آن‌سوی مرزها، این‌سوی درد: روایتِ فروپاشی و پیوند

I live in a quiet city in northern Europe, a city whose greatest concern is for winter to end early, so that its people can walk in the sunshine again and feel its gentle warmth on their faces. In this city, I teach at the university, do research, and live a life that from the outside seems orderly and undisturbed.

But every time news comes from Iran, this peace is shattered.

I am neither a refugee, nor a migrant, nor have I even chosen to stay away from Iran. My distance from Iran is not a choice; it is the result of a deprivation that has shadowed my life for years, the deprivation of the most basic rights of citizenship, of the right to education, of the right to attend university. I also have a past that still walks with me: years of imprisonment, for the crime of belief, for the crime of thought, for the crime of serving children and disadvantaged women, for the crime of being a Baha’i, an identity that has been intertwined with oppression and discrimination since the very first days after the revolution.

And this discrimination does not remain only within the borders of Iran.

Sometimes I feel like I carry it with me; on my shoulders, in looks, in silences. It is as if discrimination knows no geography.

Yet, distance does not diminish anything.

Pain finds its own way.

Every time I see an image of oppression inside Iran, every time I hear news of a human being being killed or executed, my insides collapse. And these days, with every bomb exploding, something inside me explodes. With every house that is destroyed and with every wound that someone receives, my heart is torn apart.

And every time someone goes to prison for their rights and protests, I am imprisoned again, in memory, in body, in time.

I live Iran, even from afar.
I suffer its pain, moment by moment.

For me, Iran is not just a country;
it is a thread that is tied to my entire being; a feeling, a memory, a suffering, and a hope
something that will never be separated from me, even if I am thousands of kilometers away.