“I am not your honour. Do not seek it in me.”

By S.E, Iranian ExMuslim

“To my dear parents and siblings, I am not your honour. Do not seek it in me.
Your honour does not lie between my legs. Your honour resides within you alone. I once wished to ask you to let me live, but now I no longer need your permission. You used to bury female infants under the ground, and now you bury us alive—giving us just enough oxygen to exist. Somehow, I managed to find my own oxygen, enough to breathe and eventually leave.
Let my existence be a lesson to you, though I know you will never learn. I know that deep down, you wish you had been harder on me. You wish you had never allowed me to study or work. You wish you had locked me up. But you left the door unlocked, and when you weren’t looking, I left.
Yes, I brought you shame. But I brought myself pride. Do you know how terrified I was? Even now, I can hardly believe I ran away. I had always dreamed of escaping. You never made me feel safe. I gathered every ounce of strength I had to leave. I am not a coward for running—for facing you means death, and I wanted to live.”

These words have stayed with me, a declaration of freedom from a life I never chose. For years, I lived in fear, held hostage by my family’s expectations and the suffocating weight of their so-called honour. But one day, I made the hardest decision of my life. I left.

This is my story—a journey of survival and resilience amidst a world where my voice and choices were never my own.

I was born in the gulf area, the daughter of Iranian expatriates. From the moment I became aware of the world around me, I was taught that my existence as a girl came with rules—rules that I had no say in, but was expected to follow without question.
My family was deeply religious, devoted Shia Muslims with a “Seyed” lineage—a status that only heightened their expectations of me and my sisters. At the age of eight, I began practising wearing the hijab. By nine, it was no longer a choice.

My mother told me stories designed to instil fear: “If even one strand of your hair shows, you will hang in hell, burning from that strand of hair,” she said.

I believed her. How could I not? She was my mother, and this was the world I knew. I lived in terror of making a mistake, of doing something that would condemn me to eternal suffering. That fear seeped into every part of my life, even shaping how I interacted with others. I began warning girls at school about the dangers of not covering up, convinced I was helping them avoid the horrors I feared.
Fear and control extended far beyond the hijab.

In our family, religious devotion wasn’t just about following the rules—it was woven into every part of our lives. One of the most intense experiences was the rituals of Muharram, the sacred month of mourning in Shia Islam. Every year, my family participated in these ceremonies to commemorate the martyrdom of Imam Hussain. I grew up hearing graphic stories of his death, filled with vivid descriptions of bloodshed and torture. These weren’t just stories; they were reenacted through rituals. We were expected to cry and beat our chests in rhythm with the mourning chants, a practice called latm. Some people used zanjeer—metal chains—to strike their backs or shoulders, while others performed tatbeer, cutting their foreheads with swords to let blood run down their faces as a sign of devotion.

For a child, it was overwhelming. The sound of wailing, the sight of blood, and the heavy, mournful atmosphere terrified me. I often had nightmares after these rituals. My parents believed exposing us to this from a young age was essential to instil devotion and discipline, to teach us the importance of sacrifice. But for me, it felt suffocating. These practices normalised violence and fear, making it clear that questioning or rejecting them was never an option.

My parents always made it a point to differentiate between the girls and boys in our family. We were held to vastly different standards. My brothers could do almost anything without facing any consequences, but for my sisters and me, the rules were entirely different. We were not allowed to make “mistakes.” Any misstep, no matter how small, was seen as a stain on our reputation. I grew up with the saying, “Women are like glass—once broken, they can never be repaired.” Even the tiniest scratch on the surface of that metaphorical glass was enough to ruin our lives. In my family, women were given no room to falter, no margin for error.

The violence of this belief system wasn’t theoretical—it was real, and I saw it with my own eyes. One of the most painful memories of my life is what happened to my sister when she was caught sneaking out to see her fiancé.

She thought she was being careful, using pillows under her blanket to make it look like she was asleep. But my brothers found out. They dragged her into the house and beat her mercilessly. They punched her, kicked her, threw her to the ground. She screamed for them to stop, but they didn’t. I begged them to stop, too. I threw things at them, trying to protect her, but they shoved me away like I was nothing. I was powerless. When my father came home, he wasn’t angry at my brothers for their violence. Instead, he was ashamed of my sister for “dishonouring” the family. To him, her actions were the problem—not the brutal beating she had endured. The solution was to rush her into a marriage to erase the shame.

I will never forget the sight of her walking down the aisle with bruises still visible beneath her makeup. The rest of the family moved on, but I couldn’t. I had nightmares for years about what happened. But more than that, I realised something: it could easily have been me. One wrong step, one moment of defiance, and I would have faced the same fate.

My parents constantly reminded me that a woman is ‘Awra’—her entire being, from head to toe, something inherently defective or shameful. Even my voice was considered Awra. This belief seeped into every part of my life, dictating how I moved, spoke, and existed.
When I was in high school, despite the school being segregated, boys and girls were allowed to share the same hall during breaks. I knew this wasn’t something my parents would approve of, so I kept it a secret. But one day, just outside the school, my mother saw me give a boy a quick high-five. My hand barely touched his, but from a distance, I saw her glaring at me, her eyes filled with rage. The walk to the car felt endless. When we got there, she grabbed my arm aggressively, pinching it so hard it hurt. “I will show you,” she hissed. And she did.

The moment we were inside the car, she started slapping and punching me while I cowered, covering my head with my arms. I kept apologising, desperately trying to explain that it was the first and last time, that I hadn’t even touched his skin—I had pulled my sleeve over my hand before the high-five. None of it mattered. She called it a big mistake, one she said my brothers and father would need to know about. I knew what that meant: they would make sure I never stepped foot in school again. I cried, begged, and pleaded until she finally relented and promised not to tell them.

I was an academic achiever, but my accomplishments never mattered to my father. He wasn’t proud of me, no matter how hard I worked. I heard him say many times, “What’s the point of her education? A woman’s pride is in her hijab, her modesty, and following Islam properly. Studies don’t matter.”
And for him, they truly didn’t. He never even considered saving money for my university education. To him, my value lay in how well I adhered to his version of religious and cultural expectations—not in my potential or my dreams

By the time I graduated high school, I had already started questioning the life I was living. But questioning wasn’t enough—I wanted out. My sister offered to pay for my university education, something my parents would never have done. It was my chance to start over, to build a future that was mine. But my father had other plans.
On the day of my registration, he was pacing the living room, furious.
“If she leaves without the abbaya, I’ll commit a crime,” he shouted.
The abbaya wasn’t just a piece of clothing—it was a symbol of everything I was fighting against. Wearing it felt like erasing myself, like giving in to the control I so desperately wanted to escape. But I had no choice. I put on the abbaya, tears streaming down my face, and left the house with my sister. My first day at university began not with excitement but with humiliation and fear. That day, I realised that as long as I stayed, my life would never truly be mine.

When the protests in Iran erupted in 2022, I felt a mix of emotions—hope and heartbreak. I was proud of my people for standing up, for fighting for women’s rights and freedom, but devastated by the government’s brutal response. So many women and men lost their lives. Mahsa Amini’s murder ignited the fire, but the flame had always been there, simmering beneath the surface. For years, Iranians have been losing their faith in Islam and their trust in the government. This regime has done nothing but fail us, abandon us, and kill us. They execute our people on arbitrary charges like “Going against God” or “Causing corruption on earth.”

If I had been in Iran, I would have joined them in the streets. But being far away, I experienced a different kind of pain—the pain of protesting in silence. I watched helplessly as my family echoed the same toxic rhetoric I had grown up with. They dismissed the brave women on the streets as “whores” and claimed that Iranian women were already too free.

When Mahsa Amini’s death became public, my mother called it a conspiracy, parroting the regime’s narrative that she wasn’t murdered but died of a pre-existing medical condition. It was pointless to argue. My family supports the Islamic government and reveres the Ayatollah as a holy figure. They felt no remorse for the lives lost, no empathy for the pain of our people. I wasn’t shocked by their words. I had grown up surrounded by this mentality, steeped in the same toxic beliefs. But accepting their statements without reacting was one of the hardest things I’ve ever had to do. I knew that showing even a flicker of disagreement could put me in danger.

Iranian women deserve better. We deserve the right to make our own decisions, to have control over our lives and bodies. We deserve to live, love, and be loved without fear of being scolded, locked up, beaten, or killed. We deserve the freedom to choose who we want to be. And we will keep fighting until we have it.

To the resilient Iranian women, I was once in your shoes, and I am still trying to learn how to live and be independent. And I am not free, unless all of us are. I once thought it was impossible to escape the shackles of misogyny, patriarchy and Islam. But believe,believe in it.

Fight for it.

It might take longer than expected, but one day the freedom you always longed for will be yours. That day is coming. I wish that you continue being strong, brave and most of all safe.
Zan, Zandegi, Azadi.
Woman, life, freedom.