Stonings and despair
Denise brought up the imminent stoning of Sakineh Mohammadie Ashtiani. I was going to post about this yesterday, but the story upset me so much that I ended up staring dully at the screen for an hour, then too depressed to write anything for the rest of the day. It may have something to do with being physically closer than most Americans are to that poor woman and to her children, who are pleading with the world to save their mother.
We are Farideh and Sajad Mohammadi Ashtiani, the children of Sakineh Mohammadi Ashtiani. The pain of having a mother in prison and having to wait for this catastrophe to take place is familiar for us.
The truth is, the words ‘death by stoning’, is in itself so terrifying that we try to never use it.
We say that our mother is in danger, our mother might die and our mother expects to be helped.
Today, when all the paths have reached a dead end and our mother’s lawyer said that she is in grave danger, we come to you. We go to the people of the world. The color of your skin or the country or city you live in is not important. We go to everyone who has experienced the pain of losing a loved one.
Please help our mother come back home! We especially seek the help of Iranians all over the world. Please help end this nightmare and do not let it turn into a reality. Help and save our mother.
Explaining the minutes and seconds of our life is very difficult. Words loose their meaning in these agonizing moments. Help us save our mother. Write letters and ask officials to release her. Tell them that no one has filed a complaint against her and that she has done nothing wrong. Our mother should not die. Is there anyone who hears our plea for help?
There are stories here, almost unreported in the local press, completely unreported in the international press, that suggest the area of darkness, rather than being contained, rather than slowing shrinking into the mists of history, is spreading. It's spreading in my direction.
A bomb placed in a beerhouse in the eastern province of Tunceli exploded Thursday, creating fear in the area and prompting suspicion that the attack occurred because the establishment employed women.
Last night, a young American woman of about 22 showed up at my gym. It's actually been a while since I've seen a young American woman. I'm usually the only woman there, of any nationality. Turkish women don't usually do martial arts.
From the second she walked in, I was reminded how different American women are, how full of confidence, how certain they are that they belong anywhere, how unafraid they are of judgment, how much more fully developed--how much more adult--they seem as human beings. She couldn't have been much more than five feet tall. She was tiny. But she walked into the place. full of sunshine and confidence, introduced herself, then happily started kicking and punching the bags as if the world belonged to her. Everything about her body language suggested she'd never known anything but the feeling of being welcome in places where men congregate. You could see that she'd always taken it for granted that she could, and should, have hobbies of her own, that she was fully entitled to travel around the world on her own, that she could and should do sports, that she thought of herself as fully part of human society--not an ornament, not an intruder, not merely someone's sister or daughter or girlfriend or wife.
I felt protective of her. She clearly had no idea what the men there really think of women who behave like she does, and I didn't want her to find out. Mind you, I'm not sure that I know what they think, either. I keep trying to understand it. It's not hostility. It's more sheer bewilderment, I suspect--a sense that these American women, boy-howdy, they are odd. But I've been here a lot longer than her (she'd only just arrived in Istanbul), and I can tell you that there's a reason why I'm the only woman at that gym. It's a lot tougher for Turkish women; they're judged by different standards than American women, to begin with, and they have no idea that it could ever be any other way. By the time they're her age, the message--"What will people think?"--is so deep into them that they're permanently deformed--giggling, vacant, histrionic and useless.
It's getting to me, this sense that we're witnessing the fall of Rome anew. It depresses me so intensely to read the news and see the preoccupation with the trivial, the absurd. The newspapers are full of celebrity gossip and the World Cup. International news has fallen out of American consciousness. The economies of the West are failing and no one truly understands why. As Denise correctly observes, the West is losing by the day its ability to distinguish between civilization and savagery, lost the willingness even to use the word "savagery."
I know this is the place to end on an optimistic, American note, to say that we'll prevail over this, as we always have.
But I'm not sure.
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Re: Stonings and despair
Whew. So much to think about. And, yes, a despairing feeling from here, too, where my young girls and neice giggle happily outside and I am too easily and too often seduced by the vapid culture of nothingness all around us. I see the story has arrived on the Huffington Post, The Guardian, Fox. I hope and pray something can be done. I didn't realize that this may already have happened? We're too late? By the way, Claire, did you see this? Thoughts? Seems kinda upbeat and sunny.
May '10
Re: Stonings and despair
"International news has fallen out of American consciousness."
I think Americans used to be more sophisticated. Think of Thoreau's references to Hinduism and Melville's chapter on Queequeg's Ramadan. In mid 19th century America, these were perhaps not so exotic topics. America was just one place among many, not the self-sufficent super-power.
Re: Stonings and despair
Is there anything any of us can do to help that poor woman? A online petition we can sign? A Facebook page we can join? If a million people signed an online petition, or joined a Facebook page dedicated to Sakineh Mohammadie Ashtiani, then maybe the mullahs,already nervous about the Internet, and about the uses to which it might be put by the youth of Iran itself, might reconsider this barbarity.
Claire? Denise? Anyone?
Re: Stonings and despair
I saw it, Ursula, and don't even know where to start. I think I'll save it for another post. But begin with this: http://murkyinturkey.wordpress.com/2008/12/. Those economic statistics are pretty much meaningless. And it drives me nuts that journalists never note this.
Re: Stonings and despair
Peter, I used to think my friend Christy Quirk was too cynical about the uselessness of Facebook petitions. But I've come around to her point of view. Honestly, I don't think there's a thing we can do for her. If anyone thinks otherwise, I'm sure we're all willing to try.
Jun '10
Re: Stonings and despair
Somehow, I don't think the stoning will generate a tenth of the condemnation that the Arizona immigration bill got. If the Iranians sneaked her into Phoenix last night, dropped her off on the side of the road, and today some police officer demanded her identification, THEN there'd be outrage. But if non-Americans do truly barbaric things to her, halfway around the world, well, then it's...cultural diversity. The real solution is to boycott Arizona.
Re: Stonings and despair
Claire, Denise, I think we get so caught up in the multi-pronged attack on civil society here at home that the story you've made so vivid catches us off guard. With a heavy heart, I have to agree with your answer, Claire, to Peter's question about what, if anything we can do.
I suspect that the time to do anything to save this woman from these savages came, and went, when throngs of Iranians took to the streets in protest against the thugocracy that has a strangle hold on them. Our President didn't want to appear to "meddle" in their affairs, remember? Besides, he was too busy trying to castrate Israel. His timidity in standing for Iranian freedom reverberates even today in this woman's tragic story.
What we can do is use every means available, through media, through advocacy groups, by contacting our representatives and officials, to keep this woman's story on the front page. It's our only hope, and it might just help prevent the next one.
Jul '10
Re: Stonings and despair
A tenth? It won't get a hundredth, a thousandth of the attention and condemnation from the left and the oddly-named mainstream media. I wonder sometimes how we arrived at this pass. Political correctness, of course. But where did that come from? Was it the work of cultural anthropology wherein the belief that no culture was inherently better than any other seeped into Western thought like a slow-acting poison? It certainly can be seen in the example of Obama, who openly scorns the notion of American exceptionalism. If no civilization, even those unworthy of the word, is superior to any other, by what right to we criticize stoning someone to death? It is being judgmental, a form of cultural hubris. Bringing civilization to benighted peoples was seen in Victorian times as the white man's burden. Now it is racism, just as a secure border and the methods to achieve it are seen as exclusionary -- and, yes, racist.