To be a mother in Iran under the Islamic Republic carries a meaning shaped not only by love, but also by loss, resistance and an unrelenting search for justice. For decades, the Islamic regime has produced generations of mourning mothers, women whose lives are divided into before and after: before the knock on the door, before the gunfire in the streets, before the prison sentence, before the disappearance.
Movement after movement, more mothers are drawn into this painful reality. Some stand for hours outside prison gates waiting for a single piece of news. Some record video messages addressed to the world, asking for accountability. Others speak from inside prison cells themselves. What is often less understood outside Iran is that even asking questions like “Where is my child?” or “Why was my child arrested?” can be treated as a crime. Parents who seek answers risk being detained, interrogated and sentenced to long prison terms.
For thousands of mothers in Iran, Mother’s Day is not a celebration. It is a reminder. It echoes the decades-long struggle of the “Mothers of Khavaran,” whose children were among the thousands of political prisoners executed during the 1988 mass executions of political prisoners in Iran. These mothers have spent more than 40 years searching for traces of their loved ones in unmarked mass graves at Khavaran cemetery.
Akram Neghabi is one such mother. For 26 years, she has been searching for her son, Saeed Zeinali. Saeed was just 22 years old, a computer science student at Tehran University, when three armed agents came to their home during the 1999 student protests. Since then, Akram has knocked on every door: the judiciary, prison officials, the Revolutionary Guards, the police, even the office of the Supreme Leader. She is known for carrying a framed photo of her son everywhere she goes, hoping someone, somewhere, might have seen him.
“I’m a mother whose child was taken away 26 years ago,” she said in an interview. “I want to know what happened to him. Is he alive? I have been left with nothing, not a sign or a grave.”
The Mothers of Laleh Park emerged in 2009, gathering in Tehran’s Laleh Park to demand justice for their children who were killed, disappeared or arrested following the disputed presidential election that sparked the Green Movement. I was arrested during that movement and spent months in prison afterwards. When I was imprisoned again in 2012, I saw this reality from a different angle: mothers who had become prisoners themselves.
Inside Evin Prison, I met mothers serving long sentences, watching their loved ones grow behind glass. One of my cellmates was Faran Hesami, a Baha’i prisoner imprisoned solely for her beliefs. She had a two-year-old son who came every Sunday for a 20-minute visit, brought by his aunt. But he did not know the woman behind the glass was his mother. He believed his aunt was.
Another cellmate was Maryam Akbari Monfared, one of Iran’s longest-serving female political prisoners. Four of her siblings, three brothers and one sister, were executed by the regime. When she was arrested in 2009 for seeking justice, she left behind three daughters, the youngest, Nazanin, only three years old. Maryam spent 17 years in prison without a single day of furlough. Not one day. Not even for medical emergencies, despite serious health conditions. When I saw the news of her release on April 8, after nearly 17 years, I couldn’t believe the photo of her reunited with her daughters, who are now grown women. Other mothers faced similar cruelty. Fariba Kamalabadi, a Baha’i prisoner of conscience, was denied even temporary leave to attend her daughter’s wedding. This is what the Islamic Republic does to mothers.
In recent months, the suffering of Iranian mothers has taken devastating yet extraordinary new forms. After the January massacres, when thousands of protesters were killed in a brutal crackdown, something remarkable began to happen at cemeteries across Iran. Mothers began dancing at the graves of their children, acts of profound defiance.
“It is a form of resistance when the regime expects you to break’, said one mourning mother. Another mother in Isfahan, standing at the grave of her teenage son, Mehrad Sadeghi, wore his clothes and held up his shoe and face mask, the ones he wore the night he was killed. “You may have killed the body that once wore these clothes,” she said, “but you cannot stop his path from continuing. The last step he took in this shoe, I’ll take the next. The last breath he took in this mask, I’ll take the next one.”
The killing machine of the Islamic regime continues to take innocent lives even as bombs fall and global attention shifts elsewhere. Bombs are louder; they dominate headlines. Executions are quieter. They happen in silence and go unnoticed.
On this Mother’s Day, Iranians in the diaspora are reminded of another layer of deprivation: the inability to call their mothers, to hear their voices, to know they are safe. On Feb. 28, following US-Israel strikes, the regime reimposed a near-total internet shutdown. This is now the longest state-imposed internet blackout ever recorded in any country.
On this Mother’s Day, we must recognize Iranian mothers’ courage and amplify their voices. One day, as Akram Neghabi says, “The pain of the mothers, the sound of their cries, will bring change.” That day must come. And until it does, we stand with the mothers of Iran.
Dr. Mitra Aliabouzar is a Research Assistant Professor of Mechanical Engineering and Radiology at the University of Michigan, Ann Arbor.
This article originally appeared on The Detroit News: Iran is a land of grieving mothers | Opinion
Reporting by Mitra Aliabouzar / The Detroit News
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