Dayeh Kali (Kokab Mohibi)

1923–1997 (approx.)

Dayeh Kali (born **Kokab Mohibi**) was one of the **justice-seeking mothers of Kurdistan**: a central figure in grassroots support for detained and fallen activists in Sanandaj and Mariwan from 1979 through the 1990s, and one of the women who helped sustain political resistance under siege for decades.

She was born into a working-class family and later married Ahmad Nodianian, a laborer employed in the public education sector. The family moved to the city of Mariwan. They had eight children: seven sons and one daughter. In the years following the 1979 revolution, nearly every member of the family came under state surveillance, arrest, or direct repression—first by the Shah’s regime and later by the Islamic Republic. Two of her sons were killed: one (**Abdollah**, known as “Abeh”) was killed while serving with the **peshmerga**, and another (**Nemat**, also called “Nemat”) was **executed in prison**.

From early adulthood, Dayeh Kali was known as a **self-reliant, steady, and politically aware woman**. In the final years of the Pahlavi monarchy, her home became a safe haven for underground activists. According to her son Asad Nodianian, during one of the raids by **SAVAK**—the Shah’s secret police—she knew that her children had hidden a clandestine library of banned books in the house. The stress of the raid triggered a cardiac attack. It was only through the quick thinking of her daughter, Azizeh Nodianian, that SAVAK agents were distracted and failed to find the library.

By the late 1970s, signs of heart strain and illness appeared—brought on, the family says, by constant raids, threats, and harassment. Even so, after the 1979 revolution, her **public activity intensified**. She emerged as one of the leading women in street protests, sit-ins, and prison vigils in both Mariwan and Sanandaj.

She was among the first women to help organize a major **sit-in outside the courthouse in Mariwan** to protest the arrest of political activists, together with Majid Hosseini. That action led to the release of several detainees.

After the 1979 revolution in Iran, the family returned to Sanandaj. In the summer of 1979–1980 (1358 SH), during what is remembered as the “**mass displacement/exodus of the people of Mariwan**,” large parts of the population left the city in protest and for safety as armed conflict escalated. Dayeh Kali and her husband traveled back to Mariwan, joining many from Sanandaj who went to support them. She worked in the **Kani-Miran encampment**, helping with food preparation, logistics, and basic support for displaced civilians.

As the post-revolution crackdown in Kurdistan deepened, three of her sons — Nemat (Nematollah), Heybat (Heybatollah, “Heybat”), and Shoki (Shokrollah, “Shoki”) — were arrested; another son, Abdollah (“Abeh”), was killed in the ranks of the peshmerga. From that point on, Dayeh Kali and her daughter, Azizeh Nodianian, were widely recognized among the “**families of the executed and disappeared**” in Kurdistan. They repeatedly traveled to prisons in Sanandaj, Kermanshah, Tabriz, and Kamyaran — staging sit-ins and publicly demanding visitation rights and the release of detainees — and they were present at memorial gatherings for the dead.

When the peshmerga forces withdrew from the cities and regrouped in the mountains, and urban areas in Kurdistan fell under heavy control by the Islamic Republic, women like Dayeh Kali played a crucial and underdocumented role. These mothers acted as the link between “the city” and “the mountains”: they gathered food, clothing, medical supplies, and medicine in town, carried them through checkpoints, and delivered them to **peshmerga units in remote areas**. They also transported urgent news and messages between underground activists inside the cities and armed units outside. Because many of these women were older, security forces often underestimated them — and the women themselves actively used misdirection and disguise. They would, for example, dress in the style of local rural women to pass checkpoints without drawing suspicion.

Dayeh Kali was one of the women deeply involved in this work.

In one such attempt to deliver medicine and messages to her sons in the mountains, she was arrested. She spent **forty days in solitary confinement**. Under interrogation and torture, she refused to give any names. She told her interrogators only:

“These medicines were mine. I was sending them to my own children.”

Within the family she was known for saying, half-joking and half-serious, when asked how she always knew who was where and what was happening:

“Do you think only you have an organization? I have my own organization.”

And in fact she did. Over time she built a trusted **informal network of mothers and Kurdish women** across Mariwan, Sardasht, Baneh, and Mahabad, who quietly passed medicine, notes, news, and supplies between imprisoned activists, families in the city, and peshmerga units in the mountains.

The cost of this life of resistance was immense. In one of her last visits to prison authorities in Sanandaj, officials brought her Nemat’s bloodstained clothes and told her she had to “pay for the bullet.” **She fainted on the spot** and awoke in a hospital, where she learned that her son had been executed.

Despite this, she never retreated. She continued to appear at memorials, public mourning gatherings, and mothers’ circles; she sang resistance songs; she comforted other families; and she stood, visibly and unapologetically, against fear. She herself was detained several times. Each time she was released, she resumed her work immediately.

Dayeh Kali died in Sanandaj in the late 1990s. Her family believes her illness and death were the direct result of years of harassment, interrogation, detention, and the trauma of losing her sons. Her name remains tied to the **justice-seeking mothers of Kurdistan** — women who, in the middle of war, siege, and repression, protected memory, insisted on accountability, and kept hope alive.

Notes / Context for researchers

• “Dayeh” (دایه) means “mother” in Kurdish and is used as an honorific title. “Kali” is how she was known locally. Her birth name was Kokab Mohibi. In Kurdish and Iranian Kurdish communities, many politically active mothers of prisoners, executed activists, or fallen fighters are publicly remembered by “Dayeh + name.”
• SAVAK was the Shah’s intelligence and secret police (1957–1979). Kurdish leftist families were frequently surveilled, raided, and detained by SAVAK even before the 1979 revolution.
• Mariwan / Sanandaj. Mariwan and Sanandaj are cities in Iranian Kurdistan. Sanandaj is the provincial center of Kurdistan Province. Much of the organized Kurdish resistance and later state repression took place between these two hubs, especially 1979–1983.
• “Mass displacement / Exodus of Mariwan” (کوچ بزرگ مریوان, summer 1979–1980). Large parts of the civilian population of Mariwan collectively left the city and relocated to encampments outside, partly in protest and partly for safety, as Kurdish militias, state forces, and rival armed groups clashed. The “Kani-Miran camp” was one of the main encampments that emerged during this moment.
• Peshmerga. Here refers to Kurdish armed fighters (mainly leftist or Kurdish-nationalist formations) active in Iranian Kurdistan and across the Iran–Iraq border zones in the late 1970s–1980s.
• Mothers as couriers. After the Islamic Republic consolidated control over Kurdish cities, women — especially older mothers — often served as logistical and political connectors: carrying medicine, letters, money, and news between imprisoned activists, underground networks in the cities, and peshmerga in the mountains. This was both an act of survival and an act of political defiance.