Mahsa Amini: How A 43 Year Long Battle Has Finally Made It Into The Light
I am done with being silent.
I am done with tolerating the silence of others.
My name is Daria Malek, and I am an Iranian-Canadian writer who’s art was silenced due to the control of the Iranian regime. Ironically, The Green Ney was a story of how women were silenced during the Iranian revolution, especially their art.
Yesterday, on Saturday October 1st, over fifty thousand people had closed off Yonge Street, the longest street in the world, protesting for Mahsa Amini, and the other 83 people murdered for speaking up for their human rights.
I am so privileged to live in a country where I, not only as a woman, but also a visibly minority, have protection beyond my rights. And as I watch my fellow Iranians in their homeland fight for theirs, it makes me wonder what am I do to with this privilege? What am I to do with the freedom of speech that I have?
I was silenced by the Iranian regime, but that is no longer.
Four years ago, I began writing a novel called The Green Ney, the story of an infertile American journalist in a dying marriage, who travels to Iran in January 1979 and gets stuck in the middle of the bloodshed of the Iranian Revolution with a lonely, mute orphan to care for.
Through her journey, she met multiple women who symbolized each right that was stripped from them during the revolution. Each of these 12 women were women that I had met on my trip to Iran in 2016, spanning over the three cities that I have visited. These are real women. These are real people.
This was my time to speak for these women who were silenced in their own dirt but, I had to face a dilemma: if I were to publish this novel, I would be banned from going back home to my country, and even put my family, including my grandparents, in harms way.
This was three years ago. Enough is enough. It is time to speak up.
Mahsa Amini was 22 years old when she was detained by “morality police” in Iran for not wearing her headscarf on her head correctly. Not because she had killed someone, assaulted someone, or stolen something from someone but, because she had not covered her hair to the standard of the “morality police.” How ironic that they are called “morality police” when they have no problem murdering a child because they are so weak to be worried about the hair of a women turning men on. Where are your morals?
Why are you painting our men to be so weak? So weak, that the wrists and ankles of a woman may awaken their uncontrollable sexual urges?
Our men are better than this. Our women are more respectable than this.
The greatest part of watching these protests was seeing the men and women come together in unison to fight for the women of Iran together.
For Mahsa Amini, you will always be remembered as an awakening for the people and a motion for change. We will honour your name and what you did to change the world.
Shervin Hajipour, your angelic voice and talent will be forever in our ears, singing for what you believe in, in hopes that people will listen and feel your pain and we did.
Hadis Najafi, your courage will never be forgotten. To be so brave, beyond your years, only for them to strip you of the rest of your life. But, I hope you know that they may have taken your life but they could never take away the strength and bravery that you possessed. When I watch the video of your blonde hair going up in a ponytail, ready to fight for the land you walk on, it gives me chills - an inspiration to truly step up.
For all the other people who were protesting or injured and murdered for speaking up: you make me proud to call myself an Iranian. We as people have a history of being headstrong and courageous. We must protect our beautiful culture, our art, our poetry, our food, our dance and everything that makes us Iranian, from the Islamic regime. They stole it from us once and it is our duty to take it back.
What started off as a feministic fight, turned into a humanitarian revolution.
If you have any Iranian friends, please reach out to them. Ask them how they are doing. Give them a hug and stand by them. They’re worried about their families back home; they can’t talk to them or hold them. Give back the support that we gave the rest of the world when they needed us.
And please, help us be the voice of the people who don’t have one.
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