On 13 September 2022, a twenty-two-year-old innocent girl called Mahsa Amini was stopped and detained by Iran’s morality police in Tehran. Shortly after her arrest, she collapsed at the police station and was taken to Kasra Hospital. This violent crime provoked anger in many people who decided to gather in the vicinity of the hospital to know about her situation. Mahsa was reported by authorities to have no vital signs and to be brain‑dead. Meanwhile, the medical staff were trying their best to perform resuscitation on her. All the women who were detained with her said she showed signs of head pain. She collapsed after being hit and violently forced out of the police van. These witnesses proved how cruelly she was beaten before losing consciousness. Sadly, Mahsa passed away three days later on 16 September 2022. After her death was announced, a bunch of angry people started protesting to show their hatred of and anger at the government. This protest was only the start of a bigger protest movement called The New Revolution: Women, Life, Freedom, which lasted for months. In the midst of the protests, a woman who was disappointed and dissatisfied with the autocratic Islamic Republic of Iran, summoned her courage and came to the street.
This lady, a thirty-eight-year-old, was struggling with some disastrous situation in her private life. In her marriage, her husband was not giving her the attention that any married woman deserved. Their everyday quarrels as a couple had provoked her anger. They had been married for a number of years but her husband had never told her how happy he was with his choice. Instead, he treated her as a total stranger who had no place in his heart. Whenever her husband started talking about the best moments of his life, he referred to his childhood and his twenties, but nothing about the period of courtship or marriage. Arezoo thought that her presence and the moments they shared together were valueless to him. She got so lonely. She often spent time staring at the ceiling all night. Her eyes became so red and dry as if sleep had fled her eyes many centuries ago.
And then something terrible happened to their life that worsened the situation even more. Ahmad and Arezoo had bought a house. On that day, Arezoo was supposed to read documents to be assured that everything was alright and legal. Upon reading it, Arezoo went ahead and signed it. But later it was proved that the house had no official documents and the seller rejected the given documents too. Both her and Ahmad had been cheated. So Arezoo decided to sue the seller. Their case was filed and they had to be present at the court. After months of walking in and out of the court, the trial day came. Unfortunately, the judge’s decision was against Arezoo. It seemed the documents they were given were forged and poor Arezoo didn’t notice.
That judgement destroyed their life devastatingly. Ahmad blamed his wife for what happened. They quarreled, even in the streets. Arezoo tried to calm her husband and begged him not to yell at her in front of people, but that alone even made him angrier and louder. Ahmad blamed Arezoo for almost everything. He spoke bad words, wished she would die and asked God to take Arezoo’s life. He went ahead and plainly acknowledged that the zenith of his misfortune was the moment he met her. Arezoo cried silently day and night. She lost her appetite and ate nothing most days. She even cut off her communications with the outside world, including her parents and her only younger brother. She rejected their calls. She only sent them “I am fine!” messages and nothing more. All this happened during Iran’s revolution.
Longing for death, either by being killed by the government or arrested for being part of the patriotic men and women, she wanted to run away from her pathetic life and situation. So she began to follow the news about protests. Eventually she decided to go to the street. She was at almost every single protest that was held in different parts of the city. She chanted slogans, distributed anti-government leaflets, wrote slogans and collected the bullets that were being shot at people as evidence.
One day, on a student day, people were supposed to march from Enghelab Square to Azadi Square. Promptly, Arezoo got on the subway and got off at Sharif University station early. There was no one there yet. Waiting for others, she took a walk. After minutes of walking, she met an old man who was bleeding. He had his hands on his head and his face was covered in blood. The regime people had hit him on the head with a baton. Arezoo stopped to help him. While helping, passersby informed her to run away and warned her about the government men who were approaching. Before she did anything, she saw herself surrounded by ten motorcycles belonging to the Basij in a mosque next to the Sharif University. There were twenty of them. One of them started giving her the third degree and accused Arezoo of being the leader and wanted to check her cell phone. At first, Arezoo refused but a plump gigantic man with big shoulders like a ghoul grabbed Arezoo’s neck and tried to pick her up. Choking, she looked at him while forcing a smile on her face.
The man who seemed to be the commander ordered the big man to leave her be. He neared Arezoo and asked her gently to hand over her phone, promising to let her go if they found nothing against the regime. Arezoo refused but finally gave in and let the commander have her phone. In fact, she was clever enough to have deleted every sort of incriminating data, chats and numbers earlier that day. So the man gave it back to her and let her go. But before going, the commander warned her that if he happened to see her again, he would arrest and take her to a place where no one could find her. Despite the fact that Arezoo was afraid, she tried to maintain a confident face throughout the conversation. After they left, she went across the street and continued protesting. The night came to an end and she headed to her home physically saved but mentally and emotionally injured.
Arezoo continuously remembered that event. Even before sleeping, she thought about it. The more she recalled the event, the more she hated the government, the police force, the IRGC and the Basij and her husband Ahmad. To her, all of them were the same. All this ignited a spark deep in her heart and awakened her inner strength. She was filled with positive energy to continue protesting until the regime was overthrown. This time around, her cause for protesting was not to free herself in her own life but to help in changing the regime and set free all people. She began to follow the news to know where a new protest gathering was taking place and at what time.
After days of searching and patiently waiting to fight for a better cause, the new awaited statement came along: “There will be a silent march in Enghelab Square,” and “It starts at 4:00 pm from Valiasr intersection.” It was autumn and the weather was cold so Arezoo wore a black coat and a hat. She tried to cover her face with a black mask to avoid being recognised. She put her boots on and switched her cellphone off just to be on the safe side. Everything was OK and people were coming one by one to the meeting point. Arezoo arrived at Enghelab Square and found a few people. Unluckily enough, more than fifty guards were waiting with three white vans ready to arrest the protesters as soon as they saw them. It sent shivers down her spine and nerves. This made her change direction. She headed back to the beginning of the march—the Valiasr intersection.
This time the street was full of protestors who were holding hands. But suddenly, tear gas was thrown at them. Everyone ran for their lives. Arezoo was coughing and tears welled up in her eyes. She couldn’t see anything. So she wiped the tears off her face with her hands. A kind shopkeeper, who happened to witness the encounter, ran to Arezoo with a burning carton in his hand and blew its smoke in her eyes. He did this many times and it finally soothed the pain. She thanked the man and went her way.
Right in front of the main door of Tehran University, she felt a terrible pain in her left knee. It was the masked man who was standing on the back of a motorcycle, shooting people with his shotgun. Two of his heartless rubber bullets hit Arezoo. For a moment she stopped walking. She then placed her hand on her leg and ground her teeth firmly with pain. She felt the burning pain all over her body but it wouldn’t stop her journey. She was lucky that the shooter was behind her, as many people were shot right in the eyes and went blind immediately. Right after the pain soothed, she went to Enghelab Square again.
It was now so crowded and many people had descended on there. Government men who were standing at the entrance of the Enghelan subway were trying to take an old woman with them while a young boy stood defending her. The violent men insulted the boy and furiously took him along with the woman. But when they attempted to throw him in the van, Arezoo interrupted by telling them to leave him alone. As expected, the government men were just beasts who had no heart, not even for a tiny human feeling. They were wild, cruel and fierce. In fact, they insulted Arezoo. They warned her to speak less if she didn’t want to be taken too.
At that time some other guys stepped in and bravely demanded the cruel men to free the people who were trapped in the van. “Let them go! Let them go!” these fearless demonstrators shouted. In the eyes of the men, you could see the atmosphere changing into convulsions. People pushed each other in an attempt to escape from that situation and it caused Arezoo to fall onto the stand of a man who was selling goods in the street. The man became so angry and not only did he insult Arezoo but also slapped her. Arezoo stood up, turned around and went back, leaving the scene.
Along the way, she took off her hat and the black mask and went into an alley. She didn’t notice that it was a dead-end alley. She heard footsteps behind her and didn’t dare to look. After all the pain in her leg and the exhaustion from the insults, it proved impossible for her to flee from anything more. But, reaching the dead end of the path, she had to turn around regardless.
“You can’t go anywhere! You better stop!” an aggressive voice said. There were two men wearing casual clothes and with guns at their hips. Each of them was also carrying a walkie-talkie in their hands.
“Are you with me?” Arezoo asked hopefully. But the many ridges that formed on their foreheads along with their red eyes made her notice the danger she was in. They actually belonged to the government and were against her and the other protesters. “I didn’t do anything,” she stammered.
“If you did nothing, why are you running?” the man asked furiously while the other one talked on his walkie-talkie, asking for a van. They wanted to take her with them. Sensing their plans, Arezoo begged them to let her go, but they didn’t listen. The van appeared and Arezoo insisted that she had done nothing and was just coming from work. The man laughed and demanded that she to enter the van. Arezoo refused. So the man took her hand by force and threw her into the van. The van door was closed instantly.
Inside the van, they searched Arezoo’s clothes and body, slapped her face, pulled her hair, and pressed her face against the floor of the van. They asked a lot of questions, laughing and swearing while they were touching her private parts over and over. Despite Arezoo’s pleas and cries, those two men brutally raped her. After getting their immoral desires filled, they let Arezoo go and threatened her to tell no one, otherwise she would be killed.
That terrible incident was engraved in her mind. She was filled with wrath, depression and hatred, and after two weeks, she decided to go back. But this time, she went to the grand cemetery that was located in Tehran. She went there to pay tribute to the youngsters who were killed by the regime. There, she met a divorced young lady called Shiva who had a three-year-old daughter. Shiva used to live in the US but after the death of her little son, she came back to Iran.
Shiva was brave and had tattoos of the names of Armita Abasi, Yalda Aghafazli, Sarina and others who were killed and tortured by the regime on her arm. She even gave the injured people medicine and money. When Kermanshah needed urgent help, blood, medicine and bandages, she traveled there to provide people with necessary supplements, helping them as a nurse to clean their wounds, give injections, change their bandages and check their temperatures. She even helped a woman who was pregnant to give birth safely.
Worse still, the regime started killing people with live ammunition and this made most of the people afraid to come to the streets. They were just waiting for a better day to be united again.
Meanwhile, Shiva and Arezoo kept in touch with each other. They went out and even planned for future protests together. But one day, Arezoo’s telephone rang. There was a man on the phone. It was her driver. He informed Arezoo that Shiva had been betrayed. The enemies took her to an unknown place. No one knew where she was. Arezoo was worried for her and for herself as well– will they come after me too? and what if they found me? All these questions lingered in her head. Call it luck or fate, weeks and weeks passed but nothing bad happened to Arezoo, but there was no news about Shiva’s whereabouts. Her situation was a mystery. Now after three years, in a new revolution called Lion and Sun, Arezoo keeps asking herself, “Is Shiva alive? Only God knows!”
