Photo Source: #OurStoryIsOne: Temple event honors 10 Iranian Baha’i women executed in 1983 (bahai.us)
by Sandra Hutchison
In a course offered by the Wilmette Institute this past January, students made the commitment to write creative content for the #OurStoryIsOne campaign, which was launched to commemorate the ten women martyred in Shiraz in 1983 and to link that event to the ongoing struggle for women’s rights in Iran. Learners spent the early days of the course familiarizing themselves with the campaign by studying the press releases and archives of the Bahá’í International Community and by scrolling through the campaign feeds on Instagram and X. Dr. Sandra Lynn Hutchison, their instructor, encouraged learners to study carefully the lives of the ten women and to look for an incident with which they could feel a personal connection and around which they might develop a written piece.
Four final projects were particularly noteworthy. One learner found herself captivated by a story she read about Mona Mahmoudnejad dividing a single plum into seventeen pieces so that she could share the fruit with her cellmates. The learner produced a poem based on this incident as well as various works of art in the form of mandalas. Another learner, who is based in Paris, found her theme in a connection she made between Thomas Breakwell, a Bahá’í who died in Paris of tuberculosis, and one of the ten martyrs, Akhtar Sabet, who had been trained as a nurse. The learner imagined a dramatic scene in a Paris hospital in which Akhtar peeled an orange for Thomas Breakwell. The learner went on to imagine Akhtar attending Breakwell’s simple burial service. The two figures shared much in common, the learner explained at the outset of her project, in the extent of their devotion and their willingness to sacrifice their lives for their faith. For his final project, another learner explored a poignant connection between the lynchings of African Americans in the United States and the execution of Bahá’ís in Iran.
One last project of note was an essay written by a Bahá’í who had left Iran more than forty years before. In her essay, the learner reflected on the fact that she shared the name of one of the martyrs, was the same age, and had lived in Shiraz. Until the campaign, the learner had not spoken publicly about the tragic events of 18 June 1983 nor had she spoken about her own past experiences of persecution. As a result of the campaign, she explained, she now had the courage; and as a result of the course, she had the occasion. Entitled “The Other Mona,” her piece will appear in the upcoming issue of elixir-journal.org, to appear in late May, as the campaign moves into its final days.
