edited PS
Posted: Sun Dec 02, 2012 3:06 am
A Simple Call
About fifteen months ago I was sitting in class tapping my heels on the carpet in a nervous fit, chewing off the ends of my already worn down nails, unsuccessfully brainstorming ideas in regards to a paper that would determine the entirety of my grade in that class. I needed to write about a court and legal system of a country of my choice. Being half Persian, I chose Iran. Still however, I was completely stumped and decided to call my mother and ask for her experiences whilst growing up in Iran. I then moved to picking the thick calluses I had developed during the hours I spent in the gym. Skeptical was an understatement, I did not think this call would accomplish anything other than keeping me distracted from the paper for another twenty minutes. It turns out that in fact, this phone call I had with my mother not only changed my view of her, but also promoted a change in paradigm that I would never have had otherwise.
I knew my mother was never involved in legal issues during her adolescence in Iran. Albeit, when I made the call I asked if she had any encounters with the law while she was in Iran during the Iranian Revolution. As I suspected, she did not say anything I did not already find out through my research. I was ready to hang up. I appreciated what she had to say, but at the time I was focused on my set time constraints and needed to get to work as after all, I only had a few more days until the paper was due. However somehow, the conversation took a different direction and she mentioned honor killing. Honor killing is a practice in which Middle Eastern women who find a male spouse outside of their family’s interest are beaten or killed by males in their immediate family. This almost always resulted in little or no castigation for the perpetrator of the crime. This was something my mother then started to grow timid in regards to talking about this subject; however I assured that it was alright, and that she should explain to me what she obviously knew something about, I grew interested. My mother told me that part of the reason why she left Iran was because she wanted to find love, and was actually the victim of such an assault at her father’s barn when she was an adolescent. She then spoke of an event in which she was leaving a birthday party when her brother forced her into his car and took her to the old cow milk barn that her father worked at during the day. She was then told that she was suspected of talking to a boy at that party, and was to be beaten physically by her brother as punishment. Had her father not rushed out and stopped the development after hearing the commotion that had been developing for the last fifteen to twenty minutes, she probably would have been physically chastised. She explained to me how when she left Iran she felt as though she was almost forced to leave her country. This was not only because of the Iranian Revolution, but the physical and mental oppression of women that obligated her to leave her own country. I was in shock, my whole life I thought I saw a loving innocent woman, but to my disbelief my mother had been through more than I could imagine. My mother was sure that if she had stayed in Iran during the 1979 change from the westernized government that was in place to the rebellious “Islamic” government led by Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini, she would either be dead or a slave of a man of whom she was assigned to marry. Her experience triggered something in me, an emotion I had never felt before. This simple call changed what I knew about my family, and gave me a sense of vigilantism that I needed to fulfill.
I had never formerly suspected this of my family; I see them all the time, I know them. This is the woman who has raised me and loved me since I was born; she is the purest and the most determined person I know, how could she of anyone been a victim of such heresy? At the time I didn’t know whether to be outraged at my mother’s deceased brother, who had died just a year earlier, or to channel my anger onto my paper and write up a storm. Ultimately, I decided neither. The respect I had for mother’s privacy was far more sacred. I decided that I would not tell anyone and instead use this knowledge to channel my own drive. I went from a somewhat apathetic person in these types of matters to a person who now knew his direction in life. I knew from that point forward that I would never be able to sit still and let these injustices continue. Instead of acting on this sense of vigilantism, the same pernicious sense my mother’s brother acted upon, I promised myself I would act upon knowledge and passion to create true justice.
Seeing such a primitive punitive system as an acceptable form of justice should be considered an outrage to human beings as a species, as we are capable of much more than that. This call sparked my interest in researching various world judicial systems, and has helped me come to the realization that the United States legal system plays a vital role in our society by allowing disputes to be resolved in a civilized manner, such that people do not take justice into their own hands. Someday, I wish to travel to Iran and use the skills I acquired in law school to help these underprivileged people realize that there are more civil ways to handle negative situations, and that honor killings or beatings are not an admissible form of cultural expression and should be considered archaic.
In my pursuit for a law degree at ______, I believe that I will be provided with the sustenance I will need to accomplish my goals, and that a quality legal education will play an integral role in my personally fueled drive for success and humanity.
About fifteen months ago I was sitting in class tapping my heels on the carpet in a nervous fit, chewing off the ends of my already worn down nails, unsuccessfully brainstorming ideas in regards to a paper that would determine the entirety of my grade in that class. I needed to write about a court and legal system of a country of my choice. Being half Persian, I chose Iran. Still however, I was completely stumped and decided to call my mother and ask for her experiences whilst growing up in Iran. I then moved to picking the thick calluses I had developed during the hours I spent in the gym. Skeptical was an understatement, I did not think this call would accomplish anything other than keeping me distracted from the paper for another twenty minutes. It turns out that in fact, this phone call I had with my mother not only changed my view of her, but also promoted a change in paradigm that I would never have had otherwise.
I knew my mother was never involved in legal issues during her adolescence in Iran. Albeit, when I made the call I asked if she had any encounters with the law while she was in Iran during the Iranian Revolution. As I suspected, she did not say anything I did not already find out through my research. I was ready to hang up. I appreciated what she had to say, but at the time I was focused on my set time constraints and needed to get to work as after all, I only had a few more days until the paper was due. However somehow, the conversation took a different direction and she mentioned honor killing. Honor killing is a practice in which Middle Eastern women who find a male spouse outside of their family’s interest are beaten or killed by males in their immediate family. This almost always resulted in little or no castigation for the perpetrator of the crime. This was something my mother then started to grow timid in regards to talking about this subject; however I assured that it was alright, and that she should explain to me what she obviously knew something about, I grew interested. My mother told me that part of the reason why she left Iran was because she wanted to find love, and was actually the victim of such an assault at her father’s barn when she was an adolescent. She then spoke of an event in which she was leaving a birthday party when her brother forced her into his car and took her to the old cow milk barn that her father worked at during the day. She was then told that she was suspected of talking to a boy at that party, and was to be beaten physically by her brother as punishment. Had her father not rushed out and stopped the development after hearing the commotion that had been developing for the last fifteen to twenty minutes, she probably would have been physically chastised. She explained to me how when she left Iran she felt as though she was almost forced to leave her country. This was not only because of the Iranian Revolution, but the physical and mental oppression of women that obligated her to leave her own country. I was in shock, my whole life I thought I saw a loving innocent woman, but to my disbelief my mother had been through more than I could imagine. My mother was sure that if she had stayed in Iran during the 1979 change from the westernized government that was in place to the rebellious “Islamic” government led by Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini, she would either be dead or a slave of a man of whom she was assigned to marry. Her experience triggered something in me, an emotion I had never felt before. This simple call changed what I knew about my family, and gave me a sense of vigilantism that I needed to fulfill.
I had never formerly suspected this of my family; I see them all the time, I know them. This is the woman who has raised me and loved me since I was born; she is the purest and the most determined person I know, how could she of anyone been a victim of such heresy? At the time I didn’t know whether to be outraged at my mother’s deceased brother, who had died just a year earlier, or to channel my anger onto my paper and write up a storm. Ultimately, I decided neither. The respect I had for mother’s privacy was far more sacred. I decided that I would not tell anyone and instead use this knowledge to channel my own drive. I went from a somewhat apathetic person in these types of matters to a person who now knew his direction in life. I knew from that point forward that I would never be able to sit still and let these injustices continue. Instead of acting on this sense of vigilantism, the same pernicious sense my mother’s brother acted upon, I promised myself I would act upon knowledge and passion to create true justice.
Seeing such a primitive punitive system as an acceptable form of justice should be considered an outrage to human beings as a species, as we are capable of much more than that. This call sparked my interest in researching various world judicial systems, and has helped me come to the realization that the United States legal system plays a vital role in our society by allowing disputes to be resolved in a civilized manner, such that people do not take justice into their own hands. Someday, I wish to travel to Iran and use the skills I acquired in law school to help these underprivileged people realize that there are more civil ways to handle negative situations, and that honor killings or beatings are not an admissible form of cultural expression and should be considered archaic.
In my pursuit for a law degree at ______, I believe that I will be provided with the sustenance I will need to accomplish my goals, and that a quality legal education will play an integral role in my personally fueled drive for success and humanity.
Gave this a quick read - very interesting topic but here are a few suggestions (just from my point of view):
