Sal

24 |From SWANA, living in Finland she/they 🏳️‍🌈🏳️‍⚧️| bloging about life, cities, politics & feelings.

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Yritän rakentaa tulevaisuuttani, ja on ok, vaikka mikään ei etene.

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When I was angry at the world and crying, he stayed next to me until I was waving my head and singing lalalalalala.

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2020, when everywhere was closed, I wrote a post trying to explain how Ali Khamenei looks totalitarian, based on The Origins of Totalitarianism by Hannah Arendt. I was only 18, and the intelligence ministry called me for the first time, appearing as a private number on my phone, and threatened me. I got scared and texted my friends to see them, in case they wanted to imprison me. I started deleting my memories with my ex-girlfriend and of Bloody November 2019, like I hadn’t witnessed anything. I told my ex-girlfriend, and she didn’t text me back.

2026: waking up so far from home. Ali Khamenei is dead, and my friends have perhaps forgotten me, and my ex-girlfriend still hasn’t replied but not because she’s mad at me; she doesn’t have access to the internet, her basic right. I hear birds chirping, but not as beautiful as the songs I heard in Rasht mornings after nights of war. I’m scared of how I can truly understand how Sara Hegazi decided to forgive the world in Canada, and how Walter Benjamin didn’t want to wait for tomorrow morning. I’m scared of the system being alive while I’m not.

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"Not much music left inside us for life to dance to. Our youth has gone to the ends of the earth to die in the silence of the truth. And where, I ask you, can a man escape to, when he hasn't enough madness left inside him? The truth is an endless death agony. The truth is death. You have to choose: death or lies. I've never been able to kill myself."

Journey to the End of the Night by Céline

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Holding Hands, Persepolis Iran. C.500 Bc

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Used to lie on the Caspian Sea, telling myself: these waves crash hard against your body, yet you're still floating, still asleep on the water. Here, whenever I feel sad, it is always cold. The water isn't frozen anymore, and I hope I can go to the lake and the sea here too, to feel the same feeling. But suddenly, today, I was standing still, the wind hitting me, and I was standing. Same feeling! Maybe the wind here can be my sea? I don't know... but when it messed up my hair, it felt good.

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Btw why are you always blaming people from Iraq, Iran, Lebanon, Venezuela, or wherever for being happy when their dictator gets killed but not people from the country that intervene in those places and celebrating Coachella or ... like nothing happened? (personally, don't see any problems to be happy during the war, but noticed that only we're getting blamed)

(Is it because you’re racist or because you think we’re not allowed to feel happy about the death of our potential murderer?)

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Bro is telling me Mahsa Amini wasn't killed by the Islamic Republic, sending me some shitty propaganda source while ignoring that they jailed her family and her parents have literally said she had no prior condition.

Meanwhile, I've personally experienced fainting and feeling like I was dying under police pressure.

So why can't you just admit Donald Trump sucks and the Islamic regime sucks too? Why are you trying to justify them because you just hate Trump :)))

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A letter for a friend

Azizam,

I got your message, and you’re not getting mine. Instead, you were seeing buildings demolished and windows break. You saw different types of death: the death of people and places by everyone, and now you look like somebody who has died when I checked your Telegram. When will you come back to tell me the worst and most horrible stories I have ever heard while laughing?

If the internet comes back, I will stay silent and listen to you, and when you ask me, “How was it with me?” I'll tell you I write every day, crying, shaking my feet in the bathroom, and trying to live. Living, we love living? I’m not resisting; I never have. Crisis has always been in the way, and I’m floating on the water and watching the waves.

I miss the sea where you were dancing next to it, and I was sleeping on it. And you must have smoked when the regime killed all of us and our places. Our youth smoked and went up to the sky and came back as a weapon of happiness, of death, of our murder, and sadness for places.

I don’t want to cry in my 50s and feel guilty about why I didn’t do anything when I see people my age , I’m not sure we’re even going to be 34 one day, Maybe we'll be extinct in 10 years and it's not bitter, We practiced death moments several times; that's why living every day is just a new unusual event.

Stay safe and alive.

With kindness.

-Sal

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My shaking hands and broken heart and uncertain future.

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Apparently, the President of the United States is doing something similar to what the Islamic regime has done to Iran : both seeming to want the death of civilization. I’m really worried tonight.

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Recently I’ve been in a very dark place, feeling lonely in a strange way like I can’t even find myself next to me. Maybe because I’ve always had to rely only on my inner self to stay alive. I miss my family. I even checked tickets and didn't have idea how to come back here again for studies.

It’s hard to explain how one part of me is still living every day in Iran, suffering, angry. I remember that anger, that urge to scream: asking why can’t I just live? And another part of me , just trying to swim and sleep on the water.

Is it like The Double Life of Veronika? (The music was beautiful) sometimes I feel like the music of my own life as heavy and strange as it is might be even more real.

Last night, we were lying on the couch, looking at each other, with soft romantic music playing. We said, "I love you," and even now, every time I hear it, my heart pauses, like, "Wait, did I really hear that?" Why aren't those dark thoughts and feelings present when I'm next to him? When I was looking into his eyes, I was thinking, "How did I write 'June 5' for the deadline?" Deadline to what? An old friend said there is no love without the possibility of getting hurt, and I don't want more pain in life. Evidence shows he makes me happy, and Freud said some pain is enjoyable..

When you’ve lived in instability, relying only on your inner world isn’t a choice. So the idea that maybe you can trust something outside of yourself like someone else still feels unreal to me like Wait, I'm the unstable one here:))) Every time I think about it, I wonder: is it actually possible to let external reasons make you happy?

I can say this, even if it scares me he is the light of my daily life. And maybe what scares me most is that it’s true.

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March 29:

My hands are frozen. I've never felt so alone.

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tired of everything

loneliness squeezes the heart

with two hands from inside

the head whispers: resist "living"

birdsong in the morning

the color of the sky

desperately walking through

this scene without crying

silence everywhere

ashamed if you disrupt it

by not living

then screaming every day

poor my breath

if you hear the sound: don't be afraid

air will hug you and I won't.

don't ask me what will happen next

I see death

and i will sob

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The first New Year that I can’t see my family, and video calls aren’t possible due to the digital blackout in Iran. We celebrate the beginning of spring and the renewal of nature, and I’m happy we’ve passed the darkness of winter—the sun is shining so beautifully here too.

In these moments, I’m reminded of all those who have been killed this year by the Islamic Republic. Eventually, light prevails over darkness. May this year bring a free Iran for us, and may we celebrate the next Nowruz with our loved ones.

Nowruz Pirooz. Happy Nowruz.

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Sometimes I wish I hadn't been born, or that I could answer Thom Yorke's question of how to disappear completely. Such an unfair world-why am I here?

Now I understand why Sarah Hegazi committed suicide in Canada. Why was I angry at her? Stupid me-I didn't know. You carry the wish for a free home everywhere.

I wish I'd never known what Islam is. I can't even describe how much I hate it. Can I escape to another planet?

I wish I didn't exist and hadn't seen so much pain. Breathing is hard. My future self, if you read this, you couldn't breathe either-and it's not fair. Nothing is supposed to be fair.

Maman, you would hug me. I know you would. I want that.

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12. maaliskuuta / 12 March

I don't have anything to say. Nowruz is close, and I'm feeling sad and worried, missing my parents and friends. Seeing Iran free is all I want.