Dispatches International
Soon after, she moved to Toronto where she established herself in a small basement apartment in the west end. She began taking English classes while looking for work. “People told me to go on welfare but I could never do that,” she says with pride. “Baha’is see work as a form of worship.” So work she did, stuffing letters for an investment firm. Eventually, Mavaddat
worked her way up through the company learning the ropes of accounting from Seneca College. “Things were very good for me.” Despite her comfort and
liberty in Canada, Mavaddat felt a higher calling. She felt that as a survivor of the ordeals faced by Iranian Baha’is it was her duty to serve the faith. She accepted a position that would bring her life full circle at the Universal House of Justice in Haifa. It was her job to liaise with media and monitor the situation of the Baha’is still in Iran.
That was in the 1990’s.
Since then, Mavaddat has returned to Toronto where she continues to be actively involved in the Baha’i community. Her earnest apartment shows few signs of the turmoil of her life, or the strength she has used to bring herself to this place. A place where she can speak with an aunt now living in Luxembourg on the phone. A place where walls are ornamented with photographs from her homeland. A place where she can sit at a table by the win- dow and recall her struggles.
92 More than three decades
have passed since the Islamic Revolution. Since the reelection of President Mahmoud Ahmadine- jad last June, the government has cracked down on what it perceives as a wide range of threats – from the press, to opposition parties, to students protesting in city streets, to religious minorities. Some protests have been is-
sued by organizations and institu- tions like the United Nations: “... increasing efforts to identify, mon- itor and arbitrarily detain Baha’is, preventing members of the Baha’i faith from attending university, and from sustaining themselves economically...” Only this, while seven leaders of the National Spiritual Assembly of the Baha’is of Iran are beginning their trials at the Evin Prison – where Mehri Mavaddat’s husband was tried and executed.
What will come next for the
Baha’is of Iran? The stories of Ba- hereh Motlagh, Donna Hakimian, and Mehri Mavaddat are anecdotal histories. But there is more of the same on the horizon for this reli- gious minority, thus the stories of these women might also be fore- casts. With that in mind, the best hope of Baha’is around the world may be hoping itself. In the words of their founder and spiritual lead- er Bahá’u’lláh: “Let each morn be better than its eve and each mor- row richer than its yesterday.”
Email Dylan Franks
dylan.franks@
dispatchesinternational.org
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