“… the undeclared rights that have been tread on. The violated human rights we don’t speak of. The rights which even Amnesty International cannot protect …”
Among all the people coming and going and the hubbub of the airport, there are only the two of us, all the rest is just background noise. Watching him leave, I felt I was losing my mind. I shouted: << Stay with me. Don’t go away, I love you with my whole being>>. But my voice banged against my armour and broke, in silence. He turned around suddenly and my heart skipped a beat. I watched him, incredulous. And if he’d heard my broken shout? But his eyes saw only the mask I was wearing, secure and smiling, as I went on waving to him, moving my hand like a robot. He didn’t know enough to trust his heart, and he walked quickly away, forever. I was left there, frozen, staring at that exit gate for an infinity of time, lost in my grief. Until finally the tension in my muscles made them rebel with a mute pain, and I had to free myself from my troubled mask.
The local train winds its noisy way up the mountain paths of Abruzzo and its rhythmical song is the familiar ditty that gives me confidence. I look out the window at the darkening sky and clasp my good-fortune charm with the words from the Koran. Finally I can close this chapter of my life, of my great love and after seven years of agony bury it in peace in the ashes of the past. I begin to write the first lines of this new chapter of my life, now, on this train that is taking me back home.
It all started on that distant day seven years ago when, head over heels in love, I let myself be talked into going for a drive with Farhad. I knew very well that in Iran it was against the law for a man and a woman to go out together unless they were brother and sister or husband and wife. I knew very well that if they caught you the punishment was seventy whiplashes, but I also knew that, in the face of all these risks and dangers, young people still fell in love. The desire to be near him was so strong that I found the courage to break an unjust law.
“God is on the side of lovers, and then it’s less risky in a car than on foot,” I foolishly duped myself, excited as I was to be sitting next to Farhad. Without a word he began driving and switched on the radio to release some of the tension. After about ten minutes we began to relax to the rhythm of the music that helped to calm the tense atmosphere in the car.
He took my hand ”Thank you for coming”, he said joyfully. I was happy to be there with him, despite all the dangers. Silently, I held his hand tight. The car drove down the beautiful streets of Tehran, proud of its precious load – it was carrying two hearts in love.
At a certain point I saw the car of the Pasdaran overtaking us. I held my breath for luck and let out a sigh of relief when I saw them drive off. But shortly after that, scarcely believing it, I noticed that they were going slower and slower. I felt the blood freeze in my veins, and only had time to say, “They’ve seen us,” before we had to stop immediately, following the instructions that were being given from inside the car, which by now was cruising next to ours. Two people got out, a bearded man and a woman wearing a black chador, a third person was in the car speaking into the radio. They asked for our documents. Neither married nor relatives! They made us get out of the car. They pushed us to the other side of the pavement. They made us place our hands on the wall and started to search us. He took charge of Farhad and she of me. While the woman groped among my clothes she insulted me, using the filthiest possible words. Then another car full of pasdaran arrived and they dragged my body, stiff with fear, into their car and Farhad’s into the other. The nightmare continued in the jail, where I was treated like a prostitute and my fingerprints were taken for the records. The punishment was seventy lashes and four months in jail for the crime of loving without authorization!
My anguish was terrible – I felt humiliated, broken and raped in my inmost being. It was so bad that I could neither cry nor scream, I was struck dumb. All the tension I suffered became a silent weapon of destruction inside myself. The whip fell onto the soles of my feet, beating my desperate spirit, which could find no place to escape from so much gratuitous cruelty.
My face bathed by warm tears of emotion. I look around for a paper handkerchief. Luckily the train is almost empty, and the few people on it are sleeping. Outside it has grown dark. The rays of light coming from distant villages disappear and reappear in the frame of the window. I lean my head against the seat and try to remember as I stare at the lights. It’s sad and painful, I have to overcome strong inner resistance, but if I want to begin again I have to look back over the past one last time.
They had shattered my pride, I felt guilty and I hated myself for having loved. I did not have to spend the four months in prison because my parents paid for them. When they handed me over to my mother and father, I saw them bent and humiliated. They were so small beside the bearded men who were delivering them a sermon. I had always been their good girl up to then! Seeing their fearful eyes full of tears they were trying to hold back caused me more pain than the whiplashes. That was the day of my eighteenth birthday.
I wasn’t the first, many women had had the same experience and had gone on living. But I couldn’t bear so much pain and I suffered a total breakdown. A black hole had formed inside of me, sucking me inwards inexorably. The sight of the cars of the pasdaran that dogged Tehran made me ill, and I sunk deeper and deeper into my own darkness, where I felt safe. Day after day my wish to die grew stronger, and the attraction for that absolute darkness, where nobody could hurt me, grew increasingly intense. After the failure of my first suicide attempt, they sent me off to Italy urgently on a tourist visa they’d managed to get, to stay with my brother. To forget. To be far away from those cursed cars that were pushing me into the black hole.
Once I arrived in Italy I began to recover, slowly and painfully. When the three months granted on the tourist visa were up, I refused to go back to Iran. The mere thought brought on attacks of panic. It wasn’t possible to renew the tourist visa so, following my brother’s advice, I applied for the status of political refugee. On the day I was due to meet up with the commission that was to decide whether to grant me political asylum, I had another crisis. But I managed to appear before the commission on time, thanks to my brother and the tranquillizers I had taken.
When they asked me the reasons for my request for asylum, I didn’t talk about myself. I didn’t tell them about the lashes that had lacerated my feet and left a black hole in my soul. I said nothing about my attacks of panic at the mere sight of green off-roaders, the vehicles used by the pasdaran. Nor did I talk about the love that had been trampled on. Because all that was not torture. It was simply the consequence of a legitimate sanction of the Iranian state. I was not even politically persecuted, but merely a poor girl who had dared to love in a country where that is not allowed. A disobedient love, not authorized by the state in any form, not even as a temporary marriage. A girl who hadn’t been strong enough to bear the consequences of her rebellious love.
Instead, I spoke to them about my brother. There was no doubt that he had the necessary qualifications: for many years he’d been politically active in Italy against the regime of the mullahs. He’d been on their black list for years now. They’d come to search us more than once in Iran because of him. This, I thought, was the best justification to have my request granted by the commission.
They denied my application for asylum. I hadn’t convinced them of persecution directed at me, but I was able to remain in Italy thanks to other forms of stay permits.
I didn’t want to know anything about Farhad and I wiped him out of my mind. The sole sound of his name brought on unbearable headaches that paralyzed me for days afterwards. Years later, with the help of my analyst, I tried to remember. But despite the progress made, I still could not completely get over my fear of living. My first love affair, broken off so violently, lacking a conclusion, had turned me into a wandering spirit who could find no peace, unable to love and begin again.
The train has stopped. The few passengers get off and I am alone, as I am on the train of life. For a moment I am in the grip of panic. I am terrorized by the idea of facing the journey all alone. I try to control the rhythm of my breathing and relax. I know very well that it is inside myself that I must look for courage and the will to live. The train starts up again and slowly, accompanied by the warm melody of its rattling, I rediscover the security I’d lost and my mind takes up the broken thread of thought.
A week ago I received Farhad’s phone call. At first I couldn’t grasp the words that continued to pile up on me. It was only after I’d put down the phone that I understood. He was in Europe and he wanted to get together, to say the things that hadn’t been said, to close the agony, before going back to Iran. I had to take my courage in both hands to face up to his coming. It was the strongest emotion I’d felt in seven years of non-life. The commotion and the ardour of the love we had shared were able to reawaken the life in me. We cried for hours, embraced, for our love which had been tread on while still in bud. Together we relived the pain of that experience, freeing ourselves of the shadows and the darkness. We forgave each other for crimes that weren’t ours, and finally we buried our love in peace. I was full of nostalgia while I accompanied him to the airport, but I was aware that it was no longer possible to imagine a future together.
The inspector interrupts my train of thought, “Ticket, please,” he asks politely.
I hand over my ticket, continuing the voyage in my private dimension. My thoughts fly with him on the plane that is taking him far away, to say goodbye to him serenely. With him, on the plane, is a part of me is flying away, the part with the black hole inside, and forever.
“But this ticket hasn’t been stamped,” the inspector repeats, with a questioning look on his face.
I say nothing, I don’t know how to explain. Evidently, “punch the ticket” hadn’t found any space in my overcrowded mind.
“But then I’ll have to fine you,” he says, worried, perhaps hoping that I’ll be able to justify myself.
I look at him, trying to think up something brilliant to say, but the only thought that takes shape is the strong wish to start over. Trying to reassure the inspector, I pull out my purse and say, “Then let’s hope it brings me luck.”
Ghità is an alias, used for reasons of security by this Iranian writer. Although she is by now well integrated into our country, where she lives and works, a piece of her heart was left behind in Iran. Italy and Iran are worlds far apart, but Ghità feels them close to each other inside her, and she hopes to unite them even more in her stories, dedicated to all the Iranian women whose voices have been broken by the fundamentalist regime.