Jean Wilkey

A Letter to Mona from Shiraz

by MAAVA

For me, this year was a different year. When the protests began in Iran, I kept thinking about you ten brave women and the unspeakable choice you made to give your lives for your faith. Now that I’m writing this letter, I can see your pure, innocent faces before me. Mona, you were only seventeen. Surely you had many great hopes for your future. It was your golden time for exploring the world, for trying new things.

Mona, you were the embodiment of kindness, someone whose only thought was to help children learn about ‘Abdu’l-Bahá. Sometimes I put myself in your shoes and ask myself: would I have had the strength to go to prison because of my faith? You were asked to change your religion, but you remained steadfast until the last moment of your life. To the end, you were grateful and at peace. You even kissed the hangman’s noose, for you saw it as a means of reunion with your Beloved.

I am so honored to be living in the city where you once you lived. Yesterday, I went to Koooye-Zahra, the neighborhood where you once lived. I imagined your room and I wished I could sit beside you and watch you as you wrote your beautiful stories. Then, as I walked along, I felt you beside me, and I knew you were happy that many people were aware of what you and the nine women who were executed along with you in 1983, had done, what all of you had sacrificed. I kept thinking about what it must have been like on this street when you were still alive, and, suddenly, I felt such gratitude and was overcome with happiness to be living in the city where you once lived.

After I visited your neighborhood, I went to Chowgan Square, where you were so cruelly executed on that Sunday. As I walked around the square, I kept imagining I heard the voice of the officer responsible for your execution as he repeated the question three times: “Islam or execution? Islam or execution? Islam or execution?” It was six in the evening at the time, and I could hear the muezzin’s call, so I sat down on the ground and prayed from the depths of my heart for your pure soul.

Then I began to think about Zarrin, who was executed with you that day, and of the incredible letter she wrote before she was arrested, after she had visited the Bahá’í prisoners. She so beautifully described the prison as “the home of butterflies who have been consumed by the flames of affection” and she mentioned the “nameless heroes whose silent screams pierce the dreams of the wicked and shall weaken the world.” When I thought of her words, I felt the tears streaming down my cheeks, and I wondered to myself how she could see such brightness in such darkness?

Mona and Zarrin, forty years have passed since your execution, and especially since the recent protests, people in Iran have begun to realize that women’s struggle against oppression is ongoing, that their story is one with yours. For so many years, Iranians seemed to be completely unaware of the great thing you had done, what you had been through, how you had been tortured and executed secretly, deprived even of a proper burial. But now so many people know you and understand the reason for your sacrifice. I’m proud to be living now, in a time that has been blessed by the sacrifices of faithful souls like you and Zarrin, souls who gave up their lives to light the flame of faith. It is my earnest prayer that your pure intentions, your sacrifice will pave the way to genuine freedom for us all.