sakineh ashtiani

This woman was supposed to die today. She hasn't yet. But Iran isn't saying when or if they will spare her. Only that the West needs to stop interfering with their justice. They say Sakineh is an adulterer (a crime she supposedly committed after her husband's death). For this crime she has alternatively been sentenced to death by stoning, whipping and hanging.

The politics of Iran vs. the West aside, I can't help but feel compelled by this case. There is something so painfully beautiful about this woman's face. About the love that Sakineh's son has for his mother. His tireless campaign to save her, so much so that he is in  jail now too. Her lawyers have been forced to flee the country, and her life is stretched out for yet another day.

 Before Leila was born I was terrified of having a daughter. I was scared of all the things that come with teaching someone how to be a woman. What if I fucked her up? What if I made her feel bad about herself without knowing it? And it's hard to figure out how to be a woman. At least I found it hard. I never knew where the line was on certain things until I'd crossed it, until it was too late and I was in over my head. This somehow, put it all in perspective. So this woman allegedly cheated on her dead husband. Something she confessed to only under torture. In essence, this woman has been convicted of being female. Had she been a man, there would have been no repercussions for her actions. I am still scared for my daughter, and for everyone's daughters because this is so wrong, so tragic and so incomprehensible.

For a more comprehensive overview of what's going on with Sakineh, go here.

If you would like to sign a petition to send to world leaders to try to pressure Iran to save Sakineh go here.

I am not in the habit of trying to get people to take action on political issues, but I can't keep from thinking what if she was my daughter, what would I want people to do? The answer, of course, is that I would want her to be protected at all costs.

past-perfect

The other day our friend Chris was talking about how with Leila he has the sense of being part of someone's past. I know what he means. For her, everything is the future. All of what we are doing now will someday make up the tapestry of her childhood, her past.

I imagine her, at seventeen, beautiful and awkward like teenage girls are, sitting in some boy's car talking about her crazy parents and the shit they did when she was young. I imagine there will be stories of camping trips, rides on the backs of motorcycles, a black and white dog called Norton, travel to strange places, and how her parents didn't have cable but did let her watch the Beatles movie Yellow Submarine as many times as she wanted.

And I hope that the me of her memory loves her as much as the one writing this does.

the me I was before you

There's a picture of my mother at seventeen in an old photo album. She has long blond hair parted in the middle and sad, khol lined eyes. When I was young, I used to stare it for hours. I knew that the woman in the picture was my mother, but at the same time she was so different, so utterly foreign from the woman I knew. It was hard for me as a child to understand that my mother had had a life before, had been a person before I existed. Who was this blond haired beauty with sad gray eyes? What did she want from life? Who had taken the picture?

I wonder now what picture Leila will stumble across of me and look at with shock bewilderment, wondering who was this woman before she loved me?

In Revelstoke at 19.