The Stoning of Soraya M.

A Story of Injustice in Iran

Freidoune Sahebjam, Richard Seaver

• Publisher: Arcade
• Year: 2011
• ISBN:
  9781628721058
• Topic: Ciencias sociales
• Subtopic: Estudios de género

Soraya M.'s husband, Ghorban-Ali, couldn't afford to marry another woman. Rather than returning Soraya's dowry, as custom required before taking a second wife, he plotted with four friends and a counterfeit mullah to dispose of her. Together, they accused Soraya of adultery. Her only crime was cooking for a friend's widowed husband. Exhausted by a lifetime of abuse and hardship, Soraya said nothing, and the makeshift tribunal took her silence as a confession of guilt. They sentenced her to death by stoning: a punishment prohibited by Islam but widely practiced. Day by day—sometimes minute by minute—Sahebjam deftly recounts these horrendous events, tracing Soraya's life with searing immediacy, from her arranged marriage and the births of her children to her husband's increasing cruelty and her horrifying execution, where, by tradition, her father, husband, and sons hurled the first stones. A stark look at the intersection between culture and justice, this is one woman's story, but it stands for the stories of thousands of women who suffered—and continue to suffer—the same fate. It is a story that must be told.

Don’t act like the hypocrite who thinks he can conceal his wiles by loudly quoting the Koran.

Hafez

1

IN SOUTHWESTERN IRAN, roughly thirty-five miles from the city of Kerman, lies the village of Kupayeh — whose name means “at the foot of the mountain.” Clinging to the base of austere mountains, the village is a little cluster of brick houses with thatched roofs. It is flanked on one side by an icy, rushing stream and, on the other, by a forest of beech, birch, and olive trees. Beyond stretch fields and meadows, dotted with a few grazing cows and sheep.

Kupayeh is not easily accessible. To get there, you have to take the only road, which is not blacktop; a road that zigzags upward, making several dozen hairpin turns that are as dusty as they are dangerous. Once a week, on market day, a battered old bus swings and sways up the road and arrives at Kupayeh in the morning. It brings a number of passengers, most of them peasants, whose merchandise is piled on top of the bus. They come to sell these wares or exchange them for other goods, which they will take back down to the valley and try to sell there.

It was in the village of Kupayeh that Soraya was born in 1951.

She had come into the world on the Shah’s wedding day and had been named after his bride, Princess Soraya. The whole country was celebrating the happy occasion.

Morteza Ramazani, who had married rather late in life, was duly proud of this gift from God. “She will be the most beautiful girl in the village,” he announced. “And I shall give her in marriage to the best young man in town. He will have to prove himself worthy.”

Shokat, the child’s mother, was a pious woman of fragile health. She had had her first child when she was thirteen and subsequently gave birth to four more children, two of whom died in infancy. After Soraya was born, a doctor came from Kerman to examine Shokat. He informed Morteza in no uncertain terms that another pregnancy might well prove fatal.

Whereupon Morteza took a sigheh, ¹ as the law stipulated, a second wife, who moved into the house and bore him four more children.

All lived together in harmony, but Shokat remained the preferred woman of the house. The concubine was assigned all the lowliest tasks and chores, which she carried out for many years without the slightest complaint. When Shokat’s illness paralyzed her, the two eldest sons and Soraya assumed responsibility for running the household. All three also had the advantage of knowing how to read and write, so they could read the Koran and the local posters to other members of the family. They had learned these skills at the village school. The village school did not open every day, for the schoolmaster was also the town potter, and when he had to oversee the firing of his pots, the children were free to play in the fields. It was on one of these school holidays that Soraya had her first encounter with Ghorban-Ali. She was five years old at the time, and he was a boy of twelve.

Ghorban-Ali had decided to make a kite. He had spent hours on end gluing together bits of wood and pieces of paper of many colors, but try as he might, the kite just wouldn’t fly. Either the wood would be too heavy, or the paper would rip under the force of the wind, or the glue wouldn’t stick, or the string would break. Eventually, Ghorban-Ali got the kite to fly. The great moment had finally arrived. Twenty or so children, ranging in age from five to fifteen, gathered in the meadow. They all held their breath, and the kite rose slowly and majestically heavenward. It was an occasion of great festivity. One by one, the children were each given the chance to fly the kite themselves. Now it was Soraya’s turn. Shyly, she ran across the meadow, the kite at the end of the long string. As she watched the crowd that was cheering her on, she stumbled on a stone and fell down. She let go of the kite, which soared high into the sky, then fell back toward the ground. When Soraya, whose knee was scratched and bleeding, painfully pulled herself to her feet, her little comrades had disappeared....

She ran all the way home and hid there.

Her mother bandaged her knee, and before long she went back outdoors. She had taken only a few steps when the children, all out of breath, began to scold and upbraid her: “Come and see what you’ve done.... You’re a dumbbell! We never want you to play with us again!”

The child had no idea how to defend herself.

“Come on,” Ghorban-Ali shouted at her, “come over here and see where you made the kite land.”

He grabbed the little girl by the wrist and dragged her toward the lower end of the village, the other children all following in their wake. The kite was perched atop a beech tree, so high up there was no way to get it down. The biggest ladder in Kupayeh was no higher than thirteen feet, and none of the poles they used to beat the trees when they picked nuts was long enough, either. It was impossible to climb the tree; its branches were much too frail to sustain the weight of even an adolescent. As for hugging and shaking the tree, how could they even consider that as a possible solution when its trunk was far too big around for a child to get a good grasp.

“You’ll have to build us another kite. And until you do, you can’t play with us any more.”

Thus did Ghorban-Ali proclaim his decision. It was seconded by all the other children, who threw handfuls of sand and gravel at Soraya. In response, she scrunched down her head as far as she could, and waited. Although she was sad and upset, she didn’t want to cry in front of her friends. She repressed a sob and closed her eyes tight. Then, when she could no longer hear any sound around her, she raised her head and saw that only her cousin Massoumeh had remained behind, sitting beside her.

“Don’t worry,” Massoumeh said. “I’ll help you make another one. Wait and see, it’ll be even more beautiful than that one.”

“I hate Ghorban-Ali, I hate him, I hate him. I never want to see him again as long as I live.” After this incident, Soraya’s life was uneventful for several years.

When she was ten, her parents took her down to the city to complete her education by becoming an apprentice at the home of the arbab, the wealthy landowner.

The children who apprenticed there were given food and lodging, but they received no salary. They worked fifteen hours a day and slept little, since even at night they were often awakened on one pretext or another.

The little girl did not like the arbab, this fat, unkempt, and arrogant man who frequently beat her. But what could you do when you were dealing with a man as powerful as he was, a man who always kept a gun in his car? She bowed her head, asked his forgiveness, and kissed the master’s hand. For three years she had to endure all the humiliations and vexations of an angry man and put up with his advances as soon as his wife was away. Each time it was the same. He summoned the girl to his room, undressed her slowly, said things to her she didn’t understand, and, when she was naked, he kissed her budding breasts as he masturbated. The child understood nothing, felt nothing, said nothing. As thanks, he would offer her some pistachios or dates, and at dawn she was back at work.

For three years she did not see her parents, but sometimes one of her brothers would come to pay her a visit. She was allowed to spend a quarter of an hour with him in the garden.

It was imperative for Soraya to remain a virgin until she was married, and the fat man knew it; otherwise the scandal would be so great that the arbab would have to indemnify the child’s father. At that time, long before the revolution, the authorities were uncompromising when it came to any kind of sexual debauchery.

The two sons of the landowner poked fun at Soraya, pinched her breast, and let their hands roam over her buttocks, but they went no further, since they knew she belonged to their father. One day one of the boys was roundly slapped when he laid a hand on the girl while his father was in the room. Terrified, Soraya ran out of the room and hid in the cellar.

A week later, she returned home to Kupayeh for good.

By the time she came back to Kupayeh, Soraya was almost a young woman: she was thirteen, and it was decided that she should be given in marriage to Ghorban-Ali, who was twenty, in exchange for several head of cattle, a plot of land, and several rugs.

When Ghorban-Ali saw Soraya again, he didn’t recognize her. That day he knew for the first time what it was to feel like a man. He had never had the slightest experience with a woman. First, because there were no suitable women in the village; second, because he had never been to the city; and finally, because even if he had somehow managed to make it to the city, he never had enough money in his pocket to go to a whorehouse in Kerman anyway. While there were plenty of girls in the village, they were either too young, or they had no dowry, or he found them too ugly.

Each time the fat man arrived in the village for one of his periodic visits, the entire community gathered on the town square to welcome the master. He was the man who owned all the houses, all the fields and meadows, and, above all, the water of the rushing stream, and who rented his land to the peasants. The inhabitants came up to him and kissed his hands or feet as a sign of allegiance, then begged the Omnipotent to protect the arbab and his family from illness, divine anger, or any possible misfortune that might befall them. And each villager brought a suitcase, a package, a samovar, or provisions of one sort or another to the big house situated a short distance away. That same evening other children were introduced to him.

The marriage of Soraya to Ghorban-Ali took place shortly after his return from Kerman, in the autumn of 1964. For the occasion, a mullah came up to the village, as did a company of strolling musicians.

The villagers had dressed in their best finery; the men were all clean-shaven; the women, decked out in glittering jewelry. At dusk a roaring fire was lit on the main square, where the mullah performed the ceremony. The arbab and his family were comfortably ensconced on a profusion of rugs and cushions. At nightfall, the festivities began.

Soraya remained off to one side, surrounded by the women of the village. The most active of the women was without question Soraya’s Aunt Zahra, who wanted the ceremony to be perfect. She had shown endless ingenuity in making up the young woman: she had plucked her eyebrows, reddened her lips and cheeks, colored her hair with a touch of henna, put mascara on her eyelashes and kohl around her eyes; she had affixed to her forehead a gold-and-turquoise pendant. Then she had painted Soraya’s fingernails, and offered her her most beautiful chador, woven of silk and silver, because she wanted her niece to be the most beautiful bride the village had ever seen.

As tradition required, Aunt Zahra covered the young bride’s face with a veil, which she wore throughout the ceremony, so that no one would see her before the marriage was consummated.

Meanwhile, the festivities were in full swing. Three sheep had been slaughtered, then smeared with oil and impaled on spits that were now turning slowly above the fire that sent showers of sparks into the night sky. The musicians were playing, and the men, one after another, rose and danced in slow circular movements. The women, off to one side, clapped their hands joyously. The arbab was served his food on plates, but in keeping with the villagers’ customs, he ate the lamb and rice with his hands. The singing and dancing lasted late into the night. At the first light of dawn, the fire was extinguished and all the villagers repaired to their houses to sleep. For the last time, the two betrothed slept in their parents’ houses. The next day the mullah joined the young couple in marriage in the town hall, in the presence of the kadkhoda.

Three times the mullah asked the young man if he wanted to take Soraya to be his wife. Twice, Ghorban-Ali made no response. The third time, he said yes. The same question was asked three times of the young woman. She, too, acquiesced the third time.

They kissed the Koran that was offered to them; they both signed the marriage registry; and the mullah read the marriage act. In addition to the dowry that Soraya brought with her from her parents, the arbab had insisted on offering his former domestic a beautiful samovar, a rug, an oil lamp, and a small amount of money.

As for Ghorban-Ali, aside from a necklace that his mother had given him, a khorsi for the long winter evenings, and a worn antique rug, what he essentially brought to the marriage was a commitment to work and to support his wife and his future family.

That evening, under the supervision of Soraya’s Aunt Zahra, the women carefully prepared the bride for the marriage night. She was washed, totally depilated, and perfumed. When her husband was alone with her at last, she said nothing to him. He extinguished the only lamp in the house, threw himself upon her, and forcefully penetrated her.

Ten months later Hussein-Ali was born, followed by a stillborn child and, two years later, Hassan-Ali. Next she gave birth to two girls, Maryam and Leila, then another child who was stillborn, and more children. Her last child, little Khojasteh, was born during the year of the revolution. In the space of fourteen years, Soraya gave birth to nine children, including the two who died at birth.

Like his father before him, Ghorban-Ali was naturally lazy, but this did not mean he was not always on the lookout for some dubious projects and easy profits. Anything that was on the fringes of legality interested him. He was a bit of a poacher, and a petty thief whenever the occasion presented itself. It was the Islamic revolution, and the changes it brought about in his village, that gave him the chance to make himself important.

Once a month he took the bus into the city for reasons of business. What business? Soraya never really knew, but each time he came back he had a few hundred rials in his pocket, just enough to provide his family with the bare necessities.

Little by little Ghorban-Ali abandoned his wife. In the village, rumor had it that he was having an affair in the city with a divorced woman whose brother was in constant contact with the black marketers of Zahedan. People spoke of precious jewels, of American cigarettes, of alcohol, and even of drugs. The police had come up to the village from Kerman to question first the mayor — the kadkhoda — then Ghorban-Ali, but they had left empty-handed. A man had been killed down in the valley, in the course of some brawl, and Soraya’s husband was known to have been in the general vicinity at the time. He was ordered not to show his face in the city again. From then on he became taciturn, more violent, and continually beat his wife and his children. Once Soraya showed up at her mother’s house, her face badly bloodied, carrying her youngest child in her arms. For a week she refused to return home. It was Zahra who went over to her house and cooked and cleaned for the angry husband, until finally Ghorban-Ali repented and begged his father-in-law’s forgiveness.

The years had tak...