and black Converse sneakers march
down Tehran streets waving school uniform veils in the air. They wave
headscarves in circles, block traffic in every roundabout. They shred
images of the Ayatollah, hurl his jigsawed face fragments into the street,
shouting Death to the Dictator. Shouting Bisharahl, the Persian word
for lacking any honor.
VI. Women without hijabs set crates and trash bins on fire, create a barrier
between themselves and the Morality Police. The police lob teargas grenades.
Hijab-less women are pinned to the pavement, suffocating in the obesity of fog.
They belly crawl into alleyways, crouch in doorways, make themselves small.
VII. Sixty women are detained in a torrid police station. They cannot sit.
They cannot move. They cannot use the toilet. They are told
if they are hungry, they can eat their own feces. They are told
If you don’t keep quiet, we will rape you.
VIII. Women of shorn heads are detained in psychological institutions. Diagnosis:
anti-social behavior. Women of shorn heads will receive treatment. Will be
re-educated. Security officers sexually assault the women of shorn heads.
They can return to classes after they are reformed.
IX. An officer forces a woman toward a bike. Another approaches her
from behind. He puts his authority hands on her buttocks. She crouches
on the ground. A dozen officers swarm her body. They pull and pull
at her hair.
X. A woman climbs onto the roof of a car, sets fire to her hijab. All of the women
feed their hijabs to the bonfire flames. A mass burning. And they dance
in celebration, in ecstasy, like Whirling Dervishes, as they watch hijabs smolder
into dust, into ash.
XI. Nika, a sixteen year old protester, sends a message to a friend. I am being chased
by security forces. She goes missing for ten days. Her family finds her
in a morgue drawer at a Detention Center. They are forbidden to view
her body. Only her face. Only for a few seconds. Her body is stolen
to Khorramabed, on her 17th birthday. Given improper burial
in a town far from home.
XII. Women of all ages, without headscarves, hold their hands out for Mango Lassi
at the local juice stand. Women without headscarves ride on the backs
of motorcycles, hair liberated in the marketplace wind. A woman speaks
to a man selling shawls and headscarves: Pack up and go, sir. Don’t you know
this is all over? Her arm sweeps past his wares, encompassing centuries.
Why don’t you buy them and then burn them? the man responds, holding centuries
in his flaccid smile.
XIII. Students at Sharif University conjure silent sit-ins. Boycott classes.
Make street music with chants of Zan, Zendgi, Azadi: Women, Life, Freedom.
Special forces converge, encircle the students, shoot those who try to leave.
Those remaining are shrouded in plastic trash bags. Those remaining
are beaten. Those remaining are stacked in white vans, shuttled
to locations undisclosed. One woman whispers to another through the plastic:
Don’t be afraid. We’re all together.
A middle/high school English teacher for 32 years, Marianne Peel now nurtures her own creativity. She spent three summers teaching in China; received Fulbright Awards to Nepal and Turkey. Marianne’s poetry appears in Muddy River Review, Jelly Bucket, Comstock Review, and Naugatuck River Review, among others. Her debut collection No Distance Between Us was published by Shadelandhouse Modern Press in 2021. Marianne has a new book of poetry forthcoming from Shadelandhouse Modern Press in Fall of 2023.
