Jean Wilkey

The Flowers of Shiraz: The Story of a Play

by HANNAN HASHEMI

On June 18, 2023, in the heart of Shiraz, four Bahá’í teenagers, accompanied by three tutors, paid tribute to the memory of the ten courageous Bahá’í women who were unjustly executed four decades ago by the Islamic Republic of Iran because they were Bahá’ís. In addition to honoring the lives that were lost, the teenagers also hoped to raise awareness about the struggles faced by the Bahá’í community in Iran.

All four youth had gone through a tough time in 2023. Two of them had seen their mother arrested, while another had witnessed her sister's arrest. The remaining youth had seen several of her friends arrested. All arrests had taken place during the crackdown on Bahá’ís that followed the protests launched in the fall of 2022 in response to the death of Mahsa Amini, protests during which many innocent people, including teenagers just like them, had been arrested or killed.

In the wake of these events, the four teenagers felt sad and somewhat hopeless about the future of their country. To combat these feelings, they turned to history, specifically to the lives of the ten Bahá’í women martyred in Shiraz forty years before. Reading late into the night, they were moved to tears by the women’s stories and decided they must share those stories with others.

In the weeks that followed, the four youth met in one another’s homes to discuss how to present the remarkable lives of these women to as many people as possible. How to fully convey the truth of such heroic lives? What words could be used to fittingly convey the courage of these women, the greatness of their sacrifice? After much discussion, the teenagers decided to write a play and call it The Flowers of Shiraz. In order to make space for the stories of all ten of the women, the four young women decided the play needed two scenes. A break between the two scenes would give the audience a chance to pause and recite prayers perhaps. It would also give the players the opportunity to welcome their guests.

The teenagers spent long hours writing and rehearsing. Sometimes, they stayed overnight at one another’s houses. Due to the restrictions placed on Bahá’ís, they had to practice in secret. Fortunately, their families supported them through the entire process. Having energetic teenagers in a small house for hours wasn't easy, but the families were happy to see the dedication of their children.

The young women had to look hard to find the equipment they needed for lighting and for the background music they wanted to play. There were props to look for, too. Their budget was limited and they didn’t even know where they could safely perform their play. Yet they persisted, and with the assistance of their tutors, they found the equipment they needed and created the props themselves.

They realized they would need a space large enough to accommodate a good number of spectators and one that offered a kind of “backstage” area for preparing shifts in scene and for costume changes. The teenagers consulted with the local Bahá’í community to find the best solution, and, despite the risks involved, a generous Bahá’í, someone whose children were imprisoned for their faith and whose teenage grandchildren were struggling to live without their parents, came forward to offer his large house for the performance of The Flowers of Shiraz.

So it was that on the very day on which the ten women had been executed forty years before, the four teenagers performed their play before a small audience of twenty people. During the eight shows that followed, the teenagers performed for one hundred and twenty people. The enthusiasm and also the audience feedback, which the players invited, inspired the teenagers to continue to refine their performance. Feeling a deep sense of responsibility to portray accurately the great sacrifice the women had made, they worked hard to perfect their roles until the very last day of their performance.

The four performers knew they had to convey the natural emotions of fear and worry experienced by the ten women during their detention while also highlighting the virtues of courage, perseverance, humility, and faith that enabled the women to sacrifice their lives. The teenager who played Roya did her best to convey the happiness and contentment that radiated from Roya's heart, even in the face of blatant mistreatment. And she poignantly enacted Roya’s fearless farewell to the judge as she refused to renounce her beliefs, even though she knew this refusal would lead to torture and flogging.

The story of Mona Mahmoudnejad, the courageous seventeen-year-old in the group of ten women martyrs, resonated deeply with the four teenagers, especially the account of the essay in which she had so eloquently expressed her views on each person’s God-given inner freedom, a freedom, she asserted, that no one could take away. They found the accounts of the birthday parties the women had held in prison particularly captivating as well. The teenagers were moved and amazed to learn that, despite enduring numerous hardships and intense mental and physical torture, the women never forgot each other's birthdays and, with such limited resources as they could find in a prison, they celebrated and exchanged gifts, a gesture that gave hope to other prisoners and also angered the prison guards.

In the end, The Flowers of Shiraz was a simple play, but one that had a transformative effect on all those who watched and, perhaps most of all, on the four teenagers who portrayed the ten courageous women who gave their lives for their faith, the inestimably rare and precious flowers of Shiraz.