In Iranian memory, the lion has long stood for courage and sovereignty; here it walks through a war‑torn orchard under the shadow of an eagle and a shrine‑beast. This is my way of speaking about Iran, Palestine, and Afghanistan in the current wars without maps or headlines—only animals, orchards, and the dangerous act of remembering the taste of our innate wisdom.

I want to tell you the truth: we Europeans and Americans are not innocent in this story. Our comfort is not neutral. When we fill our tanks, when we tap our cards, when we upgrade our phones, we are plugged into an order that feeds on someone else’s night. The quiet of our suburbs is insured by the sirens of Gaza, the hunger of Kabul, the sanctions suffocating Tehran, the rubble of Sana... We may not dismantle empire in a single gesture. But we can refuse, again and again, t

A people’s letter from Iran, Afghanistan, and the borderlands, this piece sits with Jalal Al-e Ahmad’s warning about Gharbzadegi and asks what liberation means when it is imposed from above versus awakened from within. It is a meditation on tyrants and martyrs, Western “saviors,” and the quiet, vast freedom that still breathes beneath our borders and our hardest days.