GREEKS FOR MAHSA

 “Woman is a ray of God” Jelaleddin al Rumi 

“Sex is great but have you ever been f….d by the Islamic Republic of Iran?” Placard at Federation Square. 

Twenty two year old Kurdish woman Mahsa Amini is dead. She was arrested by the Iranian morality police for being improperly veiled in the company of her brother and suffered a skull fracture while in custody. Women who were detained with her allege that she had been severely beaten for resisting the insults and curses of the officers who had arrested her. Put simply, Mahsa was beaten to death because a cabal of old men were not happy with the way she was dressed. Those old men and their cronies have abrogated to themselves the right to dictate to the female population of Iran what they will wear, how they will behave and indeed where and when they can appear within society. 

Across the other side of the western world, audiences are being enthralled by a television adaptation of Margaret Atwood’s feminist classic: “The Handmaid’s Tale,” a gripping account of the fate of women in an  imaginary patriarchal, totalitarian theocratic state, the Republic of Gilead. Yet according to Atwood, one of her inspirations in creating Gilead was the Islamic Revolution in Iran and indeed she refers to Iran within the text, referencing a fictional history book: “Iran and Gilead: Two Late Twentieth Century Monotheocracies mentioned in the endnotes describing a historians' convention in 2195. The most plausible fiction, is most often based on true events. Just like the fictional revolution that saw the creation of Gilead in Attwood’s world, so too did the current regime sweep to power in Iran by purporting to fight for liberty and social justice, only to establish a theocracy that drastically reduced the rights of women and imposed a strict dress code. The Iranian people have suffered ever since. Many of them, such as Mahsa Amini, have paid the ultimate price. 

Margaret Atwood has stated that her classic work serves as a response to the complacent who maintain that oppressive, totalitarian, and  theocratic governments that have achieved power, throughout the world cannot do so within the “western” sphere. And this is the reason why I, along with a sizeable number of members of the Greek community felt compelled to attend the Iranian community’s rally at Federation Square on Saturday, 1 October. Having enjoyed ties with that most vibrant and welcoming community over many years, I have borne witness to the heartbreak of friends and colleagues who have had their world turned upside down, compelled to leave one the most beautiful countries of the world, boasting one of the oldest continuous civilisations, because of their political views, because of their choice of partner, because of their religious convictions, because of persecution or simply because they cannot bear to see their country stagnate under a regime whose sole aim seems to be to perpetuate itself by widespread oppression. 

I meet with Taraneh at Federation Square. She is carrying a banner that is stark in its clarity: “Women, Life, Freedom.” “You cannot have one without the other,” she informs me. We reminisce about a time, half a lifetime ago when we would sit under trees at University and recite the poetry of Hafez and Saadi. With difficulty, I remember part of Saadi’s Bani Adam, where Saadi, as far back as the thirteenth century, calls for the breaking down all barriers between human beings: 

Human beings are limbs of one body indeed;
For, they’re created of the same soul and seed.
When one limb is afflicted with pain,
Other limbs will feel the bane.
He who has no sympathy for human suffering,
Is not worthy of being called a human being. 

Taraneh starts crying. She has not seen her mother since she left Iran, just before I first met her. She cannot go back. 

I join in the chants of the crowd. The most common chant is: “Say her name: Mahsa Amini.” “We want the regime to remember the name of the innocent woman those life they have so unjustly taken. We want that name to haunt them for the rest of their lives. We want her name to be the name they hear as they lose power and are punished for their crimes,” Reza, who is standing next to be, tells me. We repeat her name over and over again. One chant that is not translated into English is “Marg Bar Khamenei,” Death to Khamenei, (the supreme leader of Iran.) Two middle aged ladies approach me and ask me where I am from. One of them carries a placard that states: “Open your eyes and march with us.” When I tell them I am Greek and that there are a number of members of Melbourne’s Greek community, they are profoundly moved at this gesture of solidarity.  

“We love Greece,” they tell me. “We used to visit the islands all the time before the Revolution.” They begin to describe their experiences in Greece and their life in pre-revolutionary Iran and I realise that for them, like many other emigres, their memories have crystalised and their lives have been put on pause, indefinitely. The anguish that this entails as they lead an arrested existence, must be agonising. 

Shahnaz, a forthright and vivacious activist is cautiously gratified by the presence of Greeks at the protest. She wants me to convince her that our presence there is not solely motivated by a settled middle-calls community’s need to assuage their social conscience from time to time. “Yeah, I know you are here in solidarity, and you sympathise with Mahsa,” she challenges me. “But you can sympathise from home. Why are you physically here?” 

I quote appalling and unacceptable statistics relating to women who are murdered as victims of domestic violence in both Australia and Greece. I tell her that as a father of two daughters, I cannot countenance a world that restricts the horizon and discriminates against that part of the population that brings forth life, and takes away their lives when they don’t confirm to preconceived expectations and demands. But most of all, I tell her, continually fighting for the causes of freedom and justice lie at the heart of what it is to be Greek. It is the raison d'être for the entire Greek discourse and it is the underlying ideology of our identity that compels so many of us to be drawn to that protest, even though we cannot articulate it properly. I tell her about the women of Souli and the iconic status they enjoy within our culture. Shahnaz leans over and squeezes my arm with an intensity that is overwhelming. Hours later, it still hurts. She leaves me with a parting gift, a placard bearing the photo of a particularly bloodthirsty individual and an inscription in Farsi. Shahnaz offers to translate the caption, which is a satirical epigram about the regime. She takes a photograph of me and takes her leave. Almost instantaneously, I am inundated by requests from other attendees to be photographed holding their placards. The reason, they tell me, is because it heartens them to know that they are not alone in their pain.  

It was only as the crowd began to disperse that I was able to find and speak to some of the members of the Greek community present at the protest. They share similar experiences as the recipients of the hospitality and gratitude of the Iranian community. These individuals do not represent formal Greek-Australian institutions. They do not represent the various Greek women’s advocacy groups that exist within our community. Yet, they have chosen to attend the protest as Greek individuals, some of them having gone to the trouble of rendering the protest slogans on their placards in Greek, knowing that these cannot be read by the vast majority of attendees but still, serving as an important manifestation of their identity, which they feel obliged to emphasise, as much to themselves, as to the others who they have come to support. 

It is mid afternoon now and the shadows are lengthening. Taraneh is walking towards the tram-stop with her photograph of murdered Mahsa Amini with her lovely flowing hair under her arm. I quote from Moniro Ravanpour’s “These Crazy Nights,” “She just did not want to be a revolutionary. The revolution made her ugly. It covered her. She had pretty hair that she had to hide. She had pretty legs that she had to cover up.” She smiles sadly and reminds me something that I had totally forgotten: That is was she who had first given me her copy of Atwood’s “The Handmaid’s Tale,” half a lifetime ago. I raise my arm and cry “Azadi!” (freedom). She gives me a hug and whispers in my ear: “Say her name.” “Mahsa Amini,” my voice falters, and she is gone. 

DEAN KALIMNIOU 

kalymnios@hotmail.com

First published in NKEE on Saturday 8 October 2022