Blinding as a Weapon (53): “Beauty Lies in Differences”

Apart from having phone conversations with Mersedeh and getting to know her daughter Rosa, perhaps the most private moments that Mersedeh shared with us were when, after months of anxious waiting in Turkey, this strong woman and lonely mother hugged me upon landing at Munich Airport. We walked together to the clinic of Professor Amir Mobarez Parasta, an eye surgeon and a founder of the human rights organization Munich Circle, for her first eye examination.

From the beginning, she called her injured eye a “badge of honor” on her Instagram page.

On October 15, 2022, Shahinkar and her mother joined other protesters in Tehran’s Sattar Khan Street and chanted slogans against the Islamic Republic. It was 7:30 p.m. when security forces, on foot and riding motorcycles, attacked the crowd. First, they targeted the legs of Mersedeh and her mother. And when she screamed “Don’t fire, it’s my mother!” an agent shot her in the eye with a paintball gun.

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A year later, while riding the Munich metro on our way to Dr. Parasta’s clinic, we chatted, not about what she had gone through but about what to expect when a trusted eye surgeon will tell her about the fate of her injured eye.

Mersedeh was consumed by anxiety but, in all the words she used, she tried to be mindful of Rosa, the young, passionate and hopeful girl who, for months now, had become her mother's nurse and companion instead of a child.

Rosa's worried and curious eyes did not leave her mother’s face even for a moment. We were all worried. That injured eye, which drew attention to itself, had lost some color, and we did not know what Mersedeh and Rosa could expect when we arrived at the clinic.

There, Rosa sat in the waiting room. Before the first examination by Dr. Parasta, the surgeon's assistant took pictures of Mersedeh’s eyes. When Mersedeh rose from behind the machine, none of us expected that months of suppressed anger and frustration would suddenly overflow: "I am really messed up. After six months (the time it took her to come to Germany from Turkey) everything happened again. My family was always with me during those times, but they are not here now. Now, I understand again that the situation is very bad. I don’t know. I have to take good care of my other eye to keep it."

Tears were flowing from Mersedeh’s eyes the whole time she was speaking. I asked her what image she had in her mind at that moment. “I’m just saying ‘God damn them,’ that is all,” she said with a lump in her throat. “I don’t know how they are going to pay for what they’ve done to me and many others. We were living our lives and we were healthy.”

Before the protests, people knew Mersedeh through her videos on Instagram: a woman who exercised at home with her small daughter. Later, when she worked with IranWire on a series of training videos, she said: “Daily exercise boosts women's self-esteem and teaches them that their own well-being should be their top priority. Women should not get lost in the demands of everyday life and neglect themselves. Engaging in consistent daily exercise strengthens this mindset.”

If you were in constant communication with Mersedeh, you would feel her self-esteem and strong spirit at every moment. Each time news emerged that another injured protester had reached Munich, I called and told her: “You can be like a sister to her. Take care of her!” And Mersedeh, a lonely mother, did become the elder sister of many of them.

It was the same in Iran. Mersedeh was one of the first women who, after sustaining an eye injury, published on her Instagram page the truth about this crime committed by the Islamic Republic and later gathered the victims in the groups she created on social media. She fostered sympathy and empathy among them and increased their power exponentially.

Over 44 years of criminal rule, the Islamic Republic has shown that it cannot tolerate the truth and a powerful society, so they raided Mersedeh’s house several times, disrupted her life and forced her to go into exile in order to have a normal life.

Her days and nights of waiting in Turkey were full of anxiety but she endured the pressure. When she sent me the picture of the German humanitarian visa she had received, she was inundated with tears and anger but she vowed to continue the fight.

Now many people know Mersedeh. The media, not only the Persian-language outlets, have many times told the story of what she had gone through and the moment when her eye was torn apart. Mersedeh has used every opportunity to tell the world about the crime committed against her and others, including protesters and bystanders.

Mersedeh’s dream, however, has never left her: She wants to have a gym to empower women. She has recently ordered 20-kilogram weights and returned to exercising.

More than a year after Mersedeh’s eye was targeted by security forces, we are sitting face to face in Munich. It's night and Rosa, sitting next to us, ordered ice cream. She is singing Bella Ciao in Persian under her breath and says loudly: "I'm going to be a singer!"

We have returned from Dr. Parasta’s clinic. We stir our drinks. Mersedeh says that it is the “eye festival." The doctor diagnosed that there is no need to remove the injured eyeball, and Mersedeh’s healthy eye is as strong as herself and can see perfectly.

I gaze into her injured eye and Mersedeh says: “If I go back, I'll do it all over again. Every morning, when I look in the mirror, I see myself and feel the difference in my face. I always say that beauty lies in differences, that beauty lies in courage."