Mashid Niroumand - Bahá'ís of Ireland

Mashid Niroumand was born in Shiraz on December 10th, 1955. All of her life Mashid loved to study - especially anything to do with science or languages. She taught herself English and Arabic when she was a teenager and, while she was in university studying physics, she also studied French and German. Mashid was also very interested in geophysics so she took extra courses in that as well. She had just six months left in university when the Revolution happened. The universities all closed for a while but even when they reopened they wouldn’t allow her to finish her studies and they refused to give her a degree because she was a Baha’i.

There were so many things happening to Baha’is by then that Mashid wasn’t too surprised to be expelled, she’d been expecting something like that. Then, on 29 November 1982, she was arrested. They said her ‘crimes’ were that she was a Baha’i, she taught children’s classes and she was unmarried.

Mashid was well known for being a calm person and even when she was in prison this didn’t change. She used to say that she never really felt afraid even though she knew they would most likely kill her if she refused to say she wasn’t a Baha’i . As far as she was concerned there wasn’t much she could do about that as she couldn’t deny what she believed. It’s not a life if you have to pretend like that. Mashid reasoned that, one way or another, you lose your life anyway if you have to deny your beliefs.

Once, when she was being interrogated they brought her into a special room. She could hear screaming and crying all around. They made her sit on one of the wooden tables they used when they were whipping people. Chains hung from the four corners of the table, and two interrogators wearing masks stood in front of her. There was also a man who called himself Abdu’llah who had a wire cable in his hand.

The interrogators yelled at her and told her to recant and to give them the names of other Baha'is and that if she did that they’d let her go. Mashid answered, ‘I will not recant or give you any names even if you tear me apart.’

All the time ‘Abdu’llah kept playing with the wire cable and threatening her. So she asked, as calmly as she could, ‘On which side would you like me to lie down? Do you want to whip my back first or the soles of my feet?’ They all laughed.

The last time Mashid saw her family was on June 18th, 1983. They told her that 6 Baha’i men had been hanged two days earlier. They all knew what that meant.

Her father was upset. He was a gentle, softhearted man and she took him aside and asked him not to be sad.

As the Guards took her away she raised her fist in the air to show she wasn’t afraid. Later that night she was hanged with 9 other Baha’i women. Mashid was 27 years old.

*Wherever there is a hyperlink on Mashid's name (hover over her name to find it) you can connect with art work produced for the #OurStoryIsOne campaign.

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