You are here.
Your parents are not.
Your childhood is not.
Your memories are not.
They remain on the other side of the world, where you learned to walk, to speak, to hope; where your friends grew beside you; where your family still lives. You exist here. Your life exists there.
Then one day, the news arrives.
Not quietly. Not by accident. Not as a minor disturbance.
Something large has happened. Something violent. Something intentional.
The instinct is immediate. You do not analyze. You reach for your phone.
WhatsApp. Telegram. Your father’s number. Your mother’s. Your sister’s. Your brother’s.
No answer.
You try again.
Still nothing.
Not a single minute of your mother’s voice. Not a moment of your father’s reassurance. Not even a second of the familiar sound of your siblings.
Only the endless ringing.
The silence that answers.
You turn to the news. The internet has been cut. No messages leave the country. No messages return. No emails. No proof of life. Only one thing passes through the blackout: numbers.
Thousands killed.
In the country where you were born. Among your people. And your family is there. People you know are dead. Faces you recognize. Names that refuse to fade.
For what crime?
For demanding their rights. For nothing more.
You try calling again.
You walk through Canadian winter streets, cold air biting your face. Snow beneath your feet. Tears in your eyes. You ask yourself: Is my father alive? Is my mother safe? What about my sister? My brother? What about my friends? My people were killed. In silence. For what crime?
A tear falls onto the snow and disappears instantly, as if it were never there. If only someone would answer. Every day you go out. Walk in the snow. Tears in your eyes.
One day passes. Then two. Then three. Four. Five.
Tears. Worry. Waiting.
Your eyelids twitch from anxiety.
Sleep abandons you. Night brings nightmares; morning brings statistics.
Each day, the headlines strike harder.
The number of the dead doubles. Then doubles again.
You stare at the number.
You calculate quietly. They are my people. They want freedom.
Again: tears. Worry. Waiting.
You think of freedom. Of democracy. Of all the ideas your people have struggled for, ideas that now cost lives.
You think of mothers mourning young sons and daughters.
Of brothers carrying brothers to graves, screaming in rage and grief.
Of sisters collapsing during final goodbyes.
You remember your own farewell.
The last moment you stood on your soil.
You remember the tears you cried at the airport.
The final glance back.
You cry again.
For that last goodbye. For that land. For every tear you have ever shed.
Tears. Worry. Waiting.
This is your condition.
**You are Iranian.**
