Kiss the Rope
Sixteen-year-old Mona Mahmudnizhad from Shiraz, Iran was one of many arrested in the early days of the Revolution that began in 1979. She was a hard-working high school student who also taught extra curricular classes for children.
On the evening of 23 October, 1982, four armed Revolutionary Guards entered the Mahmudnizhad home. Mona and her parents were forced to wait at gunpoint on a sofa while the rest of the Guards thoroughly searched the home and collected papers and whatever materials they deemed incriminating. Leaving Mrs. Mahmudnizhad there, the Guards took Mona and her father to Seppah Prison, where they were then separated. They were among the first of 40 Baha’is arrested that night and over the following days.
On 29 November, after 38 days under duress, Mona, along with 5 other Baha’i women from Shiraz, were transferred to Adelabad Prison, where they continued to suffer brutal interrogation and torture.
Eventually, Mona was taken to a Revolutionary Court for further interrogation, after which she was returned to prison. She was tortured again: guards used a cable to whip the soles of her feet until they bled and then forced her to walk. Shortly after that she was taken again, this time to be interrogated in front of an Islamic Revolutionary Judge. Refusing to comply with his demand that she recant her Faith, she was sentenced to death by hanging.
On 18 June 1983, she and 9 other women who had been in Adelabad together were driven by bus after dark to a polo field outside the prison. An unofficial gallows awaited them.
Mona, the youngest of the women, asked to be hanged last so that she could pray for each of the others as they waited their turn. When at last it was Mona’s time, she did something extraordinary: She asked the executioner if he would permit her to place the noose over her own head. He granted her that and watched, astonished, as she held it to her lips and kissed it before laying it around her own neck.
The “crime” of these women? Being Baha’is.
A section of Crimson Ink reflects many aspects of this story.
The other women who were hanged with Mona were:
Nusrat Yalda'i, 54 years old
'Izzat Janami Ishraqi, 50 years old
Roya Ishraqi, 23 and daughter of 'Izzat
Tahirih Siyavushi, 32 years old
Zarrin Muqimi, 28 years old
Shirin Dalvand, 25 years old
Akhtar Sabit, 19 or early 20s
Simin Saberi, 24 years old
Mahshid Nirumand, 28 years old
A number of artists have paid tribute to this extraordinary young woman. Canadian musicians / vocalists Smith & Dragoman later performed this touching piece in her honor.