Mahvash Sabet served for several years as secretary of an informal council of seven individuals known as the
Yaran, who have been responsible for managing the affairs of the Iranian Baha'i community. In 2008, she was arrested and jailed for two-and-a-half years without a proper hearing. She was finally convicted and condemned in 2010, together with her fellow members of the Yaran, to twenty years imprisonment.
Her collection of poems,
Mara to Dar Nazar Avar, have allowed her to speak when words were denied, to talk when no one was listening to her. But unlike many prison poems, hers are not merely a catalogue of hopes and fears. Sometimes a means of historical documentation, a chronicle of what the Baha'is have been subjected to since their incarceration; sometimes a series of portraits of other women trapped in prison with her; sometimes meditations on powerlessness, on loneliness; her poems reverberate with appeal, are ardent with hope. For whatever the accusations against her, Mahvash Sabet is a prisoner of faith.
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