Prologue
Tehran
October 2022
Ava Bazzi hurried across Keshavarz Boulevard in the center of Tehran, her daughter’s tiny fingers clamped tightly in her own.
The asphalt was warm beneath the thin leather soles of her tan pumps, and the sidewalk was even hotter. A headscarf would
not have been her personal preference on this unusually warm autumn morning, but religious law required it.
The Bazzi family—Ava, her husband, Farid, and their four-year-old daughter, Yasmin—had been living in London since Yasmin
was an infant, so the return to Iran was a bit of an adjustment. Still, it wasn’t the way her friends in London thought, all
with the Western misconception that black was the only acceptable color for head coverings. Ava favored fashionable and colorful
compliance with the Islamic Republic’s modesty laws. A yellow scarf with a hint of jasmine flowers. Capri pants cut just above
the ankle. And a loose-fitting silk blouse with three-quarter-length sleeves, a neckline that showed no cleavage, and a tail
long enough to cover the curve of her behind.
The street vendors were in good spirits, singing and calling out to potential customers. The familiar aroma of thick black coffee wafted from a small café. Some things in Tehran never change, but so much of what Ava remembered from her childhood had become almost unrecognizable. Keshavarz was once a tree-lined boulevard of pristine beauty and elegance, home to the elite of the Islamic Republic. But now many of the magnificent trees had been cut down, and the grandiose buildings had been turned into government offices and classrooms.
“You’re hurting my hand, Mommy,” said Yasmin.
Ava was squeezing too tight, for sure. It was an overreaction to the more worrisome changes she’d noticed on her return from
London.
Barely a month had passed since the arrest of Mahsa Amini, a twenty-two-year-old woman who committed the crime of showing
her hair in violation of the modesty laws. Her senseless death in custody, at the hands of the brutal morality police, triggered
worldwide outrage and mass protests across the country. The Iranian regime’s ruthless crackdown on demonstrators only fueled
further protests. Right on Keshavarz, not far from Yasmin’s school, sixteen-year-old Nika Shakarami had joined street protesters
and was last seen being shoved into a police van. Ten days later, the morality police delivered her battered body to her family,
claiming that Shakarami had committed suicide by jumping off a building. Soon after, Sarina Esmailzadeh, also sixteen, was
bludgeoned to death with batons by security forces at a protest in Karaj. The crackdown then moved from the streets to the
classrooms as security forces raided the Shahid girls’ high school in Ardabil and demanded that a group of students sing a
pro-regime song. Sixteen-year-old Asra Panahi refused and was beaten to death. Human rights groups estimated that, since Amini’s
arrest on September 13, victims of the regime numbered in the hundreds, and the murder of schoolgirls had every mother in
Iran worried sick—including Ava.
“Walk faster,” said Ava.
“I can’t go any faster,” said Yasmin.
An old woman dressed in a black charoud passed Ava on the sidewalk, clicking her tongue in disapproval of the younger woman’s
interpretation of “modest” attire. A rectangular opening in her black veil revealed only the woman’s eyes, though in just
that passing glance, Ava felt the weighty glare of an entire society: a tradition that must be kept, a truth that cannot be
questioned, a morality whose nature is absolute, a law that cannot be broken, changed, or resisted.
They stopped at the iron gate just off the boulevard. The sign at the entrance to the playground read Girls’ School, Shahid . Compulsory education in Iran did not begin until age six, but Ava and her husband were in agreement that Yasmin would start
pre-primary at four. The large two-story building was made of white bricks, with heavy entrance doors and orange shutters
that flanked the windows. The second floor was for older girls, ages nine to thirteen. A black hijab was mandatory starting
in kindergarten. A simple white headscarf with a red headband singled out Yasmin and her classmates as preschoolers.
As they entered through the gate, the atmosphere in the schoolyard was noticeably tense. The teachers seemed nervous, and
the girls were huddled together in small groups, whispering.
“I don’t want to go to school,” said Yasmin.
Ava took a deep breath, trying to push away the fear that had become a permanent fixture in her mind. She knew that Yasmin’s
education was crucial, but she also knew that the safety and well-being of her daughter could not be guaranteed in a place
where girls were beaten and killed for simply expressing themselves.
“Mommy, did you hear me? I don’t want to go to school.”
Ava gently stroked Yasmin’s hair and crouched down to meet her daughter’s eyes. “I know it’s scary right now, but it’s important
to keep going to school and learning. You’re going to be strong and smart, and if you go to school, you can be anything you
want to be when you grow up.”
Yasmin’s expression softened. “Can I be an astronaut?”
“Sure.”
“A doctor?”
“Without a doubt.”
“A lawyer?”
“We’ll talk.”
Yasmin’s teacher came to greet them in the yard. Ava gave her daughter a kiss, handed her over to the teacher, and watched with trepidation as they disappeared into the building through the double doors.
As Ava turned to leave, she caught sight of a familiar face. Javad, a childhood friend she hadn’t seen in years, was dropping
off his daughter. They made eye contact, and a smile spread across Javad’s face.
“Ava, it’s good to see you!” Javad said. “I thought you and Farid were living in London.”
“We just moved back.”
“How did Farid’s hotel business work out?”
Farid and his business partners owned six boutique hotels in Iran that catered to international travelers, each with a high-end
Persian restaurant. With Ava’s support and encouragement, he’d developed a business plan to expand to London.
“Not well enough for the UK to renew our entrepreneur visa, I’m afraid.”
“I’m so sorry,” said Javad.
“It’s a shame, really,” said Ava. “Just when the pilot hotel was getting traction, COVID shut down the whole industry. There
was no way to recover.”
“How is Farid taking it?”
“About as you’d expect,” said Ava.
He nodded slowly, as if knowing exactly what she meant. “I’ll be sure to steer clear. Hey, I have to run, but let’s have coffee
one morning after drop-off, okay?”
Javad was the first boy ever to tell her she was beautiful, but that was at the age of eleven. She had, in fact, grown into
a truly beautiful woman, with shoulder-length raven hair, soft brown eyes, and captivating eyebrows that shone in the sunlight
like filigrees of silk thread. Getting together for coffee would be harmless, even if they were both married—as long as Farid
approved.
“Yes, let’s try and do that,” said Ava.
They said goodbye, and Ava took a slightly different route home for a stop at the bazaar. One of the joys of returning to Tehran was the outdoor market near ValiAsr Square, which was a culinary delight. Metal pots and pans hung from hooks, holding dried spices and onions. Colorful displays of fresh fruit and vegetables filled block after block of tented vendor stands. The air was alive with the aromas of roasted saffron and chives, sweet carrot, bitter melon, and fresh herbs. That morning, however, Ava couldn’t get near the market. The street was impassable. In the time it had taken Ava to walk Yasmin to school, thousands of demonstrators had crowded the street.
“Zan, zendegi, azadi,” they chanted in unison. Women, life, freedom. It was the rallying cry of the grassroots movement against oppression.
Vehicular traffic was at a standstill, horns blasting. A small fire was burning in the crosswalk. Young women were publicly
removing their head coverings and tossing them into the flames. Across the way, a woman was standing atop a mailbox. The crowd
around her chanted even louder—“Zan, zendegi, azadi”—in support.
Ava stopped for a moment and watched as the woman took a pair of scissors from her bag, cut off her long ponytail, and then
held it defiantly over her head. The crowd around her erupted. It was an act of political symbolism, at once a statement against
the rules of compulsory hijab for women, and an act of defiance in honor of Mahsa Amini, the young woman whose death had sparked
so many demonstrations like the one in which Ava had suddenly found herself. Ava believed in everything the demonstrators
were fighting for. But the street was not her battleground of choice. She turned away from the crowds and continued toward
home.
Her apartment building was one of the newest in the neighborhood, five stories of concrete and steel, with a rooftop garden. Outside the gleaming glass doors, a doorman dressed in a black suit and a red cravat bid Ava good morning as she entered the lobby. Ava took the elevator to the eighth floor and entered their corner apartment, a two-bedroom unit with plenty of space for a family of three. It was actually nicer than their flat in London, though the surrounding neighborhood was not nearly as interesting—older stucco apartment buildings painted in dirty white and faded shades of green or yellow. From a window in the living room, Ava could see the demonstrations in the square below. She removed her scarf slowly, watching, and then returned to the door to make sure she’d locked it. Her heels clicked on the wood floor in the hallway to the master bedroom. She stopped at the bureau and unlocked the top drawer. Her cell phone was inside. She’d left it behind, under lock and key, because the morality police had been stopping women on the street and checking their phones. If “seditious” messages were found, they would be arrested on the spot.
Ava had one text message: What did you have for dinner?
She texted the coordinated reply that told the sender that it was safe to communicate: Soup.
Ava was part of a growing grassroots effort by Iranian women whose common objective was to keep information flowing after
the government’s shutdown of the internet in response to the demonstrations. The network was too unstructured to have formal
“rules,” but it was common sense and commonly understood that if you received a text, you read it, passed it along to the
next woman, and then deleted it. It wasn’t safe to keep the messages on a cell phone. If the morality police found them, both
the sender and recipient would be arrested.
Her phone chimed with the arrival of another text message. It was a photograph of an ugly circular bruise on a woman’s leg.
The message read: Rubber bullet. I was doing nothing. Riot police shot me.
Ava texted back. Why the crowds on Keshavarz? Did something bad happen?
Some of the women who were brave enough to participate just stuck to the facts, no questions asked or answered. But when trouble
was so close to home, it was impossible not to start a conversation and fish for more.
The reply came quickly. 315 protesters indicted this morning. 4 as mohareb.
Mohareb. “Enemy of God.” It is the worst possible crime in Shiite Muslim law. The regime had resorted to desperate measures, charging
demonstrators as mohareb . Ava had studied enough of her country’s history to know that even Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini, the founder of the Islamic regime in the late 1970s, had only threatened to accuse his opponents of being “enemies of God.” The penalty was public execution.
Another text appeared on Ava’s screen, but it was a different sender. After the introductory exchange— dinner and soup —the news followed.
School raid in District 6. I’m taking my daughter home now.
Ava assumed the sender meant the girls’ high school. Teenage girls had been among the most vocal opponents of the regime,
and while at school they were easy targets for the morality police. Ava texted back:
Mine is too young to know what is going on.
A quick response came: Not too young to be caught in the crossfire.
So true, and the message chilled Ava. The last tally circulated by text said that 27 children were among the reported total
of 215 demonstrators killed since September. Ava put her cell phone back in the locked drawer, covered her head with a scarf,
and hurried out the door to the elevator. The ride to the lobby seemed to take forever, and she ran out of the building, hitting
full speed by the time she passed the doorman on the sidewalk. The demonstration on the street seemed to have grown even larger,
the cries for justice even louder.
Ava’s heart was pounding like a jackhammer, the blood rushing to her head, as she ran as fast as she could past the demonstrators. The smell of tear gas filled the air as she approached Yasmin’s school, which only heightened her concern. Ava continued straight ahead, pushing through the crowd, determined to reach the school at any cost, nearly breathless as she arrived. A dozen other mothers were already waiting outside the entrance gate to the school grounds. Like Ava, they had come to pull their daughters out and take them home, where it was safe. Yasmin was only in prekindergarten, but the primary school was adjacent to the girls’ high school, and the text message was burned into Ava’s mind: Not too young to be caught in the crossfire .
The schoolmaster was standing on the other side of the iron gate. She was clearly sympathetic to the pleas of distressed parents
who had come for their daughters. The gates creaked open as girls, one by one, were passed to waiting arms outside the schoolyard.
Ava caught sight of Yasmin coming through the door, escorted by her teacher.
“Mommy’s here!” Ava shouted.
Yasmin broke free from her teacher and ran to the gate. The head of school passed her to Ava.
“May Allah keep you safe,” the school head whispered.
Ava took her daughter in her arms, just long enough to make her feel safe, and then put her back on the sidewalk. Other mothers
at the gate called for their daughters and prayed aloud.
“We must hurry,” Ava shouted, and she started running, leading Yasmin along with her.
“Are we going home?”
“Daddy’s office,” said Ava. “It’s closer.”
Ava made a turn down a side street. Demonstrators sprinted past her and Yasmin, and Ava could see the utter panic on their
faces. A gunshot rang out somewhere in the surrounding neighborhood. The crowd scattered in all directions, people screaming
in confusion, and the race down the street became a stampede of civilians in search of any safe place to hide from the police.
Ava’s husband had his office on the north side of the boulevard, but barricades blocked their way. Armed members of Tehran’s
Guidance Patrol had closed off the square. Yasmin could run no farther. Crying and exhausted, she forced her mother to stop.
“What now, Mommy?”
Their apartment wasn’t as close as Farid’s office, but there was no other choice. Ava picked up Yasmin and carried her, running a half block and then walking to catch her breath, then running again toward home. Another canister of tear gas exploded behind them, propelling Ava forward. Gunshots cracked in rapid succession— pow, pow, pow! —unleashing screams and more panic.
“Stop right there, woman!” a police officer shouted.
Ava froze. Two officers rushed toward her. The bigger one grabbed her by the arm.
“Where is your hijab?” he demanded.
Ava reached for it, only to discover that her scarf was gone.
“It must have fallen off,” she said. “I was running with my daughter, trying to get home safely.”
“You cut your hair,” said the other officer accusingly.
“No,” said Ava. “I wear it short.”
“You lie!”
“No, it’s true. Our family just returned from London. We lived there for my husband’s work. I wear my hair short with his
permission.”
“You were one of those women who cut their hair in protest.”
“No, that’s not true!” said Ava, her voice shaking. “I obey the laws.”
“Liar!”
Ava didn’t see it coming, but the sudden crack of his baton against her arm made her cry out in pain.
“Mommy!” Yasmin shrieked.
“Where is your husband?”
“At work,” she said, which drew another smack of the baton.
“The address!”
Ava gave it to him. The officer told his partner to “take the girl to her father,” and then he cuffed Ava’s hands behind her
back.
“You’re under arrest.”
“No, please!”
Yasmin called out to her mother, but they were being pulled in opposite directions. The arresting officer dragged Ava toward the police van, where more officers, batons swinging, were shoving men, women, and teenagers into the back of the van like mob criminals. Ava checked over her shoulder again and again, calling to her daughter, until Yasmin disappeared into the back of a squad car. Her heart sank as the beacons flashed and the car pulled away.
“This is all a mistake!” Ava said, as they reached the police van.
“Yes, and you made it,” said the officer.
He shoved her inside the van, and the double doors slammed shut.