This is a deeply personal and painful recollection told by a member of the People’s Mojahedin Organization of Iran (PMOI), documenting a conversation that took place in 1982—one year after the execution of Mina Asgari. Mina was a 20-year-old woman from the city of Galugah in Mazandaran province who was executed by a firing squad on December 29, 1981, for her support of the PMOI.
The person sharing this story was a child at the time, working in a small carpentry shop owned by Nour Mohammad Asgari, Mina’s father. This memory is not just a record of a conversation—it is a fragment of the enduring grief of a father, the cruelty of a regime, and the quiet witnessing of a young boy who, unbeknownst to him, was being imprinted with a history of resistance, loss, and the irrevocable weight of truth.
The account unfolds like a short story and has been translated as such, preserving its tone, emotion, and narrative flow.
A Father’s Grief
The moment I heard the choked, tear-soaked voice of the old man from the entrance of the workshop, I remembered—I had to be quiet today. Mr. Asgari, the kind and eloquent elderly man, sometimes seemed to lose all his spirit. On those days, he’d recite this poem in a sorrowful voice:
My myna bird, what do I do with the grief of your beauty?
My tangled sob—how do I wait for tomorrow?
By then, I had learned that on such days, when I entered his woodshop, I should say nothing—not even hello. And even if I did greet him, he wouldn’t respond. It was as if he didn’t see me at all.
Next to his woodshop, Mr. Asgari also ran a small rice mill. Since I was a family acquaintance, he’d accepted me as his apprentice. I must’ve been thirteen or fourteen—can’t recall exactly. But he was already an old man.
On better days, when he had the heart for it, he would talk about the days of resistance under the Shah. How he had once been with the Tudeh Party, and how he and my father—friends from back in those days—were arrested after the coup of August 1953, betrayed by the party leaders. They were imprisoned, flogged. My father used to say, “Master Asgari took such a beating he couldn’t walk for days.”
When Mr. Asgari spoke of those times, a strange brightness would flicker in his eyes. But suddenly, everything would shift. The workshop would plunge into a crushing silence—a silence heavier than the noise of the saw slicing through wood.
Now, as he was singing again, I knew I should just focus on my tasks. I began moving the timber we had messily stacked at the back of the shop the evening before. His voice still echoed:
My myna bird, what do I do with the grief of your beauty?
My tangled sob—how do I wait for tomorrow?
I was thinking about what my mother had told me—that Mr. Asgari once had a tall, beautiful daughter named Mina. She said Mina had been executed. That the day he went looking for her, his back bent under the weight of it all—and never straightened again.
In my childish mind, I wondered: how do they execute someone? A girl, no less? A girl, my mother said, was like the moon, like an angel… And how does a man’s back bend forever?
Suddenly, he called out to me. “Son! Come, rest a little.”
I couldn’t believe it—it was Mr. Asgari’s voice. He had broken his silence. He was looking at me kindly.
I walked over and sat beside him. He gently ran his hand over my head and said:
“Good thing you came. I couldn’t get any work done today. I needed someone to talk to. You know, I’ve got a bunch of sons and grandkids, and I love them all—but I don’t know why I’m talking to you. I just… I feel more at ease with you.”
His words confused me. I looked into his eyes, and the depth in them frightened me. I thought maybe he was unhappy with my work. But he didn’t give me time to think: “I’m going to tell you Mina’s secret.”
I remembered what my mother had said: after that day, Mr. Asgari never stood straight again.
“It was this very day last year.”
He lit a cigarette, then angrily stubbed it out.
“It was morning—five, maybe six. They rang the bell. My wife didn’t hear it, so I went to the door. A few guards were standing there. My heart dropped. What more do these dishonorable bastards want? You already took my Mina to prison—who else do you want now?”
I pulled my chair closer. The veins in his thin neck bulged. I could hear the pounding of his heart.
“One of the guards stepped forward. ‘Are you Mr. Asgari?’ he asked. The shameless cruelty in his voice froze me. ‘We executed your daughter. Come with us to retrieve the body.’”
I forgot the world. Forgot I had a wife to tell. Sons to wake. Mina… My Mina wouldn’t ever see the dawn again?
Ever since she was little, every time I’d wake up for dawn prayer, she’d rise with me. She’d stand in front of me, watching me bow and prostrate, and she’d say, ‘Baba, one day I’ll be your dawn bird.’
His chest rose and fell with each breath. I remembered my father saying, “Asgari is like a rock. In prison, under whips and torture, he stood like a man.”
“I went with them. I don’t know how—if it was a jeep or something else. I just know I went. Mina, my only daughter! No, they didn’t kill her. They were joking. They didn’t execute her. Maybe they’re releasing her. She hadn’t done anything. She just sold newspapers. I know my Mina…”
Lost in that hope, I heard one of the guards yell, “We’re in Behshahr. Don’t you want to see your daughter?”
Cold sweat covered his brow. His mouth foamed slightly as he continued:
“I followed them. A long corridor—endless. I don’t know if it was a morgue or a dungeon or a torture chamber… I was sure I was dreaming. I rubbed my eyes, smashed my head into the wall—anything to wake up. One of the guards shoved me forward and then…”
He fell silent. A silence stretched taut with swallowed sobs. I stared at him, desperate: Say it was a dream. Say you saw your Mina waving from behind bars. Say she’s your dawn bird.
“My Mina… was lying on the ground. The blood from her chest had dried and splattered across her face…”
Mr. Asgari covered his face with both hands. His shaking shoulders scared me.
“I don’t remember what I did after. If I took off my coat to cover my darling Mina, or if I fought with the guards, or if I stayed silent. I don’t know. I just know I was still in shock from that scene, under the gaze of those vile, predatory guards… when one of them walked up holding a box of sweets.”
This time, the old man’s silence lasted longer. I stared at him, stunned. His chin was trembling.
In my childish imagination, I was picturing a kind guard, one who’d pitied this grieving father and wanted to comfort him.
“Yeah. A guard came up with a box of sweets and some money. He congratulated me—said he was my son-in-law.”
The old man’s sobs choked him, and I began crying too. Tears ran through his white beard, falling like thick raindrops into the sawdust on the floor.
Mr. Asgari stood up and left without looking back at me. And again, my mother’s words echoed: He never stood straight again after going to get his daughter.
At that age, I didn’t fully understand what Mr. Asgari was telling me. I didn’t grasp the depth of his pain. Even as I left the shop that day, dazed and stunned, and he called out to me once more—I didn’t know that this “secret” would shape my destiny.
He approached, trying to hold back his grief, and said:
“I don’t remember much else from that day. Just that we brought Mina’s body home. We washed her. And in the middle of it all, Sheikh Hassan Zahedi—that rabid dog barking across our town of Galugah—refused to let anyone say the prayer over my daughter’s pure body. Not that my daughter needed the prayers of the impure. She was gone.”
That day, as we said goodbye, the old man made me promise: If a court is ever held, you are my lawyer. You will speak my Mina’s truth…
Rape Before Execution: A Doctrine of Cruelty
During the 1980s, and reportedly in later years as well, the Iranian regime systematically raped female political prisoners before executing them. The justification given by prison authorities was that virgins would go to heaven, and this heinous act was meant to prevent that. In many documented cases, the families of these young women were not informed of the assault until after their deaths—when officials handed them a bag of sweets or a wedding cake to “congratulate” them on their daughter’s supposed marriage to a prison guard. Dozens of survivor accounts and reports have confirmed this grotesque practice.
