To my sisters in Iran and Afghanistan

To my sisters in Iran and Afghanistan,

I write to you tonight not as a distant observer, but as one whose heart beats with yours.

If I could, I would sit beside each of you tonight—on rooftops in Tehran, in courtyards in Herat, in dimly lit rooms in Kabul where the curtains stay half‑closed—and place your tired hands between my own. I would say, before anything else: you are not alone, and you have never been forgotten.

I know that some days the weight is unbearable: the closed school gates, the morality patrols, the laws written by hands that have never held a crying girl at 3 a.m. I know what it is to feel your body treated as a battlefield, your mind as a threat, your dreams as crimes. My beloved sisters, if you feel anger, you are not “too much.” If you feel despair, you are not weak. Your sorrow is sane in an insane order.

A precious memory in Iran last year

But I also know this: they have underestimated you. They do not understand the stubbornness of a woman who has tasted even one drop of freedom. A woman who knows freedom is innate, no one can take away what she is. They do not understand that a banned book can still be passed hand to hand, that a satellite dish can still pull the world through the walls, that a whisper between friends can be a university, that a poem murmured in the kitchen can be an uprising. They do not understand that the heart of a girl who wants to learn is stronger than any decree.

When they cut you off from classrooms, you turn living rooms into libraries. When they silence you in the streets, your eyes speak to each other in secret languages. When they tell you to disappear, you show up in new forms—in online classrooms, in underground circles, in coded messages, in the pages of books yet to be published. You keep finding ways to be here. This is not just survival; this is genius.

I want you to know that every time you choose to keep learning—whether it is from a smuggled textbook, a PDF on a small phone, a whispered lesson from an older sister—you are doing something holy. You are praying with your mind. You are protecting a future that you may or may not personally live to see, but which will carry your fingerprints in every line of its story.

Forgive us, those of us living outside, for the times we have watched in horror and then gone back to our ordinary days. Forgive the world for the conferences and statements that did not translate into safety, schooling, and bread. You owe us no patience.

And yet, still, I ask for it—with humility and love. I promise you this: as long as I have breath, I will keep speaking your names, writing your stories, insisting that your right to learn, to move, to laugh loudly in the street is not a cultural debate—it is a birthright.

Through my books and writings, I dream of building bridges that your oppressors cannot see: books that travel where you cannot, lessons that arrive in hidden ways, safe spaces—even if for now they must be small and quiet. These are candles we light together against a very large night. The night is real. But so is the fire.

Roaming the Alborz Mountains in Iran, Anosha Zereh

My sisters, you are not waiting to be saved; you are already saving the world’s conscience. Every time you refuse to hate yourselves, you heal something in all of us.

Every time you raise your voice, even if only inside your own chest, you widen the sky.

If no one has told you today, let me be the one:

You are noble. You are wise. Your dreams are not excessive; they are necessary. Your body is not a sin; it is a universe. Your mind is not a danger; it is a lantern.

May the day come when you walk to school in the open morning light, without fear, without permission slips from men who do not know your soul. Until then, we will keep weaving a net of sisterhood beneath your steps—so that when you fall, you fall into our arms, not into darkness.

From across the seas and time zones, I send you my heart, my pen, and my unwavering promise: I will not stop reading you, learning from you, and fighting beside you in every way I can. You are the quiet revolution, the pulse in the veins of our homelands, the future that no regime can erase.

And when that future arrives, know that it carries your name.

With infinite love and reverence,

Your sister,

Anosha Zereh

About the author:

Anosha Zereh is an Afghan-born writer, poet, and educator whose work braids Sufi mysticism, diaspora memory, and feminine wisdom into lyrical prose and poetry. She grew up between Afghanistan and the Bay Area, and has spent over twenty years in Iran. She turned to writing as a teenager to hold loss, migration, and resilience, each page an anchor guiding her back home to herself.

She is the author of The Afghan Mona Lisa: An Epic of the Unvoiced and Anonymous, which centers the lived stories and inner worlds of Afghan women beyond stereotype, giving voice to their strength, grief, and courage through narrative and verse. Her second book, Who am I?, continues this inward journey, a contemplative exploration of self-inquiry and spiritual awakening through stillness, love, and remembrance through a series of experiences and perspectives.

Alongside her literary work, she has long been engaged in humanitarian efforts focused on education and support for Afghan orphaned children and refugees for over twenty years.

Her current and forthcoming projects include Homecoming: A Return To Myself, a contemplative novel born of years of wandering and spiritual seeking, and Laila’s Garden / Night and Flame, a modern reimagining of Laila and Majnun that explores love, surrender, and awakening.

Her online writings—essays, meditations, and letters—tend themes of the divine feminine, interfaith mysticism, Afghan cultural memory, and women’s voices, all rooted in a quiet Northern California morning practice of nature, mysticism, and everyday wonder.

Across her work, Anosha sees herself as a vessel for seekers finding their way home to the heart, a gentle companion on the journey toward presence, wholeness, and inner remembrance, and a bridge between East and West through story, compassion, and contemplative language.