There’s one scene I sometimes imagine. Not because it’s all that likely, but because it keeps me going.
It’s a future where Iran is free. Where the regime that has imprisoned a whole nation under the name of faith, compelled by a fist, has finally collapsed, replaced by a secular democracy. Where Iranians both in and outside Iran can live, learn, and speak fearlessly. A country that remembers its past but is no longer a hostage thereto.
In such a future, I see myself present. Not grandiosely, and not more than someone trying to “bridge” what should never have been divided: Iran and the West. I imagine standing among the American diplomats reaching out to the Iranians and feeling something that has not been felt between the two nations in decades, namely trust. And then, a moment neither scripted nor staged: reaching out and embracing one of the new, secular democratic Iranian leaders. A very human and sincere embrace after decades of inhuman hostility and separation.
I imagine the cameras flashing, the headlines racing. Not because of or for me, but for the image of healing. A sign that history and camaraderie can be rebuilt.
Look, I know reality is heavier. Revolutions are neither clean nor totally fair. And history simply does not care about dreams. Nonetheless, I hold onto it, because sometimes you need an idealization to keep you moving forward towards a more amicable place.
I think often about the dreams that country once had. That is, of becoming a proudly modern and secularized nation, and how derailed such ambitions were. I regard figures like the Pahlavi royals as modernizing autocrats; Reza Shah, a visionary, and his son Mohammad Reza Shah, flawed but ultimately and similarly, a well-intentioned man. I regard figures like Shapour Bakhtiar, Iran’s last secular head of government, just as he wished: a bird flying through the storm, but whose warnings of impending danger were neglected.
And Mohammad Mossadegh: the earlier Prime Minister capable of eliciting yawns from the monarchical oppositionists, and yet still capable of getting them to admit that he, a patriot, would team up with the Pahlavis in the most unironic fashion to oust the unpatriotic mullahs in charge today.
While certain the regime in its current form will fall in my lifetime, I write all this knowing that this story of embracement might not happen so fruitfully.
And yet I write it anyway. I have to. Were I to stop dreaming of this, I’d lose what little sense of belonging I have left.
This is a legacy in some way. Not only the mourning of what was lost, but the quiet defense of what could have been. Most importantly, what with enough courage might still be. When those in power erase dreams, the act of keeping one alive, even privately, becomes a sort of admirable resistance.
I’ve learned that not every memory is inherited. Some, like this one, have to be made from scratch, stitched together by a generation that has never truly known freedom in its homeland, but still dares to describe what it might look like.
Perhaps someday, someone will look back at this piece and say: “you were not so outlandish.” But until then, I’ll keep dreaming. Someone has to.
