Editorial: Art and Advocacy

These past few weeks, as I have been putting the finishing touches on issue # 17 of e*lix*ir, I have been dreaming of Shiraz, the city of the poets — of its pink mosque and its exquisite gardens, of streets lined with cedars and flower beds redolent with the scent of jasmine.

And as I have been dreaming of Shiraz, I have also been pondering what is surely one of the darkest episodes in that city’s history: the execution of ten Bahá’í women on June 18, 1983 in Chowgan Square for the “crime” of refusing to recant their faith, a tragedy to which the Bahá’í International Community has, at a time when the struggle of Iranian women for greater freedom has come to the attention of the world, dedicated a year-long social media campaign — #OurStoryIsOne.

In His Secret of Divine Civilization, ‘Abdu’l-Bahá laments the decline of the once-great nation of Persia: “This fairest of lands was once a lamp, streaming with the rays of divine knowledge, of science and art, of nobility and high achievement, of wisdom and valor. Today ... her bright fortune has been totally eclipsed, her light has turned to darkness. ‘The seven heavens and the seven earths weep over the mighty when he is brought low.’” As we ponder the execution of these ten innocent women, we can’t help but weep with the seven heavens and the seven earths.

This issue of e*lix*ir is devoted to remembering those women: Mona Mahmoudnejad, Roya Eshraghi, Simin Saberi, Shirin Dalvand, Akhtar Sabet, Mashid Niroumand, Zarrin Moghimi-Abyaneh, Tahereh Arjomanadi Siyavashi, Nosrat Ghufrani Yaldaie, and Ezzat-Janami Eshrahgi. It is also dedicated to honoring the courage of the Bahá’ís living in Iran today as they so valiantly endure persecution.

And for those of us living outside Iran, issue # 17 of e*lix*ir serves as a reminder that we share a mission with those ten women and, indeed, with all people of good will the world over: namely, to engage in the struggle, at whatever cost, to scatter the dark clouds of prejudice so that the light of unity can cast its bright, healing rays over the whole earth.

In this issue, we share, as always, writing that strives to better the world. Why write at all if not for the good of the world? It is my belief that art reaches its highest purpose when it “works” for the social good. And as I see it, literary art should do “work” in the world rather than merely offer an outlet for narcissistic self-reflection.

When we put our fingers to the keyboard for the purpose of fostering what ‘Abdu’l-Bahá refers to as “the useful arts of civilization,” we engage in the process of community building. Through such a practice of the literary arts, we begin to construct a new kind of edifice, one in which all people can dwell, a place of safety and endless potentiality — the true abode of our hearts and souls.

The writing we share with you in this issue of e*lix*ir explores various dimensions of literary advocacy, most particularly the kind that fearlessly engages in truth-telling about some of the hardest experiences human beings have had to endure: execution, imprisonment, and other forms of systematic discrimination on the basis of religion.

Witness the case of Mahvash Sabet, imprisoned in Tehran from 2008 to 2017, then, in July 2022, sentenced to another ten years. I have not had sufficient time to give thought to what I might write about the translation I have just completed with Shahin Mowzoon of Mahvash Sabet’s second volume of prison poems, A Tale of Love, but what I can say is that our efforts to bring these poems to English readers took us on what was, I suspect, a journey of a lifetime.

By the time you read this issue of e*lix*ir, George Ronald Books in Oxford, England will have brought this book of poems into the world. Read this poetry of witness and weep, once again, with the seven heavens and the seven earths.

We are pleased to offer, for the first time in e*lix*ir, fiction written by young Bahá’í authors living in Iran: “The Bluest Part of the Sky” by Tanin, “The Lake” by Nourin Omidi, and “The Rope” by Mahsa Mastoori. In these stories, we catch glimpses of the dark world the current generation of Bahá’í youth in Iran must navigate.

In this issue we also share two scenes of a one-act play I wrote about Tahereh and Jamshid Siyavashi, a couple who were executed two days apart in June 1983. When, during the Bahá’í fast this past winter, I had the chance to read about their remarkable lives, I felt compelled to share their story with others. As I saw it, Tahereh and Jamshid were a modern-day Romeo and Juliet — but star-crossed lovers of a higher order. Like that famous Shakespearean couple, they were joined in death, but for the sake of a more encompassing love than the romantic love, the human passion for which Romeo and Juliet gave their lives. “Tahereh and Jamshid: A One-Act Play” tells the story of a group of Bahá’í youth who struggle to befittingly dramatize the lives and deaths of these two heroic souls even as they wrestle with the difficult circumstances that emerge when one of their members is arrested. The complete play can be ordered through elixirpublishing@gmail.com.

In our “Letters” section, we feature two letters to Mona: one written by Bahar Rohani in Yazd and another written by Maava in Shiraz. In these letters, we are privy to the perspective of a generation that has learned about Mona from those who were her contemporaries, but but has sufficient distance from the events of June 18, 1983 to begin to understand the significance of her legacy.

In the writing featured in “Remembering the Ten Martyrs of Shiraz,” writers from that same generation of Bahá’í youth reflect on the ways in which the courage of the ten women executed in Chowgan Square has shaped their lives. June Paisa Perkins’ stirring poem, “Soul Garments,” sets the tone for this section. In “The Patio,” Nourin Omidi writes of a play about Mona Mahmoudnejad that she and other youth performed to mark their coming-of-age declaration ceremony, while in “The Flowers of Shiraz: The Story of a Play,” Hannan Hashemi writes about another group of teenagers in Iran who created and performed a play about the ten women of Shiraz as an antidote to the feelings of despair to which many of their fellow citizens had succumbed in the wake of the 2022-23 protests.

In “A Free Spirit,” Nava Nazifi takes us to Mona’s childhood room, where she reflects on the true meaning of freedom. In “Through the Eyes of a Child,” Kimiya Roohani shares the memories of a child who met Mona in the months just before her execution; and in “The Flowers of Shiraz,” Shadi Tajeddini tells the moving story of how she came to take the ten women of Shiraz as her role models — her “spiritual superheroes.”

In “The Other Mona: Forever Seventeen,” Mona Shahgoli writes about her complicated past as an Iranian immigrant in America and of the ways in which her own life seems to have been invisibly intertwined with that of the other Mona, the one who made the choice to stay in Iran and give her life for her faith. And in the final piece in this section, “Free Spirits and Butterflies,” I reflect on what the execution of the ten women of Shiraz meant to me forty years ago and what it means to me now.

For Bahá’ís living in Iran, arrest and imprisonment is an ever-present threat, so in order to give a true picture of life as it is for Bahá’ís in Iran today, we offer in this issue some prison stories.

In her essay, “One Stitch at a Time,” Sama Khalily tells the story of an aunt who launched an embroidery collective from within prison walls. During the summer of 2022, Hannan Hashemi, a student in a BIHE course I was teaching, was detained. No one knew where she had been taken or why. I asked those questions in my Toronto Star article “Where is Hannan Hashemi?” and in an article she published in the same newspaper soon after her release, “My Thirty-Four Days in an Iranian Prison,” Hannan answered my questions.

To uplift the souls of our readers as they make their way through an issue of e*lix*ir whose contents may, at times, be difficult to read, we have included a stirring Personal Reflection Piece by Ghazal, “The Power of Faith in Facing Afflictions.”

For the same purpose, we have included a section entitled “Dreams and Visions,” which features three inspiring essays by Bahá’í youth in Iran who step away from the present moment to share their visions for the future of their country. In “I Dream of Country,” “The Dreams of a Planet Earth Citizen,” and “Iran will Rise,” Maava, Shadi Tajeddini, and Taranom look to the glorious future of their nation.

At the top of this section, we share a very special piece to which I would like to draw the attention of our readers. “What Mona Wanted: A Prayer for Resilience” by Kimiya Roohani is a prayer, a call, a spiritual battle cry that left me breathless and made me keenly aware that Mona Mahmounejad’s courage lives on in Iran today in the sacrificial efforts of Iranian faculty members in the Bahá’í Institute for Higher Education, who, even in the face of potential arrest and imprisonment, ensure that Bahá’í youth in Iran have access to higher education. Truly, this institution and those who keep it going are a source of wonder...

We are thrilled that to say that, in this issue of e*lix*ir, Sama Khalily has stepped in for Eira, who was otherwise committed, to keep “Ruhi & Riaz” going. In Sama’s installment of this beloved comic, we meet Sara and Soroush and learn about their hopes, their dreams, and the work they are doing to better their communities.

As in our last issue, in this issue of e*lix*ir, we feature a collaborative art project. This one came into being when Jean Wilkey shared with me a selection of the paintings she created this past year in her “Skies She Didn’t See” series, all of which were featured in a solo show in an art gallery in El Paso, Texas. I selected ten paintings from the series and wrote a brief poem to accompany each one. I chose to work in a Japanese form, the haiku, with its attention to the beauty of the natural world and its invitation, in the final line, to reflection. Each haiku is dedicated to one of the ten martyrs of Shiraz.

With the publication of e*lix*ir # 17, we continue the work of creating art that engages in advocacy. Along with other makers and visionaries, we dedicate our creative energies to cultivating the “useful arts,” arts dedicated to the betterment of the world, arts that tell the truth so that we can see it, face it, weep over it if we need to, and learn from it.

The sharing of such dark truths as we tell in this issue is not intended to dampen the spirit, but to liberate the mind from an abiding sorrow, so that the heart may fill, once again, with hope. Once we have read and pondered and wept, let us resolve to dream of a time when Chowgan Square, the infamous site of the execution of ten Bahá’í women, will have become, as one of the authors in this issue puts it, “a garden overflowing with tulips, lilies, and daisies.”

— Sandra Lynn Hutchison