I can’t say I’m in favor of dripping acid into peoples’ faces — but, given the right circumstances, I might appreciate the opportunity. I got to thinking about this back in the summer when Amnesty International called upon Iran to revise its penal code.
Sharia law provides for retributive justice and the retribution in question was made available to a woman named Ameneh Bahrami who’d been blinded when a creep named Majid Movahedi threw acid into her face after she refused to marry him. Outside of being a good judge of potential husbands, Ms. Movahedi holds a degree in electronics and held a job at a medical engineering company. She seems to be an accomplished woman who, even in the Islamic Republic, had a really bright future.
Now it seems that she doesn’t have much of a future at all. I hope I’m wrong about this, but it’s hard to imagine how any blind person could hold down a job in engineering, or how anybody as brutally scarred as Ms. Bahrami is going to have much luck finding a husband to take care of her. What she did have was the opportunity to visit Mr. Movahedi while he was strapped onto a hospital bed and pour acid into his eyes. For a long time, she wanted to do it, and I can’t say I wouldn’t have wanted to, also. Then Amnesty began to put the squeeze on her to back off, Ramadan and the time of forgiveness came around, she forgave and, from looking at the beaming pictures of her scarred face, it’s easy to see she feels pretty good about the decision. Think what would have happened in a similar situation in America.
For starters, the crime wouldn’t have been against Ms. Bahrami. It would have been against the State, and she would have been nothing more than a witness, if the judge had even allowed her to testify, because it’s easy to see a defense lawyer convincing a judge that the mere sight of her scarred face was too inflammatory for the jury to be allowed to see.
Even if she were allowed to testify, it’s not hard to imagine the same defense attorney convincing a jury to acquit on the ground that, since she was blind and all, her ability to identify her attacker simply wasn’t good enough to dispel all reasonable doubt that the guy who’d thrown the acid really was the same man sitting here in court.
Perhaps the prosecutor would be worried about getting a conviction, or just have too many trials to handle, and let Mr. Movahedi plea-bargain his way down to, say, second-degree assault and get off with time already served. No matter how things shook out, Ms Bahrami’s feelings would have had no bearing on the outcome.
I prefer the way the Iranians handle this. I like it that Ms. Bahrami is the one who not only got to decide what happened to Mr. Movahedi, but would have been the one to do it to him.
Or not. Either way, she was the one who got whatever emotional satisfaction there was to be gotten from the situation. I also don’t mind thinking about Mr. Movahedi spending something like the seven years he spent in prison waiting for Ms. Bahrami make up her mind about whether he got the acid treatment.
What Ms. Bahrami did have was the opportunity to visit Mr. Movahedi while he was strapped onto a hospital bed and pour acid into his eyes.
Or, take an example that’s a little closer to me, personally. A few years ago my nephew was riding home on his bicycle. He had just been licensed as a civil engineer, and he and his father were about to launch into business together. He was, when I think about him, the best that his generation, the best that America, had to offer. He was smart and hardworking; he had a beautiful bride, a winning personality, and a glorious future — all of which ended when a middle-aged driver fell asleep, ran onto the shoulder where my nephew was riding, and put a stop to everything except his life with massive brain damage.
The thing was, it was probably the worst day of the driver’s life, too. She showed up at the hospital, sick with grief. And wasn’t allowed to see him. The lawyers thought it was a bad idea. She showed up repeatedly and never got into the room. Always the lawyers.
The boy’s father is a kind, generous man who would have given comfort to the driver, if he had been allowed to. And she to him. But they weren’t permitted to meet. Instead, the only satisfaction he got was to drive out to the highway and look at his son’s blood puddled on the asphalt. And the driver had to watch her trial grind its way through the legal system with no concern for whether the boy she had hit, or his family, even wanted her to be on trial.
Now, imagine if something like this had happened to an American in Oman in the mid-Seventies. It did. To a good friend of mine, only he was the driver.
Three years earlier, no Omani who wasn’t either in the military or the royal family even owned a car. In fact, no Omani even owned sunglasses. The sultan was opposed to things Western. Then he was deposed and the next sultan began to modernize, so the road my friend was driving along was brand new. And the old gentleman standing on the side of the road was newer still to the whole concept of high-speed traffic when he stepped out in front of my friend’s car.
My friend slammed on the brakes, spun the wheel, fishtailed, caught the old man with the rear of his car, then rolled four or five times before coming to a stop. The court my friend had to explain himself to was Sharia: a single judge with a council of elders to advise him.
I mean it when I say that my friend had to explain himself. Nobody got to have a lawyer. The old man spoke, my frind espoke, the police told what their accident investigation had found, the judge consulted with the elders, the village sat in a semicircle and listened, and the judge announced his decision:
To the old man, he said, "Our country is changing and you need to pay attention to those changes. By stepping into the road in the way you did, you have embarrassed a guest in our country."
To my friend, the judge said, "It appears that there was nothing more you could have done to have prevented what happened. I instruct you to pay the old man three rials." Rials were worth about $2.50 at the time, so my friend was ordered to pay seven-and-a-half bucks.
Nobody thought the rials compensated the old man for whatever injuries he had received. That wasn’t the point. The point was dignity. Regardless of how it happened, the old man had been hurt and my friend had been involved. The rials were for honor and, I am almost sure, for my friend too. To clear the books in his conscience as well as to make the old man feel vindicated.
Clearly, the lady who ran down my nephew was a lot more culpable than my friend, but ask yourself. If you had been either driver, would you rather have hired an expensive lawyer to try to justify your actions to a jury chosen at random from voters’ lists and then, if you did get off, perhaps face a trial for civil damages until you were bankrupt from attorneys’ fees? Or would you rather have told your story to a council of wise old men? I know which one I would choose.
