Elica Le Bon in Newsweek:
My first visceral memories of the regime in Iran were formed before I was born. My mother had been in the notorious Evin prison in the 1980s, when hanged bodies were lined up along the entrance path so that prisoners knew what to expect. Although naturally apolitical, my mother was seen with a dissident. She narrowly escaped lynching, only because the dissident learned of my mother’s arrest and turned herself in.
The dissident was, of course, hanged.
Perhaps this is just a Persian mother’s retelling, notorious for its embellishment, but according to her, back then, she was one of the “only people to make it out alive.” When she left the prison, she demanded that a guard walk behind her so she wouldn’t be shot in the back. The regime was never more brutal than in its nascent years of life. Anyone caught with anti-regime materials—books, articles, publications, or anything of the sort—was executed. I often marvel at how miraculous my own existence is. It wasn’t just one time that my mother narrowly escaped death; it happened three times.
More here.
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