You're listening to the London Review of Books podcast. I'm Thomas Jones. My guest today is

Azaday Moe Mervene, the author of Guest House for Young Widows, who teaches at New York University. She has a piece in the latest issue of the LRB on the protests in Iran following the death of Mara Amini on the 16th of September. Hello Azadean, thank you very much for joining me again. Thank you, Tom. It's good to be back with you. So I suppose to begin and just to tell us who Masa Amini was and how she died.

Masa Amini was a young woman, 22, from the Kurdish region of Iran, the town of Sarajez.

She had graduated from high school and had been admitted to university.

She was visiting Tehran with her brother the day that she was detained by the Morality Police at a metro stop.

Her appearance on the day that she was detained from pictures we see was quite unremarkable. She didn't look to be sort of dressed in any way out of the ordinary.

She was stopped by Morality Police at a metro station because of everything that's happened in the aftermath of her death because she did die in the custody of the police and it emerged that

she was of Kurdish origin. Some people seemed to wonder whether she was targeted because she

was Kurdish. Not at all. I mean, it wouldn't have been obvious looking at her that she's of that,

of that ethnic background. Iran has so many ethnic backgrounds.

She was simply targeted by the morality police because they patrol metro stations.

And so she could have been from anywhere,

but she happened to be Kurdish in background.

And she was detained by the police,

and she died within about 48 hours of that detention.

Images of her at the hospital were released by her family.

There were journalists at the hospital.

She's intubed.

She looks entirely pale pale and she died.

The authorities have claimed that she had pre-existing medical conditions and then that something was,

that something sort of existingly wrong with her was triggered by her detention.

But clearly she was healthy when she was picked up by the police and something happened to her while she was being transported or while she was in their custody.

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