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The Execution of Atefeh H PERSIS M. KARIM For Atefeh Rajabi, age sixteen, executed by the mullahs in Iran,August  She was a tired girl trapped in a woman’s mind. Thinking of cigarettes and sex on tender afternoons. She couldn’t help herself. Her anger resided at the tip of her tongue, in the color of her lips. First, she gave herself to the boy next door, then later to a man twice her age. The reports say she was mentally incompetent. When she faced the judges, for “acts incompatible with chastity,” her quiet state of madness grew louder. She spoke against her accusers, lashing her tongue  times against the body of men wrapped in white cloth and holiness. Weeks later her body hung from a rope tied to the bough of a chestnut tree in Neka Square. Beneath the black folds of cloth that would erase her, those passing by saw the scorn in her past-virgin face. They made themselves feel better speaking under their breath. “She was a whore, a temptress, a victimizer of men.” 194 PERSIS M. KARIM That night her body lay in the hot, humid ground. Someone, perhaps the men, dug her up, fearful that her skin and bones might eat away at the soft earth where mortal saviors walk. She has risen again, some say. Given her body over to the flight of souls, to watchful eyes that entreat us to remember the body from which we came. THE EXECUTION OF ATEFEH 195 ...

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