My mother was arrested in 1981, a dissident to the Islamic Republic of Iran. I was 8 months old. She was imprisoned and tortured. Seven years later she disappeared, during the 1988 massacre of political prisoners that claimed thousands. In Iran, this remains taboo. Examining this history of violence and denial, I wonder: how does an absence of physical bodies restrain our memories, in cases when politics touches upon the most intimate aspects of human life? And when personal experience is the only thing to bear witness to politics?

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