I’ve been drawing Iranian women this month, and I’m full of mixed emotions. I’ve done 14 drawings so far. I am hopeful every day that the protests in Iran continue, but the real threat to the regime means the “guardians” of the mullahs’ power-mongering and repressive brand of Islam are lashing out, and I despise the hurting and killing that this regime has never been hesitant to commit. And, it’s not alone in that. It’s too easy to look around at home and see plenty of power-hungry monsters right here in my country, the US, just champing at the bit to hurt and destroy and whose hatred of women is no less.
I’m drawing women as young as 15 who have been killed, all over Iran since the death of Mahsa Amini September 16 at the hands of the “Morality Police.” These women, both young and old, are ordinary citizens of Iran—all anyone has of them now are low res social media selfies and a memory of their courage. The regime is not even allowing their funerals because it’s afraid.
Azra Panahi, (2007-2022; student, age 15). Azra died in hospital after being severely beaten by police on October 12 when she and several fellow schoolgirls at Shahed Girls High School in Ardabil, in protest to the killing Mahsa Amini, refused to participate in a forced pro-government demonstration. As with every other killing, the regime claims Azra died of natural causes, not the savagery of police violence against human rights protests in Iran.
It’s both so touching and so heart wrenching that some of them were such girly girls, interested in makeup and clothes and of course they are all beautiful. Among the precious few images of them I can find, I usually pick the ones that show them as they might have wanted to sees themselves: self-possessed, beautiful, adult; the flair, the style, the makeup, the direct look in the eyes of many of them. They are not quite the children in the way so many see them, which is too easy to do when you look at the published ages. I look for the faces they seem to have wanted to show the world, the images they wished to project. My dear friend Mahmood Karimi-Hakak says it so well: these young people just want to have the things other young people in the world can have.
Nika Shakarami, 2005-2022, was pursued, abducted and killed by security forces after leading a protest 20 September 2022 against compulsory hijab and the murder of Mahsa Amini by Morality Police. The authorities reportedly informed her family that she had died as a result of “falling from a great height.” The families of other murdered protestors received the same lie. Nika’s family reported that her body showed signs of severe beating and torture. Family members were detained and coerced to say that her death was a suicide.
Dia de Muertos is a celebration and honoring of those who have gone before, at this time of year when the boundaries between worlds are thin. Perhaps too thin, it seems, allowing passage too easily, too early, at the cost of truncheons wielded with inhuman ferocity and bullets sprayed that seem to find their mark too easily. We must not forget.
Hephaistos Semyorka at Dia de Muertos campo, Mythomorphosis island, Second Life