If he could he would take a flight and go there, with the other women, on the streets of Tehran, to challenge the power of the ayatollahs , arrest, whipping, death. If he could. But it can't.

Mahsa Rahmani Noble , 49, the same name as the young woman who started the protest that is shaking Iran with her death, is the great-granddaughter of Soraya, the beautiful - disowned - wife of the Shah of Persia Reza Pahlavi. If she comes back she ends up in the cell, well she goes .

Then watch the videos, and cry. With a sense of guilt that has distant roots, in her life as a child who could not understand the condition of women in her country after the 1979 revolution.
Blacklisted, at the age of fifteen she fled with her family, father and brother to Turkey, she with her mother and sisters to Cyprus, separated for a year, before finding herself in the United States in 1989. And now, in girls who defy power, she sees herself too .

“I am heartbroken for the women of my country. I lived that life. I cry when I watch the videos of the courage of those women and the cruelty of the government against them. I wish I could be there and fight alongside them . I go to bed every night with a heavy heart and a lot of guilt ».

Writer

Mahsa Rahmani Noble speaks on the phone from Rome where she moved to await the start of the shooting of the film about Soraya , based on her first book: she deals with international business consultancy but she is also a writer. She has already been in Italy, in Milan, between 1998 and 2001, and at that time she tried to meet her great-aunt in Paris who had lived in exile after the divorce in 1958.

"After months of contacts I had finally succeeded but when the time came to fix the appointment she died ." So he reconstructed Soraya's story through close friendships. "At the time when she was empress, from 1951 to 1958, Iran was known as a modern and far-sighted society: some social rights were still lacking for women who then, with the Iran of the mullahs, lost everything, forcefully and brutality".

The chronicle

And here is a historical novel that brings back to current events, to the news of these days. " Women have nothing more to lose, better to fight and risk their lives than to continue living in those conditions ." It is not a question of mandatory veil, not only. «Women in Iran can study and work but cannot do anything without the permission of their father or husband ; if a woman in Iran is forcibly taken and raped she must prove it otherwise she will be executed as an adulteress; if a woman in Iran, tired of domestic violence, asks for a divorce, she loses everything, starting with the children who are immediately placed in the custody of their father; women cannot go to a hotel, travel alone or have a free social life ». Mahsa Rahmani Noble knows that the young women who parade through the streets of Tehran have men by their side . "It is all true what we see, thanks to social media, the West finally has before its eyes without mediation the dramatic situation that is experienced in Iran. Men are no longer willing to sacrifice the lives of their wives, sisters and daughters to the state because a lock of hair comes out of the veil ».

The haircut as a sign of mourning in favor of the camera is welcome but it also takes more. "Being seen on TV and making proclamations is not enough, concrete help is needed from Western states , support that is not necessarily violent for a movement that is peaceful: women and men put their lives in front of arms, arrests, stoning". Why, is there still stoning? Mahsa Rahmani Noble's voice is a whisper: "Yes." But the answer to the next question (If the current revolution were to hit the target, would it return to Iran?) Comes with a smile: «Now, of course. I would take my children to see my country ». Our wish comes from the heart.

Maria Francesca Chiappe

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