Tehran is like a sea—you can’t see where it begins or ends. Every part of it has its own fabric, its own culture, and its own social class living in it. That’s what makes it unique. Like, if you go down south, for example, Yaakhchi Abad is a working-class neighborhood, but right next to it, Naziabad is home to pink-collar and administrative types. Or if you go to Javadiyeh, that’s working-class too—same with Rah Ahan, the railway neighborhood.

As you move up to Saadatabad, you find people who’ve come from different areas—like a lot of folks from Naziabad who made it and moved up in life. They’re managers, teachers, civil servant types. It’s kind of an upper-middle-class neighborhood. But in places like Farmanieh, you’ve got bazaaris and regime officials living there. Of course, some of them live in  Saadatabad too because Evin Prison is where many guards and security forces are stationed. 

So, yeah, Tehran has all kinds of layers—social layers, governmental layers. Every part of it is different. Like, if you go toward Islamshahr and those areas, that’s a whole different fabric— more working-class, more on the margins, both culturally and economically. So that’s how you have to picture Tehran: like a sea made up of all kinds of intertwined social, cultural, and economic layers.

Tehran’s vastness is beautiful—that’s the thing, it’s big, it’s diverse, like the sea. You don’t feel confined; it doesn’t give you that small-town feeling. In smaller cities, you walk around a bit, and that’s it—this street, that street, you’ve seen it all. But not Tehran.

With the exception of the Women, Life, Freedom movement and Kurdistan, it takes about eight years for whatever happens in Tehran to repeat itself elsewhere. Tehran has always been ahead of other towns—its growth, its awareness, its social evolution—it’s just different.

They say a fish becomes a whale in the sea; Tehran is that sea—those who live in it grow through its complexities, break, rise again, and rebuild themselves. Tehran is unforgettable—even for those who visit only once.

But the traffic is terrible, the air [pollution] is terrible, its apparatus of repression is terrible. In other cities, repression might not be as severe, but in Tehran it’s systematic. Poverty—you can find that anywhere, just in different forms: one way in Sistan and Baluchestan, another in Tehran.

I was born in Tehran and grew up there. My parents are from Zanjan—they were Zanjani, they were Turks. I remember my father had a taxi when I was about three or four. On weekends, he would take the whole family in his taxi from the southernmost corner of Tehran, Naziabad, where we lived, toward the mountains in north Tehran, where the Shah lived in Sa’dabad.

The Shah’s huge palace—with its armed guards and manicured lawns, curbs, and tidy landscaping—felt like another world compared to our own neighborhood, where the streets were still unpaved, without curbs, grass, or even trees, just a cluster of apartment blocks where my father had managed to get us a place. Below our neighborhood were two brick kilns, overrun by stray dogs.

Even though we lived there and played outside every day, it never felt safe. We always had to fear kidnappers. I vividly remember my mother telling me, “If someone says, ‘Come here, your father’s here,’ or, ‘Your brother or sister’s here,’ don’t believe them—those are kidnappers. You run away!”

One weekend, we were in the car with my brothers and sisters. As we got close to Sa’dabad Palace, I suddenly had the urge to stick my head out the window and shout, “The Shah is an ass!” I asked my mother if I should do it. I couldn’t have been more than five. It was as if she’d been struck by lightning. “Don’t you dare!” she said. “They’ll come arrest us and take us all away!” She was terrified, and I could tell from her reaction that it was serious. That moment is one of my strongest memories.

When the revolution happened, I was eleven years old. When the regime collapsed, that became one of my happy memories. In the way a child feels things, I was overjoyed. Maybe some people won’t like to hear this, but one of my happiest memories was simply that—as a child—it felt like everything had changed.

People were standing guard in their own neighborhoods. Even as a kid, I could sense that things had changed. It’s a strange feeling to see everything turned upside down—people controlling the streets, people armed, everyone with weapons in their homes. For a child my age, it was bewildering.

But after the revolution, we never felt happiness again. There was no more joy. There was repression, killings, arrests, executions, massacres in the prisons. They killed so many people in the 1980s. There were Hezbollahis, thugs with clubs… After that, I never felt anything good again. It was all [fear and] stress.

I had some political affiliations and wanted to leave the country for a bit when I fell into their trap. That day, I left the house early in the morning and sensed I was being followed. I was only twenty-one at the time. I tried taking counter-surveillance measures. They were on motorcycles, in cars—whole teams of people [after me]. The scope of it was beyond anything I could have imagined.

I went to the airport. At one point, I sat down to tie my shoe and noticed a bearded man with glasses looking around. The moment he saw me, he quickly turned his face away. They arrested me at the airport. Later, during my interrogation, I saw the same man again—he was one of my interrogators. I recognized him from under the blindfold.

After that, well, you’re interrogated—there’s torture, and they mess you up. I was already on radar—when I saw my interrogator at the airport, that confirmed it for me. I was planning to go and come back, but they arrested me. Towhid Detention Center—that’s my worst memory. I experienced things there: those torture chambers, those interrogations…

I was one of the people who started the Association of Free Journalists in Tehran; it was supposed to be an independent organization. We took advantage of the turmoil between the Participation Party and the Workers’ House—when the waters were muddy—to make it happen.

A few of us journalists in Tehran said, “Let’s form a professional association that’s independent—something nonpartisan, not tied to any faction.” At that time, the Ministry of Labor was controlled by the Workers’ House, and the Association of Iranian Journalists was in the hands of the Participation Party.

We drafted our proposal and sent it to the Ministry of Labor. It took about six months to get the permit. Meanwhile, the Association of Iranian Journalists started sending letters and making threats—filing complaints against the founders of the new association and reporting them to the Revolution Court.

Then the press division of the Supreme Leader’s intelligence office got involved. There was a cleric named Haeri—his wife was the public relations officer at Entekhab newspaper. He had a plan to take over our association: first, infiltration; then seizing control of the secretariat; and finally, replacing the board of directors.

After a while, we started noticing a lot of people from right-wing media joining the association. We thought that’s fine—we are a professional organization, after all. Then someone suggested that since membership had quadrupled, we should hold an extraordinary assembly. We agreed.

But when the results came in, almost all the founding members had been voted out. We were suspicious, but we said fine—the ballot box decides who gets elected, and we accepted the results.

A few days later, Haeri held a meeting at Laleh Hotel. He invited everyone except two of the founding members who had been reelected in the extraordinary assembly. During that meeting, he got into an argument with one of the inspectors, who immediately called the others to tell them what was happening.

Right away, all the elected members gathered for an emergency meeting. The majority of those who had gone to the Laleh Hotel meeting were Haeri’s plants inside the Association of Free Journalists. They later claimed that the purpose of that meeting had simply been professional training!

During the meeting, one of the founding members noticed a small red light blinking inside the bag of a reporter sitting next to them and realized the session was being secretly recorded. That’s when we knew for sure someone was behind all this, pulling the strings from behind the scenes.

A fight broke out on the spot, and Haeri’s crew stormed out of the meeting, which was being held in a magazine office. The founding members immediately announced an extraordinary assembly, which Haeri’s camp and the Supreme Leader’s Intelligence Organization boycotted.

After that, we began recruiting directly from the press community. The Association of Iranian Journalists finally realized how badly they’d misjudged things. Everyone was worried our newly formed group might fall into the hands of the right wing.

In the end, we held the extraordinary assembly, and the Association of Free Journalists of Tehran remained independent. Later, Haeri called one of the inspectors and said, “You’ll end up in Evin one day—we’ll make you pay then.” We told him, “The water’s already been spilled—put it back in the cup if you can.”

The last time I was in Tehran was during Ahmadinejad’s presidency. During Ashura and Tasua that year (2009), people were out on the streets from early morning—around 10 a.m.—chanting [anti-government slogans]. They had taken over Valiasr Square; some had even climbed on top of the police kiosk. My wife and kids were with me, so I stayed in the car and didn’t get out. Then the clashes intensified—alley by alley, street by street. On Kargar-e Shomali Street, there were heavy clashes. 

People on foot told those in cars, “Drive slowly and honk your horn.” The honking had become a symbol of protest. Drivers created traffic jams and expressed their dissent through continuous honking.

The IRGC motorbike units arrived, saw the traffic, and tried to make a U-turn. Two lines had formed: on Kargar-e Shomali were the people; on Kargar-e Jonubi, the Basij forces and the like, with cars lined up behind them.

Stuck in that traffic with my family, I saw the motorcyclists trying to get around—to reach the other street and put down the kids who were throwing stones. I thought, if I block them, they’ll have to move onto the sidewalk. So I drove forward and blocked their path, pretending it was just traffic. They had no choice but to go onto the sidewalk—and once they did, the protesters surrounded them and pelted them with stones. They got quite a beating there.

Then someone shouted that the road was clear, so we started moving again. That’s when I realized some of the Basijis had taken cover behind people’s cars—stones were coming at us and hitting windshields. They were using the cars as shields. But that trick didn’t work either. The drivers on the street quickly realized what was happening and cleared the road. I even ended up in a fender bender that day.

I miss Iran, but there’s nothing I can do about it. It’s hard. Our country is truly something else. You drive down those roads and see the colorful mountains, the desert sands, the lush north—it’s breathtaking. You can’t help but feel: this is our country, our history, our roots, our past. There’s so much to be proud of.

We have an ancient land—five times the size of Germany—rich in oil and gas, with four distinct seasons. You can go skiing in Urmia and, an hour later, fly south to swim in the sea. It’s a place of great food, excellent nuts and dried fruits, warm and hospitable people, and remarkable cultural diversity. The vastness of this land—its position as a bridge between Europe and Asia—has given it so much.

Socialism is very strong in Europe. But when you look deep into it, it begins with Mazdak, with the Zoroastrians—the Mazdakites who, even back then, sought social justice and equality for women and men.

When Shapour Ravasani, a professor at the University of Oldenburg in Germany, came to Tehran, we interviewed him. He specialized in social economics. He once said his colleagues had asked, “Where did the seed of leftist thought in our country come from?” and they began researching it. They traced it back to the wars between the Persians and the Greeks. Some of the Persians taken prisoner were Mazdakites, people with those same [socialist] ideals. Through them, these ideas made their way to Greece and from there gradually spread through Europe.

This is what German scholars themselves uncovered: the roots of this ideology came from Iran. These are things to take pride in. Even after centuries, even millennia, when you look back, you can still see their influence. It’s something one can truly be proud of.

Most European countries are federal—each state has its own parliament and local government—and they live well that way. In Germany, there are leftists and right-wingers, all kinds of parties. But when it comes to national interests, they stand united—as one. That kind of culture matters. I hope our country can reach that point too.

In Europe, from the far left to the far right, they know how to work together—they understand teamwork. There, if twenty-five percent of one party’s platform overlaps with another’s, they can form a government. We Iranians, on the other hand, share ninety percent of the same ideas and goals—but we can’t work together. That’s the problem.

If you look at individual sports like taekwondo and wrestling, we’re always at the top. But when it comes to team sports—like football—we suddenly fall behind. It shows that we never learned teamwork, not even as children.

In Germany, kids learn teamwork from the start: to paint their classrooms together, sell stuff at the school market together—everything they do is team-based.

The system itself encourages collective participation. That’s crucial. Germany has about eighty-five million people, and around seventy-five to eighty million belong to some kind of association. It’s fascinating—one person might belong to five different groups. These civic associations help people grow: learning to work together, to research, to propose solutions, to plan, to execute—and that’s how a society develops. None of that exists in our country.

The regime plays a major role in creating divisions among Iranians—from the Tractor football team [rivalries] to the spread of Pan ideologies, it makes no difference. Pan-Turk, Pan-Persian, Pan-Arab—the government has a hand in all of them. When you look into it, even identity-seeking activists among Azeris emphasize that the regime is behind the Pan-Turk movement, created solely to “divide and conquer.” But Woman, Life, Freedom brought everyone together.

Our issue now is ethnic rights—Turks, Kurds, Lors, and others. Even among Persians, there has to be a sense of equality to hold the country together. Otherwise, these “Pan” ideologies could become deeply destructive—even to the point of civil war. It’s dangerous. Most people stand together. These “Pans” aren’t numerous, but when they take up arms, the threat becomes real. So, if we can uphold ethnic rights….

The issue isn’t whether Khamenei stays or someone else takes his place; the system itself can no longer meet people’s needs—it’s incapable.

They’re absolutely on their way out—there’s no doubt about it. This isn’t about individuals; it’s about the system itself. The system no longer works—neither through force, nor killing, nor by easing the hejab laws and then trying to manage the aftermath through renewed repression, arrests of key activists, and executions. It’s like a dying animal thrashing about, like a headless chicken flailing up and down. The system simply doesn’t work anymore.

Twenty years ago, people like Ebrahim Razaghi and Ramin Raisdana were already saying that with the path this regime was on, it would eventually collapse—it just couldn’t go on. When you told that to regime loyalists back then, they’d laugh and say, “Come on, this is the land of Imam Zaman—it’ll go on forever!” Well, here’s your “land of Imam Zaman”—now try to fix it! From the environment to the cancer epidemic to the collapsing economy—they’re stuck. This system has no way forward. They absolutely can’t last. They’re on their way out.

This is a process—change happens through a socio-political evolution. Just yesterday, for example, I saw some videos from the south of Tehran: a girl without a hejab, her midriff bare. Just think how much this society has changed. Of course, it came at a huge cost—so many lives sacrificed for it to happen—but it did happen. Mindsets changed, the way people dress changed, and this sense of freedom…

Of course, the regime is afraid right now. After the war [with Israel], it’s in a tough spot; the economy is in shambles, and they don’t want to provoke the people further. But in a way, the Woman, Life, Freedom movement managed to bring real change. It’s moving forward—now there’s the retirees’ movement, students are starting to make noise again, there’s the teachers’ movement. They keep arresting and imprisoning people, but for how long can that go on?

Step by step, trench by trench, this movement keeps advancing. And in the long run, they—the regime—have no place in our future. They’ll disappear, and another government will take their place.

We just have to hope that the government replacing them will be democratic, freedom-seeking, and justice-oriented—one capable of rebuilding everything this regime has destroyed. But that can only happen through participation: when all [political and social] groups join hands to rebuild Iran together. Otherwise, the damage this regime has caused won’t be easily repaired.

The future, without this Akhoundi (clerical) regime, is bright—but only if one dictatorship doesn’t replace another; only if democracy takes hold, along with freedom of expression, welfare, and a life of dignity for the people.

Fifteen years ago, I had data showing that Iranians abroad held about $1.5 trillion dollars in assets. It’s certainly more now. Just imagine if that money was returned to the country—it could bring the dead back to life.

 If they’re gone, many of those people will return—at least seventy percent, maybe more. 

If the government changes even a bit, I will definitely return.

2025

The post Tehran, Adrift appeared first on Tehran Bureau.

I remember looking for an apartment near my place of work in Sa’adat Abad. After a few rejections, I finally found a decent one. I went to check it out with my dad. The rental was directly across from the landlord’s own unit. As we were about to leave, he turned to my dad and said, “Don’t worry, I’ll keep an eye on her. I’ll make sure there are no suspicious comings and goings.” That didn’t sit right with me. But I went ahead and signed the lease.

A few days later, one of my guy friends came with me to see the apartment one more time before I moved in. After we left, the landlord called my dad and asked if I was going to make a habit of bringing strange men around.

I was furious. So furious. I broke the lease. I absolutely was not going to move there.

My friend’s uncle had an empty apartment in Pounak. He’d seen me a couple of times and we had talked about the Egyptian singer Umm Kulthum, whom he adored. He was impressed that I  knew her music and songs. He liked me, so he said I could live there.

He did not want a deposit, and the rent was about $400 for a two-bedroom two-bathroom apartment.  Usually, landlords require large deposits on top of the monthly rent. Ten to fifteen years ago, deposits were around 5 to 10 million tomans. Nowadays, they’ve become astronomical.

I wasn’t really familiar with the area, but growing up, I had always heard from older family members that Pounak used to belong to my grandfather’s family. My grandfather was orphaned very young and when his father died, Farman Farma—a Qajar-era politician—seized their land. Even though there was a deed, the heirs could never reach an agreement among themselves to pursue it legally and reclaim Pounak. 

I found it kind of amusing that I was going to be living in an area that was my ancestral land. 

The first week I moved into that Pounak apartment, I was coming home one afternoon and had the shock of my life. These old men who lived on the alley where the apartment was located were all sitting outside in their underpants — in pyjama kurdi — with worn-out undershirts. They were sitting on these foldable chairs in front of their homes, drinking tea , chatting with each other, and playing backgammon. One guy was playing the radio. A couple of kids were kicking around a football. Very chaotic and loud. It was just something I’d never experienced before.

Tehran is a big city with big-city behaviors, maybe like New York. Nobody talks to anybody. Everyone ignores each other. That’s how it was in the neighborhoods I’d lived in before. So seeing people out in the alley like that — just hanging out like it was the most normal thing in the world — was completely new to me.

The building I moved into had maybe 20 or 30 units. Apartment buildings usually have a manager. They hold little elections and decide who the modir will be. Even in smaller apartment buildings —the ones with just four units — there’s always one unit that takes on the role. In those cases,  the responsibility rotates and every year a different unit becomes the modir. 

Every month or every couple of months, the buildings hold a meeting. Tenants, landlords, and homeowners have to show up, and that’s where decisions are made. If, say, they decide to pressure-wash the building, it has to be proposed and approved in that meeting. 

The modir’s job is to keep the building clean, pay the communal bills, hire someone if the heating system breaks, handle plumbing issues that affect the whole building, elevator maintenance and upkeep if the building has one, and in the spring have the straw changed in the evaporative coolers on the rooftop for the warm seasons.  To cover these expenses, residents pay a monthly fee that he collects.

The modir also sometimes acts as a mediator. If neighbors have a dispute over parking space or someone is making too much noise, they take their grievance to the building manager.

His job also includes hiring a Serayedar (building super) who handles the cleaning and yard work. Most buildings, or at least many of them, have supers, and they’re usually Afghan.This building was the only one I’ve ever lived in that had an Iranian one.

Part of the super’s job is to collect the trash every evening. The city picks up the garbage every night around nine so the trash is collected at 8 pm.

The Iranian super was incredibly lazy. He had no interest in doing his job. You’d leave your trash bag behind your apartment door at night, and it would still be there the next morning. He hadn’t collected it. Sometimes it would sit there for two days.

I remember one time, I was leaving the building, and just as I stepped outside, a few motorcycles pulled up, followed by a Pride car. These big, burly men jumped off the bikes and out of the car, each one holding a ghameh  (machete) and rushed into our building. I was completely taken aback. I’d never seen anything like that in my life.

So I rang the super’s bell — he lived in a small unit down in the garage — and told him what had just happened. “I think you need to call the police,” I said. “There are armed men running into the building with big knives.” Then I went about my day.

Later, I saw him again and asked, “Hey, what happened with those guys?”
He just shrugged and said, “I don’t know.”
“You didn’t call the police?”
“No.”
“Why not?”
And he said, “It was probably a family issue.”

A family issue?! Men with knives storming into the building?! It was absurd. I didn’t stay more than six months in that building. Then I moved to a neighborhood in North Tehran, where things were very different.

That building also had a bulletin board where residents posted ads for various services. Someone offered tailoring and alterations. Another girl would come to your home to do haircuts, coloring, and blowouts. I booked her for a blowout once. She came, did the most mediocre job imaginable, and kept complaining, “You have so much hair. This is really hard. I can’t do it.”

Finally, I told her to leave. After she was gone, I flat-ironed my hair myself because the way she’d done it made it too poofy.

There was also a lady who did nails. A guy who handled mechanical work, and if your car broke down, you could call him. And there were even ads for tutors.

That building was the only place I’ve ever lived that had something like that. It was kind of its own little ecosystem — chaotic, dysfunctional, but oddly self-contained.

The next building I moved into was much bigger — with somewhere between 40 and 60 units, divided into two wings: the East Wing and the West Wing. I lived on the first floor of the East Wing.

The building manager was a retired Air Force colonel, and he was so dedicated. They had elections for building manager — I never attended any, but he always won. He was just that effective. He stayed on top of everything. For Nowruz, he would set up haft-seens in the building. For Christmas — maybe because we had Armenians in the building, or maybe just because he felt like it — they’d decorate the two miniature cypress trees in the courtyard with lights and ornaments.

The haft-seen he arranged for Nowruz wasn’t some basic symbolic setup — it had all the proper items: sabzeh, seer, senjed, sonbol (hyacinth), sekkeh, serkeh, Sumac, and beautiful sweets. There’d be one at the entrance of each wing, so when you walked into the lobby, you were greeted with a warm, festive display, just like in a home. It was really tasteful. Not cheap-looking at all.

The super in this building was Afghan — he had been working there since he was 11 years old, which was honestly tragic. He lived in a little room in the garage, and he followed the colonel everywhere. They were very close. The colonel treated him like a son, or at least that’s how it seemed to me.

This super was really on top of everything. From treating the entire building for bugs and planting violets in the front yard for spring, to collecting the trash every night, he handled everything quickly and efficiently. Unlike the previous building, this guy was actually invested. Every night, residents would leave their trash out, and it got collected. If there was no trash outside your door, he’d knock just to make sure you hadn’t forgotten.

The building also had a shared satellite dish — not individual dishes for each unit, but a large one for all the apartments. Since satellite dishes are illegal in Iran, every once in a while, the police would raid neighborhoods to confiscate them. If the building’s front door or gate was left open, or if someone opened it for them, the police would storm inside, dismantle the system, toss it off the roof top and fine the building.

But the modirs on our street had a whole system in place. From the first building to the last one on that block, they all had each other’s numbers. If the police showed up, one of them would immediately alert the others. As soon as they got the call, each building manager would flip the circuit breaker — cutting electricity to the entire building. That way, when the cops rang doorbells, nothing would happen. No one would be disturbed. No one would hear the intercom and accidentally open the door. The super would then quietly go door-to-door, letting residents know what was happening: “The cops are here for the satellite. Don’t open the door. Stay inside.”

Sometimes, the super would even call you directly to warn you. Once, I had a cab waiting outside, and just as I was stepping out, I saw the police standing by the gate, banging on it. They saw me and shouted, “Come on, open up!” I just shook my head, backed up, and went inside. Then I called my workplace and said, “The police are here for our satellite dish, and the building’s on lockdown.” And they were like, “Okay, no problem, stay safe — we’ll see you tomorrow.” It was a completely valid excuse to skip work.

One day — this was some time later — I came home and saw the Afghan super, and I’m blanking on his name now, but he was such a nice guy. He was sitting in the front yard, wearing black, crying. I asked what had happened, but he was too distraught to answer. Later I found out from the family across the hall.

Apparently, the police had come again on one of their satellite raids when I wasn’t home. The colonel was returning home right as the police showed up. He reached for his key to open the front door but saw them and put the key back in his pocket and stood there. The police ordered him to open the door and let them in, but he refused.

Then they started shouting and swearing at him.

You have to understand — this man was a respected retired colonel. He was polite, well-mannered, and dignified. Being treated like that — especially by some young conscript soldier with no rank — was unbearable.

Every man in Iran has to go to military service unless they can get a medical exemption for things like poor eyesight, flat feet, a serious illness, etc, or they are their mom’s guardian or sole provider. Conscripts then get assigned to the army, navy, IRGC, or police. The police often send their conscript soldiers on satellite raids. So here was this colonel — a man who had dedicated his life to the military  — being insulted by some nobody without a military rank, just a kid in uniform.

And right there, in the middle of all that humiliation, he had a heart attack, and he died.

It was really sad. I don’t think I ever learned his real name because everyone always called him Colonel.

They put up a framed photo of him with a black ribbon in the lobby — on both sides of the building — along with dates and trays of halva for a few days. It was a very sad story.

I didn’t watch TV. I barely ever turned mine on. But when I told a friend about what happened, she said, “That colonel lost his life so you could have satellite TV. You need to honor him by turning it on. Watch something or leave it on. Even if it’s just an hour a day.”

And I actually did that. Every time I turned it on, I’d say, “This is for you, Sarhang. Rest in Peace”

The colonel’s story didn’t make the news — at least not in Iran — but I did find a brief mention of it. I think it was on one of those websites like Radio Farda. There was a short piece about it. It was sad.

Not long after that, our good-natured super went back to Afghanistan. 

The post The colonel appeared first on Tehran Bureau.

After a few months of online training, an in-person seminar was scheduled in Tehran. In February 2013 (Bahman 1391), I traveled from Kurdistan to Tehran to attend a seminar on financial markets. I had been to Tehran once or twice before with my father and brother, but this was the first time I was traveling alone.

Throughout the entire journey, the poverty of my land and people, and the inequality compared to the central regions of the country, were strikingly evident. From the transportation system to the icy, snow-covered, and potholed roads, which were completely unlit at night, it was all visible. From Zanjan onward, the road to Tehran became a proper highway with adequate lighting for driving.

Seeing the smoke and noise from the factories and industrial plants along the way from inside the bus, I couldn’t help but feel sorrow for all the educated and talented young Kurds who risk their lives every day to make a living, only to be shot by border guards for the crime of kulbari (carrying goods across the border).

The sheer size of Tehran’s Azadi Terminal, the crowd of passengers, the bustling atmosphere, and the large number of buses intensified my anxiety about traveling alone. It was nothing like the small terminal in my hometown, which had only four buses and two or three ticket booths. At the same time, the terminal’s well-planned surroundings, cleanliness, food stalls, and basic passenger amenities were entirely new to me, and in a way, heightened my feeling of being out of place.

From the terminal, the metro provided access to all corners of Tehran. When I got off and walked the short remaining distance to the seminar venue in north Tehran’s Ajodanieh neighborhood, it felt like I had stepped into another world. It was as if my city and region didn’t even belong to this country. In my hometown, apartments rarely exceeded five floors. Even though my city has plenty of greenery and a pleasant climate, seeing all the green spaces, trees, and luxurious high-rises of Ajodanieh made my own city feel parched and small by comparison.

Nothing in Tehran can be compared to smaller cities in terms of welfare, education, or healthcare. The best of everything is in Tehran: the top universities, the most advanced educational facilities, and the best hospitals. You’d see people who had come with patients, spreading mats near their cars to rest—clearly they had come from far away.

There are dozens of examples of inequality, often measured by “poverty indices in Iran,” “educational facilities,” “healthcare access,” and other indicators. These are occasionally published by Tehran-based journals and research organizations.

In Iran, a Kurd cannot become president. According to the constitution of the Islamic Republic, only a Twelver Shia who passes the screening of the Guardian Council and the Supreme Leader can become a presidential candidate. Therefore, a Sunni or Yarsani Kurd is legally barred from running for president.

During the reform era, the late Mohandes (Engineer) Adab, who served several terms in the Iranian parliament representing the people of Sanandaj, spoke about a Supreme National Security Council directive concerning Kurds. According to this directive, a Kurd could not become a minister, deputy minister, speaker of parliament, member of the parliamentary presidium, or head of national organizations. His remarks were covered in newspapers and also published in the weekly Sirwan in Sanandaj.

When I entered the (seminar) classroom, several participants were already seated. The chairs were arranged in a semi-circle, slightly sloped, around the instructor’s podium and facing the projector. As more people arrived, I became increasingly certain that I was the only woman in the room. After the instructor came in and introduced himself, he tried to create a friendly atmosphere by asking everyone to introduce themselves. When it was my turn—the only woman present—he asked my name, and I replied, “Kezhvan.” He asked me about its origin and I said it’s a Kurdish name meaning keeper of the mountain.

Out of nowhere, one of the boys in the class, Amir, turned his head in surprise and asked, “Do Kurds even know anything about financial markets?” The room became heavy with tension. All the old, deeply rooted traumas in my mind and soul were reflected in the intensity of my gaze. Shocked and angry, I paused for a moment before replying, “Why wouldn’t we know?” Amir quickly said, “I apologize, I meant no disrespect!!”

The first thought that came to my mind was Amir’s racist attitude, and I wondered if he opposed having a Kurdish girl in the seminar. But then I told myself: Why would someone truly against my presence feel embarrassed or compelled to apologize because of the tension in the room?

After a few seconds, he started speaking almost involuntarily: “My father was a civil engineer, and sometimes I went with him to work. Once, a tall, broad-shouldered man with calloused hands and a kind face, wearing Kurdish pants, came up to us and offered me and my father some rice cookies. I took a few without permission. In a sweet, broken Persian accent, he said, ‘Take more—it’s a souvenir from our town. Eat, nosh-e jan.’ My father told me his name was Diako. He was from Kermanshah and had been working with us for many years. He said Diako was an honest and dedicated foreman, and everyone liked him.”

Amir tried to lighten the mood and said, “Before I met Amou (uncle) Diako, the only thing I knew about Kurds was that they led a nomadic life in the mountains along Iran’s western border.”

In my angry mind, I told him, “Kurds weren’t the ones living on the border; it was the borders of Iran that retreated so far that they leaned on the Kurds.” Even after seeing Amir’s rudeness, I still didn’t dare say this out loud. There were many reasons for my silence: my lack of confidence as the only woman in the class, as the only Kurdish speaker present, and the long-standing oppressive power and audacity of the Persians in Kurdish regions.

Amir said that, as he grew older, he would go with his mother to the local fruit and vegetable market. Most of the sellers there wore clothes similar to Amou Diako and spoke in the same accent. Every time he visited, he would think of Amou Diako and miss his rice cookies.

Hearing Amir’s words quickly silenced all the unfair judgments I had held. But this time, a profound sadness replaced the anger and frustration I felt before.

I could hear the instructor’s voice continuing to speak about Kurds after Amir, but honestly, the clamor in my mind kept me from absorbing a single word of his praise.

Why were we all unconsciously trying to maintain the camaraderie in the class? Who was responsible for this heavy, racist gaze and all the ethnic discrimination?

It seemed that we were all inadvertent culprits in the situation—not by our own choice, but under the weight of systemic pressure. The greatest culprit, however, was the regime. Its centralization, disregard for peripheral regions, and neglect of the basic rights of my ethnic minority class had created these conditions.

I think the main reason for this discrimination is the lack of awareness among people in the capital about the country’s other ethnic groups. The fact that non-Persian languages and cultures have no place in education, universities, or the media—and the failure to recognize my basic rights, first as a Kurdish speaker and then as a woman—was what made me so angry and what had given Amir this false sense of entitlement.

The only way to eliminate this sense of superiority is to establish a law guaranteeing equality for all ethnic groups and nationalities in Iran. This would mean equal rights and opportunities—including access to education and welfare—recognition of all languages and cultures, and the decentralization of power.

All of this happened within the first ten minutes of the course. Although it wasn’t the first time I had experienced such behavior in society, recalling this bitter memory after years of working as a trader in financial markets still weighs heavily on me.

I had experienced similar behavior during my university years in Urmia: from discrimination by some professors between Shia and Sunni students, to classes where, because the instructor was an Azeri speaker, we had to follow the lecture in Azeri even though we didn’t know the language. Or when I applied for a teaching position in my hometown’s education department, despite passing the written exam, because during the Gozinesh (selection, a discriminatory interview law), I couldn’t answer a question about the last Friday Prayer sermon in my city, I was disqualified. They hired a Shia woman from an Azeri-speaking city.

The financial markets seminar was held over two days. Due to the long journey and fatigue, I decided to stay in Tehran for an additional two days to rest and visit some sights. I explored places like the Tabia’at (Nature) Bridge and Chitgar Lake; the city’s urban planning was captivating. Yet feelings of estrangement and homesickness called me home to Kurdistan.

The post The Kurdish Trader appeared first on Tehran Bureau.

When the war started, a lot of things changed. We were about three or four days in, around the time the Israelis issued a warning to evacuate Tehran. I don’t remember exactly, it might have been the fifth day. Many people started leaving the city. 

The lines at the gas station were insane. My aunt’s neighbor went and queued from 5 or 6 in the morning, and came back at 9 a.m. 

Then they (regime) set a limit; they wouldn’t give you more than 20-25 liters with your fuel card and without it 15 liters. Under normal circumstances, every 24 hours you could get 40 liters, but during the war, it dropped to 25.

This is a very small amount, and a lot of people fleeing Tehran would get stranded on the way to Shomal (northern Iran), and their cars would just die.

One of my friends wanted to head to Hamadan to his family home, but he couldn’t find gas. 

There are some websites that are for home services. Like, they come to your house, check your car, I don’t know, check your plumbing, paint your house, things like that. But they also provide other services like on-site gasoline delivery. They have special vehicles that come with a fuel nozzle, and you can fill up your car with them. Before the war, you could get as much as you wanted, no limit, and it would cost, like, 5k tomans [per liter] (1.19 USD). It was especially useful for people whose cars were far from a gas station, and situations like that. It was fine back then.

So, anyway, my friend found one of these websites and told me there is such an option and they are selling 10 liters for, I think, 400k or 500k tomans, and 20 liters for 600k tomans. Well, when there are no other options, you pay what you have to pay. You are going to have to pay 50k toman per liter for 10 liters, and if you get 20 liters, they will charge you 30k tomans per liter.

My friend put in a request for them to gas up his car, but no one accepted the job. There just wasn’t any gasoline available. Later that night, when I checked, they had completely removed this service from their website, and weren’t offering it anymore. It was a really bizarre situation. Really bizarre.

I was looking for a place up north for us, my mom and dad, my aunt and uncle, my brother and his wife. We only had one car, so I had to find another car as well. We ended up finding everything — both the place and the car — but we didn’t go. 

With small cars like the Peugeot 206 and similar models that don’t have much trunk space, people had to get barband (roof carriers) installed on their cars. They’d strap on a roof rack up top. 

I have a Peugeot 206 hatchback, so basically nothing fits in my car. My brother told me to get a roof rack installed just in case. He said, ‘Sort out your gas, and get the roof rack.’ I said okay.

I went to a street nearby where they sell spare parts and stuff, and asked about installing a rack. He said, ‘If you can find it, you’ll find it on Mellat Street.’ Mellat Street is …you know where the Bazaar is, right? It’s about two or three streets above the Bazaar, below Toopkhaneh Square — roughly thereabouts.  Do you know Masoudieh Mansion? Emarat Masoudieh is right by Ekbatan Street and Mellat Street — that area.

I got in the car and drove there. Normally, Mellat Street is a madhouse! When you go there, all the shops are open, cars lined up out front. One guy is getting his car customized, another’s getting a sound system put in, another one’s getting his windows tinted. It’s just chaos. It’s really hard to pass through it.

So I go there, and everything is closed. I went all the way down one street, and nothing was open. I turned onto another street, and again, all the shops were closed except for two. I thought, let me ask anyway, maybe they have something.

I went up to one of the shops and saw they were actually installing roof racks. There were six cars lined up in front, waiting for their turn to get a rack.

I went in and the guy says, ‘I don’t know if we’ll have time for you or not. Wait, though, maybe we can get to you. There are already five or six cars waiting, and I only have two installers.’

I said, ‘Okay, I’ll wait,’ because I had no other choice.

So I waited, and about a half an hour before closing time, it was finally my turn.

The guy asks, ‘Okay, what color is your car?’

I said, ‘It’s white.’

He says, ‘Okay, you want a white one then.’

I said, ‘Yeah, logically.’

He goes in and comes back out and says, ‘We’re out of white ones.’

I said, ‘So what do you have?’

He says, ‘Just black.’

I said, ‘Fine, put on the black one. There are no other choices right now.’

There really wasn’t. While I was there, three more people pulled up.

The shopkeeper was throwing jabs at them, saying, ‘You’re all getting ready to leave, huh?’

They said, ‘No, not me.’

The guy says, ‘Yeah, right, it’s obvious. All of you are planning to leave, otherwise why would so many cars be coming in?’ He says, ‘Since this morning, we’ve installed roof racks on 200 cars! Everyone’s coming to get a roof rack just so they can take a couple of extra things with them.’

Be Omid Didar

After they installed the rack, I went to get in line for gas. The line was about 500 meters long, give or take. This gas station was huge, you know, it had six lanes, and each lane had two pumps. So basically, every three minutes, they’d fill up 12 cars. They were moving cars through really fast. The gas station itself had a kind of security vibe. There were a few armed police officers standing around while people came to get gas.

I ended up waiting in line for about 30 to 40 minutes before I got to fill up. Honestly, I thought that was really good, because some people were waiting two to three hours in other places. I got my 25 liters. I wanted to be ready to get out of Tehran quickly if we had to, just in case things really went sideways. 

One of my friends had just recently received his car. And when I say ‘recently,’ I mean they delivered it like three or five months ago, but they still haven’t given him his fuel card.

His car is one of those gas guzzler SUVs, a tired Chinese model. He told me, ‘I waited in line for seven hours and never got my turn because they were only giving gas if you had a card. They wouldn’t let you fill up without it.’

When he couldn’t get gas, he went to his brother’s bagh (garden) in the outskirts of Tehran, to be safe. The next day, I called him, and he said he had been in line since 10 a.m. He would get gas, then go to the back of the line and wait to fill up again because he could only get 15 liters per turn, and his tank holds around 70 liters. He said he went to the back of the line five times and left around 6 or 7 in the evening.

It was an absolute mess, just a really, really terrible situation.

Today, I did something — I know it’s really unsafe, but I got one of those 20-liter gas cans. I filled it up separately, sealed it, and put it in the corner of the garage, so that if something like this happens again, I’ll have 15-20 liters on hand to hit the road.

Because when things get really bad, and you’re on the road for 17-18 hours, you’ll definitely run out of gas. The lines at gas stations will be long, and you’ll run out of gas on the road. That’s why I have the gas can now so if it ever comes to it, I can pour it in and at least keep driving for a few more kilometers.

To tell you the truth, during those 12 days, I didn’t want to leave Tehran. Not really… I had a few reasons. One was that I have a lot of assets. Like, I have two monitors, a laptop, and a dedicated keyboard that I use, so just packing all of this up, moving somewhere else, and setting it up again is hard—plus there’s no room in the car at all. I have my mom and dad [with me], and you also need to bring food supplies, rice, and stuff to sustain you for at least a period of time, plus you need clothes and other things… there’s just no space in the car to move all of that.

I kept holding off, just waiting, wanting to wait until things got to a point where things became critical. Like, if they hit infrastructure, if water got cut off, if gas got cut off, and it became impossible to stay, then at that point I’d say, ‘Okay, fine, I’ll leave for a month,’ and I’d figure out some way to take everything, take my laptop and mouse somehow, and hit the road because Tehran would no longer be a place you could stay. But up until that point, no.

They (Israelis) did hit infrastructure, you know, one of my friends who lives in Zaferanieh — after what happened in Tajrish, I think their water was cut off for 72 hours.

In those 12 days, I only went out for the roof rack and gas. The rest of the time I was at home. I had made a timeline of when the attacks were happening, and usually by around 12 or 1, they would stop. Then there wouldn’t be any more attacks until around 4. During the war, this three-hour window was safe.

So on one Saturday, during that three-hour entr’acte, I picked up one of my friends, and we drove around the city for a bit. The city was practically empty. In terms of shops, only a few supermarkets were open here or there. There was this one ice cream shop that was open, so we went in and got ice cream. There was no one else inside.

When we were leaving, I said, ‘Thank you, take care, goodbye.’ And the guy there, with a really sad expression, said, ‘Be Omid Didar (Hope to see you again),’ in this really sad way, “Come see us again.” It was kind of funny but also sad. That was the only place open; there was really nothing else.

Kids with Kalashnikovs

There were a lot of IRGC checkpoints at that time. The cars had ‘IRGC Patrol’ written on them. They weren’t the police or Basij; these guys were wearing IRGC uniforms, and the cars were heavy-duty IRGC vehicles. These big black cars that you’d normally only see during protests or anti-government situations — one of those big black cars that NOPO (Counter-terrorism Special Force/riot police) uses as well. They also had signs out that said ‘IRGC Patrol’.

Because there were so few cars in the city, traffic would just be like five or six cars, so it (checkpoints) didn’t really cause traffic jams. But let me tell you, when IRGC patrols show up in some areas now, it causes crazy traffic because the city has gotten busy again, like how it used to be, so it can’t handle those kinds of checkpoints anymore.

The way they (IRGC) set up their blockades is different. Regular patrols will just narrow the lane so one car can pass through, but these guys set up a zigzag path. Like, you have to go left, then turn right, making a full zigzag so a car going straight can’t just easily pass through. That’s why it causes more traffic.

Yesterday, on Andarzgoo, they had a checkpoint, and it was the IRGC again. They were mostly stopping SUVs there, cars with big trunks you can hide something in the back of.

Let me tell you a funny story about the Saturday before the ceasefire. Even the traffic police at Jahan Koodak, on Gandhi and those areas — they were carrying  Kalashes (Kalashnikovs)!

I had never seen traffic cops with Kalashnikovs before. I mean, they wouldn’t trust traffic police with anything, [not even pepper spray], just a whistle, that’s it.

I turned onto the street and saw two guys standing there with Kalashnikovs in their hands. And they looked totally normal, too — very neat, clean with trimmed beards, really normal and proper looking.

From what I have observed there is a mix of young kids, trained forces, and IRGC guys at checkpoints. In some places like Moniriyeh Square, I saw a checkpoint with a bunch of kids, and I saw the same thing in Mirdamad too. All of a sudden, it was just kids running the show.

In Mirdamad, one of them told me to [hit the switch and] lower the window , and I said, ‘It doesn’t work like that, I have to roll it down with a  handle. If you want, I can just open the door.’ So I unlocked it, and he shined his flashlight inside… There were just a few grocery bags. Then I heard his superior say, ‘Look at Agha Majid. You don’t need to open every single car door.’

The other night I got a Snapp (Iranian Uber) to come home from the gym, wherever there was a checkpoint there was crazy traffic and this guy would turn around and go from another route. He didn’t go through a single checkpoint. I wanted to tell the guy “Bro, if you’re with Mossad tell me, I can handle it!” I mean, a bunch of clueless idiots run these checkpoints. It’s honestly ridiculous.

“Check if they’re okay”

During the war, phones were extremely unstable. I’d call my friends, and the call would drop after one or two seconds—mobile calls. A lot of people don’t have landlines in their homes anymore because landlines have become just a pointless monthly fee for something you don’t even use.

There was also making contact between families and people outside the country. People would tell me, ‘Can you give so-and-so a call and let me know if they’re okay?’ or ‘Check on this person for me.’ That was happening too.

Landlines were restricted, so no one from outside the country could call us here. There are two sisters, and I’m friends with the sister who’s here. The other sister lives in London. There was a strike near my friend’s house and the London sister hadn’t slept all night, crying and sobbing and everything. She sent me message after message.

When I woke up in the morning, I told her, “Wait, let me call.” I called, and they were fine, so I messaged her, ‘They’re fine, don’t worry.’ Then she told me, “Can you ask my sister to call my husband’s family so we can make sure they’re okay too?” So it was like that — I had to call her sister and tell her, “Call your brother-in-law’s family to check if they’re okay or not.”

The internet was also completely messed up; people couldn’t use it. Literally the night before they shut down the internet, it crossed my mind, “What if they switch to the national internet, what if everything gets cut off?” So I thought, let me set up a chat page so I can at least check in with people, see if they’re okay or not.

I used ChatGPT because I just wanted to build something fast, and I had an internal VM too, but when the internet goes national, you can’t even access your internal stuff anymore. I had shared this chat page with people abroad, but then we got cut off and couldn’t talk anymore.

I built this emergency chat in the dumbest, most basic form, just so it would work. You couldn’t even send pictures, just plain text. I didn’t even have time to make it systematic or add a database, everything was just JSON files. I made clones and gave one to my brother, one to a friend, another to another friend, and told them, “This is your chat page. If something happens, let’s notify each other about what’s going on, if we’re okay, if everyone is safe and sound.”

And during the first five nights of the war, we were seriously using this chat. I would write to my brother, “Is everything okay? Do you have water? Do you have electricity?” and he would write back, “What’s going on there?” 

I’d tell him, “Everything’s fine, we have everything here.” Because there was no internet, that chat was our only communication channel. It was actually kind of funny.

I’ve been thinking about building it out a bit more, making it more complete, in case something like this happens again. I need to make it a bit more responsive, add the ability to send files and things like that.

Even now, our internet isn’t normal—it still has serious disruptions. 

My work depends on the internet, and the situation has become extremely complicated. I had to take Thursday and Friday off because I couldn’t work at all. In the first two or three days, I managed to set up a connection—but that’s a really complex story… It’s been really hard for me to work.

Right now, I’ve rented a VPS in Europe, but I don’t connect to it regularly so it doesn’t get blocked. I only connect to it when I really need to get some work done, and then I disconnect immediately.

They even blocked Google! Google eventually started working again. From around day six or seven of the war, they whitelisted it because people were basically going crazy since the internet was practically gone.

During that blackout, a lot of people moved over to Bale and Rubika (Iranian social media platforms and messengers), and I know many people started using them—using their web-based versions. Look, it’s not about [people] trusting these apps; it’s about the anxiety levels of the people outside the country, because they were seeing the news, seeing how f*@ked up everything was, and realizing they had no way to contact their families. That’s why so many people moved there; even friends of mine did it because it was the only way they could connect with their families. But I am not the type to install such apps.

One of my friends said to me, “I can’t log in, can I use your phone number?” and I told them, “No, I won’t even let you register my number there.”

The whole situation has become really complicated.

As for Starlink, the entire narrative has now shifted to: “Drones are using Starlink.” So, if you go near Starlink, you’re a spy, and it’s basically impossible to go near it now. They’ve put really heavy penalties on Starlink.

Shrapnel in the rooftops

It was really bad when the Israeli military would issue warnings telling people to evacuate certain areas. On the last night, they told District 7 to evacuate, Enghelab and Pich-e Shemroon, which was exactly to the left of my brother’s place, right in the targeted zone.

Fortunately, they weren’t home. If they had been home, I would’ve had to rush over there to get them, and bring them here, because apparently the strike was very close to them.

Actually, the windows of their fourth-floor neighbors shattered. They had a budgie that died of shock because the blast wave was so strong. The explosion was on the other side of the street, but the shockwave shattered all the windows on this side. It was really close.

Thankfully, they were on the second floor, and before leaving, my brother had taped all the windows, so their windows didn’t shatter.

I don’t know exactly how much damage there was because they [the regime] don’t report anything accurately. But a clear example of the destruction that everyone can see is that Babak Zanjani building, the tall tower at the start of Gandhi Street — actually, not Gandhi, it’s Africa Street. They hit the top of it, and even now, it’s still in ruins.

Over by Bokharest Street, where my gym is, around Fourth and Sixth Streets, I saw two buildings that were completely destroyed, nothing was left of them.

The blast wave was so strong, and there was so much shrapnel that on the other side of the street, about 40-50 meters away, the facades of two banks were heavily damaged. The windows of another building were shattered, and in some of these older houses, the window frames had been ripped out — that’s how strong the shockwave was.

There was shrapnel embedded in the roofs of some homes. I personally saw two places where there was shrapnel stuck in the roof.

They had completely leveled two buildings to the ground; it was something unbelievable. I don’t know the exact address numbers, but it was between Fourth and Sixth Streets, where there are these attached buildings, and they had completely destroyed them. It’s right at the beginning of the street, like three or four buildings from Fourth Street. We don’t even know what these buildings were. 

As for the rest of the areas, like Kamraniyeh, I don’t really go that way, so I haven’t seen it myself.  And I haven’t seen much in other areas either. It’s not like the damage is super visible everywhere, except for these few places that I actually pass by.

It was honestly such a strange, and intense week.

It wasn’t like the old war days when Saddam would just randomly launch missiles wherever. Now, they [the Israelis] actually have a target, and they hit it.

I was talking with my mom about the Iran-Iraq war, and she was saying that back then, you genuinely didn’t know if you’d survive the next attack. The entire concept of going to the shelter was because we understood we needed to get inside, that it was possible we wouldn’t make it through the next strike.

But now, there’s a huge group of people who feel completely at ease, saying, “Okay, there’s no scientist living on our street, there’s no IRGC guy here,” so they truly don’t care at all.

That’s the difference with these precision strikes. It’s not like they’re just randomly firing missiles.

I mean, it’s possible that next to your building, there’s, for example, a Ministry of Defense building on one side, and an IRGC site on the other, so there’s a chance you might get hurt because they’re hitting that specific spot, and you just happen to be in the vicinity.

There are places where IRGC guys go, and, of course, they love living in those fancy uptown areas. But if you’re in some random, remote area where no IRGC people or highly protected scientists ever go, you can assume you’re probably safe.

It’s not like the eight-year war, when planes would just come in and drop whatever load they had, even dumping their extra fuel tanks before turning around and saying, ‘Well, that’s all folks, goodbye.’

That’s one of the reasons why people didn’t have that same intense stress no — they say noghte zani [precision strikes], and honestly, it really was.

Look, there were casualties. At the end of the day, it’s war. No one has promised not to kill. In the end, civilians also get killed.

But it was very different from the previous war. If you didn’t have IRGC people or scientists near you, there was a good chance they wouldn’t hit your street or your neighborhood.

Something really strange was that they didn’t hit Tehran’s District 12 at all, or District 11 either, even though the Supreme Leader’s compound is right above District 11. The compound was definitely empty, and they probably thought, ‘Why would we hit it?’ Instead, they hit places where there really would be casualties.

The closest hit to us was near where my brother lives, and even then, we never fully figured out what exactly happened there.

My friend’s dayi (maternal uncle) lives on Araqi Street in Pasdaran, and they were getting hit non-stop around there. That whole area was really unsafe. You know, these [regime] people have big appetites, they always pick the nicest places to live.

When [Ali] Shamkhani did his interview, he did it at J Café , which just opened in Arjantin Square. You know who owns it? It belongs to Admiral Group, which you probably know is owned by his son. ¹

There’s this guy at my gym who works at Admiral. He was telling me Shamkhani went to this café to do his interview. There were people there and when Shamkhani walked in people freaked out. Everyone ran out. 

Shamkhani went there deliberately because they thought that they (Israelis) wouldn’t hit a public café, because there would be a lot of civilian casualties. But people quickly cleared out of the area.

The reporter said to him, “You’ve come to a public place, aren’t you worried?” He (Shamkhani) says, “No, they already hit my house, they hit my office, there’s nothing left, I don’t have anywhere else!”

Even though Admiral has around seven or eight buildings right in the Arjantin area — above the square, below the square, on 15th Street, 14th Street. They have seven or eight really massive buildings there, and in one of them, which is just their HR building, for example, they have a gym on level minus six.

When I saw Shamkhani’s interview, I thought, ‘This guy looks healthier than me…’ Mashallah, even his lung capacity was great. If your rib cage was shattered, how are you breathing so comfortably?

There wasn’t a scratch on his hands, no bruising on his face, nothing. In several parts of the video, he bangs his cane on the ground, and a lot of people were saying, ‘Come on, someone who’s actually injured couldn’t be banging a cane on the ground like that.’

Everything about it was strange. His house was definitely empty. I think they were informed beforehand. Just like that incident with the Evin prison warden’s kid, where they texted him ten minutes before and said, ‘Tell your dad to leave, we’re going to attack,’ and he (the warden) really did leave. It was exactly like that.

He (Shamkhani) literally said, “My son left the house ten minutes before [the attack].” I think they told his kid, and they emptied out the house, and went downstairs, and then they (Israelis) hit the house. It was fishy. 

‘Nonsense, but they repeat it’

During the war, I read domestic news sources and foreign ones when I could. In the domestic ones, we were the absolute victors, and in the foreign ones, it was the opposite. 

A funny thing in all of this is how they (regime) tell themselves a lie so many times that they actually start to believe it. Like, in the back of their minds, they’re like, ‘Yeah, this is exactly how it is. This is obviously the truth.’ They repeat the story to themselves so much that it becomes their reality.

Right now, there’s this really ridiculous thing going on where they seriously claim on TV that ‘We shot down ten F-35s.’ Like, they’re dead serious: ‘We shot down ten f*@king F-35s.’

They said it in the beginning, and then they kept repeating it, and then they made programs saying, ‘If our economy was weak, we wouldn’t have been able to shoot down F-35s, so our economy must be strong too.’ Then they were like, ‘The Supreme Leader said, if we can be so good militarily, why can’t we be good in automaking?’

They’re like, ‘If we’re shooting down F-35s, that means we’re really good. We should bring that same mindset into auto manufacturing…’ It’s such nonsense, but they repeat it so much that they actually think it really happened.

They made another program where they said, ‘People are asking, if you shot down an F-35, why aren’t you showing it to us?’ And the guy says,‘Look, the F-35 is a very valuable thing! One possibility is that we sold it to China so they can copy it, so of course there’s no wreckage for us to show.’

But the option that they didn’t shoot it down isn’t even on the table. They genuinely believe they did.

I’m telling you, it’s total nonsense, but they repeat it in so many different ways that for a moment even you start to doubt yourself and think, ‘Wait, maybe this is actually true.’

They kept repeating the F-35 lie until, Israel was finally like, ‘Okay, tell us which one you shot down, because we sent out ten aircraft and all ten of them returned, we’re seeing them right here. At least tell us who the pilot was so we know too…’

But these guys just kept going with it. One of their big talking points was that ‘We shot down the F-35 that hit the IRIB (state TV) building, in Tabriz.’ They put out tons of reports about it, made a big fuss, and in the end it turned out to be nothing.

And I don’t mean like just some random news agency reported it—no, it was on national TV. You still haven’t taken back control of your airspace and you say you shot down ten F-35s?!

We should have been convinced when Mosta’an 110 [was unveiled] that they have zero intelligence and are completely out to lunch. ²

Today, this Israeli minister was saying, “We can’t change the regime, but we’ve paved the path for you…” Dude, the smoke from this regime is getting in your eyes. Just change it and get it over with so we can all be free.

We’re on this track now, nothing we can do about it. We’ll know in a few months, tops. As that song goes, “Que sera, sera. Whatever will be, will be.”

2025

The post Evacuating Tehran appeared first on Tehran Bureau.

I was five years old when the revolution happened. Kurdistan had entered a period of intense political tension with the central government. The issue of autonomy was being discussed. In the spring of 1979, the three of us brothers got sick at the same time. My older brother’s leg, my younger brother’s heel, and my left elbow became swollen. There was no good hospital or doctor in our area. Since Tehran was very far from our city and difficult to reach, we had to go to Tabriz.

My father took us to the Children’s Hospital there. I don’t know what happened, but both of my brothers got better after they were given injections and went home with my father, while I stayed behind in the hospital.

I wasn’t yet six years old when I found myself surrounded by Azeri-speaking doctors and nurses, without knowing either Azeri or Persian. There wasn’t a bed for me, so I slept on a mattress spread out on the floor between two rows of beds. I remember crying for the first two days and nights, looking for my father, but he was at least three hours away from me.

On the second night, when I couldn’t sleep, I got up to drink some water. I had to pass by the nurses’ station. One of the nurses turned to the others and said, “Kurd di, Sunni di”—meaning, “He’s Kurdish, he’s Sunni.” I understood what it meant to be Kurdish, but not what it meant to be Sunni, or why she introduced me that way. Maybe it was out of this fear that my father told them my name was Karim at admission. But everyone quickly found out I was Kurdish and Sunni.

They drained fluid from my elbow several times, and in the end, they put my arm in a cast. After three weeks, my father came for me, and we left Tabriz for Bukan. Our return coincided with Ayatollah Khomeini’s decree ordering the attack on Kurdistan. In his decree, which was also recorded on video, he called the Kurdish fighters infidels and, quoting a verse from the Quran, “ashaddā’ ʿala l-kuffār wa ruḥamā’ baynahum” (severe against the unbelievers and merciful among themselves), and demanded a harsh crackdown on them.

After Khomeini’s decree, the army and the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC) attacked Kurdistan. The IRGC—essentially the regime’s second army, irregular and unprofessional—was also an ideological corps. For this reason, most of its members were poorly educated or illiterate, and largely from lower social classes.

In Kurdistan, however, figures such as Dr. Abdulrahman Qasemlu, Dr. Jafar Shafiee, Fouad Mostafa Soltani, and Sheikh Ezzeddin Hosseini were prominent political and popular leaders who guided the Kurdish movement. Because Kurdistan had a culture of organized political parties and a strong organizational structure, they were able, in a very short time, to mobilize the Peshmerga forces and lead popular defense.

During what became known as the “Three-Month War,” Khomeini’s forces suffered heavy defeats. In cities that were predominantly Azeri-speaking and close to Kurdistan, such as Miandoab (in West Azerbaijan Province) and Qorveh (in Kurdistan Province), even hardline Shia Azeris collaborated with the IRGC in the killings and massacres.

For example, during the attack on the village of Qarna by the IRGC and plainclothes forces—a village that was entirely Kurdish but located in West Azerbaijan Province—63 people, including pregnant women, elderly men, and the village Imam holding the Quran, were shot under the pretext of Kurdish Peshmerga presence. The operation was led by Molla Hassani, the Friday prayer leader and Supreme Leader’s representative in Urmia.

Massacres similar to Qarna also occurred in other villages, such as Inderqash, Qalatan, Sabzi, Sarchenar, and other places. Atrocities also took place in the cities, their magnitude beyond what words can express.

In  Nowruz 1979, they attacked the city of Sanandaj. A bloody battle ensued. The IRGC showed no mercy even to civilians. According to eyewitnesses, the authorities did not allow people to bury the dead for a week, leaving the bodies lying in the streets and alleys.

We had a brick factory near the first predominantly Azeri-speaking city, Miandoab. Some of our customers were Azeri truck drivers who knew my father. It was late August when we set off for Kurdistan, after three weeks in the hospital, with my arm in a sling around my neck.

After passing Malekan, the bus stopped somewhere for tea, food, and a short rest. One of our customers, who happened to be there, saw us and came over, saying, ‘Kak Aziz, what are you doing here?’ My father explained that we were returning from the Children’s Hospital in Tabriz. Speaking in heavily Azeri-accented, broken Kurdish, the guy said, ‘They are killing Kurds in Miandoab; you shouldn’t take the main route back!’ My father asked, ‘Well, what should I do?’ The customer said, ‘Get your bag from the bus and come with me—I’ll take the back roads and get you to a safe place.’

We got into his car and drove along rural roads until we reached the first Kurdish village where my father’s Khaleh (maternal aunt) also lived. During the drive, my father’s acquaintance told us about Khomeini’s decree about Kurdistan. He said that negotiations had failed and that the Kurdish Peshmerga forces were now fighting the IRGC and the Islamic Republic’s army.

Kurdistan and the fully Kurdish villages begin at Shinabad, about five kilometers from Miandoab toward Bukan, which at that time was under Peshmerga control. We spent the night at my father’s aunt’s house. The next day, we took the back roads to the main road to Bukan, and from there traveled to the city by minibus. During the Three-Month War, I was still taking what felt like a kilo of pills, and returning to Tabriz was impossible. My arm remained in a cast, hanging from my neck.

One day, one of my father’s acquaintances said, ‘Go see Hamzeh Agha, the Panseman-chi (the bandager, someone who knows how to dress wounds but is not a doctor) to remove your son’s cast—it’s not good for his arm (to still be in one).” We went to Hamzeh Agha, and he expressed both surprise and concern, saying, ‘This child’s arm is mangled. Why didn’t you remove the cast sooner?’ He placed the cast in a basin of water and let it soften. He used special scissors to cut open the cast. My arm was thin, crooked, and my elbow was swollen.

During the war, Kurdistan was under economic blockade by the central government, and resources were extremely limited. On top of that, our city didn’t even have a physiotherapist or a physiotherapy center. No one thought that my arm would need physiotherapy to reduce the stiffness and deformity after being in a cast for so long. 

Things have improved somewhat where we live nowadays, but compared to Tehran and Tabriz, the difference is still striking. Compared to our city and the Kurdistan region, Tehran feels like a different country. It has a different identity and culture. Its facilities were and are incomparable to those in our city and region.

I felt like a stranger in Tehran because it was so different from our region. They considered me an outsider because my way of dressing [in Kurdish clothes] was unfamiliar to them. As soon as I opened my mouth to speak, they would immediately ask, “Are you from the provinces? Where are you from?” At that time, my accent was much stronger than it is now. We had heard a lot about Tehran being this way and that way, so when we went there, we visited some of the sights. For me, the first things that were really striking were the tall towers and then the escalator.

I remember seeing an escalator for the first time in a shopping mall in Tehran. I was a teenager then. There were no escalators in our area, so this kind of step felt strange to me. I rode it several times just to see what it was like and how it differed from the regular stairs back home. The differences between Tehran and our city range from escalators and factories to skyscrapers, roads, infrastructure, etc.

As a teenager, I was a member of the Bukan theater group, and our troupe traveled to Tehran to participate in a festival along with other troupes from all over Iran. Once we left Kurdistan, it felt like we were passing through wasteland until we reached Zanjan; from there on, there seemed to be no empty space—it was filled with buildings and factories everywhere. We entered Tehran from the west and were taken to a building in north Tehran for our stay. It had a large gate, and when we entered the courtyard, I saw a huge, palatial villa with a swimming pool.

I had never seen a house like that in my life. Wealth seemed to pour from every corner of the building. We learned that this luxurious house was confiscated property and under the control of the IRGC. The walls were carpeted with intricate designs, and the curtains, light switches, and electrical outlets. Everything was completely new to me. I had never seen a house like this in my life.

For meals, we went to a hall in the building that could comfortably hold two hundred people. It was a circular hall, used for parties, dancing, and gatherings. The wall tiles, which featured beautiful miniature paintings of semi-nude women, had been covered with plaster, but parts of the plaster had fallen, allowing us to catch glimpses of the miniatures that someone had tried to hide from view.

During this trip, I developed a high fever and chills and went to a hospital—I don’t remember exactly which one, but it was somewhere in northern Tehran. They immediately examined me in the ER and prescribed some medication and injections. The staff and services were organized. I had to return the next day for another injection.

Our troupe leader was an Azeri speaker and had a relative living in the south of Tehran, in the Kianshahr area. We traveled there by minibus with the group, which also gave me a chance to see Tehran from north to south. Along the way, the contrast between the northern and southern parts of the city was striking—the southern areas were far poorer in terms of infrastructure and construction.

I remember the relative’s house was simple, almost prefabricated, but they were incredibly hospitable and kind. The troupe leader asked them to take me to a clinic or medical center for my injection. We went there and waited for half an hour, but no one took responsibility, and it seemed as though nobody was coming. Finally, our hosts fetched a nurse they knew who worked there to give me the injection, and then we left. Apart from this visit, I never went to Tehran for medical care.

Bukan Hospital finally acquired an ultrasound machine when I was at university in Rasht. The machine had been obtained through the efforts of the then Bukan MP, and a banner was placed over the hospital entrance to thank him. Major industries and infrastructure in the region are still incomparable to other parts of the country. As a result, unemployment rates in Kurdistan remain among the highest in Iran, and young people—even educated ones—often turn to kulbari (carrying goods across the border) for a living.

* * *

I lived with this arm for years, enduring its weakness and pain, until the summer of 1990 (1369), when we went to Tabriz again—this time to the city’s main hospital, “Imam Khomeini.” Our hometown hospital had neither an orthopedics department nor an orthopedic specialist, which is why we had to go to Tabriz. As we set off from Bukan toward Tabriz, we inevitably passed through Miandoab. The first three-way intersection, “Seh-Rah Bikandi,” reminded me of my missing uncle, Amou (Paternal Uncle) Omar.

Amou Omar held a special place in my heart. We loved each other deeply. He had twins, Shuresh and Golbahar. They both died in childhood, within a day of each other. I don’t know what illness took them.

One morning, I woke to the sound of Amou Omar crying. He held me tightly in his arms and said, “Your friends are gone… you smell like Shuresh and Golbahar.” I was too young to understand the depth of his grief. From that moment on, I became even more precious to him, and in the absence of his children, he gave me all his affection and love. He would often carry me on his shoulders and buy me treats and gifts. I became very attached to him.

During the central government’s economic blockade of Kurdistan, some food items became scarce, including sugar. Amou Omar, along with Amou Sadiq and his son Hasan, took our minibus to Miandoab to buy large quantities of sugar from the Miandoab sugar factory to distribute among family and neighbors. Because some of our customers lived in Miandoab and had previously saved my father’s and my life, they were hopeful that knowing people there would make the trip safe. Confident in that, they took our minibus to purchase supplies and return them to Bukan. My cousin didn’t have his Shenasnameh (ID-birth certificate) with him, but Amou Omar and Amou Sadiq both had theirs.

When they entered Miandoab, the IRGC forces stopped their minibus. After checking the IDs of my two uncles, they took Amou Omar with them. They gave no information about where he was being taken or which prison he was in.

Months passed without Amou Omar returning. I was always waiting for him. Our house is in northern Bukan, closer to Miandoab, while my grandfather’s house was on the other side of town, closer to Saqqez. A few minibuses ran like a local bus line. The fare was 5 rials per person, and my allowance was 10 rials a day. Every morning, I would use my 10 rials to go to my grandfather’s house, hoping that my uncle would return and I would see him. 

My grandfather would go to Miandoab and look for him everywhere. He would never find his son. After a long time, we learned that Amoo Omar had been executed by a firing squad somewhere outside of Miandoab. I heard this from my Ammeh (paternal aunt).

Even when I got older, I often dreamed of Amou Omar. Once, I dreamt I was on a mountain slope that had grave-like crevices. Suddenly, Amou Omar emerged from one of the crevices, his clothes covered in dust and dirt. He dusted himself off and said, ‘Come on, let’s leave here—we have to get home as soon as possible.’ But that return home never happened. To this day, we still don’t know where Amou Omar is buried. Miandoab has always reminded me of this atrocity. 

We went to Imam Khomeini Hospital, and one of the doctors, an orthopedic specialist, took my case. After taking X-rays, it became clear that my arm needed surgery because the head of the radius bone had become calcified. I was hospitalized again. My older brother, who had come with me, returned to Bukan, and I stayed behind. I was alone again.

This time, I was older, knew Persian, and could communicate. I spent 21 days in that hospital, long enough to become familiar with the entire nursing team and many of the patients on the ward. I met a boy my age named Habib who’d been admitted for surgery due to a dislocated or overgrown lateral cuneiform bone in his foot. There was a bearded man under thirty in our room. They said he was a ‘war veteran.’ He told me he had been shot in the leg fighting the Kurdish Peshmerga, and they had to amputate. Every year, he had to return for surgery to shave down the bone growth in his leg; otherwise, he would be in severe pain. One day, he bluntly said, ‘I am thirsty for the blood of Kurds.’

My wait for elbow surgery continued. Every patient was asked whether they wanted “special” or “general” surgery. Knowing my father’s financial situation, I chose “general,” which meant the “special” cases went ahead of me, and I waited for my turn every day. Eventually, I heard that my doctor had gone on leave and that another specialist, who worked at a Sepah (IRGC) hospital, would operate on my arm. My elbow surgery ended up with Dr. Nouri, who was a Sepahi.

On the morning of the twenty-first day, the Sepahi doctor came in, glanced at my file, and told his colleagues to take me to the operating room. I remember being alone in the OR with the female nurse prepping me for surgery. She asked what had happened to my arm. I asked, “Should I tell you everything from the beginning?” She said it would help me go under anesthesia more easily. I told her I was cold, and she covered me with a green cloth. Gradually, the rest of the team arrived. I lost consciousness. When I woke up, it was night, and darkness had fallen. The pain was unbearable. It was relentless. I couldn’t sleep at all that night. I asked the night nurse for a painkiller. 

The next morning, as usual during patient rounds, Dr. Nouri, a burly blond man, came to our ward with his colleagues. When he reached my bed, he glanced at my file and said, “Move your fingers.” My entire arm, from elbow to fingertips, was in a cast, with only my fingers exposed. I wiggled them, and Dr. Nouri said, “Good,” and was about to leave. “Doctor, when will I be discharged?” I asked him. 

He turned back and said, “I want nothing more than for you to leave as soon as possible. What if you set off a grenade here?” I immediately replied, “You should be afraid of us Kurds.”

None of his colleagues reacted, perhaps because he was a Sepahi. One of them, who I think was a final-year medical student, looked at me and whispered, “Shhhhhhh.”

Because the tip of the radius in my left arm had been severed and left untreated, the condition of my arm worsened year by year. A few years ago, I went through a difficult period while pursuing a master’s degree in political science. My wife, who had been unemployed for years and had no interest in working or learning the language [of our new country], asked me to invest our savings in a small restaurant with her nephew. I was initially against it, partly because we had no experience in this area and partly because this wasn’t the kind of work we were used to.

Things were reaching a breaking point, and I finally gave in. My wife and her nephew used our savings to set up the restaurant. In less than four months, her nephew walked away, leaving us with a business we knew nothing about. On top of that, I was still in school. I had no choice but to drop out, roll up my sleeves, and dive into a business I had no experience in. I worked fifteen-hour days, sometimes longer, but it didn’t work out. Eventually, I went bankrupt. I fell into a deep depression, and my wife filed for divorce.

My life fell apart. After some time, weighed down by loneliness and despair, a friend insisted that I take up cycling.

Gradually, the pain in my left elbow worsened. Although long-distance cycling—at least 250 kilometers per week—had helped improve my physical and mental well-being, my left arm and elbow hurt badly. Every time I got on my bike, after about half an hour, my left arm would lock up, as if the bones of my forearm and upper arm were jammed together. I had to pull on my wrist to free my elbow. Gradually, even working and cycling became impossible. After years of living with this pain, I decided to seek treatment for my arm—for the third time, but this time in Belgium.

My family doctor referred me to Dr. Stefan Peter, an orthopedic specialist. When he examined my arm, he said it urgently needed an MRI to determine the exact problem. After reviewing the scan, he told me the situation was serious and required immediate surgery. In addition to severe arthritis, the lower bone—whose tip had previously been removed—had destroyed all the cartilage between the two joints. Bone fragments had formed, causing a severe infection. Surgery was unavoidable. Dr. Peter explained that in a few years, he would need to perform an elbow prosthesis to allow me a better quality of life for my remaining years.

For me, Iran and Tehran have always been reminders of bitterness, inequality, and discrimination. Part of this hardship and injustice came from the central government, and part stemmed from the people’s adherence to the unjust and inhumane policies of the government toward Iran’s periphery.

Despite the toxic propaganda spread by the Islamic Republic about the Kurds, the Zhina Movement (Woman, Life, Freedom) changed everything. After the Zhina uprising, especially with the help of social media and increased connectivity between the center and Iran’s peripheries, remarkable and positive shifts have taken place in the public perception of Kurds. I always say that Iranian sociopolitical history should be divided into two periods: before Zhina and after Zhina.

Nowadays, most people like Kurds. They no longer see us as rural or lower-class. They recognize Kurdish culture as a distinct and authentic one. When I was in university, I couldn’t find a single Persian speaker who shared my views. Now it’s the opposite. Many of those who sacrificed their lives for Zhina were not Kurdish. The change is remarkable. It is the result of greater connectivity, social media, and the growth of human rights awareness. People see how democracy and equality work in the world and have come to understand that cultural differences are a reality. They are seeing these things and slowly learning. 

The post My Left Arm appeared first on Tehran Bureau.

I grew up in Urmia, a city officially known as part of Iran’s West Azerbaijan province but which we, as Kurds, simply call Urmia province. It lies in East Kurdistan, in the northwest of Iran. I was raised in a typical Kurdish family, in a middle-class neighborhood in the western part of the city.

Back then, Urmia looked very different. Today, apartment complexes dominate the skyline, but when I was younger, the city still had its old charm; there were tree-lined alleys, modest houses with wide backyards, and quiet parks tucked between streets. Our house was big. It had four bedrooms and a large backyard where we spent much of our time. It was one of those neighborhoods built in the 1980s and 1990s, the kind that once gave cities across East Kurdistan and Iran their character.

Although I was born and raised in the city, my family’s roots are in a nearby village about eight kilometers west of Urmia, called Nushan. The village sits in a lush valley called Bande in Kurdish. A beautiful region, surrounded by mountains, gardens, and a river that runs into a dam built roughly twenty years ago. Our life in Urmia was between the city and the village, much like many other families in the city. During the summers, we spent most of our time in my grandparents’ village and their garden. 

Every summer, I would return there to spend time with my grandparents. Those summers were the highlight of my childhood. The days were filled with laughter, cousins visiting from other cities, and endless afternoons swimming in the river. We would help our grandparents in the orchards, picking apples and vegetables. My grandmother often sang old Kurdish poems as we worked. Those were the simplest and happiest moments I can remember—moments that defined my connection to both my family and the land.

The Hidden Kurdish Identity of Urmia

Many people, both inside and outside Iran, assume Urmia is a Turkish Azeri city. Even now, when I meet someone new, they often ask how I can be Kurdish if I’m from Urmia. That misconception is not accidental; it’s the result of decades of deliberate propaganda and demographic manipulation by the Iranian state.

In reality, Kurds make up more than half of Urmia’s population. Many of the city’s major neighborhoods—such as Gire Cihu (meaning “Jewish Hill”), Badiki, Alwaj, and Tarzilu—are predominantly Kurdish. Yet, our existence has been systematically denied through state policies that privilege the Turkish Azeri population while marginalizing Kurds and other minorities.

Politically, Kurds are nearly absent from positions of power. I once read a study showing that Kurds hold only about three percent of administrative and political roles in the entire province, despite constituting more than half of its population. The rest are dominated by the Turkish population. In the southern parts of the province—cities such as Mahabad, Bukan, and Sardasht—Kurds form the overwhelming majority, yet remain politically sidelined.

Beyond the city center, the mountainous regions of Mirgewer, Tirgewer, and Soma Bradost are entirely Kurdish, dotted with hundreds of villages. But these communities, like the rest of us, have long been made invisible by both Iranian and Turkish nationalist narratives.

Historically, the region was largely Kurdish, with Armenian, Assyrian, and Jewish minorities. The Turkification of the area began under the Safavid dynasty, when Turkic Afshar tribes were resettled in the region and many Kurdish families from Urmia were forcibly exiled to Khorasan in northeastern Iran, Mazandaran, the Caspian coast, and even Qazvin. This policy of forced displacement continued under the Qajars and the Pahlavis. Each era brought new waves of exile and settlement that diluted the Kurdish presence and reshaped Urmia’s demographic identity.

Today, the result of those centuries of manipulation is clear: a city where Kurdish identity has been erased from the official narrative, even though it still thrives in everyday life.

Urmia has always been a city of many identities—Kurdish, Azeri, Armenian, Assyrian, and Jewish. My own family has Jewish roots tracing back to the western mountains of Urmia, near the border between today’s Yüksekova (Gever) in Turkey and Urmia itself.

Through my own research, I discovered that Urmia once had five synagogues. All of them were destroyed over the years—most during the 1950s. One synagogue remained standing until about fifteen or twenty years ago, when locals began a renovation project, but it was later halted, and now the building lies in ruins.

There was once a thriving Jewish community in the neighborhood known as Gire Cihu, which I mentioned before, renamed by the Iranian authorities to Islamabad. People still call it by its original name, though. It’s one of the poorer neighborhoods in the city now. Most of its Jewish residents were forced to leave. Many emigrated to Israel; others to the United States or Sweden. Only a few remain, and those who do keep their identity private.

Urmia also had large Armenian and Assyrian Christian populations. The Azeri Turks in the city are mostly Shia Muslims, while Kurds are primarily Sunni. There are also small Yarsani communities—followers of an ancient Kurdish faith blending elements of Judaism, Islam, Christianity, and even Buddhism. There are around one to two million Yarsanis across Kurdistan, though not all are ethnically Kurdish. Some also have been “Turkified” over time, particularly in the East Azerbaijan province. Like Bahá’ís and other minority faiths, Yarsanis have been severely persecuted by the regime.

The suppression of diversity in Urmia didn’t start with the Islamic Republic. It goes back to the Pahlavi era, when minority communities were targeted under the guise of modernization and national unity. For example, in the 1950s, during the first waves of Aliyah (Jewish migration to Israel), the Pahlavi government demolished synagogues and Jewish cemeteries. On the road from Salmas to Urmia, there once stood a Jewish cemetery and synagogue—both were destroyed, and a large grain silo was built over them. The remaining land was turned into a marketplace, which still exists today.

This erasure extended to Armenians and Assyrians. When I was younger, I remember a time when Christmas coincided with the Shiite mourning ceremonies of Ashura and Tasua. The regime banned Christmas celebrations, sparking protests among Christians. Many of my Armenian friends and neighbors eventually left the city because life became too difficult. Some emigrated to Armenia, others to the United States—especially to Orange County, California—and many others to Sweden. I also knew several Assyrian families who migrated to Australia for the same reasons.

The regime’s intolerance has often taken a physical form. For instance, the Alwaj neighborhood in northwestern Urmia, which was home to both Kurds and Assyrians, saw its Assyrian cemetery demolished. Many families left afterward.

These patterns—the destruction of sacred sites, the forced migrations, the rewriting of local names—are not isolated events. They are part of a long continuum of erasure, spanning different governments and ideologies. The Islamic Republic simply continued what earlier regimes began.

Even today, Bahá’ís in Urmia, as elsewhere in Iran, live under constant threat and discrimination. Their faith, like the Yarsani and others, exists in the shadows—just as Kurdish identity does in the broader political landscape of the region.

Dreams of Tehran

In my family—and for many people around us—going to Tehran meant success. It symbolized a better life, opportunity, and prestige. The capital had everything: the jobs, the business connections, and the modern lifestyle. My uncles lived there, and I always looked up to them. To us, they represented what it meant to be successful. To leave the smaller city behind and start anew in a place where everything seemed bigger, faster, and more advanced.

My uncles and cousins had already carved out lives in Tehran, and our visits were thrilling glimpses into another world. The city’s skyscrapers, sprawling shopping centers, wide parks, and luxury cars stood in stark contrast to life in Urmia. As a teenager, I dreamed about following the same path. I imagined myself living in Tehran, running a business, and building a future that looked like theirs—comfortable, confident, and full of possibilities. Whenever we visited, I was mesmerized by the sheer scale of the city, the endless streets, the tall buildings, the noise and movement, and the shopping malls filled with lights and sounds. Compared to Urmia, where everything felt smaller and quieter, Tehran was like another world. Even the subway fascinated me. It felt like a symbol of progress, something that made Tehran modern in a way that my hometown could never be.

I can’t remember exactly how old I was when I first went there—maybe nine or ten. My uncles had already built their lives in Tehran, and from time to time, my family would visit them. My earliest memory is going with my father to the Tehran Grand Bazaar to see one of my uncles at his store. The bazaar was enormous, like a maze. I remember walking through its crowded corridors with my father, the sound of people, the smell of food, and the constant movement. It was so vast that at one point even my father got lost, asking shopkeepers for directions. It was long before smartphones or Google Maps. People simply had to ask their way through.

That day, my uncle ordered lunch from one of some restaurants. The food was unlike what we ate back home—heavy, rich, and dripping with oil. It wasn’t bad, just different. We also have a bazaar in Urmia, but it was small and quiet compared to this overwhelming world of Tehran’s commerce. My uncles always complained about how unhealthy the food was there—even today, they still prefer bringing homemade meals instead. But back then, for me, everything about that day felt new and exciting. It was a glimpse into a bigger life I wanted to have someday.

My perfect Persian accent 

So determined was I to embody this dream that I perfected a Tehrani Persian accent. My teachers often assumed I was a native of the capital. In my mind, assimilation into Tehran’s lifestyle was not just desirable. It was essential preparation for the future I believed awaited me.

I come from a fully Kurdish family. I grew up surrounded by Kurdish language, Kurdish music, and Kurdish food. Everything about my life was Kurdish. But I was taught by a system that made me feel like that wasn’t good enough. A system that quietly, but consistently, told me that to be Kurdish was to be lesser.

So, like many others, I tried to escape that feeling the only way I could: by sounding different. I trained myself to speak perfect Persian, mimicking the Tehrani accent so well that even my teachers couldn’t place me. They would ask, “Are you from somewhere near Tehran? Are your parents working here?” and I would smile, pretending not to be proud of the answer I had long rehearsed: “No, I’m just Kurdish from here.”

But deep inside, I knew why I did it. That accent—the smooth, confident Tehrani sound—was everything. It was the voice of television anchors, pop singers, and successful people. It was the sound of belonging.

I consumed everything Persian: the music, the TV shows, and the movies. I thought that if I wanted to be seen as “cool,” I needed to talk, look, and even move like people from Tehran. That was the culture’s unwritten rule. And I followed it without ever questioning why.

It wasn’t until I got older that I began to understand what was really happening. Watching popular Iranian comedy shows like Barareh, Paytakht, and Nûn-Khe, I started noticing the way they portrayed people from outside Tehran. These shows were supposed to be funny, but they were built on a certain hierarchy, which made the Persian-speaking Tehrani the symbol of sophistication and everyone else the punchline.

For example, Barareh mocked Luri speakers. Nûn-Khe turned Kurdish villagers into comic stereotypes. Paytakht exaggerated the Mazandarani and Gilaki accents to make their speakers seem simple, naive, and uncivilized. And for years, I had laughed along with everyone else. Then one day, I realized how cruel that laughter was. I saw that these shows weren’t harmless fun. They were reflections of a system that mocks diversity while pretending to celebrate it. They painted us, the non-Persian peoples, as uncivilized, slow, and inferior. They made our languages sound like stupidity.

When I began talking with people on social media, I realized it wasn’t just Kurds. The same kind of mockery existed against people from Isfahan, from Ahvaz, and from almost anywhere outside Tehran. A “standard” accent had become a measure of intelligence and respect. And that wasn’t an accident. It was systematic.

Later on I realized that this linguistic hierarchy mirrors something much bigger: a political project of domination. The Iranian regime has built its idea of national unity around a Persian-centered identity, one that forces everyone else to assimilate or disappear. The same dynamic exists in Turkey, where Istanbul Turkish is treated as the “real” language, and anyone speaking differently becomes a caricature—rural, uncultured, and provincial.

Years later, I can still recall those TV shows vividly. And when I look back on them now, they feel more like insults than comedies—not because they were allegedly showing Kurdish life, but because they exposed the reality of how the state and the dominant ethnic group, the Persians, see us. 

I always told myself, if there were ever a show that portrayed Kurdish life truthfully, a story about a Kurdish family in a Kurdish city dealing with ordinary things like love, work, and family, that would have been something worth celebrating. But instead, the stories we got were filtered through a lens of ridicule. They weren’t reflections of who we are; they were reminders of how we’re seen.

Tehran and the Icepack 

I used to buy maps and magazines about Tehran, pepper my cousins with questions about its neighborhoods, streets, restaurants, and cafes, and imagine myself someday driving through nice areas in West Tehran (specifically a quarter called “Bagh-e-Feyz,” where my uncles used to live) in my own car, escaping on weekends to Mazandaran or Gilan. 

I was always captivated by the stories my cousins shared about life in Tehran—like casually spotting a movie star in a neighborhood restaurant or discovering the latest craze everyone was talking about, such as a new milkshake introduced by a company called Icepack. The first time I tried one, I was so amazed. When Icepack eventually opened a branch in Urmia, it felt as if a small piece of Tehran had finally made its way to us, and I couldn’t have been happier. The first Ice Pack was always my favorite, especially the banana flavor. Unfortunately, they don’t exist in Germany, but back home it was one of those small joys that stayed with me. I was really obsessed with it, and it was really tasty. When an Ice Pack branch opened in Urmia, it quickly became my favorite place. It still exists, even today. It was one of those trends that started in Tehran and then spread elsewhere, so when it arrived in Urmia, it felt like a piece of the capital had reached us. The branch was located in a place we call Bande, a valley on the western side of Urmia. I remember thinking, Wow, they have this in Tehran, and now we have it here too.

Bande  is a beautiful and historic valley, just two or three kilometers from the city. The area is full of gardens, small rivers, and hundreds of restaurants. The valley stretches all the way to our village, which lies near the dam the government built years ago. It’s a popular destination. Everyone who visits Urmia must visit there. It’s a place where you can relax, eat, and enjoy nature; a place filled with life and calmness at the same time.

Expanding business to Tehran

Back home, my parents ran two clothing stores that imported Turkish and other European brands. Because of Urmia’s proximity to the border, our city offered products that were rare elsewhere, drawing even wealthy Tehranis to shop in Urmia’s stores. Watching them being stylish, confident, and cosmopolitan reinforced my belief that Tehranis embodied a superior cultural and modern standard. Yet I was proud, too, that customers often remarked on Urmia’s fashion sense, seeing it as a trendsetter for the capital.

In 2011-2012, my parents expanded their business to Tehran’s Grand Bazaar, putting my older cousin in charge. They opened a store in Bazar-e-Koweytiha, where they sold high-quality jeans made in Turkey. I spent summers there helping out. It was then that I began to see a different Tehran: a city of chaos, pollution, and relentless stress. Beneath its glamour, daily life was expensive, unsafe, and exhausting. It was a city that reeked of smoke and sewage in the canals by the streets, which never stopped roaring, and where everyone and everything seemed to be in a constant rush. You could be stuck in traffic for hours, navigate the subway while wary of pickpockets, or walk the streets with the risk of encountering robbers on motorcycles. My cousins were always warning me to stay alert and keep a close eye on my belongings. Still, weekends offered some relief—strolls in parks, visits to museums, and dinners in uptown restaurants. Sometimes, when I walk through certain streets in Berlin, a faint smell takes me back there. It’s strange—Berlin reminds me of Tehran in some ways. The chaos, the energy, the endless movement of people. The difference is that Berlin feels freer, less suffocating, and more human. Tehran was always under pressure—a place where life moved fast but freedom stood still.

But Iran’s worsening economy, battered by sanctions, corruption, and inflation, soon caught up with us. When international sanctions tightened, inflation spiraled out of control. I remember when one U.S. dollar was worth just 900 to 1,000 tomans, but within a matter of months it had surged past 2,000. The cost of imported goods doubled almost overnight, pushing many items once seen as “luxuries” far out of reach for ordinary Iranians. For business owners like my parents, the crisis was even more suffocating. With Iran’s banking system cut off from the global network, carrying out transactions and purchasing goods from abroad became nearly impossible. Like many others, my parents went bankrupt, closing both the Urmia and Tehran stores and losing almost everything, like many other business owners. With that loss, I believed my chances of ever living the “Tehrani life” I had idealized vanished, too.

When Kobani changed everything 

Meanwhile, life took yet another turn. As the battle of Kobani against ISIS unfolded in 2014 and the way it was discussed on social media, I found myself drawn to politics and history, to questions of identity I had never before considered. It wasn’t until Kobani rose against ISIS that I began to see myself not as a future Tehrani, but as a Kurd who needed to understand his people’s story. 

When I was younger, I was like most teenagers in Kurdistan and Iran, shaped, without realizing it, by a system designed to make me forget who I was. Even though I came from a deeply Kurdish family that spoke Kurdish, sang Kurdish songs, cooked Kurdish food, and lived with Kurdish values, I grew up in a country that systematically taught me to hate that part of myself. From an early age, the message was clear: to succeed, to be accepted, to be somebody, you had to become less Kurdish and sound, act, and think more Persian.

For a Tehrani or Isfahani, this might sound absurd, but for us, it was normal. We grew up learning that being Kurdish was a disadvantage, even a burden. The state made sure we absorbed that message in school, in the media, and in every layer of social life.

Then, in 2014, everything changed. That was the year of the Battle of Kobanî. By then, social media had begun to reshape how young people saw the world. We finally had access to 3G internet in Iran. Fast enough to watch videos, read news, and connect with people beyond the limits of our geography. For the first time, we could see ourselves reflected in stories outside of state propaganda.

When ISIS began its rampage across Iraq and Syria, the world watched in horror. But for us Kurds, the fight in Kobanî, a small border city in Rojava, or northern Syria, became something much more than a military battle. It was a battle for our existence, identity, and survival.

I remember reading updates every night. The Kurdish defense forces, the YPG and the YPJ, the women’s units, were fighting not just against ISIS but against decades of erasure. Civilians had fled, but these fighters, many of them my own age, stayed to defend the city. Within weeks, Kobanî had become a symbol of resistance, its name echoing across the world, from Kurdish homes across Kurdistan to newsrooms in Europe.

Through Kurdish media like Rudaw and on Telegram channels where people posted and shared news, books, and history, I began to see a world I had never been taught about—my own world.

People were sharing Kurdish history books that had long been censored or forgotten. One of them was Sharafnama, written nearly 800 years ago by the Kurdish historian Sharafkhan Bidlisi. Ironically, it was written in Persian, but what it contained was revolutionary for me. Reading it felt like tearing down a curtain that had been covering my entire life. Everything I was taught in school about Kurds being primitive, disorganized, or dependent on others was all a lie. I found out that we also had a civilization, a culture, and a history as deep as anyone’s. But it was all stolen and changed. 

I started to read more poetry, history, and essays. That’s when I discovered the works of Sherko Bekas, one of the greatest Kurdish poets. His words carried both beauty and pain, and one of his poems struck me more than any other. It was about how “Tehran doesn’t smile at anyone,” which goes like this:

Tehran Does Not Smile at Anyone

Tehran—Its scarf caught on the branches, its cloak cast across the water, its robe stretched upon the road, and its turban left upon the garden wall.

With great effort, it has tied its beard to a song. Clothed Ashura in poetry, turned mute music into a cry, and made life itself a question.

Tehran—It does not smile at anyone, not even with death. It finds no joy in anything, not even in dying.

Its women, its sons, and its daughters—all bear the same name: Death. 

And from that place, life will never be born.

For me, this poem revealed the true face of Tehran. A city I had once imagined as vibrant and full of promise instead appeared as a place shrouded in darkness and misery. It was a lifeless metropolis, draining energy, joy, and resources—not only from Kurdistan but from countless other corners of the country as well.

It was the beginning of my awakening that to truly know myself, I had to reclaim what had been taken from me: my language, my history, and my being as a Kurd. 

As I delved deeper into Kurdish history, my imagination of Tehran began to collapse. I discovered that the capital, the very city I once dreamed of, had long been a center of policies that oppressed my people. It was a city where politicians and rulers passed laws that banned my mother tongue and denied my identity as a Kurd—laws and verdicts that led to the killing of countless innocent Kurds. It was the city where both the Pahlavi dynasty and Ayatollah Khomeini justified the mass repression of Kurds and other minorities. It was also the city where most of Iran’s wealth was concentrated, while the rest of the country was left to struggle in poverty and despair. For me, Tehran was no longer, in my eyes, a place of skyscrapers and fashion. It had become the seat of power where decisions were made that not only suffocated life in Kurdistan but also cast a shadow over the entire region.

It wasn’t just the politicians and their corruption that made me resent the city—it was the way it was built, the way it seemed designed to exclude and oppress certain groups. Every time I went back, I noticed more of it. What struck me most was how Afghan refugees and migrants were treated on the subway, in buses, and in the streets. They were looked down upon, spoken to harshly, and ignored as if they didn’t belong and were not humans.

Most of the people doing the hardest, most exhausting work in the bazaars—hauling heavy goods, cleaning, lifting, and carrying—were Afghans or Lurs. It was painful to see how invisible they were, how their labor kept the city running while they were treated with such disrespect. I couldn’t stop asking myself why. Was it just because they were Afghan, because they had no rights? Or because they were Lur and faced systemic discrimination like so many others in Iran?

These questions stayed with me. Over time, they turned into anger—an anger not just at the government, but at the entire structure of the city. I began to hate going back there, avoiding it whenever I could, except when I had no other choice—like for medical reasons. The city I had once idealized transformed into a symbol of inequality and injustice. Just as Sherko Bekas wrote in his poem, Tehran became for me a city that killed joy, stifled humanity, and turned life itself into mourning.

How I left Kurdistan: My last trip to Tehran

At 28, already living in exile in Germany because of my years of human rights activism, journalism, and cooperation with human rights organizations, I ultimately had no choice but to flee and seek safety in Europe. I had to pass through Tehran one last time in 2024 before fleeing the Iranian regime. That day was marked by fear, anger, and sorrow. Hugging my family for what I knew might be the last time, in Khomeini Airport on the city’s southern edge, I carried the heavy realization that Tehran itself was partly to blame for my departure from my home and the people I hold dear. But this flight itself has a long journey, as everything in one’s life is interconnected. 

In Iran, every man is required to serve in the army. I graduated in 2020 with a degree in civil engineering, but the university never gave me my diploma. Around that time, I began the process of applying for a military exemption. I have an eye condition called keratoconus, and I already knew that this condition would qualify me for exemption. But as a Kurd, I faced constant obstacles. The authorities made the process as difficult as possible, not only for me but also for many of my Kurdish classmates. The bureaucracy was exhausting. The university was supposed to issue a letter that I could present to the military service organization to begin the exemption process, but they kept refusing to provide it. I had to fight for that document for a long time before finally getting it.

When I submitted my file to the military office, they referred me to a medical committee for examination. I had already undergone surgery on one of my eyes, which should have been enough to confirm my exemption. But the doctors in Urmia claimed they couldn’t verify whether the operation was real. They sent me to another specialist in the city, who examined me and confirmed that I indeed qualified for exemption. Still, they refused to accept it.

Eventually, they sent me to Tehran for further evaluation. I don’t remember the name of the hospital—only that it was a military one in the city center. I had to stay there for two days while they ran several tests and wrote long reports. They finally told me that they would send the results back to Urmia. After nearly two months, I received a message on my phone confirming that my exemption had been approved. They asked me to bring photos and documents so they could issue the exemption card. With that exemption card, I was finally allowed to apply for a passport. 

By then, I had already decided that I needed to leave Iran. I first tried to find a legal way, like applying to universities abroad, especially in Australia, which seemed like the most accessible option at the time. But the process was slow, and I couldn’t wait any longer. The fear of being arrested due to my political activities was always there, following me everywhere.

Urmia, being close to the Turkish border, has long been a passageway for people trying to flee Iran—Afghan refugees, Iranian dissidents, and many others seeking safety or a better life in Europe. Eventually, I spoke to my father, and he introduced me to some people he knew who were involved in smuggling routes across the mountains. It was dangerous, but it felt like my only way out.

I was lucky. My uncle, an electrical engineer who was working on a project for someone, happened to overhear a conversation about the owner of the project helping people leave Iran for Europe. Knowing how desperate I was to get out, he approached the man. The smuggler claimed he could take me to Europe—not through the mountains or the sea, but by plane. My uncle trusted him, and I decided to do the same. A few days later, the man messaged me on WhatsApp, asking me to bring all my identification documents to his office in the city. He told me to wait two weeks. It sounded unbelievable, but everything moved fast. He arranged a fake Ukrainian passport and gave me detailed instructions for the journey.

Ten days later, he told me to book a flight from Tehran to Vienna. I traveled to the capital for what I knew would be the last time. It was winter, and Khomeini Airport felt both vast and suffocating. The man met me there and walked me through every step—what to say, what not to say, and how to act at each checkpoint. Somehow, it all worked. The security officers didn’t ask for my real passport. At the boarding counter, I handed over a small piece of paper marked with a cross, and they gave me my boarding pass without a question. It was as if the entire system had been paid to look the other way. The flight from Tehran to Doha was smooth, though I was terrified. I sat quietly, ordered an iced coffee during the layover, and tried to calm myself before boarding the next plane to Vienna. When I arrived in Austria, no one asked a single question. They scanned the passport—it worked—and waved me through. Within hours, I was on a train to Germany, where friends had booked me a room. For the first time in my life, I could breathe. Looking back, I still can’t believe how easily it all happened. Maybe it was luck, or maybe it was a system built on money and connections. Either way, it was the end of one life and the uncertain beginning of another.

Today, Tehran is no longer my dream city. It is a dark, polluted metropolis in the heart of the Middle East, where joy has been suffocated and where life, for me and for so many others, has been systematically denied, a place I would never want to go back to. 

The post Tehran Does Not Smile at Anyone appeared first on Tehran Bureau.

I was born in Kurdistan, in Mahabad, on the day Morteza Motahhari was assassinated. We Kurds were the only people who rejected the Islamic Republic from the start so when they killed Motahhari, who was a staunch opponent of the Iranian liberation movement, to celebrate his death they named me Shuresh, which means ‘rebellion.’ 

Kurdish names are like Native American ones—meaningful. We don’t give our children Arabic names—only Iranian ones. For example, my sister’s name means ‘inverted tulip, ’ my brother’s name means ‘mountain lion,’ my son’s name means ‘fire of love,’ and my wife’s name means ‘a garden full of flowers.’

Before the revolution, Mahabad was called “Little Paris”—for its beauty, nature, hospitality, and the small-town lifestyle of its people. I’m not just saying this, anyone who has traveled there can confirm how beautiful Mahabad is. 

I lived there for a time. After that, I spent some years in prison. The first time I was imprisoned was in 1998. I was in jail for about a month or two. I’d written an article about the Mahabad municipality, and they arrested me. When I got out, it was time for my military service and they sent me to Tehran to the special police unit—the riot control division as a form of exile.

I wouldn’t have called Tehran exile, but they sent me there as an exiled soldier. At first, they made me clean toilets, do janitorial work, that sort of thing. But I was an athlete, a provincial boxing champion. When they realized that, they took me off janitorial duty and made me part of the city patrol. 

But then the Intelligence Office started causing trouble, saying I shouldn’t be there, so they sent me off to Zahedan. I served about two and a half years as a conscript, without any added time. I spent five or six months of it in Tehran, and the rest in Zahedan.

Tehran is a city that’s one thing on the surface and something else entirely beneath it. When you go under its skin, you experience one world; when you go above it, you experience another. To me, Tehran is like its own planet—an isolated globe. One side tells one kind of story, and the other side tells a completely different one.

When I arrived in Tehran, the first thing that struck me was the city’s disparities. I saw the inequality and injustice, the highs and lows, the poverty and wealth, the haves and have-nots, the hungry and the full. There was a girl sitting in her father’s car—Peugeots had just hit the market back then—and another girl selling flowers, hoping to sell a single rose.

I saw a lot in Tehran—good things and bad things, extreme poverty and extreme wealth—but some things stay with you, in your mind and in your soul. I remember I was in Laleh Park with two or three of my friends one day, when I saw a father beating his child. I got very upset. The child was a beautiful, blue-eyed little boy, and the father looked worn out, broken. I asked, “Why are you hitting him?” He said, “What’s it to you?” I couldn’t stand it, so I pulled the child away from him and asked, “Amoo, why is your dad hitting you?” He said, “I asked for a candy.” I said, “You’re hitting your child over a candy?” He said, “What can you do when you don’t have money for candy in your pocket?” Hitting your child over a candy that cost five or six one-toman coins back then.

I was in that position myself when we went to Turkey for the second time. My child asked me for something I couldn’t buy. I didn’t hit them, but I couldn’t give them what they wanted. The whole thing came back to me again. I put myself in that man’s place. That’s the worst memory I still carry—on my shoulders, in my mind, and right before my eyes.

One good memory from Tehran was once, we were in Tajrish, standing guard in the streets—I was on duty. After the 1999 Tehran University dormitory protests, they’d send us soldiers to walk the alleys and streets. I saw a man loading pots of food into his car. He had a really nice car—I didn’t know the name—one of the newest models, an SUV. He was putting pots of food, water, and fruit into the back. He invited us over and said, “Officers, have something to eat.” We said, “We’re on duty.” He said, “Come on, have some fruit.”

I’ve always been curious by nature. So I said, “If you don’t mind me asking, where are you taking all this food?” He said he was taking it to Shahriar, and I asked why there? He told me because people are living there…construction workers, Afghans…lots of people who dream of a skewer of kebab. He had pots of rice and two full pots of kebab, meat, and chicken. I asked, “Which street? Where exactly are you taking it?” He said, “Why so many questions? You want to arrest me or something?” I told him that I write poems and stories sometimes, and that I’d like to write his. He said, “No, I’m not doing this so you can write about me.” I promised I wouldn’t write about it, I’d just come and see. So he said come to this street, this alley in Shahriar.

That Thursday or Friday, I managed to get city leave, so I went there to see. And yes—people didn’t know who he was, didn’t even know his name. He’d just put the food into disposable containers and distribute it among the houses. I found out he was a really charitable man. I never learned his name, but to me helping others in any way possible is beautiful. Helping doesn’t just mean giving money or toys or things like that. He said that there are kids who’ve never seen kebab in their lives, who’ve never had a single skewer of chicken kebab. “Let them have it once a week.” That, to me, was something really beautiful.

Comparing Tehran and Mahabad is like asking which hurts more when they hit you: a long stick or a short one? Tehran is the long stick—a capital city with 11-12 million people. By contrast, the entire population of Mahabad is only about 800,000 to one million. The level of inequality and injustice in Mahabad is much lower than in Tehran.

Kurdish towns have this habit—the people themselves have a socialist way about them. When someone really has financial problems, the rich help them. I knew a lot of people there. I used to talk to wealthy people, shopkeepers, merchants; they had books with lists of names of people they would pay a stipend to every month.

If something bad happens in Mahabad, like a shop burns down, everyone gathers and raises money to lift it out from under the rubble. Once, a Tehrani guy came to Mahabad and his car— one of those Peugeots that used to catch fire—caught fire. Right there, people collected money for him and bought him a new car; that’s how it is. But in Tehran, if you have such a problem, people just watch, pull out their phones, or stare at you. One time, an addict was overdosing. There was no one [helping], so I went to his side. Everyone said, “Let him die, he’s a junkie.” I said, “He’s an addict, not a madman… even if he were mad, he’s a human. This addict is a person, a human being—how can you want him to die?” Mahabad isn’t like that. If they see an addict, they pay for his treatment to get him clean.

When I was leaving Tehran, there were so many stories in my head that I hadn’t written. Tehran itself is a book, a novel, a series that never ends — a story that keeps going every day. That’s how I see Tehran. I’m not saying it’s bad, filthy, or unlivable — no. Tehran is a story in itself, a long book you can never finish reading. Every day, you sit and listen to its own words. Go sit at the city’s highest point — that alone is a story. All its people, the rich and the poor, are stories of their own.

If one day I can return, I’ll go back to Tehran to finish the things I left behind. My hope is for that time — when everything and everyone in Iran come together as one, like in the Mahsa movement, the Zhina movement — when we all unite to build a more beautiful Iran, more beautiful than ever before.

To me, the Mahsa movement reconnected all of Iran’s vital arteries; now they all flow back to the heart. Those lifelines that were once cut off from one another have come together again, returned to the same heart we’d all longed for in Iran. That heart is beating again.

The ‘Woman, Life, Freedom’ slogan goes way back. It started with Kurdish girls—since so many of our girls are part of political movements, many of them armed—that’s when it began. By the time it reached the Mahsa movement, it truly shook Iran’s dictatorship to its core.

When they say, ‘My life for Kurdistan,’ Kurdistan answers, ‘My life for Iran.’ That’s the dream we’d all had for Iran. And through the Mahsa movement—though it came at the cost of so much blood—that dream finally took root.

You can only speak of hope when you see solidarity among your people — that’s when hope becomes real. When the people of Iran stand together like unbreakable steel chains… when they can accept one another — accept differences, accept criticism — that’s when hope is possible.

Then I’ll have hope that Iran will become the kind of country the whole world dreams of living in. Our Iran is good, beautiful — but only if you, as a Tehrani, and I, as a Kurd, can accept each other. If you and I can stand with a Baluchi without a birth certificate, and help them get one — so that they can accept us, and we can accept them.

From the day I learned to speak, from the day I could stand on my own two feet, I noticed things — I understood injustice. My father was a salaried man, so we had everything we needed, but many kids didn’t. I’d come home and ask, “Mom, how come Khaled doesn’t have shoes and I do?” And she’d say, “Because his father’s a laborer.” I’d ask, “But doesn’t a laborer work? Doesn’t he get paid?” She always said that even as a child, I was obsessed with these things, always asking questions like that. My father used to say, “This one’s going to get himself into trouble someday.” 

I was young back then and had that  journalistic instinct. So in 2003, I became a reporter for the Center for the Defense of Democracy in Iran, based in the Netherlands, and worked with them on cases of human rights violations I’d gathered in Tehran, Zahedan, and elsewhere. There were no satellite TV [news channels] yet, and internet cafés had just started to open — you could go there and get online. After I began filing my reports, another group was formed called the “Center for the Defense of Democracy and Human Rights of Kurdistan,” and I started working with them too, reporting on human rights violations.

In 2005, during Khatami’s presidency, when they started arresting journalists, lots of people were detained. I was one of them. One of the people I’d been working with, someone I used to send reports to, had given them my name. So they arrested me in March and took me to the Intelligence [Office]. I was held there for two months and went through the worst kinds of torture imaginable.

I had written a lot about people who were tortured, but when I saw and felt it myself, I realized two things: how low a person must go to inflict that kind of pain on another human being, and how strong someone has to be to endure it. The physical torture is one thing; after a few days, the pain fades, the wounds heal. But the kind of torture that takes over your soul, that destroys your being — that never heals. It’s been more than twenty years now, but it’s still with me.

When they arrested me, they asked me where I lived. I knew my wife was at my father’s house, so I said there. I didn’t take them to our own home because I had books and other things there. We went to my father’s house, and they searched it but didn’t find anything.

We were newlyweds — just a year in. She was seven months pregnant. We’d been together before marriage, boyfriend and girlfriend. We’d made so many promises, made so many plans for a good life — “We’ll do this, we’ll do that,” all those dreams and hopes. Then suddenly,it’s all taken away.

In that moment, when I looked at her, I saw the tears falling from her eyes, one by one. She had her hand on her belly, just looking at me.  I said, “Forgive me.”  She said, “I won’t forgive you — but come back.”  I said, “I’ll come back. I promise I’ll come back.”

And I did come back — but it took six years.

The first night when they took me to the Intelligence [Office], they tied me to a radiator in such a way that I couldn’t sit down or straighten my legs. I had to stay there on my tiptoes. My eyes were blindfolded, but I could still tell what time it was — I counted the calls to prayer and realized it was the evening one, near the end of the night.

Then I heard the scrape of slippers on the floor, getting closer. Suddenly, someone struck the back of my neck — hard. They’d tied me so tightly that I couldn’t fall, couldn’t even bend my knees. Imagine that — standing on your toes like that. Then that bastard turned his back to my face — and farted in my mouth. How far can a person go in destroying their sense of decency, their humanity? 

The next day, they brought me into the interrogation room. I was completely naked, blindfolded, my hands tied behind my back. You sit there like that — naked, blindfolded — in front of the interrogator, unable to see anything. Sometimes they take a stick and “play” with (assault) you … they possess your soul.

They removed my blindfold, and I saw my wife’s intimates pinned on a board in front of me. He said to me, “Do you know who’s here?” I said, “You’re saying my wife is here.” I didn’t lose it — not on the outside — but something broke inside me.

Even now, as I tell this story, it gives me goosebumps. He said, “Do you know how far along your wife is?” I said, “Do you?” He said, “Yes, she’s seven months pregnant.” I looked at him and said, “So you’ve been to my house?” He said, “Your wife is here too. The guys are having fun with her.”

I lowered my head and said, “Everything’s in your hands right now. But if you’re a man, untie my hands.” He said, “Like this — naked and barefoot — you want to fight? Should I tell them to come and f*** you [up]?” I said, “I’m in your hands now. You can do whatever you want. But if you were man enough, you’d untie my hands for five minutes.”

He started laughing. They blindfolded me again, and the beating began — a storm of blows. They dragged that swimsuit across my face, the bra across my neck. So many things… It was unspeakable.

My wife later told me that six men climbed down from the roof into our yard. She was heavily pregnant — as we Kurds say, her belly had reached her mouth — and they pushed her. She fell, lost consciousness, and then went into labor right there. The neighbors, hearing the commotion, had rushed over, picked her up, and took her to the hospital.

They had gone through all our personal belongings — mine and my wife’s — and taken everything: one of her bras, her swimsuit, even the most private things between a husband and wife.

The people working in the Intelligence service aren’t right in the head. One of them once told me: “Don’t think I love the government — no. I take money to extract confessions from [the likes of] you. I get paid to do this.”

They’d bring in teens who’d been arrested for supporting the Democratic Party [of Kurdistan] or for spray-painting slogans on walls, and make them sit on a lit camping stove. There was a metal ring on top, and because they were blindfolded, they didn’t realize what they were sitting on. They’d force them down onto it, and two others would hold them so they couldn’t get up. I personally witnessed two or three of those cases. They did that to terrify me — to show me what they could do to me too.

These people (torturers) — most of them are outcasts. Even in their own families, no one shows them a bit of respect. A person like that, who’s been treated like nothing his whole life, suddenly finds himself with a bat or a club in his hand — and he can easily take a life, strip someone naked, humiliate them in any way he wants.

It’s like these mullahs. Now they’ve taken power, taken Iran with all its wealth and people — and what are they doing? Executing people every day. Killing left and right. How many of our youth have they killed? Fifteen hundred people in one protest alone. These were people the world rejected; even the earth wouldn’t let them set foot on it. But now, they hold power.

It makes a difference [where they hold you] — Tehran’s different, Isfahan’s different. Urmia’s Intelligence is a slaughterhouse. Mahabad’s Intelligence is even filthier. Bukan’s is filthier still. I don’t know a single person who’s been there and come back without broken bones. I was a boxer — my body was used to taking hits — and they still broke my jaw three times. My fingers are all crooked now.

My cousin’s still in prison. There are five Kurds who’ve received death sentences again — one of them is my cousin. I was talking to his father, and he said, “Shuresh, they burned off all his tattoos with an iron — every single one of them.”

When I was transferred to the central prison in Mahabad there was another young guy with me. We were so filthy that the prisoners wouldn’t let us stay with them. They said, “Go shower tomorrow, then come to the ward.” So they left us in a small room by the door.

There were two or three boys there — maybe twelve or thirteen years old. Imagine [minors] in an adult prison. I don’t know how that could make sense in anyone’s mind.

I fell asleep. I ached all over. They’d had me for two months. The young guy who was with me — I was around twenty-eight then, he must’ve been eighteen, nineteen, maybe twenty — woke me up and said, “Agha Shuresh, Agha Shuresh, I hear something.” I said, “What?” He said, “Get up.” I got up.

They hang curtains between prison beds for privacy. I heard creaking and moaning — those kinds of sounds. I pulled back the curtain and saw two of the prisoners were assaulting one of those boys. I got really upset and walked out. 

I couldn’t sleep at all that night. In the morning I found out that those kids were dealing drugs inside. They’d stay there for ten days, twenty days, maybe a month… the prisoners would sexually abuse them, give them drugs, and then they’d go out, pick up more, and come back in — as easy as that. I saw it myself. I’ve said I’ll testify to it at The Hague — that I witnessed these things with my own eyes. Many of us did. Many of the prisoners who were there with me also saw how they brought underage boys into the prison — they’d both sell drugs and be sexually exploited by the inmates.

From talking with prisoners, I found out that in Mahabad prison there were at least thirty or forty political prisoners. One of them was shot in the leg and they’d left it to fester until it had to be amputated; they did amputate his leg. There were many others.

There were at least fifty or sixty people who disappeared — their bodies still haven’t been found. No one knows where they are. Some of them were killed under torture, and their bodies were given to the medical school so students could dissect them. Or they were buried somewhere.

A lot of prisoners had been transferred in from Sanandaj, and many came from Naqadeh, Paveh, and Baneh prisons.  So I got the idea to subtly collect names.

For instance, I’d go up to someone and ask, “Ali Agha, when you were in Paveh prison, were there many political [prisoners]?” He’d say, “Yeah, Shuresh, they took five or six people and disappeared them.” I’d ask what their names were, where they were from, and they’d say: so-and-so was arrested for this reason… and so I’d piece together histories [for these prisoners]. I even collected the names of those who were executed. When that list of names came out, it shocked the Islamic Republic, because they had hidden this information for such a long time. They were in shock.

No one ever found out that I was the one who did it. For example, I’d casually say in conversations, “They say so-and-so was executed,” and people would confirm it — Yeah, we talked to his mother, or [yeah] the family said they were given a grave-plot number where [the] body is buried. That’s how it went. I gathered this information little by little.

I wouldn’t let my wife visit me much — mostly my brothers came. I didn’t want my child to see me in prison. They told him, “Daddy’s on a trip. He’s away, Daddy’s coming back.” But I’d see photos — pictures from birthdays — they’d bring them to me. Gradually, my child’s face took shape in my mind.

In prisons, especially in West Azerbaijan, female visitors are treated with extreme disrespect. Female guards strip-search them without hesitation, cameras or not. It’s still like that today. Sometimes they even send male soldiers to grope women under the pretext of searching for contraband.

I didn’t want my wife to go through that, so I’d only ask my brother to tell her to come see me when I had names. I was willing to accept the risk of her being humiliated or …, because the work we were doing was too important for me to be sensitive about those things.

I had a specific set of clothes just for sending out information. My wife knew that this outfit was only for that purpose, because we couldn’t talk on the phone. I’d write letters; sometimes I’d give her my poems to take out — I didn’t want them left in prison.

When everyone went to sleep at night, I’d go to the bathroom — there was one that didn’t have a camera. The way the cameras were placed, that one spot was blind. I’d go there, write, and hide the notes inside the lining of my collar. I’d sew it shut with a thread and a sort of makeshift needle — they hadn’t given us metal ones, so it was something like a toothpick that you could pierce, and thread. That’s how I stitched it up and gave it to my wife, and she’d take it out and email it from an internet café.

From the very first day I met my wife, she was involved in my work — my partner, my helper. Many of the things we said to each other were in code, our own language. If she coughed once, I knew exactly what she meant. If she said a single word, that one word carried an entire story — a sentence, a long text between us.

It was like that story of the man who wrote to his wife from prison: “Everything’s fine here, but I wish I had a red pen.” And his wife understood immediately that he was being tortured and suffering — because the letter wasn’t written in red ink.

It was the same with us. I’d planted that understanding in her from the beginning. I’d say, “The collar’s really dirty — wash it well.” And she knew exactly what that meant, what was hidden inside the collar.

It wasn’t normal to send your clothes out to be washed. The first time I gave her mine, they asked her, “Why are you taking his clothes?” She told them, “Shuresh has sensitive skin, and most of the prisoners here are sick. He can’t wash his clothes inside.”

When a person reaches the end of the line, you don’t know if you’ll survive the central prison or be killed. So many were killed there; some had their throats slit at night. You have to leave something of yourself behind so people will know what goes on inside those prisons. Some things just cling to your soul and never let go. And you don’t want to let them go either —so you just keep going, as far as you can.

Because I reported the names of those underage kids who were selling drugs, after about a year or so of being there, they were removed from the prison.

I set up a library — they wouldn’t let me at first. I sent out so many letters through my wife, through representatives, through anyone I could, until they finally allowed it. I even started a newspaper we’d post on the wall. Many of the guys who were in for drugs, booze, or murder — they started reading books.

Things like that are worth courage. They’re worth putting your life on the line for. I was threatened all the time. Sometimes they’d take me away, threaten me, beat me — “Don’t do these things.” I’d tell them, “I’m not doing anything illegal. It’s just a library.”

One person has to show courage so that ten others can find it. If I don’t have courage, maybe those ten won’t either. Someone always has to sacrifice themselves — their life, their family — to at least change the future for their children. My struggle wasn’t for me. It was for these children — for mine, for yours, for my brother’s, for the children of Iran. So they could have a chance at a better future, not end up like us. We were the cautionary tale. Well — let them not be like us; let them not have to flee.

My poor wife — she’s endured so much because of me. I think even if I lived another thousand years, I could never make up for what she went through with me. I just can’t. Every time I look at her face, my eyes sting with tears — for the days we lost, the days that [could have been]… when I got out, we were both old. It had only been six years, but we’d aged in the prime of our lives.

The government confiscated everything we had. We were living with my parents. It was a bad time, really bad. Then we spent seven miserable years in Turkey. It’s been nine months now that we’ve been somewhere we can finally breathe a little easier. After twenty years of life together, we’ve only had these nine months of peace.

When I was released after six years, they gave me another six years of “social rights deprivation.” It meant that if I did anything — anything at all — I’d be sent back to prison to serve those six years again. That’s the condition you agree to when you sign the social rights deprivation form upon release.

It means being cut off from university, from most things an ordinary person in Iran can have — you can’t have any of it. Every week, either my father or my brother had to go and sign a paper saying, “Shuresh hasn’t gone anywhere this week.” That’s how it was.

In Kurdistan, there are commemorative dates like August 16,  and January 22 — anniversaries that are important to Kurdish people, like the founding of the Democratic Party or the execution of Qazi Muhammad. These are symbolic days — people either celebrate or mourn. On August 16, for instance, they’d come around our house to see if I’d lit a fire or gone anywhere. Either I had to go in myself, or my brother had to go and sign.

During those six years, I was under such strict censorship. I couldn’t publish anything. Can you believe it? I could only write at home. I had no published work anywhere.

After six years, they finally allowed me to open a boxing class. I started teaching, but every day they’d call me in — or call in my students. Once my “social rights deprivation” ended, I slowly began filing reports, and I started working with the Center for the Defense of Democracy again. They had launched a radio station — Radio Kurdane. I’d send them pieces, but under the website administrator’s name, not my own.

The young man who was the admin returned to Iran, and unfortunately, they arrested him. He immediately gave up my name and told them, “He’s the one sending these reports.”

One of my students at the boxing gym was an IRGC intelligence agent. One day he came to me and said, “I’m an officer myself, and maybe what I’m about to do is treason. But I respect you  a lot and care about you. You’ve changed my life with this sport. If you don’t run now, they’ll arrest you. Go.”

The moment he said that, I gathered my clothes, called and told my wife, “Let’s go.” My wife and the kids — by then there were three — my [oldest] son, who was about twelve, the middle one was four, and the youngest, my daughter, was two — we left right away, straight for Turkey.

That same man (the IRGC agent) arranged for us to cross the border. You know his life was falling apart; he worked in intelligence and was having problems with his wife. Even though boxing is a rough sport, but believe me, most of my students’ parents would come to me with their kids’ problems, and I’d help them sort things out. I organized gatherings, took them hiking, to the swimming pool. It wasn’t just young people — I had students in their seventies and eighties. It got to a point where no one could tell anymore who was a friend and who was a foe, who worked for the intelligence [services] and who didn’t. Old and young, everyone came there to train, to feel alive again. I’d earned a kind of respect there — even my enemies respected me. 

Maybe God — if there is one—was looking out for my kids maybe He loved them, because we didn’t end up in misery again, or back in prison. Turkey wasn’t a great place, but it was better than prison, better than torture, better than being separated.

The post The Rebel appeared first on Tehran Bureau.

I started learning Persian exactly 25 years ago. Two months before I started Farsi, I saw an ad at the Belgrade Book Fair: “Let’s learn Persian.” I had no idea what Persian was—I didn’t even know this language existed. I thought, I’ll go to the Iranian Cultural Center to see what this Persian is like, and then decide whether to continue or not. And that’s how it began.

The course was called Āzfa—short for Āmuzesh-e Zaban-e Fārsi (Learning the Persian Language)—and it had four levels, which took about four years.

In the first level, I found Persian wasn’t too difficult. Maybe that was because my teacher was very smart and explained everything so well. But the second level showed me it was, in fact, quite hard. Because I saw it was hard, I kept going—I’ve always loved a challenge, I don’t like easy.

People here speak English, Italian, Spanish, or German. I also know Greek, which is considered one of the harder languages, but Persian is much harder. And because it’s hard, it fascinates me.

When I finished the fourth level, the head of the cultural center asked if I’d like to go to Iran for a Persian language and literature course. I said I would. So, in February 2004, I went to Iran.

Because I’m afraid of flying, I wanted to go to Iran by bus. But at the time, I was told there were problems in Turkey due to heavy snowfall, and I might not be able to get through. So I ended up going by plane.

I arrived in Tehran at 3 a.m. My Persian teacher and his brother were waiting for me. We drove around the city until 5 a.m.—the streets were very empty. We grabbed something to eat, and I went to the Faculty of Literature at the University of Tehran.

You could say my first impression of the city was quite negative, because I was alone, had just come from Serbia, and didn’t know anyone except my teacher and his brother. When they left, I didn’t know what to do or whether I should call someone or what.

I stepped outside and saw a few women heading to the mosque. I’m not religious, so seeing religious people felt strange to me.

But when I met the professors at the Faculty of Literature and we started talking, I realized everything in Iran was normal. After that, I had no problems. Although my first impression was negative, my opinion changed after just one day, and everything was fine. Our residence was across from the University of Tehran, on a little alley called 16,000. I think the building belonged to the Ministry of Foreign Affairs, and it was only a two-minute walk from there to the university.

Valiasr Street was full of different shops, very modern. I remember it being both beautiful and very long, stretching all the way to the north of Tehran. My roommate was Ukrainian. He loved hiking and walking, and we would go for long walks together—15 kilometers, sometimes even 20.

One time, we went to Tajrish, and on the way back to the university, we got a taxi. The driver was a lady. She asked us where we were from. I said I was from Serbia, and he was from Ukraine. She said, “I have two daughters—if you want to get married, give me a call!” She meant we could go to Khastegari (a ceremony to ask for a girl’s hand in marriage) and get married in Iran!

At that time, my Persian wasn’t very good, but people were surprised. Of course, they could tell I was a foreigner because I’m two meters tall, but I tried to speak only in Persian. Then they would say, “No, he’s not a foreigner; he’s Iranian.”

Tehran has two and a half times the population of Serbia. This was the first difference I noticed. The second difference was that Tehran is very large, meaning we don’t have a city like Tehran in Europe. The third difference was that it’s very dirty, not because you see trash in the streets, but because almost everyone owns a car, everyone is outside, and there is traffic everywhere. Belgrade is also dirty, but you could say Tehran is dirtier.

I found it interesting that Tehran has a lot of parks; Belgrade isn’t like that. It also has some very interesting museums, like the Carpet Museum and the Museum of Contemporary Arts. I don’t think Belgrade has more than five or six museums, but in Tehran, each district might have five museums. The food is much more diverse than here. I love Iranian food—rice, koobideh kebab, barg kebab, and any dish made with eggplant.

I cook Persian food myself. Barbari bread was the very first Iranian thing I made. I made Barbari this morning: flour, sugar, salt, yeast, a little butter, black sesame, and white sesame—that’s it. Then I put it in the oven. I used to make it with baking soda, but now I see butter makes it much better and tastier. 

Just recently, I made halva—homemade halva! I also make baklava with almonds, rosewater, and cardamom. I have made sonati ice cream with raw pistachios. I want to make faloudeh as well, but haven’t had the chance yet. I don’t think it will be very difficult; I want to try it and see how it turns out. A friend of mine brought me herbs and spices for ghormeh sabzi from France, but I haven’t cooked it yet. I’ve made Koofteh Tabrizi—it’s excellent! I brought some for my colleagues, and they really liked it. They keep asking when I will make it again because it was excellent. I say, “Well, it’s an Iranian dish, so of course it has to be excellent.”

Most of my Iranian friends are from Belgrade, but I’ve also made a few friends in Iran. I’ve been to Iran several times; except for the first time, all the other trips I went by bus, because when you travel by bus, you get to talk with different people along the way. I’m still in contact with some of those people. In 2017 or 2018, I was a guide for Iranians coming to Belgrade, and I made friends with some of those travelers, too.

I don’t think there is a big difference between Iranians and Serbs. I have been to Turkey, Iran, Egypt, Macedonia, and several other countries, and I feel we are all one family—from here all the way to Bangladesh even. The differences between us are very, very small. Apart from religion and language, I think ninety percent of us are the same. Like the Saadi poem (Human beings are members of a whole, In creation of one essence and soul).

Reading Persian poetry is very difficult for non-Iranians; someone definitely needs to explain it. I’ve noticed that sometimes it’s even hard for Iranians. My favorite poet is Ferdowsi. But my favorite verse is [from Saadi] “ta mard sokhan nagofteh bashad, eyb va honarash nahofteh bashad” (Until a man speaks, his fault and art stay hidden). 

You can’t say that poems translated into English are the same as their Persian originals. A poem translated into English or any other language no longer conveys the full meaning of the Persian.

I love Iranian music too. In 2001 or 2002, I asked the cultural center to give me a tape or CD of Iranian music, and they did. I went home and listened. I heard an instrument that was very unique and beautiful, but I didn’t know what it was. I went back to the cultural center and asked; they told me it was a santoor. I didn’t know what that was. At that time, there was no YouTube to help me find more information. I told myself that one day I would buy this instrument and try to learn how to play it.

I went to Iran for a seminar in 2015. I am a professor at the Faculty of Agriculture. After the seminar, I talked with a friend who was also a professor and told him I wanted to buy a santoor. He said he wasn’t familiar with santoor and that we should ask around to see which one is better and which one has good quality. I told him I just wanted it for myself, to try playing at home. We went and bought the santoor. I returned to Serbia, but there was no one there to talk to about it because Europe is completely unaware of this instrument and doesn’t know what it is.

Then a music ensemble from Isfahan came to Belgrade, and one of the IRNA reporters who was here at the time told me to definitely go meet them and ask about the santoor. I went there and one of the musicians tuned my santoor, and we became friends. I wanted to pay him, but he said no, I don’t want money, we are good. I said, “Alright, then I’ll make baklava for you in return.” He agreed. I went home, made Iranian baklava, and brought it to him. They went to Istanbul later, and he messaged me from there and said he had eaten the entire two and a half kilos of baklava! I said, “Really? The whole two and a half kilos?” He said, “Yes, it was very delicious; I ate it all!”

Two years later, I went to Iran for another seminar and stayed at the home of that same friend in Isfahan. He said, “Let’s go have some baklava.” We went and had baklava with walnuts. I said, “This isn’t real baklava; I’ll make some for you.” So we bought rose water, almonds, and the necessary ingredients, and I made baklava at his house in Isfahan. He ate it all, but I didn’t—because I don’t really love baklava, though I enjoy making it.

Afterward, my friend and I went to see a santoor master, and he gave me a book and a CD to learn it. I had to teach myself because there are no santoor teachers here. So I learned it on my own. I think I’ve reached an advanced level with santoor, as I have practically finished the two or three instructional books I had. I downloaded some of these books from Telegram. I’ve learned about two hundred or so different pieces, both short and long. My favorite piece is “Rang-e Dashti” by Habib Sama’ai. I think I have to go to Iran again and take a few private lessons from santoor masters so they can teach me to tune it and help me buy advanced instructional books.

As for modern Iranian music, I like Moein. Songs like “Kol Donyami,” “Tanaaz,” and “Yade To.” Hayedeh’s “Shab-e Eshgh” is amazing, Mahasti’s “Zendegi,” Javad Yasari’s “Lab-e Teshne,” Ahmad Azad’s “Room Nemishe,” and….

If I were to describe Iran to someone who has never been there, I would say it is a very large and beautiful country—a historic land with statues and monuments over 500 years old. It has a very ancient and rich civilization, excellent food, and wonderful people. I would describe everything positively. Of course, I would also tell them not to believe the negative propaganda from television and mass media because they do not show the real Iran and its people.

Iranian people used to be religious, but I see now that many have grown to dislike religion. None of my friends go to the mosque. None of them believes that the Iranian government is good. No one says that Iran should interfere in other countries. None of them support the government. In other words, the people are one thing, and the government is something else entirely. But people outside the country don’t know this.

When I was traveling from Tehran to Mashhad, there was a man on the train who asked me where I was from. I said, “Former Yugoslavia, Serbia.” He asked, “Are you Serbian?” I said yes. Then he asked, “Why did you do those things in Bosnia?” I replied, “I didn’t do anything myself; I didn’t go to war. But yes, Serbia was involved. Just like Iran, Russia, and Germany were involved [in conflicts]—it’s the same thing.”

I asked him, “Do you think Serbs are bad?” He said, “No, no, sorry, that’s not what I meant.”

I said, “But maybe because of the mass media, you think I’m bad. But the mass media says the same thing about you—they say you are bad.” He said, “No, I’m not bad.”

I said the mass media is like a central source that spreads propaganda everywhere. They say we are bad, and they say you (Iranians) are bad. They say you are terrorists, but I’ve traveled five thousand kilometers across Iran and haven’t met a single terrorist. If that were true, I wouldn’t be alive. He said, “You’re right.”

I told him, “We have to look at it this way: unfortunately, there is a central source that says we —us, you, and the others—are bad. But in reality, we are not bad.” And that’s how our conversation ended.

The first time I went to Iran, I had read in Serbian newspapers that on 22 Bahman, people in Iran gather in front of the U.S. Embassy in Tehran and throw various stones they’ve brought inside the embassy. I took a stone weighing about half a kilo or a kilo—not a small one—and brought it with me to Iran. Nobody at the airport noticed the stone, and I brought it to Tehran.

When I finished my Persian language course, I talked to my professors and said I wanted to go there and throw the stone inside. They said, “Baba, that’s no longer an embassy; soldiers are there, and you can’t go inside.” I said, “You don’t understand how upset people in Serbia will be if I can’t put this stone inside the U.S. Embassy!” They said, “No, no, it’s not possible.”

Anyway, I threw the stone into an alley.  I realized it was a lie, but that’s what the newspapers had written.

I have been to many cities—Tehran, Tabriz, Zanjan, Shiraz, Yazd, Babolsar, and Mashhad—but Isfahan is something else for me. Isfahan is my number one city, my number two, three, four, and five. It’s in my heart.

In Shiraz, I visited Persepolis, Pasargadae, and Naqsh-e Rostam, which were very interesting. I also went to Vakil Bazaar, which was beautiful. But I simply cannot describe the beauty of Naqsh-e Jahan Square in Isfahan. I got lost three times in the bazaar there and asked people how to get out, and they guided me. It was very fascinating and beautiful. Sheikh Lotfollah Mosque, Ali Qapu Palace, Si-o-se-pol Bridge, and Khaju Bridge—all of it is stunning.

Isfahan is really “Half of the World.” The last time I was there was six years ago. On the very day I arrived, water returned to the Zayandeh River, and my friend told me that because I came to Isfahan, the government had allowed the river to fill with water! The whole city had gathered there, celebrating the water’s return.

We share many cultural and linguistic similarities; did you know that Persian and Serbian have about 800 to 1,000 common words? Words like “azhdaha” (dragon), “moshama” (plastic bag), “abrou” (eyebrow), “devist” (two hundred), “kolahche” (small hat), “fitileh” (wick), “divar” (wall), “shalvar” (pants), and “qashoq” (spoon). We also say “bezan be takhteh” (knock on wood), and it means the same thing in Serbia as in Iran. Or when people meet each other, they kiss three times, just like in Iran. In most of Europe, it’s usually two kisses, but in Serbia and Iran, it’s three.

In Iran, I saw a type of hat and shoes very similar to the traditional hats and shoes of central Serbia, from the Šumadija region. In Shiraz, there is an area called Sarvestan, and some say that Sarvestan and Serbestan (Serbia) sound alike and may be connected—that perhaps we came from there—because their clothes, shoes, and hats are quite similar.

I have heard that when Cyrus and Darius came this way, to northern Greece, people came with the soldiers and settled there. An interesting fact is that we also have a city in southern Serbia called Birat, and its carpet designs are very similar to Iranian carpets, which is quite fascinating.

If I could find a good job, I would love to live in Iran—either in Isfahan or maybe Mashhad. There is an area in Mashhad called Torqabeh where I spent only two hours, but it was very beautiful. The handicrafts, small carpets, everything was wonderful. I don’t quite know how to describe it. I saw people coming from Saudi Arabia, Dubai, and Kuwait to Mashhad to visit the Imam Reza shrine, but Imam Reza might make up only about five percent of the whole city. The rest of the city was very nice to me. Now, I think Imam Reza’s shrine is empty, and most people don’t go there anymore!

One of my friends lives in Mashhad, and his father is a judge. Once when I visited, he told me, “Any problem you have will go away in three minutes, just call me.” I said, “Alright, very good.” This is another one of the similarities between Iran and Serbia: if you know the right people, any problem can be solved in three minutes.

I don’t ever want to live in Tehran because it’s very crowded. Wherever you want to go, it takes three hours. Isfahan is also pretty busy, but not as much as Tehran. I think Mashhad has a metro now. Fifteen years ago, when I was there, they were building the metro, but I don’t know if it’s finished yet.

Right now, my focus is on santoor. I’ve performed a few short concerts in Belgrade, but I was very nervous, much more than I expected. Even though I’m a university professor and I’m used to speaking with students weekly, teaching and attending various meetings, playing the santoor was a different beast. The stress I felt was unbelievably intense.

No one believes that I’ve taught myself to play the santoor. Maybe it’s because of the great love I had for it that I was able to learn. Santoor is love—love and nothing else exists.

If santoor is God, then I’m a believer. If it isn’t, then I’m not.

The post The Santoor Player of Belgrade appeared first on Tehran Bureau.

I first came to Iran in 2011 and spent four weeks backpacking through the country. I wanted to explore it because what I had heard from my Iranian friends at university was very different from what was being said about Iran in the media at the time. There was a big disconnect. It was very intriguing to come and see the place for myself.

I loved it so much that I wanted to come back and learn more. So, I decided to enroll at the University of Tehran and returned as a student.

When I first got there, I found Tehran very overwhelming. I didn’t speak the language, and couldn’t read the street signs. The city was huge. I couldn’t find my way home, and people didn’t speak English. I had no idea where I was. There was no Google Maps, or at least not such great service at the time.

I was completely lost in the city. I missed my bus stop, and I had no sense of direction—no idea where I was or where my accommodation was. I remember standing in the middle of the street, crying, when a taxi stopped. I had the address of my accommodation written on a piece of paper, so I showed it to him. He drove me home, but overcharged me by quite a lot. I was just so frustrated and felt really, really lost.

The first thing I did the next day was call a friend. He bought me a map of the city and sat me down, and we went through it—where different places were, where my university was, where I was living, and where various sites around town were—so I could orient myself.

Getting my student ID wasn’t much smoother. When I went to the university registration office, I gave them my name and birthdate. The registration lady asked me, “Are you Sunni or Shia?” I said, “Well, I’m neither. I’m Christian.” She replied, “I don’t have ‘neither.’ I don’t have Christian. I only have Sunni or Shia.”

I said, “But I’m Christian.” She was like, “Okay, I’m going to put Sunni.” I said, “No, no, no, no, no. If you put down a religion for me, I don’t want to be a minority religion. You’re going to put Shia.” So, in the system, I was registered as a Shia student because they just didn’t have the option Christian.

Two of my classmates, who were from Bulgaria, had the same issue. I think they put down Sunni for them. And Bulgaria didn’t exist in the drop-down menu for country, so they selected another random country for them.

On my first day at the university, I actually got into an argument with my professor—I don’t even remember what it was about. My cultural background is rather direct in communication, and I didn’t realize that that’s not the norm in Iran. I must have said something that offended him, and we ended up having some kind of disagreement.

I stormed out of the building and sat on the steps, chain-smoking a couple of cigarettes because I was so angry. What I hadn’t realized was that smoking—especially for women—was basically a no-go. So from day one, I became known to all the other students in my faculty as the badass student because I sat on the steps with my legs spread like a dude, smoking.

At first, I lived in student accommodation with two of my classmates. It was not a dorm—more like a shared flat. It was really cheap, but it also really sucked. The place was in a rather conservative area near Enqelab Square. We weren’t allowed to have friends of the opposite sex over. I didn’t feel very comfortable coming home alone at night, mostly because you wouldn’t see many women out by themselves after dark. On top of that, there were cockroaches—one of my biggest phobias.

As quickly as I could, I looked for my own place. I found a very lovely flat in the north of Tehran, which I shared with a Polish guy who was doing his PhD at the university. Slowly but surely, I started building my circle of friends. 

I was surprised by how easy it was to make friends—how naturally I connected with Iranians, and how cultural or religious differences didn’t matter at all. That’s why I always say people everywhere are basically the same. They might think a little differently, but if you show genuine interest in their culture, they’ll be open with you. 

As part of my degree, I went to Dehkhoda Institute. There were a lot of North Koreans at the institute at the time. One day, a TV show approached Dehkhoda to see if any foreign students would be willing to come on their show. I agreed to go. 

Obviously, it was all in Farsi, and my Farsi was okay, but I was still a beginner at that stage. Throughout the show, the host kept making fun of my bad Farsi, which I found quite funny. I thought, okay, so I came all this way to a foreign country to learn the language, just to be on live television and be made fun of for my bad language skills.

I was in Tehran during an election year. It was Ahmadinejad’s last year. The president who replaced him, Rouhani, was labeled a progressive, and people were very excited. In the months before the election, many people were like, “We’re not going to vote, what’s the point?” But a couple of weeks before the vote, there was a real spark in the city, and people were quite hopeful for change and for this new candidate. You could really feel it on the streets of Tehran.

I had to go to class the day the results were being counted. I was constantly on my phone, checking for updates. My teacher told me to get off the phone and pay attention to the class. And I said, “But these are the elections! How can I not be on my phone? How can you not be interested in the outcome?”

I remember when Argo came out, my university organized a screening of the movie at the former U.S. Embassy for us international students, along with the Basijis. It was part of the cultural exchange program, or whatever they called it.

As the movie neared the end, where the Americans get away, I noticed the Basiji guys in the back looking really pissed off—clearly annoyed by the ending.

We had a discussion about the movie afterward. One guy raised his hand and said, “The movie’s totally wrong. They’re portraying us like we were just hanging people in the streets, and that’s just not true.”

I raised my hand and said, “With all due respect, I do believe there’s some truth to that, based on historical accounts from that time. People were being hanged in the streets. It was a revolution—things get messy during a revolution; people die, get shot, get hanged, and so on.”

He replied, “Okay, fine, we hung them in the trees, but we didn’t keep them hanging there. In the movie, it looks like we just left them hanging.”

I thought that was kind of funny because his point was that they didn’t leave the bodies hanging for long, whereas the whole point of the movie was simply to show that people were hanged from trees in Tehran.

The former Embassy was also a museum about the hostage-taking. As I walked through it, I thought I have to bring back my friends. I knew a guy from university whose family member worked there, and through him, I organized two or three more visits to the museum.

The first time we went, the guy who welcomed us took photos as we entered, and it was pretty strict. By the third visit, he said, “German girl, I really don’t have time for this today. You know the museum—just go and show yourself around.” I remember thinking I’d really like to go down to the cellar—this would be the golden moment. But I knew I really shouldn’t. Even though I wanted to, I didn’t.

There were some funny things in that museum. The people who worked there seemed to look at everything with suspicion and paranoia. During the tour, they showed us a machine and said, “This is where they printed passports, and that’s why this was a CIA cell.” All of us visitors were thinking, “It’s an embassy—of course they printed passports.”

There was a chamber they claimed was a sealed-off space for secret operations, accessible only by iris scan and fingerprints. I looked at the guide and thought maybe he doesn’t speak English, and said, “It’s interesting that you say this is an iris scan, because the sign on the door just says something like ‘Pull lever or turn handle to open door.’” It was clearly from the 1970s. It was just so funny.

The guide said, “That’s just what they printed on there to make people believe it’s easy to get in. But you actually needed an iris scan!”

On 22 Bahman, which is the day of the revolution [anniversary], the university organized an international sports event in the north for exchange students. I just thought to myself, Why would I go there? It felt like there were going to be so many things happening throughout the city, especially around Enqelab Square.

I decided not to attend the sports event and go to the rallies that were happening that day instead. I had also planned to go to a church service with my Armenian classmate.

The rally was a bit surreal. There were lots of people who weren’t from Tehran—people from outside the city, from all over the country—who kept asking me for directions to places like Azadi Square and Enqelab Square. I remember seeing dartboards hung up with Obama’s face on them.

People were walking around with posters that said things like “We’ll resist forever” and “Death to America.” I walked up to the soldier handing them out and took a few for myself.

When I got to the church, the guy at the entrance took one look at me and said, “No, no, no—you can’t come in with that here.” So I had to leave the protest posters at the door before I could go inside.

I remember how excited I was to drink wine at church, because it’s obviously part of the Christian religion, symbolizing Jesus’ blood, and alcohol was otherwise illegal across the country. That was before I found an alcohol dealer and before my sister visited.

She arrived not long after. I was waiting for her just past the gate by the X-ray machine. My sister walked through, her bag went into the scanner, and suddenly I saw the guy at the machine talking to her, and she was talking back.

She finally came out with her bag, and I asked, “What did he say?” She said, “He asked if I had any alcohol in my bag.” I said, “Well? What did you say?”

She goes, “I said, Yes, of course. I brought three bottles of beer, two bottles of wine, and a bottle of vodka for my sister.” I stared at her: “Are you serious?!” 

She just shrugged and said, “Come on. You’ve been telling me this is an Islamic Republic and there’s no alcohol here. Obviously, I couldn’t show up empty-handed.”

Honestly, I think the officer let her go because she didn’t lie. He was probably so shocked that she didn’t try to make an excuse that he just said, “Yeah, okay… go.”

Then we went home, cooked some pork she’d also brought, and had our first round of beers on the rooftop.

There were two funny encounters I had with the religious police. During my 2011 trip, I was, of course, aware of the Islamic dress code, and I had a headscarf and something to cover my bum. But it was a very hot day, so I rolled up the sleeves of the long shirt I was wearing up beyond my elbows.

We were walking around in the bazaar—my friend and I—and all of a sudden, there were these two ladies following us, dressed in black from head to toe. They kept talking at us in Farsi, and back then, I didn’t speak any Farsi. I told my friend, “Hey, look, there are these two ladies. I think they want to tell us something.” She was like, “No, come on, they probably just want to sell us something. Let’s just keep walking.” And I said, “No, no, no, they look quite official. They have these weird green stripes on their shoulders.”

Anyway, we stopped. These ladies spoke to us, and I kept looking at them, saying, “I have no idea what you’re saying. I’m sorry, I don’t speak any Persian. I don’t speak Farsi.” Then, all of a sudden—because she realized I didn’t understand what she was trying to tell me—she reached out, rolled down my sleeves, looked at me, and said, “Welcome to Iran.” And then she walked off. That was my first encounter.

The second encounter happened while I was a student at Dehkhoda. At the time, it wasn’t uncommon for women who weren’t wearing proper Islamic clothing to be arrested. There would be a van parked somewhere, and they’d pull women off the street, put them in the van, and take them to the police station. Then, either their parents or their husbands, if they were married, had to come and collect them.

So I walked into one of those patrols. Again, I was wearing something that was somewhat acceptable—but probably my sleeves were rolled up, or my shirt was a little too short. Anyway, the lady wanted to arrest me, and kept asking, “Where are your parents?”

At that time, my Farsi was good, so I explained, “My parents aren’t here, I’m a foreign exchange student.” But I could tell she didn’t really understand what that meant. She just kept saying, “But we need to call your parents. They need to come here and collect you.”

I explained to her, “Look, my parents live in Germany. I’m not Iranian—I’m just here on exchange.” But the woman still didn’t get it. Finally, one of the arrested women inside the van told the officer, “Listen, there’s no point in arresting her—she’s a foreigner. Her parents aren’t here.”

In the end, the police obviously let me go, but I found it quite funny that the concept of a foreign exchange student was so alien to them. Because the country had been so sealed off, the officers just couldn’t understand that I was by myself in their country as a student, and that my parents weren’t there.

I have a lot of funny stories and sometimes crazy ones from Tehran. My friends and I used to go to this café in Evin, near the Prison. It was open almost 24 hours—didn’t close at 1 or 2 like most places—and they had fresh juices. We’d bring our vodka in water bottles, order juice, spike our drinks, and sit there getting drunk in this random café by Evin f*@king Prison until five in the morning.

Once, we heard about the richest man in Tehran, and we just wanted to see what he lived like. So, my two Iranian friends and I got some burgers and drove up to his house in North Tehran. His house was massive. It wasn’t even a house. It was a mansion. It was a palace with pillars in front and peacocks in the garden. We just sat there on the sidewalk, the three of us with our burgers, eating them, looking at the house, being like, “Wow, this is how people can live here too. So fancy.”

Just before I left Tehran, a friend asked if there was anything I still wanted to do before leaving Iran. I said, “I’d love to shoot a gun.” He called a friend, who said his uncle—or someone in his family—had connections to a shooting range. We decided to go there, buy a couple of rounds, and shoot.

What I didn’t realize at the time was that it wasn’t a public shooting range—it was more like a military training ground. I can’t say for sure, but I think it might have belonged to the Quds Brigades. It was definitely military.

When we got there, it was the two guys up front, and me in the back, wearing my red headscarf and red lipstick. We pulled up to the gate, and the guy in the guard hut stared at us with his mouth slightly open, stunned. He opened the gate and let us in.

We parked, and I said, “Great— let’s find the guns.” I walked over to this box where you rent the weapons and was just about to ask for one when I suddenly heard a voice behind me, “Who the hell are you?”

I turned around and saw a very tall Iranian man in military uniform with many, many stars on his shoulders. They later told me he was the managing general of the base. He asked again, “Who the hell are you?” I said, “I’m a foreign exchange student from Germany… and I just wanted to shoot a gun.”

He goes, “No, no, no, no, no—you cannot shoot a gun here.”

I said, “Well, if I can’t shoot, maybe my two Iranian friends can, and I’ll just sit on the side and watch.” He replied, “No, no, no—you don’t understand. Not a single bullet will be fired while you’re here, because if you get hurt, it’ll cause an international crisis.”

I had no idea what kind of place I’d walked into, but it was definitely some kind of military training site. The fact that I got that close to getting a gun as a foreigner still baffles me.

I had no idea who he was, but he was definitely very senior—multiple stars on his shoulders. Because he was Iranian, he said, “You cannot shoot a gun, but since it’s Ramadan and close to iftar, stay and be our guest.” He was probably doing tarof, but I said we’d love to stay for dinner!

We stayed and had some really good food. After about half an hour, the general burst in, looked at us, and said, “Get the hell out. Now.” That was tarof—he didn’t want us to stay, but we still did. Eventually, the general kicked us out.

By the end of my time in Iran, I had a really great life—I had lots of friends, traveled around the country, visited Isfahan and fell in love with Naqsh-e Jahan Square, and even went to Qeshm Island, where I saw dolphins. On weekends, I’d get invited to various embassy events. I felt very proud of having built a life in a country so different from my own cultural background. I think the biggest takeaway from that year was making lifelong friends. I hadn’t expected that.

My least favorite experience was actually being interrogated. What happened was, I had already left Iran to study in London, but I returned about a year later in 2014 as part of my master’s thesis research. When I arrived at the airport, my passport was confiscated. The officers were very friendly—they said there was “an issue” and that I needed to go to a specific office to sort it out. Once that was done, they said, I could get my passport back.

I was meant to stay with a friend from university. When I arrived at her house—she lived with her parents—they obviously got stressed because I was a random friend of their daughter. My passport had been confiscated, so potentially, there was an issue with me, maybe something I’d done, and I was staying at their house. I think they were a bit worried that this might have negative consequences for them.

Since my passport had been confiscated, I couldn’t go anywhere else—not even to a hotel—so I was basically stuck. They were not happy with me being there.

At that stage, I didn’t think it was going to be a problem. I went to the office they told me to go to. I got there around 8 a.m. and said I was here to sort things out.

They said, “No, no, no, you’re totally wrong here. You have to go to this other office.” So they sent me across town—Tehran is a very big city—so it took quite a while to get there. But when I arrived, they told me I was in the wrong place and sent me somewhere else—again, across town. And when I finally got there, they said, “This isn’t right. You need to go back,” which, of course, was the original office I had started from.

By the time I returned, it was already 4 p.m. I explained, “Everyone kept sending me away, and they sent me back here.” That’s when I was told to go see the head of—whatever it was, I don’t remember exactly—that building or organization.

When I asked him what was wrong, he said, “Well, there’s clearly an issue we need to sort—but not now, because it’s 4 p.m. We’ll make an appointment for you. There are a few questions you’ll need to answer, and we’ll call you.”

And that’s how he sent me away. Later, I received a call and an address, and I went there with my friend’s mom—the one I was staying with. It looked like a normal little house with a waiting area. But there was a soldier who made sure I didn’t have any electronics on me—no cables, no phone, nothing.

He asked me to sit in a room—an office. And at first, I just waited. Half an hour went by, and I started looking around. I got a bit stressed because I realized that this wasn’t a normal office. It was made to look like one. There was a desk and a chair, but the surface was covered in dust. It was supposed to look like someone works there, but no one actually did. The telephone on the desk wasn’t connected; the cable had been cut and was just lying on the floor. There was a weird outline of a door in the wall.

I could tell it wasn’t an actual office—just made to look like one. Then three people entered and said they had questions. By that time, I think I’d already waited two hours. They interrogated me for about three hours.

The problem was my former flatmate. To this day, I’m not sure what her exact role was. She was working for an embassy. I think they had grown suspicious of her and her activities, or what she was up to. Her Farsi wasn’t good, and whenever she needed something done, or needed to call someone, or figure something out where English wasn’t enough, she always asked me to do it for her. I was happy to help her out.

During one of her interrogations—or maybe it wasn’t really an interrogation; more like an interview, since she was working for an embassy and treated with diplomatic protocol—she told them, “I don’t speak any Farsi, but whenever I need anything done or need help with something, my flatmate does that for me, because she speaks Persian really well.”

They asked me about her and what she was up to, and there was a bit of a back-and-forth. It was quite intense because they accused me of things I obviously hadn’t done—espionage, collaborating with her, spying on the country—claims that were totally untrue.

They asked at some point, “Do you want to call the embassy? We’re going to take you to prison now. And if you’re taken to prison, you’re never going home. We are going to arrest you.” I said, “There’s no point in me calling my embassy because I’ve done nothing wrong. I haven’t violated the laws of this country. If you want to bring me in front of the judge, then yeah, let’s do that now.”

After three to four hours, it ended with me having to give a handwritten confession-apology. Because I think they were still very much focused on that woman, I wrote a formal apology to the Islamic Republic, apologizing for not having selected my flatmate more carefully.

They wanted me to write other things, but I refused. I said this is the only thing I would do because everything else was not true.

The interrogation was entirely in Farsi, but at some point, I asked for an interpreter. They asked why I needed one when I spoke so well. I said, “Well, because this is very important to me, and I want to understand your questions 100 percent. I want to make sure that I give you the precise answers you’re looking for. So it’s very important that I have a translator who can at least pick up nuances that I might not be able to convey in a language other than English.”

They initially wanted me to write my statement in Farsi too, but I was very happy in the end that I could write it in English, as that really allowed me to be very specific about certain details.

After I left, I had a bit of a nervous breakdown in front of the station. It was Ramadan, it was extremely hot, and I hadn’t eaten or had anything to drink. They’d offered me water, but I got the sense they were testing me—they wanted to see if I was smart enough to turn it down. So I said, “No, I’m sorry, I won’t drink water because it’s Ramadan. I respect the laws of this country.”

By the time I got out, I was really dehydrated, exhausted, and overwhelmed. I hadn’t expected any of this. As soon as I stepped outside, I started crying. We got a taxi to the metro with my friend’s mom, and while we waited for the train, I just kept quietly crying.

All of a sudden, this person shows up and says, “Hey, I’m an international human rights lawyer. Here’s my card. If you need help, call me.” I was really freaked out and asked my friend’s mom, “Why is this person coming up to me? Why did they assume I have a problem?” She asked them, and the person—who claimed to be a lawyer—just said, “Well, it’s a foreign woman crying on the street, so clearly something must be wrong.”

I ripped up the card as soon as I got on the train—not in front of him, obviously—and never contacted him. The whole thing really freaked me out.

From that point on, I felt I was under surveillance. They would call my friend’s house and speak to the mom, asking things like, “What’s she up to? What is she doing? Is she stressed?” And my friend’s mom would just say, “No, she’s just going to the university, just doing her things, meeting friends for coffee. She’s not stressed. No, she’s not going to her embassy.”

That went on for maybe a week. I was still waiting. The friend I was staying with was supposed to leave for the U.S. to study, and her parents really didn’t want me to stay with them any longer. I remember feeling incredibly stressed. I spoke to another Iranian friend and told her what was going on, and she said, “Come stay with me.”

I didn’t want to cause her any trouble. I told her, “I know I’m your friend, but you’ve only known me a year. They’re accusing me of something serious—espionage. You don’t really know me, and I wouldn’t hold it against you if you kept your distance. Let’s just meet again after this is over—maybe in another country or another time.”

I was so touched when she said, “f*@k that. I know you. You’re my friend, and I’m taking you home.” I had nowhere else to go, and the fact that she trusted me after such a short time meant a lot.

Later, we drove by that building—the one where I’d been interrogated—with another Iranian friend. It was a random building—I didn’t know what it was—so I wanted him to take a look and tell me what it actually was, or who it belonged to. And he said, “Yeah. That’s them.” It wasn’t just a random police thing. It was them.

At some point, I got a phone call from a number that showed up on my phone as just zeros. They told me I could come and collect my passport at the same place where I’d first been summoned. I went in to see the head of that organization.

I’ll never forget that moment. I reached out to take my passport—he was still holding it, I was touching it, wanting to take it— I said, “Well, I hope this means things are sorted now.” He just kept holding on to my passport, and then looked me in the eyes and said, “If you’re a friend of Iran, then yes.” And then I just took my passport and left.

I’m not sure whether I had changed my flight or I had one booked, but I stayed in Tehran for another three or four days after getting my passport. I had no reason to run—and I didn’t want to. My friend told me, “You’ve done nothing wrong, so act like nothing’s wrong. Because nothing is wrong. Well, apart from the fact that they are clearly trying to pressure you. To see if you’ll crack, if you’ll make a wrong move. So it is important to behave as normally as possible.”

So I went to the university, met friends for coffee. I always told people beforehand, “This is what’s happening with me right now—if you’d rather not meet, I completely understand.” But none of my friends declined a meeting.

I even watched the World Cup—football—at the German Embassy in Tehran. And then, a few days later, I flew home.

About a year after everything had happened, that former flatmate called me. I completely lost it—I was screaming at her. I was furious. Because it hadn’t just been about me or my safety. I had Iranian friends. This could’ve put them in real danger.

I was angry she’d given up my name. During my own interrogation, they kept asking me to name people—friends, people I spent time with. And I refused. I told them, “My friends are the people I study with. You’re the intelligence unit—go to the university, look at the records, find my classmates.” I didn’t give them a single name.

It wasn’t easy. But it’s not like they were waterboarding me or putting electric wires on my hands. It just took a bit of backbone to say, I won’t name anyone.

The fact that she gave them my name—then didn’t even tell me afterward—made me furious. I told her, “I can’t believe you did this.” And she had the audacity to say, “Well, maybe you actually were doing something. Maybe you were up to no good.” Hinting at espionage.

Afterwards, I heard she kept on trying to go back to Iran, and for different reasons, it wouldn’t work out.

But I actually did go back when I was working for the UN. I had to return to Iran for a project, so I did. Would I go back now? Yes, of course I would. I mean, there’s no reason for me not to. Why wouldn’t I?

Iran is a fantastic country, rich in history, culture, and natural beauty. Its heritage spans thousands of years, and there’s so much to see and experience. The people are incredibly welcoming and hospitable. Despite the ups and downs—the rollercoaster of it all—I truly mean it when I say it was one of the best years of my life.

I want people to know about Iran. And when I think of Tehran, there’s a quote I once read that captures it perfectly: “Isfahan and Shiraz are Iran’s soul, but Tehran is its beating heart.” That’s exactly what the city feels like—beautiful, overwhelming at times, but utterly fascinating.

The post The German Exchange Student appeared first on Tehran Bureau.

I haven’t lived in Tehran, and I’ve never traveled there either. But in my mind, Tehran is this huge city… full of traffic, crowds, and pollution. The first thing I picture is the air pollution—I’ve seen so many images and heard about it non-stop in the news. I imagine it’s much bigger than the city I’m from. Maybe with taller, more beautiful buildings.

And like most big cities—whether it’s Tehran, Istanbul, or anywhere else—I feel like people are a bit colder there. More distant, less warm; not as close-knit as in smaller places, like in Kurdistan. It’s not like Sanandaj, where whoever comes to the city is welcomed with warmth. People talk to you, help you, and make you feel at home right away.

I’m from Sanandaj. It’s a really beautiful city. And I’m not just saying that because it’s my hometown. It genuinely is a beautiful place with a lot to see. The most famous is Mount Abidar—everyone knows Abidar. It’s such a lovely spot, and nearby you have the Gheshlagh lake and the dam. There are great viewpoints and historical places as well. We have some really nice old villages around Sanandaj too but Abidar is definitely the highlight. And the people there are warm and friendly. They’re very cultured and hospitable.

You can visit places like Palangan village and Uramanat—there are so many beautiful spots to see there. We went to Uraman once. Someone from the village was so kind that they insisted we stay the night at their home. We were not friends or acquaintances. We had gone there as tourists, and it was literally the first time we met them. But they treated us so well that we ended up staying over, having dinner with them. Honestly, they were incredibly gracious hosts. They welcomed us into their home like we’d known each other for years.

I’ve been to Kermanshah as well, but I didn’t get that kind of experience there. It wasn’t like that. I had imagined Kermanshah would be like that too, but when I went, it wasn’t. I think the most hospitality I’ve seen in the whole Kurdistan region was in Uraman.

I’ve met tourists from Tehran before. There’s a waterfall in the Uramanat region. We went there once with a few of my friends. We usually wore Kurdish clothes, but that time we went in manteaus. There was a family of four from Tehran there too: a tall couple with their two kids. You could tell right away they weren’t local. Most of the men there were wearing Kurdish clothes, so it was easy to spot who was from Kurdistan and who had come from another city. They connected with us pretty quickly and started chatting. We were the only ones who could talk to them [in Persian]. They were very warm and friendly.

I would’ve loved to visit Tehran, but I never wanted to live there. I don’t know why. I just never wanted to move to Tehran. Maybe it was mostly because I was really attached to my family. They were in Kurdistan, and even when I got accepted to a university in another city, I didn’t go. I stayed in Kurdistan for university. I was honestly very attached to my family.

I studied law at university. I’m not someone who likes getting into religious discussions or distinctions at all, but I grew up in a place where it’s part of life. At university, right at the start, our professor began teaching a section on the conditions someone has to meet to become president. One of them was that the person has to be a man—so that already ruled us out. Then he said they have to be Shia—and we were Sunni.

These things didn’t really matter to me personally, but every time they gave me a form to fill out, it always asked: Shia or Sunni? I had to check “Sunni.”  There was no option not to—you had to answer it. So I asked the professor, “What does that have to do with anything? You mean if someone is Sunni, they can’t become president?” He said, “Well, it’s based on Islamic law. They have to be a Twelver Shia.”

It’s not like I wanted to become president, but it still felt discriminatory to me. And it’s not just about my own experience as a Kurdish girl; I’ve heard things from others and seen things myself.

I’ve always been adventurous. I’m the kind of person who constantly needs something going on in my life, some excitement. Back in school, I was really interested in learning how to read Kurdish, because we have such beautiful poetry and Diwans (poetry books). My mother herself had memorized these poems and would recite them to me. I couldn’t read Kurdish from a book. I always wished that alongside Persian, which is the official language we are taught, they would also teach us our own Kurdish language at school.

It wasn’t until I was in seventh grade that one of my dayis (maternal uncle), who knew [how to read] Kurdish, finally taught me the Kurdish alphabet. I was bilingual, yet I still couldn’t read or write in my mother tongue. To me, that is a form of discrimination. Imagine—up until seventh grade, I couldn’t even write my own name in Kurdish. After I learned it, one day at school someone reported me, saying I was being a troublemaker.

It was around the time when Farzad Kamangar, who was a teacher, had been executed. We made some noise about it and wanted to know why they (authorities) had done that. I was living in the school dorm at the time. They (agents) came into the dorm and took every Kurdish book I owned. My Kurdish books were poetry books. None of them were political. I also had Persian books that did contain political content, but they didn’t take those. They only took my Kurdish books, and I never saw them again.

One of those books was a gift from a friend of mine who had sadly passed away after suffering kidney failure. I was heartbroken about that book in particular. I kept thinking: why couldn’t they have at least left that one for me? They confiscated all of my Kurdish books.

When my brother was in second or third grade, I went to his school for a PTA meeting because my mom and dad were traveling at the time. During the meeting, I suggested that I could come in the afternoons and teach the kids [how to read and write] Kurdish.

I made the suggestion because I had learned Kurdish with so much difficulty myself. All the parents were really happy about it and said it would be great if it could happen. We even spoke with the principal. He said, “I personally don’t have a problem with it, but we need to get a permit from the Ministry of [Culture and] Islamic Guidance.” I said, “Is that really necessary? Why should I have to go there?” He said, “Under no circumstance are you allowed to teach until you get that permit.” I said, “Fine, okay.”

Well, I went back and forth so many times. The kids—my brother’s friends—would ask every single day, When is she coming? When is she coming? In the end, they just wouldn’t allow it.

So, at my own expense, with my own money— and I was a university student at the time—I went and made booklets for them. I would download materials from Telegram—I’d search for Kurdish alphabet and language booklets, then take them to the internet café to get them printed for the kids. Just imagine.

The kids would come to our house. Just imagine. I had made 8–9-year-old kids promise not to tell anyone they were coming to our place to learn Kurdish, so I wouldn’t get in trouble. It was just a small group, kids my brother’s age. They promised they wouldn’t say anything at school.

Sometimes, when people noticed they were coming to our house too often, they’d say, “She teaches us math, she helps us with our schoolwork.” Since my brother was at the top of his class, they’d say, “She’s tutoring us in math,” and things like that.

That’s how I taught those kids Kurdish. For about three or four months, they’d come over two or three times a week. Then summer break came, and some of them didn’t stay in town. They went to [their] villages or to other cities. But in that short time, they learned how to read and write Kurdish.

Actually, some of them found me on Instagram recently and messaged me. Their Kurdish writing was really, really good. And they call me ostad (professor/master)!

Kurdish people experienced discrimination and repression even before the Islamic Republic— and it continued after the Islamic Republic came to power. Kurds actually boycotted the referendum for [the establishment of] the Islamic Republic, and that’s why Khomeini issued the call for jihad against the Kurds.

For as long as I can remember, I’ve heard about how, after the revolution, Khomeini ordered jihad against the Kurds, calling them koffar (infidels) and telling people to go and fight the “infidels.” I have heard there was a horrific massacre in Sanandaj… that Kurdish [political] parties who opposed the Islamic Republic were targeted but that ordinary civilians were killed along with them. They stormed in and massacred civilians. I’ve heard hundreds of people were killed.

Those who remember it still recount it or write about it. This atrocity has only survived through the memories of those who witnessed it. It was never covered by the media for us to understand the true scale of how horrific it was. It wasn’t like today, where we have the internet and things like that.

Because honestly, they hadn’t left [people] a choice. They [Islamists] overthrew the monarchy themselves, and they brought an Islamic regime themselves. They really took advantage of people’s religious sentiments at that time. People didn’t think this would be the new system [replacing the monarchy], especially since Khomeini had said, diplomatically, that he would separate religion from politics, that “we will have nothing to do with politics.” That’s exactly what he said and people were duped. 

But because Kurds had already experienced discrimination and repression [under the Shah], Kurdish political leaders at the time said, “We will sit down with you, but you must write our rights into the constitution right now. Give us our rights; this is what we want.”

So when they said Khomeini has said the choice was either the Islamic Republic or the monarchy, and later claimed 98% of people voted for the Islamic Republic, Kurds had boycotted the referendum entirely. Not even 1% of Kurds voted. 

Iran is a country with many ethnicities, a lot of diversity, and different languages. If that isn’t managed properly—if people don’t have their rights—this is what happens. Right now, Kurds are facing intense repression, so they naturally push back.

People who haven’t experienced this repression may not understand it, but those who have know that they have to stand their ground and say, “As long as you keep hitting us, we’ll keep pushing back.”

Before [Woman, Life, Freedom], they had created this image of Kurds as violent people. That they kill, that they behead others. My own brother, who lives in Isfahan, once told me that he got into a taxi and his phone rang. He answered it, and after he hung up, the taxi driver asked, “Are you Kurdish?” He said, “Yes, why?” The driver replied, “If I had known, I wouldn’t have given you a ride. They say Kurds behead people.”

This was the kind of image they had spread about Kurds everywhere. And honestly, unless someone actually spends time with Kurds, they don’t truly know them.

Of course, nowadays many Kurds live in Tehran and other cities. Because of the economic situation, many move to bigger cities for work, to study, or for other reasons—and they’ve integrated into society. So maybe now, people know them better.

But when the Zan, Zendegi, Azadi movement happened—it began in Kurdistan. People finally understood that it was the Kurds who started it. From the footage they were seeing, and through that sense of solidarity [that spread across the country], people realized that all those negative stereotypes about Kurds had been lies—that Kurds were genuinely fighting for their freedom and their rights.

I think people finally recognized the legitimacy of this struggle that has existed for hundreds of years. Iranians understood that the Kurdish struggle is truly legitimate.

I was working as a freelance journalist in Erbil when it happened. People were sending me tons of videos, and I was publishing all of them. Because I was sharing so many videos and news about the protests, the Islamic Republic threatened us in Erbil, and we had to leave and go to Turkey.

Back then, any video that came to me, I posted without making any distinction. Whether it was from Tehran or any other city, whether someone had been executed or killed on the streets—it didn’t matter. It was no different from someone being killed in Kurdistan. For us, it was the people losing their lives out on the streets. We knew who the enemy was; we stood with the people, and our problem was only with the regime.

Honestly, the feeling I had when I saw videos from Kurdistan was exactly the same as the feeling I had for videos from Tehran and other cities.

There are basically two fronts now. We don’t really have “neutral” or “non-political” people anymore. Even if someone claims they’re not political, even if they don’t want to be, when you’re living in Iran today there are only two sides: you’re either with the people or with the government. Anyone living in Iran, their side is clear: you’re either with the people or with the regime.

It was the Zan, Zendegi, Azadi movement that really showed that Persian and non-Persian, Kurd, Baluch, or any other ethnicity in Iran, we’re all actually on the same side. It’s the government that creates division. It’s the government that isn’t with the people. There’s no problem between the different ethnic groups in Iran. The problem is the regime itself.

This whole policy that treats [people from other ethnic groups] as second-class or third-class citizens the moment they say “I’m Kurdish” or “I’m Baluchi”…[needs to change]. If Kurds had their full rights—what they’re asking for, their right to self-determination—they could definitely coexist.

What’s important to me is that there is democracy in Iran; that there is no difference between the people of Kurdistan and those in other parts of Iran. 

That, in my opinion, would be much more beautiful. Then there would be no talk of a separate Kurdistan or of the system falling apart. Just that there is democracy for everyone in Iran, that’s all.

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