Arvidnelson.com The online home of Arvid Nelson, writer of Rex Mundi & Zero Killer

Letters from Shiraz

I'm at the tail end of the yearly Bahá'í fast. Nil by mouth from dawn ’til dusk, March 2nd to March 20th. I've actually come to look forward to the fast; I learn something new every year, and it's a profound way to reflect on things.

I'm also doing a comic book project with a talented Bahá'í artist and board game designer, Aaron Kreader. I'm doing the writing, Aaron is doing the hard part. [edit: fixed the url to Aaron's site!]

We're trying to raise awareness of the situation Bahá'ís in Iran face. The Bahá'í Faith was founded in Iran, but you know what they say about prophets and the land of their birth. Bahá'ís have been pretty badly mistreated ever since the early days of the Faith (the mid-1800s), and things only deteriorated after the 1979 revolution.

The comic we're putting together focuses on three Bahá'ís who were thrown into prison for four years in 2007; they were accused of "teaching the Bahá'í Faith" when in reality all they were doing was offering free tutoring sessions to underprivileged kids in a poor suburb outside the Iranian city of Shiraz -- you can read all about it here.

I hunted around for images of Iranian security forces, for reference for Aaron. I was surprised at how unsettling it was. I mean: I'm a tough guy. I like MMA and heavy metal music. But there's something about unstaged, documentary evidence of human brutality that's really upsetting. There's one particular image I can't get out of my mind:

I don't know who this poor person, is, but I cannot erase the look of terror on his face from my mind. What does the future hold for him? Torture, indefinite imprisonment... maybe even worse. And what could he possibly have done? He's not a big guy, after all. I really hate it when big people physically impose their will on smaller people, it just makes me sick.

The person in this photo probably isn't a Bahá'í, but that's of course beside the point -- the struggle for greater freedom and human rights in Iran is the struggle of the Bahá'ís in Iran, and the struggle of the Bahá'ís is the struggle for human rights.

So wherever you are now, my brother, I am praying for your safety and happiness. You deserve a whole lot better than it seems like you're being treated in the photo.

And thank you, Saman Aghvami, for taking the photo in the first place. You've got a lot of courage, brother.

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