Blinding As A Weapon (15): Zoha Mousavi “Went Blind So That Others Can See”

As IranWire has reported, hundreds of Iranians have sustained severe eye injuries after being hit by pellets, tear gas cannisters, paintball bullets or other projectiles used by security forces amid a bloody crackdown on mainly peaceful demonstrations. Doctors say that, as of now, at least 580 protesters have lost one or both eyes in Tehran and in Kurdistan alone. But the actual numbers across the country are much higher.

The report concluded that such actions by the security forces could constitute a “crime against humanity,” as defined by Article 7 of the Rome Statute.

In this series of reports, IranWire presents the victims’ stories told in their own words. Some have posted their stories, along with their names and pictures, on social media. Others, whose real names shall not be disclosed to protect their safety, have told their stories to IranWire. IranWire can make their identities and medical situations available to international legal authorities.

This is the story of Zoha Mousavi, a 25-year-old woman who was one of the first to publicly reveal this crime by the Islamic Republic.

“The eyes are not only to see but sometimes to be heard as well” and “We went blind so that others can see are the two sentences that grab your attention when you open her Instagram page.

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Zoha Mousavi is from the southern city of Ahvaz, in Khuzestan province, but she lives in the central city of Isfahan.

Images shares on social media clearly show the high level of violence used by the security forces to crack down on protesters who had gathered in Isfahan on October 2, 2022, shouting “Woman, Life Freedom.”

Mousavi was shot in the temple and lost her left eye as a result.

The incident happened in the early weeks of nationwide protests triggered by the September death of Mahsa Amini in the custody of morality police.

Treatment has failed to restore Mousavi’s eyesight. She has returned to her everyday life, but it is no longer a normal life.

Two weeks ago, an Instagram follower asked Mousavi, “Your eye or freedom?” and Zoha replied, “Difficult question…but the best feeling in life is to feel free…We pay its price to gain freedom. So, it is worth it.”

20 Minutes of Hell

In a story she posted on Instagram on February 21, Mousavi recalled the night when she had to go from hospital to hospital for tests and find one that had the required equipment. She wrote that, besides the pellet in the eye, another pellet had lodged inside her head.

Mousavi was sent to the operating room without any anesthetics: “They tied me to the bed, the doctor took the scalpel and started cutting deep into my eye. I screamed so loud from the excruciating pain that the whole hospital came to the door of the operating room. Because of the pain I lifted myself from the bed and then slapped myself down again…Suddenly the doctor who spoke with an Isfahani accent turned and said, ‘This scalpel is blunt. It cannot cut easily.’ I cried, ‘For God’s sake, give him a sharp one.’ It lasted 20 minutes.”

 “I’m from the Tribe of Light”

By looking at Mousavi’s postings we come to know a young woman who, before the night when she was shot, was a tattoo artist and a beautician. She was joyful, loved driving cars and listened to music popular among generation Z.

Like many other victims who have lost their eyes during protests, Mousavi lost her job. But she writes more about hope than the pain she is suffering. “I am from the tribe of light. I shall not remain dark,” she wrote on Instagram.

Like many others of her generation, Mousavi likes to record every moment in her life on social media, like her first picture without an eyepatch or the time that she had to spend in the waiting room of the eye doctor on Valentine’s Day.

“There is no hero…Your savior lies within you,” she once wrote.

No Time for Mourning

“The most difficult moment is when you forget what has happened but suddenly you remember it,” she also said. “For a while now it’s been difficult for me to sit behind the wheel. Yesterday I noticed that my glasses were dirty. I took off my glasses to clean them and I cleaned the glass over the injured eye…I had forgotten about it.”

But Mousavi is slowly learning to live a new life. She is driving again, has removed her eye shield and posts pictures of her blind eye. She says she has accepted the fact that the treatment might take longer than expected. “You not only cannot stop me but you have made me stronger,” she tells the shooter.

Mousavi has turned from being a woman who posted funny videos to a woman who considers fighting as being part of life. When a follower asked her, “We are unhappy for you. Why don’t we show a sign of unhappiness in your face?” she answered, “You want me to show my unhappiness so that they would see my weakness?...It’s not time for mourning.”

And when someone accused her of “normalizing” what had happened to her, she wrote: “You can rest assured that the only people for whom it is not going to be normal are me and people like me…I only wanted to show that you can hope for life and remain energetic even in the darkest and the most difficult moments in your life.”

“I miss my beautiful eye”

Like many other women, Mousavi liked to be admired for her looks, especially for her eyes: “In the past, anybody who wanted to compliment me said, ‘What beautiful eyes you have’…I miss my beautiful eye.”

Four months after she was shot, she wrote, “This should not have happened…In this prime of our lives, we deserved a more delightful life…We did not deserve to experience, to see and to hear many of these things.”

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A post shared by ✨ضُحا✨ (@zohamosavii)

Mousavi posted the first picture of herself in summer 2019. On the right side of the picture, her eye is gazing at the viewer, but the left side is a burnt silhouette with a hole where the eye should be. “It seems you had a premonition,” wrote a visitor to her page.

Nevertheless, the young woman insists that this crime must not be forgotten. “One day, history will say what our eyes did,” she wrote.