Today, I’m writing from heartbreak, and from hope.
I am the daughter of a Persian father. Yes, he still uses the name Persia to refer to his Country.
I’ve been only once when I was very little.
I’ve always longed to know that part of me.
They say my poetic, mysterious side is my Iranian inheritance.
And today, that inherited heart is breaking…again.
So, I cannot be silent.
This isn’t “just politics.”
It’s erasure. Brutality. The normalisation of death.
If a society permits one portion of its citizenry to be menaced or destroyed, then, very soon, no one in that society is safe… Judged by this standard, we are a loveless nation. James Baldwin
This is not about choosing sides in a war. This is about refusing to look away when people are made un-grievable. When violence becomes so routine it disappears into headlines. When grief itself is politicised.
The danger isn’t just war.
It’s how people grow numb to it.
Many of us are grieving for people and for possibility.
For a future that doesn’t contemplate violence.
If we continue to accumulate only power and not wisdom, we will surely destroy ourselves… If we become even slightly more violent, shortsighted, ignorant, and selfish than we are now, almost certainly we will have no future. Carl Sagan
I refuse numbness.
I reject the idea that complexity means inaction.
To carry both beauty and displacement is not a contradiction, it’s a calling.
I still believe in love, the radical, inconvenient kind.
The kind that names what must be named.
We are not powerless.
We can still choose to see clearly.
To speak gently but firmly.
To mourn every life as sacred.
To live with a heart not deadened by fear.
Where have you gone quiet to stay safe?
This is about futures.
This is about children.
This is about the soul of what we’re creating, or destroying.
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