Freedom Fighter

On this day exactly one year ago, Nazhin (a pseudonym for her protection) was emerging from eleven hours of brain surgery intended to remove a tumor. Unfortunately only 62% of the tumor could be removed, so then she had months of very aggressive radiation therapy that left her exhausted, weak, sick, and hairless. Still some of the tumor remains, so she is set for testing every six months for the foreseeable future. Her father, who she adored, was Iranian. He died in 2016. Her mother is Irish and disapproves of Nazhin's politics. But Nazhin has decided, she said today, to regard every hour as a gift so she can keep fighting fascism. I will delete this post if she is pursued for protesting, though I think her determination may encourage others, so I leave it here for a while.

Today she came to my place with Donna Hayes (see extra), and we talked and cried, laughed and raged for hours. Nazhin wants to explore writing as a form of protest, and she and Donna are collaborating on the next phase of Silent Voices. We were  all close to Malcolm. At one point during her radiation treatment, Nazhin collapsed at home. She woke in a hospital at 4 a.m. to find Malcolm beside her, awake, vigilantly waiting for her to come to consciousness. She was probably the last person to see him alive. He went with her to a protest on the Friday evening before he was found dead on Monday morning.

She’s one of the bravest people I’ve ever known. Dedicated to justice, she is a fierce non-violent protester. She has been handcuffed and beaten by police, shot with rubber bullets, subjected to tear gas, and chased off the street by police cars while she was on her motorcycle. Until the brain tumor, she always got back out into the streets as soon as she could walk again. This year because of her brain tumor she has been a little less active.