A Public Execution S. Rouzbeh ۱۴ آذر ۱۴۰۴ A mother and her five-year-old son encounter a public hanging. Afterwards, the family confronts the fear and nightmares that remain. Execution S. Rouzbeh Nothing unusual was supposed to happen that day. A mother simply wanted to go to the bakery with her five-year-old son. The weather was hot; the Mordad sun had made the paving stones burn like a furnace. The smell of warm earth mingled with people’s sweat. But a strange crowd had gathered in the town square. The murmur grew louder. Curious and anxious, people looked towards a yellow crane with a thick rope hanging from it. The mother took her son’s hand: ‘Come on, sweetheart. This is no place for us.’ But it was already too late. A line of burly men had blocked the way out. A loudspeaker read out a sentence in a cold, official voice. Then a man with his hands bound was led beneath the rope. The little boy stared, his eyes filled with terror. The man’s trembling legs, his fixed gaze, and then the sound of a heavy silence. The body moved in the air. A scream rose from the crowd. Some phones were raised to record the moment. The mother tried to cover her child’s face, but it was far too late. The image had been engraved in his mind for ever. That night the nightmares began. The child woke with a cry: ‘Mum! The rope! The rope!’ His little hands were ice-cold. His eyes stared into the darkness of the ceiling, filled with a terror he could not put into words. In the days that followed, he refused to leave the house. The sight of a washing line, or even a curtain cord, was enough to make him scream. At school, his drawings were filled with ropes and a hanging man. His teacher’s raised voice or his classmates’ laughter frightened him. His father, who until then had said nothing, finally asked one evening: ‘Why has he become like this? He’s changed since that day.’ His mother sighed: ‘He saw it… he saw everything. He was made to watch.’ A week later, they took him to a doctor. The little boy sat on the chair, hiding his hands behind his back and looking constantly at the floor. After hearing what had happened, the doctor said: ‘Your child has post-traumatic stress disorder: PTSD. These nightmares and fears are natural after witnessing a violent scene. But the difficulty is that treatment is not easy. It may take months of work before the effects begin to lessen.’ His father asked, his voice choked with grief: ‘But doctor… whose fault is it? Who is responsible for these wounds?’ The doctor was silent for a moment, then said quietly: ‘No one accepts responsibility. Neither those who carried out the sentence nor those who drew the crowd to watch. This child is simply one more victim. The victim of a scene that had nothing to do with him.’ Tears welled in his mother’s eyes: ‘Public execution… they said it was to prevent crime. But look at us now. Crime has not diminished, and we are no more at peace. Only a child, our child, has been filled with nightmares.’ His father gently took the child’s hand. The boy silently looked at the ceiling. ‘The doctor’s right… that day in the square, something in my son died. You cannot build justice with a rope.’ The doctor lowered his head and said: ‘Yes. Public execution does more than take the life of a condemned person. It wounds the psyche of a generation. Children are the most innocent spectators of this theatre of death.’ A heavy silence filled the room. Only the child’s trembling breaths could be heard. And that day the mother understood that the wound in her son’s heart was the wound of a generation; a wound that no medicine could heal except awareness, education and humanity. Source: https://srouzbeh.com/en/posts/archive-0794e95b-9099-d058-83b4-c4323b90d290 Please credit the author and link to this edition.