|
BY FARIDEH GOLDIN
• Former Portsmouth resident Farideh Goldin is the author of “Wedding Song: Memoirs of an Iranian Jewish Woman.” To learn more about her, visit www.FaridehGoldin.com.
Source: :The Virginian-Pilot; Date:Feb 22, 2006; Section:Hampton Roads; Page Number:13
I could see only a partial silhouette of the grayhaired woman sitting in front of me. Hand folded over hand, she looked griefstricken. While I was curious about her silent mourning, I was more drawn to the tenderness of her daughter, sitting by her side on the floor, holding her hand and looking at her with worried eyes. GOLDIN That was
May 26, 2002, when my husband and I were attending the biennial Iranian Studies Conference in Bethesda, Md. He recognized the mother immediately from an article that had appeared that weekend in The Washington Post.
She was Mehrangiz Kar, the Iranian human-rights activist, lawyer and dissident. She had been thrown in jail for criticizing the Iranian government in 2001. Tortured but not broken, she was eventually released and allowed to leave for the United States to seek treatment for breast cancer.
When I saw her at the conference, she had just discovered that her journalist husband had been sentenced to life in prison in Iran, and Kar believed that her “sin” of practicing free speech was one of the causes of the arrest.
Living in Boston now, Kar will be the keynote speaker at the 20th annual Friends of Women’s Studies Dinner at Old Dominion University on Feb. 21. She will discuss “The Prospects for Women in Iran.”
Although Iran and its combative president, Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, have captured many headlines in The Virginian-Pilot, the Hampton Roads community has rarely experienced the other Iran. Kar strives to expose the legal bondage of Iranian women in the hope of making a better world for the younger generation, for women like her own daughters.
Kar named her youngest daughter, the one I saw at the conference, Azadeh, which means “born into freedom.” A few years later, I had the opportunity to have dinner with her when visiting Oberlin College for a lecture. Actually she sought me out because I am Iranian and because she still aches for the homeland she had to abandon as a result of her parents’ political activities.
Azadeh struggles with her mother’s separate identities. Mimi (the name she calls her mother) is her best friend with whom she laughs, gossips and argues.
Mehrangiz Kar, on the other hand, is the woman who appears on the Google search engine and in the media. She writes and lectures, and, therefore, she belongs to the public and not always to her daughters.
“It is because of her (this public person) that Mimi went to prison,” Azadeh wrote on her mother’s Web site, “because of her Mimi is now in exile.”
Azadeh is proud of her mother’s courage in exposing the new laws in Iran that discriminate against women, once again allowing young girls to be married at age 9, barring mothers from any rights to their children after a divorce or death of their husbands. At the same time, Azadeh acknowledges the price that she had to pay as the daughter of an outspoken lawyer.
Many – including Mehrangiz Kar – believe that Iranian women, highly educated, rebellious and resilient, will give birth to the next Iranian Revolution, not by advocating violence, but with their words.
Iranian women have shone since the Iranian Revolution of 1979, despite the restrictions imposed on them by the government. Mehrangiz Kar exemplifies the sacrifices they are willing to make, risking imprisonment, torture and exile for themselves and their loved ones.
-- Mehrangiz Kar, an Iranian human-rights activist, lawyer and dissident, was jailed for criticizing the Iranian government in 2001.
|
