Remembering Atefeh, (2011-13)

 

Remembering Atefeh, (2011-13)

Atefeh Rajavi Sahaaleh was a girl living in a small town, Neka, in Northern Iran. Her mother died when she was a small child and her father was an addict and neglected her. She was raised mostly by her grandparents. She was an isolated, lonely child and extremely vulnerable. At the age of twelve she was raped and prostituted by a taxi driver who was formerly a member of the Revolutionary Guard. She  - not her pimp/rapists - was imprisoned, numerous times and, when she threatened to go public, she was sentenced to death and hanged, on August 15th, aged sixteen, for 'crimes against chastity.' 

Even in Iran, it is illegal to execute a child so her documents were falsified. She is not the only one and Iran is not the only country that does this. The response in Iran was muted at first because the state owned and controlled media covered it up. Word go out though and women got increasingly angry. 

The criminalisation of underage girls and corresponding impunity of their abusers well be horribly familiar to sex trade survivors the world over but, in Iran, where the bodies of women and girls are used to symbolise the male (dis)/'honour' of the nation state, it takes on another dimension: in effect the state is the pimp. 

This pot was made with a group of Iranian friends, mostly refugees, both men and women, and was smashed in front of the Iranian Embassy in London, August 15th, 2011. I rebuilt it, leaving some pieces out so you can see the image of Atefeh inside. It remains the only image there is of her - it's from her ID card. 

The edges of the gaps are picked out in gold to honour her short life and her brave attempt to fight the injustices she faced, alone and hugely disadvantaged. 

Nasrine Sotoudeh, an extraordinarily courageous, Iranian human rights lawyer, made the following observation on Atefeh's case and countless others like hers: 

"The courts somehow deal much more rigorously with the women than with the men. The weakest point in our downfall is that this is happening right in front of our eyes but, sadly, we pretend that we just don't see it." 

Sotoudeh has herself been imprisoned and beaten on numerous occasions for standing up for girls like Atefeh and trying to represent and defend them in court. 

Today we remember Atefeh, as the Taliban secure their hold on Kabul and the whole of Afghanistan, and women's sex-based, human rights take another turn for the worse. These are not good times for women. 

A Tale of Two Ministries

For the foreign visitor, arriving in Esfahan in Spring does make you wonder if you died suddenly and got catapulted into Heaven. However, Esfahan is also a large industrial city. It sprawls and belches gross sulphuric yellow pollution, which hangs in a thick cloud at the periphery, a cloud so dense that even on an otherwise clear day, the city is not visible as you enter it from the South side. It is entirely concealed under the suffocating blanket of smog. This is Esfahan’s ‘other side’. There’s plenty more to add to add to that, but not in this post.

So, what of the exhibition?
Well, it hasn’t been cancelled, exactly, nor postponed, exactly. It has suffered from a bout of bureaucratic incompetence, conniving and malevolent malfunctioning that makes its pollution seem almost harmless. Having laboured day and night for five months on no pay, and produced a body of work that I like to think might hold its own in a gallery, having organised the transport and written the catalogue and done everything I should have done, I was refused a visa. So, just to clarify this: a government institution, namely the Museum of Contemporary Art, Esfahan, invites me to do the show and asks me to sign a contract and the very same government refuses to allow either me or the exhibition to enter the country.

Arcane dealings
The Foreign Ministry, part of central government, doles out the visas. The Museum is under the jurisdiction of provincial government of Esfahan. The process was as follows:
FM to Museum, ‘Send us a copy of the official letter confirming the exhibition.’
Museum to FM. ‘No – bugger off!’
FM to Museum, ‘Send us a copy of the email you sent her inviting her to exhibit.’
Museum to FM. ‘No – I said NO, now bugger off!’
Museum to me, (snarling): ‘The FM is trying to trick us into being your host but we are forbidden to be the host to any foreign artist - VERY VERY forbidden’
Bureaucratic language note: ‘host’ means someone who ‘takes responsibility for you all the time that you are in Iran.’ Meaning: if you do anything ‘wrong’ it becomes the fault of the ‘host’. Tough on an individual, but something you might think an institution could tolerate.
Technically, as far as I can tell and as far as anyone can tell, the museum is indeed the host, but they’re having none of it.
My interpretation: Museum has got very cold feet, possibly because ‘foreign artist,’ in this case, is ‘British artist' and, since A’jad (Ahmedinejad) is preparing to get in the bed with Ooooooooo ba mast, (Obama) a new ‘great satan’ must be found as a matter of urgency and the old ‘great satan’ ie Britain, will do just fine. Bum. That ‘s all I’ve got to say – in this post anyway. Actually I’ve said quite a bit more but it’s all off blog, hence my prolonged silence in this space. Oooooo baa maast, btw, is how Obama's name reads when it's written in Farsi. In effect it divides into three words, which just happen to mean 'he's with us' - ok, strictly it's ooo baa maa, 'he with us,' but what's a 'st' between friends? Back in November 2008, last time I was in Iran, this was considered a thigh slappingly funny joke at the news stands in Tehran. It was pretty funny the first few times.

So what now?
So, in principle, it could all just wait till the election’s over and the dust and pollution settles and ‘they,’ whoever ‘they’ are, get a bit less paranoid about foreigners, especially foreigners who have something called a BBC in their country that does unspeakable things like report on what goes on in Iran - occasionally. And what of the planned triste between Ooooob and A’jad? Will they or won't they? Will Oooooob get Mr. Mousavi instead? What about that poor women (Roxana Saberi) they’ve just stuffed in gaol for god knows how long as a bargaining chip?
October 2003, Tehran, lobby of Naderi hotel, Hassan to me: ‘This really is the most lawless bloody place I’ve every encountered.’ (‘Hassan’ teaches Middle Eastern politics and law at a well-known British University)
October 2004, London, Afsane’s kitchen, watching the rice, Felora to me: ‘Iran would be a great place, Claudia, but the problem is there’s no law.’
The tale of two ministries suggested that even Iranian officials are utterly confused by their own legal bureaucracy, but the Tale of Roxana says that in April 2009, they’ve just declared war on their own legal system. Many would say they did that decades ago, but it hasn’t been quite so fully-paid-up, so shamelessly public for some years has it? Or am I just deluded?

To more important matters
Atefeh comes to mind, but they didn’t expect anyone outside Iran, outside Neka even, to notice– we did and we’re still angry by the way. Come to think of it, this year, August 15th, (?) is the fifth anniversary of her murder…
This is the Wikipeida entry for Atefeh Rajabi Sahaaleh, it’s not bad as these things go. Here is a link to a blog about Atefeh with the youtube links to an American version of a documentary about her. There is also a BBC documentary, 'Execution of a Teenage Girl' available on youtube in five parts. Click here and type 'execution of a teenage girl' into 'search' to find the five pieces. Here’s one in French which is all in one, not in parts.