Today is the day of lovers, and I hate all the red teddy bears and neatly wrapped chocolates, all those forced smiles and watered-down declarations of love.
I hate Valentine’s Day because it is full of hope. Hope that love lasts, that it endures forever.
Like a nation celebrating the end of a war while still in the middle of it.
Love does not last forever. Wars have not ended. And love has never finally triumphed over hatred.
It does not matter whether it is Valentine’s Day, Sepandarmazgan—the Persian celebration of love—or the birthday of Fatimah.
You are no longer here, and you will not be. Nobody walks beside me along Valiasr Street anymore.
I no longer wait for anyone in the cafés of Enghelab Street.
For me, Valentine’s Day recalls everything I thought might happen, everything I believed could somehow come to be, but never did.
It tells me that, for years, the same door has turned on the same hinge. Just as water does not flow uphill and frogs do not sing classical Persian melodies, the world remains as it was. Only sometimes does hope give us the illusion that perhaps, perhaps, perhaps this time the world has something different planned for us—even though we know both its hands are empty.
I once heard that our world today needs honest despair more than false hope. And I know that hope is the most dangerous weapon humanity has invented.