The Black of the Blackest Ocean

Mohsen Shekari was executed on December 8, 2022 in Iran. His picture is all over the web and in the news today. His name hashtaged and tweeted over and over again. When I went to google him to see what is known about him, his name popped up just from me typing the first letter of his first name "م". That is all you need to see his face stare back at you in that one photo. I averted my eyes from his and just stared at his cuffed jeans. Everything about him just feels so familiar. The color of his jeans, the big cargo pants-like pockets, the swirls on his t-shirt, the cloth wrapped around each wrist, those dark blue ridges in the cuffs of his light blue jeans. I don’t know why I keep coming back to them. Everything about him just feels so familiar, so familial, like he’s a stand-in for a cousin we all have, someone we all grew up with.

He’s been dead for many hours now. The news says his body is in the Behesht Zahra morgue and not delivered to his family. There’s a video going around of his family’s reaction to the news of his execution. I don’t need to watch it to know that it’s of a woman wailing, maybe just crying, maybe calling out his name. The news says he was executed for blocking a street and attacking a member of the Basij. With a machete, the New York Times says. I don’t even know what that means. The news also says his crime was that in blocking a street and attacking a Basiji he had “waged war against god,” this Moharebeh with a god who…I don’t even feel like finishing a sentence about a god who’s become a sad excuse for so much pain.

I didn’t really want to write about this today. I honestly neither feel like conveying the news nor feel like analyzing it. I also just don’t have anything to add to what’s already been said. It’s almost the end of the day here and everyone has expressed rage, sadness, written his name, and cursed the Iranian government. What else is there to say other than to hurl fury at a system that is waging war against its own youth—beings even more powerful than just a one god?

But I’d like to quietly sit here with the image of this man whose name I didn’t even know until I woke up to the horror that was his execution. Those who had been in a cell with him recently gave a sketch of Mohsen Shekari: That he worked in a coffeehouse (and loved to talk about various types of coffee), that he wanted to buy a playstation 5, that “they” had told him he’d only get 10 years instead of the automatic execution that goes with waging war against god, that he was kind, and the part that got to me: that he spoke of his loneliness.

That’s the thing. While we all said words and words and words, and none of those words were about him, someone told him he’s going to die. Or maybe, I don’t know, they didn’t. Maybe they just wordlessly came to him and took him. And they put a noose around his neck. And I’m sure it was dark though not as dark as what came next. And this kid, this man, this person who had words of loneliness but also kindness, but also coffee and playstations, this Mohsen Shekari then became nothing but two words. He’s now the first person executed in direct relationship to the protests in Iran since September. He’s become this image of a life taken for no reason but pure cruelty. He’s become yet another hashtag for all of us to express our sadness and our anger. But none of that holds a candle to being alive and dreaming.

I haven’t read Neil Gaiman’s The Sandman, but I truly love the beautiful television series based on some of its stories that came out this past summer on Netflix. Everything about it takes your breath away. The Sandman tells many stories about Dream/Sandman/Morpheus, he of the Endless who are beings older than gods. The Sandman has power over dreams—the ability to have them, not have them, have them forever, have them never—and so he has power over reality. I was thinking about “the Dream King” today because I was thinking of the Tori Amos song “Tear in Your Hand.” As a loved one pointed out to me a while ago, Tori Amos and Neil Gaiman are very good friends and the song playfully begins with that friendship:

“All the world just stopped now
So you say you don't want to stay together anymore
Let me take a deep breath babe
If you need me, me and Neil'll be hangin' out with the dream king.”

But as I was thinking of Mohsen Shekari’s life and the darkness that so quickly descended on him and the dreams that will no longer exist, I also thought about the ending, a good place for me to end this note so you can go and (re)listen to the song yourself:

“All the world is
All I am
The black of the blackest ocean
And that tear in your hand.”