Women of Iran*

It is a peaceful night. The stars and lights make Tehran a beautiful city at night.

Behind the walls of one of these houses, a four year old girl is sleeping. She is dreaming of getting ready to travel with her mother on a bus. Except her mother gets into the bus and she is left behind. She is having a nightmare. Her mother is leaving her. She cries. She wakes up. Her dad is at the bed side. "You had a bad dream", he says. "No, mom left, no it was not a dream". "Mom is here, everything is fine". The fact that her dad is comforting her, not her mom, does not help.

She is in her twenties. She is happy to have found some new friends in the university. She has to hide her social life from her mother. She has to lie to have a normal conversation with a male friend. She is asleep. She dreams they are walking in the park, having a good time. Guards stop them. "How are you related?", they ask. They are being arrested, taken to the jail, for their crime. She wakes up. She is relieved she was dreaming.

In another house, a woman in her fifties is sleeping. She is always scared. She locks all doors, closes all curtains, turns off extra lights. She is having a nightmare. Someone is following her. She tries to walk faster. She plays smart so that her follower give up and leave her alone. She travels a longer path to delay arriving home, so that no one learns where she lives. She arrives home. She unlocks the door. As soon as she thinks she is in, strangers push her inside. She yells loudly. She says things in her sleep. Her daughter hears her, "Mom, wake up! You are having a bad dream"!

These are females of Iran. Appearing calm and pleasant, while being scared and frightened to their bones. They wish for a peaceful sleep.

* I had written this long before June 2009, when uprisings unfolded. Maybe now the whole country wishes for a peaceful sleep.

عهدش بتمبه

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