Volume I Issue 2


be released after extensive torture. With this treatment, the Baha’i in Iran became familiar with the price of religious freedom. Bahereh Motlagh, like many


Baha’is, has paid heavily for faith, having lost her husband to the Revolutionary Guards in the third year of the Islamic Revolution. She is a quiet woman with the perfectly coifed hair emblematic of Persian women of her genera- tion. Motlagh’s unwavering belief has also uprooted her, divided her family across three continents, and cost her freedom on multiple occasions. She welcomes me into her pristine apartment where she lives with her youngest daughter Parnaz, who joins us for the inter- view because, as Motlagh puts it, “My English not so good.” “In the time of the Shah, I


was a school teacher,” Motlagh says with pride. “My husband was a leading chemical engineer who worked with sugar plants. His work took him all over Iran.” The Mot- laghs lived in Tehran before mov- ing to the smaller town of Hama- dan. Despite being forced out of her government job as a teacher, Mrs. Motlagh lived a peaceful life with her husband, raising their three children. Both Bahereh and her husband were actively involved in their local Baha’i community and were elected to administrative leadership roles on what is known as a local spiritual assembly. She beams as she tells me about her husband and their work. Motlagh says that At the


time of the Shah, Iranians would sometimes harass Baha’is. “They would burn Baha’i businesses, beat our children in school, put dirt on our doorsteps. They wanted to intimidate the Baha’is,” says Mot- lagh, her face no longer happy but still proud. “But they never could.” Whenever such attacks occurred, the Baha’i community would come closer together. Motlagh and her family were able to eke out a rela- tively peaceful living in Hamadan. In 1979, a palpable change


began to weigh on Iranians across the country. The Islamic Revolu- tion started; some found ease in the sweeping reform of the Aya- tollah’s regime, but the Baha’i community feared that they were becoming even bigger targets These fears became a reality


for the Motlaghs in July of 1979, when their home was raided by members of the Revolutionary Guard. “I remember they jumped down and came in from all sides of the house. Windows and doors, everywhere,” Motlagh recalls of that evening. The armed intruders gathered all the Baha’i books in the house before announcing that Mr. Motlagh was to be taken away. A seven-year-old Parnaz – now sit- ting across from me in Motlagh’s apartment – reacted to the inva- sion by clinging to her father and refusing to let him leave with the Revolutionary Guards. The assailants, perhaps


moved by the child, promised they would return her father the next day. Nine days and 100,000 toman


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