Monir Nahid was born in 1925. She was sent to school and spent her early life in her ancient city of Senneh (Sanandaj), Kurdistan Province, Iran, where she flourished as a lively and humorous young girl until she moved to Tehran in 1965. Losing her husband at the age of 30, she used her skills as a seamstress to support her family.
Although her education did not go beyond the elementary grades, she was an avid reader with cosmopolitan tastes far more sophisticated than the level of her formal education. She took pride in her extensive library, her only wealth, and inculcated the same zest for the written word in her children, urging them to read at least a book a week. During her years in exile, she rekindled her love for books encouraging her son Farhad to open a bookstore in Los Angeles. Sadly Farhad predeceased his mother in 2002.
More than anything else Monir Nahid was fascinated with reading novels, biographies, and histories. If anyone insisted on taking her a gift, she always preferred a book over anything else.
The cosmopolitan city of Tehran had a profound impact on her where she dedicated herself to the education of her children. Two of her children, Ahsan Nahid, an engineer, and Shahriar Nahid, a student, were among the first to be brutally executed in Iran on August 29, 1979 as part of the vicious campaign ordered by then Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini against the Kurds, whom he labelled “heretics.”
The authorities used every possible means to prove that a photograph of the execution had been forged, but the image became the engrained nexus between the new regime's ideology of political violence and its rhetoric of deception and demagogy. The photograph went on to win the Pulitzer Prize.
Her world turned upside down with the death of her sons, Monir Nahid’s life was in danger after she addressed a group of university students, speaking out against the regime’s brutality. She fled Iran to resettle in the US where her daughter Roya resides.
It was during 1980's and 1990's that many Kurds and Iranians came to Los Angeles in search of sanctuary. For the newcomers, Monir Nahid became a galaxy around whom political activists would circle. Her history in Los Angeles was definitive and essential to the Kurdish and Iranian community throughout those decades. Her new home in exile became the center of social and cultural activism for Kurdish artists, musicians, and newcomers to town. To all of us, she was an iconic figure in the diaspora, whose presence invoked a special reverence and a renewed zest for our activism.
Her mission in life was nothing but the quest for truth and justice. She was grateful to those who sought to uncover the truth. She welcomed interviews with journalists, researchers, and writers, including Ron Kelley (1993), author of "Irangeles," Susan Meiselas (1997), author of the photographic history "Kurdistan in the Shadow of History," and photojournalist Joshua Prager (2006) who wrote "A Chilling Photograph's Hidden History" about the photograph documenting the execution of Kurdish prisoners in Sanandaj, including Monir Nahid’s two sons.
Addressing the Pulitzer Board at Colombia University, Monir Nahid thanked photographer Jahangir Razmi for not letting "her painful history fall into oblivion," a history that brought her and many of us to Los Angeles.
For Kurds of the diaspora, no one can approximate Monir Nahid's iconic resistance. More than the force of her tragic destiny, her power as a Kurdish woman stemmed not only from her opposition to all forms of patriarchy, but her unequivocal intimacy, solidarity, universal love, and magnanimity, and her Kurdish struggle for liberty. Despite illness, she was vigilant until the last moment of her life.
Monir Nahid leaves behind her daughter, Roya, son-in-law Masoud Vakilli, Moncher, and two grandsons John and Sam Shahidi, as well as a vast array of relatives and friends, all of whom she affectionately loved and cherished. The legacy of her life will continue to bear fruit in the many trees she planted and the flowers and vegetables she cultivated in her gardens.
Dr. Amir Sharifi is the president of the Kurdish American Education Society
