Iran's grieving mothers' ties have been a political force to reckon with

An interesting aspect of the rebellion in Iran is the power of mourning mothers. Since the 1980s, kinship among grieving mothers has been a driver of political engagement

Women! Life! Freedom! Echoes of a Revolutionary Uprising in Iran

by Chowra Makaremi

Published by

Yoda Press

278 pages ₹599

  In September 2022, a 22-year-old Kurdish-Iranian tourist in Tehran, Jîna Mahsa Amini, was arrested by the morality police for wearing her veil loosely. She died in a hospital a few days later from a brain haemorrhage. The killing of Jina Amini led to an uprising that reverberated with the words “Woman, life, freedom”— a slogan of the revolutionary women from the marginalised lands of Kurdistan — across Iran as women took to the streets to burn their veils in protest against the Islamic Republic of Iran.

 

In Woman! Life! Freedom! Echoes of A Revolutionary Uprising in Iran, translated from the French by Maya Judd, anthropologist Chowra Makaremi highlights the unique differences between the 2022 Jin, Jîyan, Azadî insurrection and the Iranian people’s movements during the 1979 revolution and the Green Revolution in 2009. In doing so, she revisits her family history through her grandfather’s diary, which she turned into a book earlier, Aziz’s Notebook: At the Heart of the Iranian Revolution (2011). Her mother and aunt were killed in prison in the aftermath of the establishment of the Islamic Republic, their histories and existence, like that of many others who dared to stand up to the government, erased by the state.

 

Ms Makaremi provides a comprehensive history of Iran’s presidents and Supreme Leaders, setting the context for the people’s movements against theocracy. She regards the 2022 uprising as the turning point where the terror inflicted on the ethnic and religious minorities such as Kurds, Balochs, Arabs, entered mainland Iran. She writes, “The damaged body of the young girl with the Mona Lisa smile [Jîna Amini] lay at the crossroads of several forms of domination and impunity: her death made their entwining visible and obvious.”

 

The fear of violence engulfed generations of citizens in Iran after the 1979 revolution. They feared sudden disappearances, executions, rapes, forced confessions and prolonged imprisonment. People who inherited the fear without knowing what to fear came face to face with it in 2009, which gave way to a subtle and quiet rebellion bubbling under the surface. It all came to fruition with Gen Z. As Ms Makaremi writes, “…the children of the 2000s didn’t inherit this fear—how or why, who knows, but generation Z abandoned the transmission chain. It took to the streets, middle fingers raised in the air.” Moreover, young girls in school began tearing up pictures of the Supreme Leader from their textbooks, an act that was unprecedented and unimaginable by previous generations. Many of them disappeared and were found dead.

 

This outrage against the morality police, at its heart, was feminist. Many women in their 20s and younger took to the streets to free themselves of the veil by burning it. It was a direct challenge to the obligatory dress code imposed after 1979 to demonstrate the extent of state’s control over the public space, “intimate, total, enforced by physical repression.” Men came out in support of women in equal numbers, and women took the lead for freeing themselves — and men “who had no veils to burn; that is no clear and recognisable symbol of refusal”— from the theocratic regime.

 

Another interesting aspect to the rebellion in Iran is the power of mourning mothers. Starting from the 1980s, kinship among grieving mothers became a “driver of political engagement”. It helped them occupy a public space to resist in a feminist, albeit pacifist, manner. In recent years, this movement too saw a change. The mothers in the 1980s “wanted to know the truth about the death of their children, while now the mothers were demanding justice. They not only sought legal resolution of crimes, they also reminded us that memory…is one of the faces of justice.” It is especially important because the state has systematically erased the history of massacres.

 

Ms Makaremi reveals the workings of the military and the cyber police in extracting forced confessions. When Jîna Amini’s parents were allowed to take their daughter’s body for a funeral, their ambulance was re-routed. By the time they arrived at their destination, they had “confessed” that her prior illnesses led to her death, not police brutality. Meanwhile, cyber police worked towards arresting anyone who showed signs of dissent, which led to the death of the young artist Shervin Hajipour who uploaded a song, “Baraye” that became the anthem of the movement.

 

With genocide, wars, hate-crimes and growing fascist power across the globe, this book uncovers the inner workings of a theocratic authoritarian state. Woman! Life! Freedom! is an important book for the times we live in, a must read for anyone losing hope in humanity’s future.

 

The reviewer is an independent writer based in Sambalpur. @geekyliterati on Instagram and X