Tala Raassi is a fashion designer currently residing in USA. She has an interesting story of being at the receiving end of 40 lashes at the age of 16 and in Iran for attending a party. Now, she has taken that brutality and fighting it through her designs. More power to her. here is her website darbedar.net.
and here is her story from msn.com
There’s a memory that has defined my life: I’m standing in line in a long, dark hallway, handcuffed to a friend, while listening to the horrifying sound of two other friends screaming out in pain. I’m in a jail in Iran’s capital, Tehran, and I’m about to be served my punishment: 40 lashes. My friends emerge from a room down the hall, tears streaming down their faces and blood staining the backs of their shirts. I can barely breathe as I wait for the guards to call my name. Finally, it’s my turn. My friend and I, still cuffed, enter the torture room together.
Two expressionless, middle-aged female guards, each dressed in a chador, or long black robe, remove our cuffs, then instruct us to lie facedown on a pair of bare mattresses. We will be lashed on our backs. The guards grab two black leather whips and dip them in water, to make the lashes sting. I turn my head and see them raise the whips high in the air, then I squeeze my eyes tight, terrified.
The first of 40 lashes comes down hard across my back. I feel a shock of searing pain. I’m wearing a cotton T-shirt, which you’d think would be preferable to wearing nothing at all, but I soon learn that it’s actually worse. As the lashes come down one after another, the T-shirt starts to stick to the cuts on my back; the whip pulls the shirt away from the welts after each lashing, intensifying the pain. I keep thinking, I can’t believe this is happening to me. I’m a good student; I come from a great family. I’m not a criminal.
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