As I write these words, it’s been five months since the people in Iran started a revolution, which borrows a slogan from the Kurdish freedom movement: Jin* Jîyan Azadî. As an Iranian, there was rarely a day when I didn’t find myself in a position explaining to other individuals about the benchmark of a nation. A benchmark that seems like a tunnel of trauma without light in sight. Having to explain these basics reminded me every day of how my individual mind and soul has been separated from Iran in time and space, and where my body wakes up every day. A viral tweet replied to the question “How are you?” with “It’s been five months that I’m not living in my own body”, which resonates with many Iranians and, to be frank, is very familiar to anyone in exile.

Experiencing this parallel world, as much as it is empowering, providing freedom and room for actions, enabling one to move forward, think critically and creatively to shape the movement and support others, at the same time it adds pinches of salt to an open wound. The wound of living together, being connected and being-with, yet witnessing how selective activism can be. The type of activism that can unite the whole world together and assemble lines of people from dissimilar political beliefs and backgrounds to rightfully help those fleeing Russian aggression in Ukraine and supply them with temporary options and solutions, to make it slightly more painless for them. Yet the same people don’t even care to share few euros worth of material or immaterial resources with other individuals who haven’t fled Ukraine, or to be more precise, people of colour who had no control over the geopolitical situation in which they were born, although circumstances forced them to seek refuge. For these people, humanitarian aid and routes to save humans are considered a crime, and seeking them out makes those seeking refuge criminals, not victims.

Experiencing this duality and having the possibility to speak about these problems and events, while suffering and at the same time being geographically “dis-“located, is like the pain the brain of someone who suffers from phantom syndrome feels and tries to locate in an already amputated body part. The brain recalls that the pain is present, yet there is no physical attribute to connect it to, as the in-pain body part simply doesn’t exist anymore or, to be more accurate, is no longer attached to the body.

Not having studied medicine gives me the disadvantage of not being able to make a more profound and poetic statement about this example and, of course, the disadvantage of not knowing how to deal with such cases medically; hence as a human who tries to be human, I can imagine that discovering the detached attributes can help the individual to look for solutions or ways of resisting the ongoing trauma, which in this case and on a societal level defines itself in forms of activism, as individuals or as groups.

Let me clarify myself with a quote from the nowadays somewhat hated, yet influential Iranian content creator and political satirist, who has lived in the United States for over two decades – let’s imagine an Iranian John Stewart. Kambiz Hosseini once opened an episode of his beloved show “Politic پولیتیک“ with several personal anecdotes, yet this time there were no satires. The episode aired during the Persian New Year and thus had the festive vibes of the New Year, yet it was a New Year in exile. Like many other cultures, Iranians celebrate their New Year with the start of spring. That means if you’re living in Iran, New Year’s Eve isn’t the end of December, but the 20th of March. On the 20th of March, people usually have their whole house cleaned, get rid of their old trash, or donate some clothing they don’t use anymore, and then wait for the countdown beside their loved ones and call the ones they cannot be with physically to wish them a happy New Year. Yet, when one doesn’t live where Nowruz is celebrated, but was raised with that culture, on that day in March, one is highly excited, but doesn’t see any sign of excitement in the world around you. The exact opposite is happening. Everyone is busy with their ordinary lives, which is even more frustrating. In that episode, Kambiz uses the opportunity to talk about his inner struggle and pain with this imposed situation that not only Kambiz, but all Iranians in exile feel. He says when he was in Iran, he always thought that lots of his problems and struggles would end with migration, that many things are connected to the geography of a place, and when you relocate or simply remove yourself from there, then you can just forget about them and be free. The long introductory monologue ends with: “I was wrong; everything came with me after migration. I left part of me back home, but all those burning issues came with me.”

I clearly remember watching this episode and feeling something I didn’t have any words for back then. I was sitting in my room in Tehran, where I was born and raised, and feeling “homesick”, like being in exile while not in exile. I was clearly experiencing empathy. Yet after migrating and coming to terms with these sorts of feelings more often, I hardly ever use the word “homesick" close to nada, because on paper I have officially migrated. Still, on my own terms, I ran away. I ran from not having any space or safer-space in which to exist and practice, as censorship had all of us by the balls, on the stage, behind the curtains, in front or behind the camera or computer, among friends or family.

The German term "Heimweh" is a better definition of that feeling. The combination of two words, pain and home, is a more accurate translation, because the pain is not only about missing home as a place but also as a concept, as a utopian place which, for marginalised communities, means nothing but never-ending pain and just an idea of belonging somewhere, where you have the power of shaping and editing it over and over, which never exists.

There’s a Persian saying: “The human is alive with hope.” Scientifically, this is wrong, as humans need a correct combination of hydrogen and oxygen to survive. Hope is an immaterial idea that gives us the ambition to continue trying. The whole process of trying is to provide a space that has and can supply us with the correct combination of oxygen and hydrogen. A big part of the current revolution in Iran and prior social movements during the past century was directly regarding the environment and health of individuals. For instance, there has been a group of environmental activists who were wrongfully arrested over five years ago in Iran, one of whom mysteriously died – was murdered – under suspicious circumstances after two weeks in custody. Many others are still in prison despite being proven innocent by Iran’s Ministry of Intelligence. Recently one of them broke their silence and published an open letter from prison describing what sort of physical and psychological torture she and others went through. Here is a quote from Sepideh Kashani’s recent letter: “I swear by the Quran full of wisdom [the opening of the Yas sura]. At the beginning of each interrogation session, the interrogator reads the Yas sura out loud. Afterwards, a person who claims to be a Mullah recites the death sentence of my dearest Houman Jokar. I don’t see him as I am sitting blindfolded against the wall. Is this Houman’s death sentence? Here? In this room? Who? My Houman? Houman of his mother? The same Houman who smells and worships every bit of this country?” These are Sepideh’s explanations of the mental torture she was put through. She later explains that this was one of the techniques they practiced quite often to break her and force her to confess to a made-up scenario to incriminate herself.

While reading the letter, one cannot avoid feeling severe pain in the amputated body part, as well as feeling “home pain”. The pain of where we are as humans, how powerless we are despite being connected, and how we can let such brutal situations exist on the same planet we all wake up to every day.

Yet, as long as we all have access to the correct combination of oxygen and hydrogen, we make the continuation of this echo system possible. Thus, in a way, it’s our duty to preserve it and support the ones who sacrificed their freedom for it. Let’s not forget that the environment or the planet is not in danger: WE ARE! A planet that survived the big bang and ice age can correct its system, WE CAN’T. So we either need to break the cycle, or we are looking directly into the eyes of our own demise. The Islamic Republic is no different from global warming. To be honest, the Islamic Republic and other terrorist gangs like the Islamic Republic are the main reasons for global warming.

Gangs who sacrifice anything to have access to more financial resources and rule the world by spreading their poison. In such situations, one has two options: either ignore the whole situation and stay out of it or take a stance, engage your practice, and organise counter actions. Staying somewhere in between would be impossible as performing selective activism only slows the process, makes radical change less possible and provides the criminal gangs more time to reorganise themselves and silence those who lead the winds of change. In such situations, it’s not a favour from us, but our responsibility to see and check our privileges and resources, and think about sharing them with others who are committed to such causes.

Both in a material and immaterial sense. Below I conclude this essay with a few options for the culture scene for how, through their connections, they can help the revolution in Iran and other nations living under dictatorship in the long and difficult struggle to overcome and overthrow the terrorist regimes.

Look at your institution and see where you have the equivalent of your oxygen and hydrogen lying around and whether you can create the correct combination and provide people in need with it. Let’s take a traditional theatre as an example. The easiest way is to support affected individuals in your line of work. This can be in collaboration or simply sharing platforms/resources. As an act of solidarity, one could organise events, yet think about long-term solutions. Here are some projects I would have wished would have come from the cultural scene:

• Providing scholarships for artists and cultural workers from Iran, Kurdistan, and Afghanistan, providing them refuge and bringing them to safety, especially for the disabled and LGBTQIA+ community
• Providing a centre for dialogue, supporting the revolution in the development of its discourse, and creating an accessible archive
• Dedicating a part of their seasonal programme to Iran and hiring Iranians, Kurds, and Afghans in exile to practice further
• Sharing social media platforms with the artists and activists or providing a series of panel discussions on this topic
• Looking in their storage and sharing resources that are lying around with activists and groups that are working on voluntary basis
• Sharing their connections to the political scene with the activists and journalists working freelance and voluntarily in exile
• Cancelling an event and donating the budget of that event to artists or activists who are in need of financial support to continue their practice
• Looking at the season’s programme to see whether that reflects what society needs and also whether it has a Eurocentric perspective
• Thinking about marginalised communities and putting them at the forefront of their support

Or, most fundamentally, just make your team more inclusive by keeping eye on its diversity, then the team will organically come up with these ideas on demand, as in that case, the pain doesn’t need to be located and attributed. In such a situation, the pain is within the team, and thus, the institution will organically react to that as a human being and not an institution that is forced to do something. Denial is a river in Egypt.