The Press and Journal (Aberdeen and Aberdeenshire)
Iranian mum fled home to find safety in Scotland
The handsome couple in the wedding photograph look serene and happy. By rights, Mehrangiz (Mehri) and Manuchihr Farzaneh-Moayyad should have enjoyed long, contented years of marriage in their native Iran, building a loving home, watching their three children grow up, playing with grandchildren, and secure in their Baha’i faith.
Instead, religious persecution and regime change turned their lives upside down with astonishing inhumanity.
Manuchihr was executed; Mehri was arrested and, facing execution, managed by the skin of her teeth to escape on camels across the desert with her 12-year-old daughter to join her sons, sent to Scotland earlier for their education in Dundee and Aberdeen.
Mehri’s story has now been told in When Reason Sleeps by family friend and fellow Baha’i Audrey Mellard.
The Baha’i faith originated in Iran in the 19th Century, and teaches the unity of all people.
Audrey describes how persecution on grounds of their faith is a fact of life for the Baha’i in Iran, with the family enduring taunts and insults on a daily basis.
But for a while after Mehri and Manuchihr’s children were born, life was happy and comfortable, although always with threatening undercurrents.
They lived in Tehran, and then Qazin, with Manuchihr overseeing the construction of branches of the FrenchIranian Bank of Credit.
In 1979, he was transferred to Shiraz – but the family’s move coincided with the start of the Islamic Revolution, and in light of a growing campaign against Manuchihr for his Baha’i faith by local clerics, his employers transferred him back to Tehran for the family’s safety.
The ousting of the Shah, Reza Pahlavi, by supporters of the exiled Ayatollah Khomeini meant that nearly 60 years of efforts towards modernisation were swept away and the country was put under the control of Muslim clerics.
Audrey writes: “On his return to Iran, Ayatollah Khomeini issued a fatwa – a ruling on a matter of Islamic law – ordering Jews, Christians, Zoroastrians and other religious minorities which pre-date Islam to be treated well.
“This fatwa specifically excluded the Bahais and virtually declared open season on the Bahai faith.”
Unprecedented persecution ensued, with killings, torture, imprisonment, disappearances, confiscation of property, destruction of Baha’i centres and holy places, loss of jobs and pensions, denial of education.
In May 1982, Manuchihr was arrested and driven to the Revolutionary Court, where he was sentenced to death.
His imprisonment involved harrowing episodes of mind games and vicious torture as he refused to recant his faith.
On the night of July 9, Mehri had a strange dream, which Audrey describes in her book.
It turned out to be a remarkably accurate prediction of her husband’s execution that day on charges of being an active Baha’i.
Their distraught sons Farshid and Fardin phoned from Scotland, desperate to return and protect their mother and sister Shanna.
Mehri persuaded them to stay safely abroad as the persecution and executions intensified. Other members of the family “disappeared” or were executed, including one of the children’s beloved aunts.
Mehri had no time to grieve or come to terms with discovering the terrible things that had been inflicted on her husband.
Her arrest was inevitable, and came a year after the execution of her husband, on July 10 1983.
Aged 86, she is now in the care of a nursing home.
Farshid lives in Oldmeldrum and is married to a Scottish woman, while Fardin lives in Houston and Shanna in Australia.