Iranian women are being killed and their bodies stolen

Mahsa's fate: A recurring tragedy

Recently, Armita Garavand met a fate akin to Mahsa Amini's when she was fatally struck on the head by security forces. Much like Mahsa, they took their time to acknowledge her death — 27 days, to be precise. After all, they are the ones who dictate the precise moment of death.

The young girl's lifeless form lay in the hospital for 27 days until they had completed their fabricated tale about her death. We will never know the precise timing of these crimes. And so we wait, day after day, still holding onto hope.

Armita was another Mahsa. We know she endured a brutal assault on 1 October as she entered the subway station on her way to school.

Despite being accustomed to the temporal gap between the murders and the announcement of deaths, we wanted to keep believing in a miracle in Armita's awakening before they declared her time of death.

In the shadows of anticipation, we waited for a miracle. For 44 years, we have been waiting as they snuff out our lives today and declare our death tomorrow.

They extinguish us, wipe away any documentation of the crime, and imprison witnesses. Through the menacing spectre of death, they confine the families of the fallen within the walls of their homes.

With each life they extinguish, the regime fabricates a story to tell Iranians and the world. One time, our steps faltered, and we tumbled to the ground. Another time, our weak bodies could not bear the malnutrition caused by a skipped breakfast.

To add insult to injury, we know they are killing us and beating us to death every day, yet we are still unable to tell the world the true causes of our deaths when the dictatorial regime works around the clock to destroy evidence of our murder, entrap our families in the confines of their homes, send death threats to our friends, and incarcerate journalists.

Sarina's words

Our voices have been silenced — a silence that echoes louder than our chants once were. No one listens to us anymore. Our screams are irrelevant. What happened to the voices that reverberated in relentless protest after Mahsa Amini's murder?

We no longer need to be heard. We have been dragged from the safety of our homes. For over a year, we shouted in the streets of our homeland against those who killed, executed, and detained many of us. But now we realise that each nation endures its struggles alone, and alone, it faces its destiny.

Many nations, upon witnessing the agony of another, may express sympathy for their rebellion. Those nations suffering under a dictatorship may even catch the uprising contagion.

Yet only a people enduring injustice truly comprehend the experience of suffering, rebellion, and anger after being oppressed for years.

Whether in their waking hours or in their slumber, Iranians live in oppression. If they manage to sleep, they are haunted by nightmares.

We are alone. In the streets of our country, only we gaze into each other's faces, veiled in a pallor of pain and misery and wearied by years of suffering.

One night, after the murder of Mahsa Amini, 16-year-old Sarina wrote in her notebook: "Even the daylight was dim. The sky was dark that day, and our sun did not shine. No one came to our town, where the hot days feel cold."

"We were all bewildered, waiting for someone to come, despite knowing that no one would go and that we shouldn't wait. We were all breathing, but none of us was indeed alive."

Do you know Sarina Esmailzadeh?

She took to the streets a year and two months ago, precisely one week after Mahsa's murder, only to be killed by security forces.

Tiny graves for clothing

Have you ever seen a man burying his child's perfume and clothing in a pit?

Fourteen months ago, Sarina's parents laid her garments to rest in the chilly earth instead of her lifeless form, stolen in every sense of the word.

You see, after they take our lives, they also take our lifeless bodies hostage to silence our fathers and mothers. The graves for garments may be small, but they overflow with the profound and insufferable grief of fathers and mothers.

Defying their paralysed limbs, fathers excavate graves for their sons and daughters, while mothers sprinkle handfuls of earth over diminutive tombs void of the bodies of their murdered children.

Some graves are vacant but for the departed's garments. Others hold bodies buried before their blood has cooled.

Last glimpse through the right eye

Fourteen months have elapsed since then, since the day a mother cradled her child's body in her blood-stained hands and fled, desperate to prevent the security forces from stealing his corpse.

"I stole my son's mangled body from the battlefield. In what place in the world does a mother steal her own son's lifeless form? I hid him at home. The scent of blood and decaying flesh permeated our house."

"I was vomiting blood myself as if I were tilling the soil and sowing its bloody dust. I felt that I was bearing a child and on the verge of giving birth! I told my husband: 'Get up and go dig our grave or dig a small grave for our son.'"

Fourteen months have elapsed since a mother placed the body of her son, barely nine years old, in the freezer where she kept his ice cream, fearing it would decompose. A few days later, she went knocking on neighbours' doors, deliriously begging for ice for her child's body.

Fourteen months have elapsed since the day a bride buried her groom, advancing alone in her white wedding gown towards his grave and sprinkling a handful of soil onto it.

Fourteen months have elapsed since the day a mother took off her red headscarf and waved it as she danced in front of her child's coffin on the street leading to the cemetery.

Fourteen months have elapsed since the day the people of Mahabad headed to the cemetery three times in one day. On the way to the cemetery to bury the bodies of three young men, they sang songs of revenge and freedom. They filled their fists with gravel from the graveyard and returned to the streets once more, and tomorrow, they will return.

They possess tanks and rifles while we hold nothing but tightly clenched fists.

Fourteen months have elapsed since security forces aimed their weapons at our eyes and I wrote a final love poem: "Last Glimpse Through the Right Eye."