The Women Blinded by Iran

When I was living in Iran, someone gave me a copy of Margaret Atwood’s The Handmaid’s Tale. I read it the way we read dangerous things in Iran: quietly, quickly, keeping the cover hidden. The world Atwood built, a theocratic republic where women’s bodies are state property, did not feel like science fiction to me. It felt like a warning I had already been living inside my whole life.

Then I moved to America, and I discovered that millions of Americans loved this story as a story. They watched it as a television series. They dissected it in book clubs. They wore the red cloaks to political marches as a metaphor. And I wanted to grab them by the shoulders and say: This is not a metaphor for us. For us, it is Tuesday.

There is a detail in Atwood’s world that I read and moved on from when I first encountered it: The regime blinds the women it wants to punish. I accepted it as the dark logic of dystopia and turned the page.

Then, almost exactly four years ago, in the Women, Life, Freedom protests in Iran, the Islamic Republic shot Kosar Eftekhari in the face and blinded her. And Farideh Salavatipour. And 580 others.