"Nazhin" Again

Today from 10 a.m. till 5 p.m. I joined a number of Portland activists (all between fifty and twenty-five years younger than I) for a picnic, planning session, and taping of a podcast. They went on to participate in an event at the ICE Building tonight, but this old woman came home to process photographs and rest. I was with them to make photographs of a particular activist for use with a podcast devoted to her perspective, but I am not posting any of those photographs out of concern for her safety.

“Nazhin” (a pseudonym I have used before) is Persian-American, and I love the T-shirt she is wearing and the wonderful way she costumes herself. She’s holding a little microphone in one hand because she was one of the interviewers for the podcast. Her latest cancer scan shows fairly minimal growth, and the oncologist explained that they cannot do additional surgery because if they do, she will lose the use of one eye. 

He recommends additional rounds of radiation at six-month intervals, though she is now having a break from it. She tells me the last round made her so sick that she isn’t sure she can face another round when the time comes. Meanwhile, she resists encroaching fascism every way she can.