Ghazal Ranjkesh

“I would open my eyelids and eye with my hand to see inside: I would see a cornea full of stitches and torn in the middle of a sea of blood.”

"The sound of the eyes is louder than any scream," reads Ghazal's personal statement in Persian on Instagram.

Ghazal Ranjkesh is a Irani woman who was shot in the eye with “birdshot pellets” by regime agents for protesting for another woman’s killing in Iran in November 2022.

Numerous pellets destroyed the law student’s eyeball, eyelid, and part of her face.

She has been fitted with a prosthetic eye after a major surgery in Italy.

While there have been many cases of such blindings from last year, the 21-year old was the first to openly post on social media about her injury to raise awareness.

She published a story on January 12, 2023.

On the eve of her enucleation operation to prepare for an artificial eye transplant, she wrote in this post:

“Today is the time to say goodbye to my eye’s last remnants. Burnt eyelashes with only a few strands left, a small part of my eyelid held together by plastic surgery, a cornea still not in place with forty stitches, and a medical lens!

These are all left of my eyes, and tomorrow they will have to be drained. They will have to drain the blood for the artificial eye to take their place.”

She said she got used to the wound on her face, and even felt proud of it, and that going through plastic surgery was agonising.

When I went in front of the mirror, I would open my eyelids and eye with my hand to see inside: I would see a cornea full of stitches and torn in the middle of a sea of blood.

I would call it and say, don’t look at me so unkindly; you were always full of love. No matter if it didn’t look at me, I loved it anyway.

It’s hard to bear a stranger coming and sitting in its place..

But I will get used to it because I survived and I have to live; Because I have a story that is still ongoing...

Because I still haven’t seen the day that I “must” see, I know it’s close. Very close.

In the video she shared from her hospital bed after the shooting, blood seeps from her right eye but she still makes the victory sign with her fingers.

The video went viral showing how Iranians were being targeted by authorities.

“Why were you smiling when you shot me?” Ghazal wrote alongside her video.

She later deleted it to protect the medical staff whose voices could be heard.

But Ghazal had started something unique.

Young men and women with similar injuries realised they were not alone and could find a community online to help them through their trauma.

Social media users wrote back to her, saying, “Dear Ghazal, you gave your eyes, but you opened many eyes…”