Mrs. Plaxeded Mutariswa Ndira was getting her children ready for school a few weeks ago when she heard a scuffle in the bedroom where her husband was still sleeping.
"Some men ordered him out of bed," she says. "He refused, saying he wanted their IDs. He was grabbed naked and shoved into a vehicle that speeded off. My husband was screaming and wrestling."
When Chala Ahmed won the U.S. visa lottery in the town of Haramaya in eastern Ethiopia, his first thought was to earn enough money in America to build his mother a home. The new house would be painted pink and sit behind a high white gate, and it would be built on the shores of Lake Haramaya, a nine-mile stretch of placid water that gave his hometown its name.
It took Ahmed, 26, almost eight years of long-haul trucking across the United States before his family's house was finished. He sent money home regularly, and relatives reported back on the progress.
"You can take off your headscarf now," Seema says with a wide smile as she welcomes me into her world and offers me some tea.
A friend of a friend who'd lived in Iran for a few months introduced me to Seema, a 24-year-old film editor. She's part of a crowd of twenty- and thirty-somethings I saw in Tehran's lively galleries and cafes. They're artistic, literary and highly educated young people from middle class families.
The clock is ticking. Less than 12 hours until I need to be on a plane out of Tehran. I've just been told politely by the Ministry of Culture and Islamic Guidance that I won't be getting the visa extension I'd expected. So I am on overdrive, trying to cram the last of my interviews into a sleepless night.
In those final hours, what I most want to know is how I can describe Iran's "red line." That's the slippery, ever-changing boundary that dictates what Iranians can and cannot say. I realize I have no idea what that line looks like. Is it wavy? Is it straight?
Ryan Anson talks with FRONTLINE/World's Mimi Chakarova about what drew him to live in the Philippines in early 2000 and why the Islamic separatist struggle in the south of the country and in southern Thailand have become a central focus of his work.
Donate Now