Mooness Joon

 Mooness joon & Mahdokht Sanati (my mother) circa 1940

Mooness Joon

My great grand mother was called Mooness joon. If you were to translate her name from Persian to English, it would be the perfect companion, and that she was! Our lives overlapped long enough for us to play cards, go for walks and on occasion, provided me with a precious glimpse into her life.

Mooness joon was mostly quiet and still. She led a very simple life. I discovered one day as we were casually talking about belongings that she owned exactly four dresses. I didn’t believe her so she dared me to count for myself. I ran to her closet and opened the door. There were in fact only two dresses on the hangers. Over my shoulder, I heard her say, “I am wearing one. The fancy one on the right is my dress for ‘mehmooni’ (party dress) and the other one is what I will be wearing tomorrow. Look down, the fourth one is in the laundry basket.” In her days, all dresses were hand made to order, so four in fact was bordering on affluent! Mooness joon’s total comfort in the simplicity of her wardrobe astounded me. How could four dresses be sufficient? I learned that they were more than enough for her. If needed, she was happy to part with one.

Much of our interaction centered on playing Pasur and backgammon, but slowly I began to pry. I must have been seven or eight when I learned that Mooness joon was eighty years old. ‘Eeeeighty yeeears old?’ That sounded like an eternity to me. With a smile on her face she repeated my exaggerated way of saying her age and quietly chuckled. I asked her if she had any memories that she could share. To my complete surprise, she opted to tell me about how she was violated by a gendarme (an armed police officer). What? How? She had a habit of locking her fingers together and rotating her thumbs around each other at a gentle pace. Taking a deep breath, she told me that Reza Shah (the ruling monarch of Iran from 1925-1941) wanted to modernize our country, and one of the first steps was to liberate women. I asked how women’s liberation was introduced. She told me that starting in 1936, the wearing of the chador in all public arenas excluding the mosques was banned. (The chador is a cloak or fabric worn over clothing, covering the entire body, but not the face). If any women continued to wear the chador, the gendarmes were tasked to remove the covering by any force necessary. Mooness joon was the gentlest person I knew and I could not imagine her standing her ground to keep her right to continue wearing her veil. She told me that the chador was like a second skin to her, and up to this point she had only taken it off within the confines of her home, or at indoor family gatherings. She reminded me how the wooden house doors used to have two distinctly different shaped knockers: one for men and another for women. If the knocking sound were from the assigned male knocker, all women would immediately run to wear their chador so they could be appropriately covered for the male visitor.

On this day, while walking in a public square, Mooness joon who must have been in her mid-forties crossed paths with a gendarme riding on a horse. He yelled at her to remove her chador and she refused. He placed his baton under her chador and forcefully ripped it off. For her, this was an assault. For her, he had not just removed her outer covering but rendered her naked, a public humiliation that traumatized her all these many decades later.

In retrospect, I should share the incredible contrast between Mooness joon and her stepdaughter, Sediqhe Dowlatabadi. Forty years later, while Mooness joon was still shell-shocked by having her chador ripped off, in contrast, Sediqhe was among the first to step out without a veil in 1936. Considered one of the pioneers of the Persian Women’s Movement. Sediqhe is known as the first female journalist. She attended the Sorbonne and was the founder of the first feminist magazine in Isfahan called ‘Zaban-e Zanan’ (translation: language of women). Sediqhe also started a school. It is remarkable to explore how these two women came to live under the same roof. The person that connected them was Sediqhe’s father. On the one hand, he was forward thinking enough to insist that his daughter be educated just like his sons. On the other hand, following the traditions of the time, when he was widowed, he took a second wife, a child bride who was none other than Mooness joon. She entered this household at age nine and was younger than Sediqhe. In fact, the story goes that Mooness joon had her first child before she experienced having a period which may seem biologically impossible but not so ~ since the age difference between my great grand mother and her first child was only twelve years.

As I learned about Mooness joon’s brutal childhood, it became more clear to me why she was so quiet and still. Imagine having two daughters when you are still a child yourself. I only experienced unconditional warmth and love from her. I remember as I was saying goodbye to her prior to being sent to a boarding school she whispered in my ears, ‘Make Iran proud by your actions.’ I didn’t know it at the time, but those were her last words to me. They have been etched in my mind and continue to resonate with me.

By sharing Mooness joon’s story, I hope I have been able to reflect how she didn’t have a choice in being a child bride, but she fought to keep her veil. She resented the banning of the chador because once again she was forced to take actions against her will. The true liberation of women cannot be dictated. It has to be inclusive and evolve organically. Ultimately, it has to be a woman’s choice to do exactly as she wants with her body. Mooness joon’s story in some ways echoes what happened in our country. After decades when Iran was considered highly progressive and played a very prominent role in the Middle East’s socio-economic and political scene, in 1979 the country abruptly disengaged from its perceived trajectory. Majority of Iranians chose to shed the forced Western values by the Pahlavi family and embrace Islam. Once again, no one could be permanently forced into a set of values that were foreign to them and labeled second-class because they wanted to remain true to their own roots.

However, just as Mooness joon and Sediqeh Dowlatabadi lived comfortably under the same roof, there could have been more tolerance and opportunity for plurality and the sharing of all sides of the spectrum ~ both during the Pahlavi era and now. Unfortunately openness and acceptance of the ‘other’ is a lesson yet to be learned.

Male & Female Door Knockers