Iranian Reader

In response to Nazy Kaviani's Iran: A Reflection:

So what’s with this being shot in the heart?

Neda gets shot in the heart and so we are told does Sohrab. Being shot in the heart is a bloody affair. We watched how the explosion of arteries squirts the blood out of every orifice. We watched it squirt out of Neda’s mouth, then nose. Was it also coming out of the eyes too or did it just spread over her face? I watched that clip a couple of times and I noticed that I actually noticed all kinds of details that first time that I missed in subsequent viewings. And Sohrab – where did the blood squirt out of his body? Was there a picture of his body that I missed? It squirted out of his mother though. I couldn’t bear to watch the video of her breaking down at the burial. I saw her bloody explosion in my mind.

Last I wrote here was about Ghaza. Then this happened in Iran and I didn’t know what to say. I kept reading all the motherly things my fellow Iranian mothers said about how they felt about the kids getting shot in the streets in Tehran. None of it moved me. I know how they feel but nothing they said moved me. I read the comments people wrote about how beautiful and powerful their descriptions were. I wrote a couple of comments myself. But I was lying. Nothing they said even remotely touched me.

When they showed me my son for the first time after yanking him out of me after a C section I felt nothing. I was drugged of course. I looked at him and I saw every last detail: the white knuckles, the big toes, the curl of the eyelashes. But I felt nothing – only this: I felt that someone was holding my heart in their hands, showing me. What would you feel if someone was holding your heart in their hands in front of your face? Nothing. You’re supposed to have emotions kicked up in you at the site of your newborn, but are you supposed to feel sentimental about an internal organ, your heart? Only your mind gets boggled. It is kind of dizzying.

And of course I’m staying up awake a lot. It is 3:29 in the morning now. I took drugs again. I don’t feel that I’m shot in the heart; I want to be shot in the heart. Let the blood drain out of me and turn my heart into the piece of tough muscle that it is. Let this be over. Let these thirty years be over. Let everything else that has nothing to do with these thirty years be over. These motherfuckers shot us in the heart a long time ago. And it’s not just these motherfuckers only. It’s motherfucking life. Let’s get it over with. Let the blood run. It drains out of you pretty fast. Let this be over. I hope I get shot in the heart.