Iran. My Mom. Massacre.

Two weeks of radio silence and no news from my mom.

My mom used to call me every week, always on Sundays, between 8:30-8:45 PM. Never missed a call. And after being away from home for over a decade, if I don’t respond she immediately assumes I’m dead. Like most moms.

As you might have heard, the Islamic regime has cut out all internal and external communication ways, and even managed to jam Starlink. So it’s been complete radio silence. They cut out the internet and phone signals, and killed at least 16,000 people in just a few days. 

Same tactic as Ag-Gag laws of the animal industry. Don’t let people see the violence, then abuse and slaughter sentient beings. 

I’m an only child and the only person she has. While many families didn’t let their kids leave Iran so they are not left alone, my mom sold her Jewelry, Persian rug, and her house to send me to a good high school, piano class, university, and eventually help me leave. 

She ends every voice call by saying “I love you, and I’m so glad you are not here.”

Let that sink in. 

What has the Islamic Republic done to this mother (and millions of other families) that she’d rather never see her son again, the only person she has, than have him living in that country? Let that sink in.

Caption: I always feel uneasy sharing this picture. The last time I saw my mom in Tehran International Airport. Even my last picture with her stings. For many my mom’s hijab is viewed as a cultural thing. But it’s not. It’s oppression of women. My mom is not religious. And she would lose her head if she loses the hijab. I hate to see my mom in it. Another price of being born in Iran.

I once asked my mom to apologize for having me

I know how harsh that sounds, but I meant it. I looked at the air pollution in Iran and thought “I deserve better.” No one deserves to inhale carcinogens every day and live in such a stressful, aggressive environment. To this day I still don’t know what my parents thought when they brought a kid into that environment.

I don’t hold it against them. I’m not blaming them. I know they did what billions of parents do. They tried to build a life in whatever reality they were trapped in without much thinking. But I think about it.

16,000 killed is not the full story

My frustration is not just the 16,000 that were killed in the recent protests. It’s all the slow deaths and tortures, and all the stolen happiness and hope that you can’t count or see.

And if you ask me, they are killing all the 90 million people of Iran (and probably more by exporting death). Maybe not all at once. Maybe not with a bullet. But with a system that slowly crushes people’s bodies, minds, futures, and dignity. They killed something inside all of us. Something in our minds will always stay.

“Blood will flow when flesh and steel are one
Drying in the colour of the evening sun

Tomorrow's rain will wash the stains away
But something in our minds will always stay

Perhaps this final act was meant
To clinch a lifetime's argument

That nothing comes from violence and nothing ever could.”

- Sting

In Iran what’s happening is a form of violence that happens quietly, every day, and it eats away at people’s lives until they’re either broken, sick, silenced, or dead.

A dear friend of mine who served in the Marine Corps once told me one of the toughest experiences of their training was being locked in a room, tear gassed, forced to remove the mask, and inhale the gas.

In Iran, you don’t need to be in the military to experience this. You've heard my stories, but it's not just me. Most Iranian people have lived it under the oppressive Islamic regime.

You’ve heard about my stories of being chased with a machete by an Islamic Republic's Guard who tried to kill me. But I’m no hero. It’s impossible to speak up in Iran without facing some form of violence. 

Nobody plans to leave their entire life in one suitcase

When you’re a kid, you’re not thinking one day I will be leaving my country. You’re not thinking that one day you will pack your bag and all your life will fit into a suitcase. You leave your memories, your belongings, and part of who you are behind.

And in my case, it was packing my bags and leaving knowing I can’t come back. Knowing this is a decision you cannot undo.

Imagine looking at all your favorite people and places knowing that you will never see them again.

The price of being born in the wrong place

No matter how proficient I am in English, I can never express my emotions and thoughts and love the way it would truly feel in my native language, in Farsi. That is one price I have to pay for being born in the wrong place.

If you get to express your thoughts, emotions, and love in your native language, you should be grateful. It’s something people don’t even notice until it’s gone, until they’re forced to live without it.

It’s small things that eat at you that you don’t even realize. The pain inflicted on us on a daily basis that you can’t quantify. That the media doesn’t report.

How did Iran become the villain in every movie?

Imagine this: in every military movie your country is the bad guy. Some bearded ugly barbaric terrorist is the representative of one of the richest and oldest countries and cultures in the world. How did this happen?

Caption: A replica of the Cyrus Cylinder, displayed at UN HQ in NYC, a 2,500-year-old Persian text linked to Cyrus the Great’s entry into Babylon. It’s often referred to as the earliest declaration of human rights, rejecting terror and destruction and calling for an end to slavery and oppression, while affirming freedom, dignity, and justice.

That is what the Islamic regime has done to me and millions of other Iranians. They turned our country into a symbol of fear and conflict in the world’s mind. They turned “Iran” into a word people hear and instantly think about something bad.

And I’m happy. I’m fine. But everything I’m saying is true about every person from Iran.

And I’m the lucky one. Think about those who weren’t lucky to get out. Or they just couldn’t.

I know I have a higher risk for cancer from inhaling all the carcinogens in the air growing up, but I don’t have it yet. But so many others do. So many people are dying.

Caption: The air pollution in Tehran, my home city. Direct result of a regime that did not care about people. But god forgive if you are a woman and your hair is visible.

The journalists in prison. The gays. Women who don’t want to be forced to wear scarves. Literally anyone who said anything that the regime didn’t like.

It’s the stolen childhoods. The stolen hopes and dreams. It’s all those people who could have had a great future.

The airport memory I refuse to update

I’m ashamed to admit that ever since I left Iran, I haven’t video called my mom.

I have this memory of her at Tehran’s international airport, the last time I saw her. She had given up everything she had to help me leave, as difficult as it was for her.

And it feels like a part of me never wanted that last image to change. To see how much older she looks under the stress and oppression.

It feels like I’m willingly choosing not to see the reality, and not face it. Not that different from non vegans, I suppose 🙃.

Something that the regime took away is a simple feeling most people don’t even think about.

Answering a simple question: where are you from?

I never liked being asked that question. It’s not that I’m truly ashamed of being from Iran. It’s knowing that with that name comes a lot of negative labels in the listener’s mind.

And often the question is followed by, “Do you go back often?” Then I picture myself on a gallows being executed. But then I smile and say, “No, I don’t. Long story.”

Something as simple as answering where you are always feels painful.

Should we be proud or ashamed of our nationality? 

To George Carlin’s point, I don’t think people should necessarily be proud of their nationality, or in this case be embarrassed about it, because we don’t have any control over it.

We should only be proud of things we accomplish in our lives ourselves.

What is it to be a proud American if you were born here? It was simply an accident.

But I also get what people mean when they say they’re proud of the values that a country promotes and upholds and fights to keep.

And you’d be proud of those values not because you want others to envy you, but because you want others to have the same liberty, and a chance to live in prosperity.

How wonderful to live in a country where there are no thought crimes. Where you can question things. Where you have the right to disagree, to protest, or to remain silent.

You’d be dead in Iran if you expressed yourself the way you do now!

In the Islamic Republic, you can get arrested not for something you did, but for something that you believed, or didn’t believe. You don’t get the right to remain silent.

Instead you may very well get a bottle up your anus. I’m not exaggerating.

The Islamic Republic is probably the number one country when it comes to torturing and sexual violence towards prisoners.

It’s crazy to think about, but all of you reading this would be in jail or killed for who you are, or for something you believed in, which wouldn’t be allowed in my country.

How do you calculate the cost of this? The childhoods. The dreams. The futures.

Until I accepted that I was gay, what about a decade of my life when I had to live in an environment where I was made to believe I was sick. That I was a deviant. A criminal.

How do you measure and quantify that suffering?

I’m not saying these because I want pity. All in all I consider myself lucky.

I’m living a life fighting for animals and running ASAP, knowing there is nothing else I’d rather do with my life. I could never ask for anything better than that.

But it makes me think of all the suffering and pain that is not counted in those metrics. The number of deaths that the media reports.

16,000 deaths?

No my friend. It’s a lot more than that.

Why I refuse half rights for humans and half rights for animals

And what does all that experience mean in my advocacy today?

It means I’m not advocating for people to go to “cruelty-free” jail, still jail but without sexual violations, just for being a journalist who reported something the regime didn’t like.

I’m not advocating for gays not to be executed but to still be imprisoned, and not have the right to be with whom their heart desires.

I don’t want a relaxation of some Sharia laws that allows women to walk without hijab, but they still need their husband’s permission to leave the country, or they don’t have the right to divorce.

I just want people to live in liberty, with free speech, and live in prosperity and dignity.

And for the animals, that’s what I want too. If I have one life and one voice, I don’t want to spend it on giving animals bigger cages instead of advocating for their lives and rights to live without exploitation and harm and violence and abuse by humans.

There is an organization called FarmKind where you can pay to offset the harm you are causing for not being vegan. 🤦🏼‍♂️

On FarmKind’s website, they have a “compassion calculator.” If you choose “vegetarian” and “dairy only,” it says you owe your conscience very little money, because it treats it as “just” 0.01 cow harmed per serving, since a dairy cow produces lots of milk and calories and is “only” killed once when she’s no longer profitable. So for one serving of dairy, you can offset the rape and murder you supported with $0.04. I guess calling it a rape and torture calculator wouldn’t trick people into donating.

Remember what I asked “How do you measure and quantify my suffering as a gay ex Muslim?” By FarmKind’s logic, since I didn’t get executed, then by all accounts we are all good! 

But we are NOT. And I’m NOT.

I will NEVER live another childhood the way I deserved.

And the cow is NOT.

Because how do you quantify the suffering of being raped 6 times or 7 times, having your babies taken away, and then being killed? If you ask me, that’s worse than eating meat.

Maybe the Islamic regime can make it up to me by giving me $0.04 🙃.

Free speech is a gift. Use it. 

For all of you born in a country where you could express yourself freely, you don’t understand the gift of free speech.

“For all those born beneath an angry star
Lest we forget how fragile we are”

The second your free speech is threatened, you will start to realize the gift you had.

And now that we have it, we owe it to the world to use our liberty and freedom.

Perhaps in World War II people had to go to front lines and risk their lives to protect these values. We have it so much easier.

We don’t have to fight tanks and machine guns.

But in some ways it is easier to identify a tank. It’s not easy to identify an ideology, especially when you live in it.

So we have a harder job to fight an ideology that has brainwashed people to eat animals and see them as slaves, as commodities, as lesser beings that we can do whatever we want to them.

But at the very least we don’t have to risk our lives. All I’m asking is to use your voice and what you have.

And that’s what people are doing in Iran. They’re doing exactly that, every day, at the highest cost.

And the world is looking away. It’s radio silence.

My body still remembers what they did

I have PTSD from motorcycles.

For anyone who has walked with me, they know that if I hear loud engines like those of motorcycles, I feel agony, and my face will show it.

Why is that, you ask?

Because of the number of times the Islamic Revolutionary Guards attacked me and my friends, or surrounded me and other people from both sides of a street, or in a dead end, only for them to beat the life out of anyone in front of them.

Caption: I was attacked just like that. That’s University of Tehran, my undergrad university. The revolutionary guard came at me but as I screamed “don’t hit” some poor guy appeared from nowhere and the guard went after him.

Even joy needed approval

Under the Islamic regime, women are not allowed to sing solo.

And when I was the president of the music club at the University of Tehran, they wouldn’t give me permission to play Persian or pop music.

I once submitted a program for my concert where I was going to play themes from “Hotel California” or “My Heart Will Go On”, and I wrote “Beethoven” as the composer. 😂

Or I wrote “Hotel California arranged by Beethoven.” Then I submitted it for approval, and I got it approved. 😉

Caption: My annual concerts in College of Engineering at University of Tehran (I’m with the accordion). If you are wondering about the smiley faces, that was my signature. My way of igniting some hope in the heart of censorship and oppression. I never shared this because I felt uneasy about having the pictures of those dictators up there.

I had the morality police sitting in my concerts, making sure people are not having fun, or that I don’t play anything that is not approved.

But thank God everything I was playing was from Beethoven, and the muggle couldn’t even tell.

When I talk about the regime, I’m not just talking about prisons and torture. I’m also talking about how it tries to control what people feel, what people sing, and what people are allowed to enjoy.

Even music had to be approved. Even joy had to be monitored.

Because that’s what these systems do. They don’t just want to control your body. They want to control your spirit.

Just as depicted by George Orwell’s 1984.

Islamic revolution in Iran happened in 1979. It’s been 1984 every year since.

And when you grow up in that, it changes you.

Why Iran’s revolution gives me hope

When you do animal advocacy in the US, there’s always a part of your mind that says even if we got a Western country to go vegan, what about the rest of the world.

What about the countries where barbarism is governing and not rationality and compassion?

But the revolution in Iran gives me hope.

Because even talking about animal rights in Iran is political and dangerous.

It’s hard to have conversations with people who slaughter millions of animals on the streets under the influence and brainwashing of the regime.

Sacrifice Eid and the childhood I lost

Each year in Islamic countries millions of animals are slaughtered on the streets in the name of God during the Sacrifice Festival (Ghorban Eid). It’s just as barbaric as the massacre of turkeys on Thanksgiving, but with an additional damage. It kills animals as well as empathy!

I remember clearly the sheep who was slaughtered in front of me. It was disturbing, but adults told me they don’t feel pain.

I remember the butcher cutting the testicles and throwing them into someone in the crowd, a friend, because I guess that was the luxurious part to eat.

I remember the butcher cutting a hole in the sheep’s skin and blowing and blowing to separate the skin from the tissue below, to skin that poor animal.

I got desensitized.

And when I say my childhood and innocence was stolen, that’s a part of it.

And it’s a lot harder to have a conversation about compassion for animals when that’s how you grow up.

It’s hard there to get hunters who kill animals for pleasure to have compassion for animals, versus most ordinary people on college campuses who don’t hunt would not stand the sight of an animal being bled to death.

I refuse to give up

So the revolution in Iran could finally bring stability and prosperity to the region.

And as one of the top Iranian animal activists, I’m excited about the prospects of yet another country that could become one of the most vegan friendly countries in the world.

Like the old Iran before the Islamic revolution, it could have massive influence in that region.

And that’s why I refuse to give up.

Use your voice. That is the price of freedom.

If you live in a country where you can speak freely, you should be grateful.

If you have the right to question, the right to protest, or even the right to remain silent, you should be grateful.

If you have a voice you should be grateful.

And you should use it. It’s a tax we should willingly pay for being lucky enough to live in these societies.

We owe it to those who don’t have it.

And we owe it to the animals too. We have reduced animals to a point where we don’t even hear their voice or consider them victims.

I would get executed in Iran. But I am living in dignity in the US. If I were a cow or a chicken, I’d be executed in Iran, in the US, and literally anywhere else in the world.

Animal oppression remains the biggest legal and moral blindspot in history.

If Iran is rising, it means ideologies can collapse. It means things that look permanent can break.

It means the future can change.

As depressing as the news is, the revolution in Iran is the best hope I’ve ever had for prosperity in Iran. And perhaps seeing my mom again.

Change is always possible, but only if people refuse to shut up, refuse to normalize cruelty, and refuse to give up.

While I feel a heavy burden on my shoulders, and can't wait for the winter to be over (a reference to a revolutionary Persian song I played to dedicate to people of Iran), I’m getting ready to start traveling from next week visiting all our campuses to speak up for the most voiceless, oppressed, and neglected: animals.

“On and on, the rain will fall
Like tears from a star
On and on, the rain will say
How fragile we are
How fragile we are”