Danuta Hinc

The Stoning of Soraya M. is the movie you must see and the movie you should not see.

What do I mean?

When I was a little girl growing up in Poland, my family — my parents, my younger sister, Aleksandra, and I — went on picnics regularly.

One of the places we liked was Żarnowiec Lake, located not far, maybe 10 kilometers (about 6 miles), from our house.

There was something strange and beautiful about the lake. Its surface was always perfectly still and could carry voices well into the distance. My sister and I liked to shout our names and derogatory phrases like, “You are stupid, stupid, stupid.” We laughed listening to the echos of our voices that, although carried by the wide waters, seemed to belong to someone else.

The surface of the lake was black from the shadows of the trees surrounding it, and this made it perfect for our purpose: skipping stones. My father, my sister, and I loved skipping stones during our Żarnowiec Lake visits. This is what we did on our picnics while mom read magazines for women, like Kobieta i Życie.

Today, after many years, I still see those stones gliding fast on the water. Most of them skipped three, maybe four times. The rare ones skipped six times. I want to say six was the record but I don’t remember if it was my father’s, my sister’s or mine.

I have always liked stones. Perhaps they remind me of the happy moments of my childhood. I collect them on beaches while other people collect sea shells. I collect them on my walks in the woods sometimes. I carry them in my purses and in my pockets. Sometimes I paint them and give them to my friends as presents. I have them in my house as decorations — black and shiny ones in a wide black dish on the glass table in the kitchen; a huge flat one found in the creek near my house, sitting on the kitchen countertop.

I like the feeling of a smooth stone in my hand. I like turning it over and over and over again. And this is all I could think of watching the movie you, my reader, should watch and that you, my reader, should not watch.

The Stoning of Soraya M. is based on a true story that happened in Iran in 1989. We also know that the practices shown in the movie still take place in some parts of the world.

I am glad I finally watched the movie (because I wanted to know) and I wish I had not watched it (because one should not witness suffering beyond comprehension). I want to forget it and I can’t. I want to think about something else but I can’t.

Suddenly, all the stones that I remember and all the ones that I now possess have became something else, something different — a testimony to all the women who face the worst of evil in this world. They have become a testimony to the purest innocence crushed by incomprehensible cruelty. And I can’t believe that it happened and still happens in my world. In your world, too. In our world.