I have written about how war, running away from a war, living with traumas of war, having to hide horrors of war from one’s children, and then, when they become adults, explain it all, compare what you have witnessed as an adult to what they saw and heard and sensed as children. But it is never enough. Never actually fully put to words.
I ran away from a revolution, and a war. Ran away from imminent jail, torture, execution. And I ran away from having my 18 months old son fall in the hands of interrogators to hurt him to have me name names. And I have ran away from a country hit by a revolution’s religious fundamental madness where I was not allowed to get divorce to save my life and my child’s; the maze of religious and law and order and culture and cruelty that trapped women inside the compulsory identity, and laws that strips that same identity of equal human and civil scars rights reserved, under countless conditions for citizens after the Islamic Revolution.
After 40 something years of witnessing Iran’s Regime created a vicious cage for us all, inside and outside the country to live in or watch from afar, now there is a war there. A foreign country is hitting back the regime of Iran for all the nightmare this regime has caused since 1980 by constantly calling for its disappearance from the face of earth or the maps. To feel what I feel in the midst of confusing feelings, is overwhelming, put it lightly. Sometimes, it fells like standing at the edge of earth, sway back and sway forth into an abyss.
So, what do we do now? Live life like there is no life to live tomorrow.
They call people like myself out of touch with reality, witch depends on what one calls real.
Saghi Ghahraman
Toronto Canada