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Imagine that you were at work just before Christmas and you found a memo spelling out your death. Something like this: “Assassin: ‘Permission to kill X.’ Boss: ‘Yes, she’s a trouble-maker, always demanding more rights for colleagues. She must be eliminated, but postpone it till after Christmas.’”

No, this is not fiction. Surreal as it may sound, this was how Shirin Ebadi found out what her government was planning for her.

The exchange took place between a government minister and a member of a death squad. Only it was not Christmas. This was in Iran, during Ramadan — the holy fasting month for Muslims.

Despite the fear she felt, Ebadi walked back home, prepared dinner for her family in between domestic chores, put her two little girls to bed and only then mentioned to her husband that “something interesting happened to me at work today . . .”

Iran Awakening is a riveting memoir by Ebadi, the Iranian lawyer, activist, writer, dissident and recipient of the Nobel peace prize in 2003. In it she recounts the changes that have engulfed Iran from the days of the shah to the Islamic revolution, through her own experiences and those around her.

A judge at the age of 23, Ebadi describes the spirit of the 1979 revolution thus: “It seemed in no way a contradiction for me — an educated professional woman — to back an opposition that cloaked its fight against real-life grievances under the mantle of religion . . . Who did I have more in common with? An opposition led by mullahs who spoke in the tones familiar to ordinary Iranians, or the gilded court of the shah, whose officials cavorted with American starlets at parties soaked in French champagne?” Millions thought like her and participated in the revolution — which would eventually alienate them as it too lost course and veered towards the same corruption and repressiveness it set out to eradicate in the first place.

Ebadi quickly realised that the revolution demanded her defeat as a free woman. Within a month, her rights were being eroded. It began with the “headscarf invitation”, and progressed to the imposition of full black chadors. Stripped of her right to work as a judge, she was reduced to serving as secretary in the court over which she had presided.

Further repressive laws chipped away what few rights women still had in this new macho society. A woman’s life was worth half that of a man’s, as was her testimony in court. She needed permission to divorce her husband and automatically lost custody of children to the father, no matter under what circumstances the divorce took place.

As I read her book I kept wondering why a people which had successfully ousted the shah was unwilling to revolt against Ayatollah Khomeini’s brutal and suffocating regime. The answer, of course, was that it was not Khomeini’s revolution that united the Iranians, but Saddam Hussein and his American supporters. During wars and invasions, defence of the homeland becomes a sacred mission and Iran during the Iran-Iraq war of 1980 was no exception to the rule. Inflamed nationalism replaced all feelings of grievance and betrayal by the revolution.

But wars and repression also trigger mass exodus. Many of Iran’s brightest were among those who fled to better lives in Europe, Canada or the United States. Ebadi was not among them. She decided to stay and fight the system from within, making it her mission to beat the mullahs at their own game.

Ebadi’s battle was in the courtrooms. She set herself to learn and master the 7th-century Islamic jurisprudence from which many of the mullahs’ draconian laws derived.

She eventually got a licence to practise law in 1992, devoting herself to defending women and children in politically sensitive cases. In doing so, she began to highlight human rights abuse in Iran. She rapidly achieved international recognition, something this formidable woman, who is now 59, saw as a vital aspect of her work. She used her rising profile abroad and increased understanding of the power of the media to put pressure on the state over its refusal to reform laws at home.

But in doing so she also incensed the mullahs, and spent 25 days in solitary confinement in the notorious Evin prison in Tehran. Prison did not break her, and she emerged if anything more determined to advocate human rights and to prove to fundamentalists in her country and to secular critics outside that human rights and freedom are not in conflict with Islam. Perhaps as importantly, she strongly argues that change in Iran must come peacefully from within when the Iranians are ready, and not when the West decides it should be so.

Hala Jaber is a foreign correspondent for The Sunday Times. Iran Awakening is available at the Books First price of £11.69 (inc p&p) on 0870 165 8585

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