Rage Against the Veil

Dr. Homa Darabi had been one of the most prominent child psychiatrists in Iran. She was married and had brought two successful, ambitious daughters into the world. She was licensed to practice medicine in Iran and in forty-nine states in the United States. She was the first Iranian ever to be accepted to the American Board of Psychiatry and Neurology. She established the first clinic in Iran dedicated to treating children suffering from mental disorders that, until then, were thought to be incurable.

She taught at the University of Tehran, worked at its hospital, and managed her own private practice. But Iran did nothing to welcome or appreciate her. She was mired in a society that placed little value on the rights of women.

Dr. Darabi was appalled by the laws of the hijab - the Islamic dress code for women - which were being resurrected under Khomeini. These new laws required women to cover all parts of their bodies, with the exception of the face and hands, in public. These laws are often the most talked about throughout the world. But beyond the laws of hijab existed other government sanctioned rules. The testimony of a man was equal in value to the testimony of two women. Islamic women could not serve as judges.

A woman could not travel, work, or go to college without her husband's permission. Yet a man could divorce his wife without even telling her. In family court, a mother could not be granted custody of her children unless the father and grandfather refused custody.

Throughout her life, she fought to change the inequities and reverse the injustices faced by all people in Iran, in the end, the obstacles proved too powerful for her to overcome.

Those obstacles took the form of a husband who seemed apathetic to his wife, a government that treated her with contempt, and acombination of influences that affected her life from the day she was born until the day she died by her own hand - burning herself in a public square in Tehran to protest the oppression of the Islamic Republic of Iran. Haunted by the questions surrounding her sister's death, Parvin Darabi and her son, Romin P. Thomson, examine the life of this courageous woman.