The sound of a violin. A music lesson with a child in another room. The contrast between the lulling beauty of distant strains of music and the crackling intensity of Gilda Kirkpatrick is quite something to experience. She is a woman with a cause, and you cannot help but listen up. However, everything I see around me in her home seems to deny what she is telling me: the mansion on Paritai Drive overlooking Waitemata Harbour; the opulence of the spaces and grandness of the furniture; the gorgeous pets – a Maine Coon cat, an orange pointer; a bespoke aquarium complete with side plate-sized turtles; and a child, or possibly two, at King’s Primary in Remuera. This is the outcome of Iranian diaspora, and this is Gilda’s remarkable story.
She was living in Tehran and just turning 16 when it happened. The hijab control police arrived at a birthday party for a friend and arrested everybody in the house because it was a “mixed girls and boys” party.
“You know – teenagers with their parents,” she says. “They took us to jail and they kept us there without telling our parents [where we were] for a couple of days.” Then they were allowed to contact home. The teenagers were kept in prison for nearly a fortnight.
I ask Gilda what happened while they were incarcerated.
“Interrogation, every day,” she replies with a groan. “Humiliation. It was just disgusting. Then they took us to – what do you call it? – a coroner – to make sure we had our virginity intact. Because if you didn’t there would be a second part where they have to find out who you had sex with, and either give you lashes or make you marry that person.”
Gilda and three other girls were identified as virgins and sent home to change
