To Britain, where a woman who hasn’t said a word for six years is apparently talking too much. Are you a man who’s got a massive view about how a hostage should behave after a lengthy incarceration? Are you 90% throbbing forehead vein? Do you like your prison victims pliant, and super-obsequious about having spent pretty much their young daughter’s entire life as the cell guest of a theocracy? If so, we really, really want to hear from you! And I have a feeling we’re going to! Can you possibly stow your two-litre caramel latte in the cup holder, handbrake turn on to the hard shoulder, punch in the phone-in digits, and then give a masterclass in how unthreatened you are by the decadent western spectacle of a woman speaking her mind.
Encouragingly, because some British people like to put their mouth where their arse is, the above call to arms has been answered. By mid-morning today, #sendherback was trending on Twitter (further bolstered by those so horrified by the hashtag they felt the need to repeat it). Down the phone lines and across the internets, many people are simply not happy with Nazanin Zaghari-Ratcliffe’s failure to react to her belated release like she’s just won Miss World in 1957. You know the playbook: deeply indebted tears at a flow volume that won’t disrupt the mascara; silence broken only by a pledge to work with children and animals. British children and British animals, just to be on the safe side.
