Open Wide The Doors (a Memoir Of Faith, Hope And Freedom In Iran)

A courageous memoir from a prize-winning poet and prisoner of conscience in Iran

''Against the scale of Iran’s past, her testimony reinforces the power of individual conscience and endurance as the only way forward.'' Financial Times

In March 2008, the Intelligence Bureau of Mashhad summoned Mahvash Sabet. She told her husband she would be back home in Tehran by the evening. She wouldn’t be released for ten years. The authorities would go on to arrest every other member of the Yárán-i-Irán, the community representatives for Iran’s most persecuted religious minority: the Bahá’ís.

Documenting Mahvash Sabet’s first ten months of incarceration, in Mashhad and later Evin Prison, Open Wide the Doors is a portrait of Iranian society behind prison walls. It thrums with compassion for Iran’s thieves, prostitutes, and even prison guards. If you keep your heart open, Sabet proves, no judge, interrogator or torturer can crush your soul.

''In these dark days we live in, Mahvash Sabet’s memoirs about her persecution and incarceration in the dungeons of the Islamic Republic are a ray of light. This book is a testament to the power of truth, to the fact that in our darkest times, in times of brutality and indifference we can still preserve our dignity, our humanity and our belief in hope.'' Azar Nafisi, author of Reading Lolita in Tehran

''Her book is valuable because it shifts the centre of Iranian history away from rulers and revolutions and towards the people who endure the consequences…Against the scale of Iran’s past, her testimony reinforces the power of individual conscience and endurance as the only way forward.'' Financial Times

''An essential book that reminds us of both our capacity for evil as carriers of darkness, and our obligation to survive as carriers of light.'' Alberto Manguel

''Mahvash Sabet, a prisoner of conscience in Iran, invokes doors – iron doors, doors with double chains and locks, doors with knobs on only one side – again and again in her heart-wrenching account of injustice, violence, and prejudice. Yet faith, conviction, grace, and dignity cannot be locked away. They move beyond enclosures, beyond the reach of tyranny. No door – no machinery of repression – can bar their power or their passage. Open Wide the Doors, edited and exquisitely translated by Bahiyyih Nakhjavani and Azita Mottahedeh, is an eloquent testimony to that truth.'' Farzaneh Milani, author of Veils and Words

''Mahvash Sabet, a Bahá’í prisoner of conscience in Iran, writer and poet, was sentenced to twenty years in prison only because of her faith. She has endured torture, solitary confinement, and appalling conditions despite her serious health issues. In clear prose, Sabet shows how she fought against injustice and found strength in her faith and her connection with her cellmates – a testimony to how small acts of kindness in a world of evil can keep hope alive. This is an important book that illustrates the cruel persecution of the Bahá’ís in the Islamic Republic of Iran – an unflinching witness account that deserves to be read widely.'' Marina Nemat, author of Prisoner of Tehran

''Amidst the tragedy engulfing the people of Iran today, Mahvash Sabet''s prison memoirs provide a poignant glimpse of a better