Hamed to Saber · Originally published on 1 October 2026
Hello Saber. How are you?
What a question. How could anyone be well in days like these? If you are asking about me, I am far worse than I was in 1401, the Persian year that began in March 2022.
These days I have learnt that grief cannot be carried alone. In our own country, we Iranians carry it together. Every time another young life is cut down, we hold one another with our eyes and comfort one another with our words.
The blond, blue-eyed people here do not understand the grief of being Middle Eastern. People go to therapy for their troubles, but the therapists do not know how someone can be shot twenty thousand kilometres away and someone here can die inside.
Do you remember the night we sat amid fire and blood? A barrage of slogans came through the window, and we wondered what would happen. I spoke about history, Islam and sociology, trying to reassure us: whichever way we looked at it, change was possible. It had to be possible.
These days I ask myself: what if it is not? What if the blood sinks into the earth, and we forget the faces of young people who had nothing to offer but their lives? What if nothing grows from the blood of our country’s young?
People have told me to forget Iran. You were born there, they say, but now your country is somewhere else. Let go of the news. Let go of those people.
But you know that a homeland is more than a country. Its grief crosses mountains, plains and oceans, finds you, and settles on your heart. How can someone who has seen the streets, the struggle to reach something better, the hope inside the darkness, forget what happened to us and to our homeland?
To people back home, I am a comfortable expatriate. To people here, I am an unwelcome, sorrowful presence who spoils the evening.
But to you I am still a friend, without either of us having to remember how far apart we are.
Remembering our late-night drives, and remembering the times we ran for our lives, I get through these days and wait for the day we have been promised. If I am here, we will celebrate together. If I am not, leave a place for me.
I am waiting for your reply.
