Letters to Narges Mohammadi
Hundreds of supporters and writers around the world wrote messages in solidarity with writer and PEN/Barbey Freedom to Write Award honoree Narges Mohammadi when she was announced as the 2023 Nobel Peace Prize laureate. These messages were shared with her family—her husband Taghi Rahmani and two children Ali and Kiana—in December 2023 at the Nobel Peace Ceremony in Oslo:
Margaret Atwood
As writers, we rely on one another’s insight, talent, and commitment to help us understand what is going on in the world, reflect, engage, and imagine what life is like for other people. That is why writers are so often the targets of repression: they tell truths that many in power would like to conceal. Your work, your courage, and your dedication are an amazing example. You have a great many admirers and well-wishers. In hope,
Margaret
Margaret Atwood is an award-winning author of more than 40 books of fiction, poetry, and critical essays including The Handmaid’s Tale and, published most recently, Old Babes in the Woods. She served as the first president of PEN Canada.
Azar Nafisi
Dear Narges,
We haven’t met in person, but I have met you in my heart. My heart breaks thinking about all the physical and psychological torture you, and other political prisoners, have been suffering through in the Islamic Republic’s jails.
You and I both know that the violence the regime inflicts upon those who resist it is not out of strength, but out of weakness and fear. The Islamic regime is afraid of you and other courageous Iranian women, from Mahsa to Armita and beyond, who have been threatened, harassed, jailed, tortured, and even killed, and still refuse to give in to the regime. For you and for them, lack of freedom is a kind of death.
Which is why freedom for Iranian women has become synonymous with freedom for Iran and freedom from totalitarian regimes around the world. Your struggle represents this strive for freedom. Against silence, it represents voice; against despair, it represents hope; against falsehood, it represents the truth; and against death, it represents life, actualizing the words: woman, life, freedom.
Azar Nafisi is an award-winning author and professor of English literature. Her books include the best-selling book Reading Lolita in Tehran and, most recently, Read Dangerously.
Kylie Moore-Gilbert
Dearest Narges jan,
Your courage is exemplary, and your voice has a mighty resonance well beyond your prison walls. We hear you, and we are with you.
Love, Kylie
Kylie Moore-Gilbert is a political scientist and the author of Uncaged Sky, her memoir on the 804 days she was unjustly imprisoned in Iran.
Emma Thompson
Most beloved and admired Narges
I wish I were there to deliver your profoundly deserved and inspiring Nobel prize.
But I am with you in spirit – always and forever and I imagine the day when we will meet and share our ideas, our politics and our love for the women of the world.
Be well and with my deepest respect and love.
Emma Thompson is an award-winning screenwriter and actor. She has written several screenplays including Sense and Sensibility and has acted in film, television, and stage productions.
Fariba Adelkhah
Dearest Narges jan,
The fight for women, life, and freedom; the fight against discrimination and segregation; and the defense of justice can no longer be led from a jail cell, but must take place alongside those crying with all their might in the streets. Your health is a priority and your freedom is non-negotiable.
Fariba Adelkhah is an anthropologist and the author of Prisonnière à Téhéran (Prisoner in Tehran), a book on her four years of unjust imprisonment in Iran.
More messages in solidarity
Your extraordinary bravery leaves me in awe. People all around the world are learning about your resistance to repression and being inspired. We all have so much to learn from you. It seems so inadequate to say ‘thank you’! But we all need to thank you as you lead the fight for a better world.
You have raised the banner of free speech, and for your actions have been punished severely. I salute your courage and join the thousands, perhaps millions of writers and poets and everyday people who value the struggle you have been going through. I will remain a steadfast supporter calling for your release. Stay strong, and know you are never alone.
Dear Narges Mohammadi, All over the world, we poets and writers of PEN (and countless others!), we who are lovers of peace, justice, and women’s rights, are advocating for you and wishing you and your family courage. Be well and safe, and, as the late great peace activist and Buddhist teacher, Thich Nhat Hanh, would offer: May you be blessed to notice “what’s not wrong in the world,” co-existing in each moment with cruelty and horror, so as not to drown in the tears of compassion. Peace and poems.