Until We Are Free

by Shirin Ebadi

  Apart from seducing the rural and urban poor with cash handouts, Ahmadinejad was also adept at nurturing Iranians’ inherent sense of nationalism. One evening, as we were all gathered in the living room watching the news, the state television station broadcast Ahmadinejad giving a speech about the country’s promising young scientists. He claimed, “There’s a girl who went to her high school principal and told her, ‘Khanoum, I’ve discovered nuclear energy at home, can you do something with this?’ ” Ahmadinejad then went on to describe how he had dispatched scientists from the Atomic Energy Organization of Iran to check out the purported discovery. “They went to her house, and they saw that in the kitchen, with parts she’d bought at the bazaar, and with some help from her big brother, she had actually produced nuclear energy!”

  I watched, dumbfounded, and turned to look at Javad and Nargess, who both appeared stunned as well. It was one of the moments, of which there were too many in Iran, when we didn’t know whether to laugh or cry. It was truly hilarious, what the president was claiming: that a high school girl had cooked up nuclear fission in her kitchen. But it was also profoundly disturbing, the extent to which the president would bend the truth, contort reality, in order to persuade Iranians that their country had the right to nuclear power. In a later news broadcast it emerged that Ahmadinejad had sent bodyguards to secure the safety of this budding genius and her kitchen laboratory, though we never learned her name or the precise nature of her astonishing discovery.

  —

  It was just after lunch on an ordinary Wednesday when I glanced at the clock and realized it was nearly time for Mr. Mahdavi, a state intelligence agent, to drop by for his appointment. He came to my office occasionally to discuss various “concerns,” always telephoning in advance to set a time, and was studiously polite. I knew that Mahdavi was not his real name—all the state’s intelligence agents concealed their real identities—and though his manner was civil, the simple fact that I was dealing with someone with a fake name unsettled me. The previous week I had received a threatening letter in the mail, and I had been considering whether to mention it to Mahdavi. Javad was especially worried, and I felt I had to do something. The letter had read: “If you continue your work, both you and your daughter Nargess will be taken care of.”

  I hadn’t mentioned the letter to Nargess; she already took all the precautions I thought necessary for her safety, and I didn’t want her to feel intimidated or, even worse, resentful at such a young age. She would have plenty of time to grow politically bitter later.

  Mahdavi might not know anything about the letter, I figured, and perhaps it was better that way. The Iranian state ran various intelligence branches, some much more hard-line than others, and they often competed with each other. If another branch had decided to get tough with me, better for Mahdavi’s branch not to feel compelled to match it.

  I slipped the papers I had been reviewing into a folder and pulled on a head scarf, waiting for the buzzer. When it rang, it was only a few minutes after the hour, but Mahdavi apologized for his slight tardiness. He was a tidy man of medium build with a clipped beard and a lawyerly demeanor, always jotting down notes on a yellow pad and pressing me for more details.

  After a few pleasantries, he raised the latest “concern” he had with my work. In early 2005, I had agreed to represent Roozbeh Mirebrahimi, a journalist and blogger the authorities had arrested in 2004, leveling the various charges they usually brought against reporters who worked for the country’s beleaguered but still functioning independent press. In agreeing to represent him, I had repeated publicly that Iran’s judicial and penal system was deeply flawed. Mahdavi and his superiors in the Ministry of Intelligence did not appreciate such remarks.

  “Khanoum Ebadi, you know what the problem is,” he said, crossing his legs and looking at me intently. “America is our enemy, and it takes advantage of such criticisms.”

  “But what I’ve said is perfectly true.”

  “So you should come and tell these things directly to us. Don’t go and tell the media. When you do that, the enemy exploits your words.”

  It was a conversation we had had before, on several occasions. Each time Mahdavi made the same supplications, and I gave him the same replies.

  “If the state stops behaving badly, then I won’t have anything to say. Then there will be no cause for anyone to exploit anything. But if what I say is being exploited, the root of the problem is the state’s behavior.”

  He looked at me that day with some disappointment. I shrugged, finding I had nothing to add. I had been a judge and was now a lawyer, and the law concerns itself with intent and the results of intent. If the state intended the best for its citizens, then it needed to demonstrate that in its behavior toward them. It could not arrest journalists, throw them in prison, inflict all manner of psychological torture and abuse on them, and then dispatch an agent to talk to me about America “exploiting” my objections to this.

  “I can only ask you again: please don’t speak in such a way that will harm the regime,” Mahdavi said, rising to leave.

  When I had closed the door behind him, I sat down at the table, wondering for how much longer they would phrase these demands as requests.

  —

  That winter, as 2005 slipped into 2006, Ahmadinejad’s net of persecution widened. On a cold February afternoon in the holy city of Qom, a day that happened to be Ashura, the most precious mourning day in Shia Islam, hundreds of Sufis were gathered at a local hosseiniyeh, or prayer hall, dressed all in black and weeping for the martyrdom of Imam Hossein, a grandson of the prophet Muhammad who was killed in the seventh-century battle of Karbala and remains a central figure in Shia Islam. The men slapped their chests rhythmically and chanted the mourning cries for Imam Hossein, their voices intermingling and rising together.

  Outside the doors of the hosseiniyeh, dozens of bearded men in disheveled clothing, their shirts untucked and their faces taut with anger, prepared to break into the mourning ceremony. When given the word by the militia commander, they pushed the doors open and attacked the mourners. Rushing forward with loud shouts, they shoved and kicked every man they met. The Sufis reeled, many of them falling back, startled out of their trancelike grief. Shots rang out. It was unclear from where, but there were shouts of “He’s been shot!,” and then it was mayhem, as the attackers and the mourners scattered in every direction.

  Not long after all the Sufis had fled, several more men arrived and began planting empty whiskey bottles and women’s underwear around the deserted hosseiniyeh. There was blood on the floor in places, from those who had been wounded, but they carefully ignored this and concentrated on leaving their incriminating evidence.

  Then the bulldozer came. It rumbled down the street and began bashing its cement claw at the front walls. It tore a chunk off the main doorway and then attacked the sides, leaving dusty and jagged holes in its wake. The residents of Qom and hundreds of Sufis poured into the streets to watch smoke billow from the ruins of the hosseiniyeh. Within hours, it was ash and rubble. That night, the state television news service announced that despite the sacredness of the holy day of Ashura, the Sufis had converged at their prayer hall to drink alcohol and have illicit sex. This was why, the newscaster said, their hosseiniyeh had been demolished.

  Just over a year into Ahmadinejad’s tenure, his administration and cronies were giving free rein to the religious extremists that filled the ranks of the state’s voluntary militias. Though the members of these militias did not draw formal state salaries, they received endless financial perks, from low-interest loans to mortgages to use of government cars. They did not wear uniforms, but they were supported by the state security forces, and they often acted independently of the police. Often the militias mobilized as a vigilante force, breaking up lectures and events they deemed critical of the state, as well as setting up their own morality checkpoints, harassing young people who had Western music or alcohol in their cars, and raiding private parties. While President Kh
atami was in power, he had sought to rein in the militias, demanding more lawfulness and a respect for people’s privacy. But Ahmadinejad reversed this course and instead began egging the militias on, encouraging their most intolerant attitudes and giving them subtle signals that should they wish to punish those who deviated from their strict view of Islam, the state would not get in their way. The Iranian legal system, with the head of its judiciary appointed directly by the supreme leader, worked in tandem with this growing radicalism.

  The Sufis, whose mystical practice of Islam emerged in the eighth century, posed no real threat to the state, though their numbers were considerable. The Gonabadi Sufis, who took their name from a region of northeastern Iran the founder of the sect hailed from, found meddling in politics abhorrent. They just wanted to be left alone to practice their Islam, and across Iran’s cities, they went about their lives, as doctors, lawyers, writers, and so on, but chose to worship in the mode of Sufi ritual. The more hard-line state clergy and the government did not appreciate the Sufis; they considered them somehow deviant, just as they considered anyone who practiced a more tolerant, more flexible interpretation of Islam deviant. The authorities had banned the Sufis from practicing their traditional whirling dance, as well as a number of their most colorful practices, like walking through flames without getting burned or being pierced without drawing blood.

  I knew the leader, or morshed, of the Sufis, Mr. Tabandeh, from my days as a judge, before the revolution. It was unthinkable that his followers would have been drinking and womanizing in a prayer hall, let alone on the day of Ashura, as all the reports in the state-controlled newspapers alleged. The independent newspapers still publishing at the time related the events more objectively, but even they merely reported the raid and demolition without investigating what had really transpired.

  A few days later, three people stopped by my office. They said that a few of the wounded Sufis had lodged a complaint with the Qom magistrate’s court against some of the assailants, whose identities had been determined, and also the men who had ordered the assault. But when the prosecutor had seen the complaint, he had refused to register it and order an investigation. Instead, he tore up the document before their eyes and told them that as the guilty parties they had no such legal recourse. When the Sufi leader, Mr. Tabandeh, heard of this, he told them to come to me. “Take the case to Mrs. Ebadi and ask her to represent us. If she is involved, the prosecutor won’t dare to tear up the complaint.”

  I asked my visitors to explain the real cause of the clashes. They said that recently the Sufis had been drawing ever bigger crowds. Iranians who were committed to Islam but alienated from the official mosques, which they associated with state corruption and hypocrisy, were attracted to their order. At the Sufi hosseiniyeh, there was no mandatory six-minute prayer for the health of the supreme leader and other senior officials. As a religious alternative, at a time when Iranians were increasingly turning away from mosques and state prayer, the Sufi religion offered a vibrant Islamic alternative.

  The people’s flocking to the Sufi hosseiniyeh had prompted one of Qom’s influential clerics, a man who enjoyed the endorsement and affection of the supreme leader, to issue a warning. The cleric, whose own speeches and ceremonies were no longer well attended, had demanded that the hosseiniyeh be placed under his authority. The Sufis had refused this, citing the endowment documentations they possessed, which had set out the procedures for the management of the hosseiniyeh’s affairs. Ultimately, the simmering envy of a few influential clerics had prompted a group of state-supported vigilantes, along with their clerical backers, to attack the Sufis that day.

  I immediately agreed to act as the wounded Sufis’ attorney, and I asked two of my colleagues to take on the case with me. One was a lawyer from Qom, Mohammad Seyfzadeh, whose local influence I thought might prove useful. The next day Seyfzadeh visited the office of the prosecutor of the city of Qom, carrying a power-of-attorney letter signed by both of us and the three visitors from Qom. On that occasion, upon seeing my name, the prosecutor did not tear anything up and instead opened a case file. Seyfzadeh, who would later be sentenced to six years in prison for his legal activities, requested that the victims hurt during the attack be examined immediately by a forensic doctor, to document their injuries before they healed. But the court, in a delaying tactic, asked him to return the following day; when he did, he was told that the file had been sent to Tehran to be handled by the Special Court for Clergy. Legally this would not have precluded the victims’ examination, but the prosecutor intentionally took his time forwarding the paperwork, so that the wounds would fade with time.

  It took two months to refer the case to Tehran, and when I followed up I was told precisely what I had been expecting to hear: that neither I nor any of my colleagues had the right to represent the case, because we were not clerics, and that it would be handled by the Special Court for Clergy. This separate court effectively worked to shield clerics from the law, much as diplomatic immunity protects diplomats from being prosecuted for all manner of wrongdoing. So the final outcome of this disturbing and tragic case had really been determined from the outset. And after that, the state’s relations with the Sufis deteriorated sharply. Hundreds of Sufi followers in cities and towns across Iran were arrested, and even this mild, peaceful section of society found itself besieged and imprisoned, made an enemy target by the state.

  On June 12, 2006, a cloudless, summery afternoon, a group of women’s rights activists began arriving at the Seventh of Tir Square, one of the capital’s major public spaces. It is a sprawling, wide square, lined with manteau shops, office buildings, and florists, always busy with traffic, as the motorway that leads north to the city intersects the square to its north. The afternoon was warm, and some of the women wore sandals and light, modest manteaus. Although thick brown smog usually hangs over Seventh of Tir, that day the air was bright, the green patches of grass around the traffic islands looked lush and healthy, and the square bustled with the honking of taxis and the slow rumbling of buses.

  Earlier, the activists had crossed the streets of Tehran passing out a pamphlet titled Why We Don’t Consider the Present Laws Just. The tone of the pamphlet was simple and disarming; in natural language, it used anecdotal examples to illustrate why the country’s laws—“which we often don’t think about until we fall into a fix”—were so deeply problematic for women. The women had a few banners rolled up in their handbags, but they had not yet removed them, not wishing to attract attention before the crowd properly formed. Around seventy people had arrived and were milling about the central south side of the square, chatting and waiting for others to join. I passed through the square that afternoon, but I didn’t stay for the protest itself. That night, the organizers recounted for me what had come to pass.

  Just a few minutes before four o’clock, the key organizers, who had arrived early, noticed a small convoy of green-and-white police cars heading down from the north side of the square. As though the moves were coordinated, some motorbikes bearing policemen in riot-gear helmets poured in from a narrow side street to the east of the square. Out of several police vans flooded policewomen in severe, head-to-toe black chadors. They began running through the square, waving batons, the fabric of their chadors billowing around them. The protesters tried to melt into traffic, to scamper toward the sidewalks and into the crowd. But suddenly there were police officers everywhere, shouting for everyone to disperse but not letting anyone get away. The policewomen roughly grabbed women protesters by the arm and dragged them toward the waiting vans. Male police officers attacked the men in the crowd. Great plumes of tear gas shot out, and people screamed, “My eyes, my eyes!” Some women stumbled and doubled over, clutching at their faces.

  One particular policewoman, with a heavy build and a brown maghnaeh, a cloaklike head covering, was the most violent. She looked almost like an executioner, the activists recounted later, storming about and shouting and digging her nails into the arms of the protesters. H
er face, they said, contorted in rage as she strode from assault to assault. When women collapsed from the tear gas, the policewoman grabbed them by their head scarves and dragged them along the pavement toward the police vans.

  The authorities put down the protest before it even got started, crushing it with a violence no one had anticipated. They injured a number of the protesters and arrested a number of the key organizers, even Ali Akbar Moussavi Khoeini, a reformist former member of parliament who had come out in solidarity with the women. In the days after the crushed protest, the Tehran public prosecutor declared that the arrested protesters were accused of disturbing public order, fostering tension and unrest, and spreading lies. The police had, of course, known about the protest in advance; the organizers had posted the date and time on their website, for they felt they had nothing to hide. But it was clear that the regime would not tolerate such public gatherings, even if they were peaceful. This directly violated the constitution, which upholds people’s right to free assembly and public demonstration, on the condition that no weapons are carried and the principles and tenets of Islam are not undermined. But for the purposes of the organizers, with whom I was in touch, the crackdown and arrests made bruisingly clear that they would need to change tactics.

  The activists met shortly afterward to discuss what had happened and to devise a new strategy that the state would tolerate. To be effective meant not crossing certain red lines. A feminist movement that was locked up, imprisoned, and not permitted to organize, they knew, would be of little benefit to anyone. Their experience in the women’s movement to that moment pointed to the need for legal reform, but it was the fateful crackdown at Seventh of Tir that actually gave the women their new direction. As I have experienced so often myself, being crushed simply gives you greater exercise in collecting the shards of yourself, putting them back together, and figuring out what to do next.