‘I was drowning’: Iran Nobel winner exposes pain of separation from children

Iranian Nobel peace prize winner Narges Mohammadi has said her biggest fear is dying without seeing her two children again after being separated from the twins for over a decade, in her memoir published on Thursday.

In the book, “A Woman Never Stops Fighting”, Mohammadi, the 2023 laureate who has spent most of the last decade in-and-out of prison for her human rights campaigning, reveals both the defiance and the pain of her struggle.

Mohammadi recalled the scorching summer day in July 2015 when, while jailed in Tehran’s Evin prison, she said goodbye to her twins Kiana and Ali, then eight and now 19, for the last time before they left for Paris.

“They arrived dressed in colourful summer clothes, their hair neatly combed, bright smiles on their faces,” she said, adding the children were “completely absorbed in their own world” rather than worrying about farewells.

After embracing a last time, “once outside, still holding tightly on to one another, they began to run. They looked back, waving goodbye — an image I’ll never forget.

“My body was flushing with heat. I felt as though I had become a flame, scorching in the hot summer air,” she said.

“I felt as though a vast void had opened inside me.”

After their plane had taken off for Paris, she recalled feeling that she “knew that for their sake, the kids had to be taken out of Iran.”

“It wasn’t safe for them — not with the sabotaged cars, the midnight intruders, and the shadow of the gallows over our home.”

“But at the same time, I was a mother, and I was drowning.”

“I would likely not see Kiana and Ali again, at least not for a long time. And how could I live without seeing my children?”