The Women Who Swore at the Television

Language Matters by Elias Winter · Jul 8, 2026 · 17m

The funeral was a sea of black.

Black chadors. Black banners. Black turbans. Black cloth stretched across buildings and avenues. Black gathered into such density that it seemed less like color than atmosphere, as though the state had found a way to manufacture night and march it through the streets.

The cameras moved over the crowd slowly, reverently, searching for grief and finding it everywhere. Women stood packed together beneath the weight of the same garment. Men struck their chests. Voices rose in lament. Portraits of the dead towered above the living.

I watched and felt revulsion.

The…