Nazanin’s cold anger wasn’t in the script – and the trolls hate it

What emotions would you expect to feel upon returning to your family after six years in foreign detention? A mixture of relief and disbelief, probably.

And when the fear begins to subside and you finally have space to feel other emotions again — what then? I’d imagine anger, lots of it. Anger that you had lost six years of your life; anger that your husband had to go days without food to protest your imprisonment; anger that you have to “get to know” your little girl all over again. 

On Monday, just days after her return to the UK, Nazanin Zaghari-Ratcliffe appeared at a press conference in which her ranging emotions were clear. She shared her gratitude towards her family and her supporters, as well as her anger and frustration at the empty promises offered by multiple foreign secretaries during her detainment.

In the press conference, Nazanin’s husband, Richard, gave his thanks to the foreign secretary, Liz Truss, for enabling his wife’s release. Nazanin disagreed, outlining that she had dealt with an unprecedented five foreign secretaries over the course of six years, asking, “How many foreign secretaries does it take for someone to come home?” 

The response to Nazanin’s comments was immediately hostile; she was called an “ungrateful cow” by multiple people on social media and a hashtag calling for her to be “sent back” to Iran went viral on Twitter. Ex-MEP, David Bannerman tweeted, “I do hope she’s not biting the hand that saved her,” whilst one caller on LBC complained that Nazanin had not “come across as a sort of victim”. 

This is a woman who, according to a report in The Times last year, experienced sensory confinement, sleep deprivation, prolonged isolation, threats to her family and prolonged handcuffing, chaining and blindfolding at the hands of the Iranian regime. To express disappointment that she did not fit into your expectation of “victimhood” is nothing short of delusional. 

Would Nazanin be expected to fit into this model of “victimhood” if she wasn’t a woman? Or would the call to “send her back” would have been so immediate if she wasn’t an Iranian-British dual citizen? It seems unlikely. 

Nazanin has every right to express anger and frustration, she should not be told how to act or how to feel. The focus should be on why it took six years and five foreign secretaries to get her home, not why she isn’t acting “more like a hostage” — whatever that is supposed to mean. 

Alongside the nasty hashtags calling her names, many users on Twitter were quick to critique Nazanin’s appearance, disappointed by how healthy she looked. “She presents as being in top physical health & confident to the point of arrogance,” tweeted one “I feel sorry for her husband! What’s the betting she dumps him,” tweeted another. What does it say about our society that some people would rather Nazanin have looked weak, unwell or injured?

As a woman who was often “seen but not heard” in the media over the course of her detainment, Nazanin became a character that people at home could project their beliefs or expectations onto. Then, as soon as she was a real woman, not just an absent mother described through the words of her loving husband, she lost some support and was inundated with angry comments and hostility, born out of a kind of sadistic disappointment that she had failed to fit the (misogynistic) expectations invented for her.

Nazanin has spent six years waiting for her freedom and, now that it is here, she finds her freedom of speech curtailed by people with more opinions than sense. Has she not suffered enough? As Marina Hyde expertly put it in her column in The Guardian, “a woman who hasn’t said a word for six years is apparently talking too much.” 

Whether or not you agree with Nazanin is beside the point; the strength of a woman who has gone through hell and back but managed to hold on to her spirit and continue to fight for herself is something to marvel at.