Fighting back tears, she tells kids: don’t let anyone humiliate you

‘‘I want to cry,’’ she quietly tells her interpreter, Babak, in Farsi. ‘‘I want to cry.’’

‘‘Not now, not here,’’ he urges softly.

Pursued by journalists and photographers, the 56-year-old Ebadi has taken a morning out of a hectic schedule of World Social Forum conferences, panels and debates to see for herself the plight of the people the Forum is supposed to help: the Sahyog school for daughters of slum dwellers in a resettlement colony in suburban Goregaon.

These girls’ parents are mostly day labourers earning no more than Rs 50-60 a day. There is no municipal school, no health post, no dispensary, not even a ration shop. With extra charges imposed on them for maintenance, electricity and water, the community is sinking into debt. A quarter of the children here have dropped out of school.

Ebadi’s arrival sends a tremor of excitement through the colony. She is taken to see the school’s single ‘classroom’—a room barely 4 by 5 metres—then led outside to meet the children.

The school, run by a local NGO Sahyog, has 60 girls, aged 11 to 18. All wear bright saris and brighter smiles.

Ebadi gives them her first broad smile of the day. Above, seven floors of windows are crowded with faces gazing down on her. After songs of welcome, she stands up to deliver her message, her earlier teariness replaced by strength.

‘‘You have to learn that you must take your rights by yourselves,’’ she says, punctuating her words with a pointed finger. ‘‘Don’t allow anyone to humiliate you or be cruel to you.’’

She asks them to mark the anniversary of Gandhi’s assassination, January 30, as an International Day of Non-Violence and pray for peace. ‘‘In Iran, I will pray for peace with you,’’ she says.

After her speech, and the promise of a computer for the school, the diminutive Ebadi is nearly knocked off her feet by a rush of excited girls. ‘‘Don’t push! Don’t push!’’ cries one of her assistants. Every one of the girls wants to shake her hand. Ebadi does so with each one, smiling.

She’s late for a WSF debate and has to go. She stops to shake hands with one of the school’s trustees, Neha Madhiwalla. ‘‘You’re doing a very good job,’’ she says, in a rare burst of English. ‘‘Keep it up.’’

Education—especially of girls—is a subject close to Ebadi’s heart. For her, it’s the key to fighting discrimination against women, something she has first-hand experience of and has made central to her struggle for human rights and democracy in Iran.

The country’s first ever female judge, Ebadi served at the city court of Tehran from 1975 until the Islamic revolution in ’79. The new regime declared that female judges were against Islamic law and demoted Ebadi to role of court secretary. ‘‘I couldn’t tolerate it, so I resigned,’’ she says.

Undaunted by threats to her life and the risk of jail, she became a persistant annoyance to the new regime, specializing in human rights cases and demanding a new interpretation of Islam compatible with women’s rights and human rights in general, freedom of speech, and democracy.

She became the first Muslim woman to win the Nobel Peace Prize in October 2003, an award condemned by Iranian conservatives as a political attack on the regime. But since then, Ebadi’s fame has immeasurably strengthened her position. ‘‘They can’t touch her now,’’ smiles Babak.

After a frenzied drive through Goregaon, she enters the chaos of Nesco Grounds for her next speech. Ebadi seems to disappear into the swirling mass of dancers, delegates, noise and dust, reappearing as a pink-suited blur, pushed along by Babak.

At Hall 4, Ebadi is the guest of honour, opening a debate on human rights. ‘‘Islamic governments discriminate and repress women and they call those who disagree blasphemers,’’ she tells the 4,000-strong crowd angrily. Loud applause. But a part of her ire is clearly directed further westwards, at governments ‘‘who suppress human rights under the pretext of the fight against terrorism.’’

It’s over in minutes. Ebadi and her interpreter stand up, to the obvious dismay of the debate’s chair, Irene Khan, Secretary-General of Amnesty International. She has to attend another meeting.

‘‘It’s not that she doesn’t want to listen to us,’’ Khan falters into the microphone, ‘‘But as you can imagine, she’s very much in demand.’’ As Khan speaks, a pack of reporters and Ebadi groupies sprint across the hall after her, demanding interviews and autographs.

She scrawls a rapid two-stroke signature on a flyer or two, before Babak bundles her back out into the fray.

There’s no time for lunch. Buffeted by a Korean anti-war protest, Ebadi practically sprints to the next panel on ‘The Public-Private Divide.’ She condemns an upcoming French law banning Muslim girls from wearing the hijab in schools. ‘‘It will only encourage fundamentalism,’’ she warns. While other panelists speak, she takes secretive forkfuls of fruit behind her hand to keep her going.

It’s four o’clock before there’s a break for food. Under the rouge and lipstick, Ebadi looks worn out. ‘‘I’m a little tired,’’ is all she will admit to.

The morning’s school visit still hangs heavily on her mind. ‘‘It was so frustrating, deeply frustrating, to see those girls,’’ she says. ‘‘If there was justice in the world they wouldn’t be living like that.’’

‘‘The poverty is shocking. There are people living on the pavements while others live in palaces,’’ she adds. ‘‘The difference really bothers me.’’

An assistant leans in. It’s time to go again. Ebadi seems to wilt briefly, then stands up. Four months after winning the Nobel, she still seems unprepared for the demands of international celebrity. ‘‘I expected to win it,’’ she says, with a sly grin. ‘‘But when I’m 80, not so soon. I thought it would take a lot more work.’’