A brave Iranian competitive rock climber decided to take off her hijab while competing in South Korea. Then she disappeared. According to reports, “The whereabouts and status of rock climber Elnaz Rekabi, 33, are uncertain after she represented Iran at the Asian Championships in South Korea and was photographed competing without her hijab, the Islamic headscarf mandated for all women by the authoritarian regime in Tehran.”

Iran later released a picture of Rekabi smiling and wearing a headscarf at the airport. But it was an old photo, which is not at all a good sign. In Macbeth, Shakespeare looks at the peril that the defenseless, and in particular disarmed women, face when protection is not provided to them. Lady Macduff and her son, abandoned by her husband who fled from the murderous Macbeth without his family, speaks for Rekabi and far too many others in Iran today:

Lady Macduff: “Whither should I fly?
I have done no harm. But I remember now
I am in this earthly world, where to do harm
Is often laudable, to do good sometime
Accounted dangerous folly. Why then, alas,
Do I put up that womanly defense,
To say I have done no harm?
[Enter Murderers]
What are these faces?
First Murderer: “Where is your husband?”
Lady Macduff: “I hope, in no place so unsanctified
Where such as thou mayst find him.”
First Murderer: “He’s a traitor.”
Son: “Thou liest, thou shag-eared villain.”

First Murderer: “What, you egg.
[Stabbing him]
Young fry of treachery.”
Son: “He has killed me, mother.
Run away, I pray you.”

[Dies. Exit Lady Macduff, crying. Exit Murderers, chasing her]