Her Words: “I Will be Leaving”

Shahla Jahed Hanged in Tehran

It is not yet 6am and daylight has not struck. I am awakened by a telephone call. The caller says, “I will be leaving; Sooner or later you too will come.” And before I could say a word she said, “Bless me, and do not give me false hope. Nine years have passed and this will be my last Wednesday … “

I had not heard her voice for two years and did not expect a call at dawn. And while I had heard that she had asked for my telephone from a friend, I was still shocked, and did not say a word.

And thus she left this world, leaving us and my colleagues to continue, as we had in the last few years, to search for hope that the victim’s family which had for nine years mourned the savage death of their own dear one would forgive the brutal murder of their loved one, and again speak to the victim’s mother who took her mourning black clothes off only after Shahla was eventually hanged last Wednesday.

I invariably return to the days after my prison release and the occasional telephone calls. By this time everybody knew who was behind the requests for legal assistance for other woman prisoner: Shahla Jahed, herself in prison. We would direct the family member to an attorney who worked pro bono. These were women who because of their economic plight did not have the means to hire an attorney and because of their ignorance had become victims of this violent society and its male-chauvinistic practices.

There were women who by law should have not been sentenced to more than 2 years of imprisonment but were given 15 year prison terms, and others who because of their justified defense awaited to be hanged. These were women whose rights were violated. But weren’t Shahla’s? Did anyone raise question about the inconsistencies in her case as reflected in the dossier?

I go back to the days two weeks after being transferred to Evin prison from a secret detention center. I was still in solitary confinement and it was she who contacted my family and my attorney on my behalf and brought me news. I had heard and read many times about her love and the crime committed on Gol Nabi street. And now, I was with her in ward 2 of the prison. I asked her about her love, the murder of innocent Laleh, and the two children whose spirits were torn as they witnessed the crime.

Even then her eyes sparkled when spoke of her love and she repeated that she would do anything for her love. Perhaps she could not even have imagined that one day the very man she adored would watch her body hang from the gallows in cold-blooded passivity, board a plane and leave the country so that the gaze of people would not prick his conscience.
 
She did not regret for a bit that she had, as she put it, “Professed to have committed a murder at the request of the man she loved.” After all, she was in love and full of zeal and passion for life, and a love that she had carried for 13 years, and for whom she lost her life.

Regardless of whether she was a criminal or not, Shahla was first and foremost a human being. A person with a right to live. A right given by God which was taken away from her by human beings that proclaim to follow Islamic laws. She left and what remains is a love story and nothing else. But for me, journalists, and women and political activists who had been through the women’s ward of Evin prison Shahla was the image of a woman who despite her own predicament in prison continuously tried to be of help and a voice for other prisoners: a familiar voice for our anxious families.

She was neither a hero nor a symbol, but a victim of our male chauvinistic society. A representation of women who are simply “shadows.” She was the victim of law and society while the very same law and court never questioned the “man” of this story, and ask, Why? Laleh’s mourning family, which perceived justice only through the death of Shahla, also never asked the “man” of this unfortunate story and his daughters “why,” and took things to the point of having him be present at the scene of Shahla’s hanging as a way to legitimize the final curtain.

This representative of “shadow” women went at a time when members of the parliament of her country are busy formalizing the negation of her rights and other women, and who give even more unprecedented rights to men to push more women into the “shadows.”

She left us but her dossier in the judiciary, while closed there, will remain open in the court of public opinion because of the many unanswered questions related to the case, along with a huge volume of other similar cases.

Shahla Jahed is gone but her going is a warning bell for all of us that the government intends - as is also rumored in Evin prison - to use the current political turmoil in the country to kill all those women prisoners whose cases have been in limbo for years. This would kill two birds with one stone. On one hand it amounts to taking advantage of the extra-ordinary conditions in the country to deal with long-standing issues, from its perspective because there is today less public attention and outcry over such executions, as Shahla Jahed’s case clearly showed. While on the other, by directing public opinion and attention to such cases, the public will be focusing less on political prisoners and their adverse conditions.

As Shahla is being buried, my mind turns to a number of other victims who await their execution as a way to legitimize existing discriminatory and unjust laws, which thirty one years ago turned public crime into private crime and launched the path to encouraging revenge rather than reform.

Contrary to most countries, murder is considered a private act in Iran where the victim’s family must decided on the fate of the suspect, regardless of whether s/he is the actual criminal or not.
 
Punishment in our country is a form of revenge and does not have the purpose of reform or correction. This problem has a cost to both parties: the family of the victim and the family of the suspect. If the victim’s family pardon’s a suspect the criminal goes unpunished, and if the victim’s family does not forgive the suspect, then suspect’s family is hurt. And the vicious cycle of violence goes on.

[Shahla Jahed, the temporary wife of soccer star Nasser Mohammad Khani, was hanged on Wednesday on charges of murdering the athlete’s wife, Laleh. At the scene the victim’s son pulled the chair Shahla was standing on while Khani looked on. Some groups and international organizations have said that Jahed was wrongfully convicted.]