Chapter 7: The Same Emotions, Different Voices
We are angry. We are fighting. And more than ever, we are lonely. As I write these lines, I keep returning to the same feeling: the more I explain, the less understood I feel. Perhaps it is because what I am trying to speak about is unfamiliar and difficult to hold. I know that some people can process every single word I say and still miss the larger picture simply because sometimes words are not strong enough to carry the message.
There is another group as well. People who understand this feeling because they have once lived it themselves, but who now choose not to listen to me, or to my people. Why? Because their understanding of the world has settled into something rigid. Black or white. Good or bad. And “good” is often defined only by what aligns with their own lives and their own comfort and the rest would be defined as “bad” and easy to be dismissed..
For the past twelve days, the regime has been killing people in Iran; people who have taken to the streets and said, clearly, that they no longer want this regime ruling their country.
I am currently reading a book written in Iran in 1979, just before the revolution. Roozha dar Rah by Shahrokh Meskoob. It is a painful book to read at this moment, because in many passages it feels as though the author is describing today, not events from forty-seven years ago. There is a line in the book that has stayed with me: “Which familiar stranger, which stranger friend do they kill today?”
This is how we feel as Iranians now. We mourn those whose names we may never have known, yet who feel closer to us than many we do. We call them hamvatan; a word in Farsi that means people of the same homeland. Isn’t it beautiful? We have a name for this bond. The homeland ties us to one another, quietly and deeply, creating a unique connection.
For these same twelve days, with the internet shut down, I have not been able to speak to my friends and loved ones in any real way. Instead, I have been listening, again and again, to “Allo” by Balti, a Tunisian rapper. The song speaks of living in a new country, of loneliness, of not being understood, and of the impossibility of returning home because of what is happening there.
I do not speak Arabic beyond a few words and expressions, yet I feel this song. I have listened to it over and over again, on repeat. He sings of being among strangers, of having been away for a long time, of hair that has slowly turned grey with distance and time. I do not need the words. I am living what he sings.
It is the same feeling I get when I listen to the music of Le Trio Joubran. There are no lyrics, and yet grief is undeniable. Sadness is undeniable. Some emotions arrive without language and remain intact.
This is a strange time. You may not understand its details fully, simply because you have not lived this life. But I believe this grief is not entirely foreign to you. Perhaps you have known it under a different name, in a different place, caused by different hands. But you have felt it.
Otherwise, how could I cry every time I hear “Holm” by Emel Mathlouthi? During the pandemic in 2020, she released this song, set to a melody originally composed by Anoushiravan Rohani for the Iranian film Soltan-e Ghalbha in 1968. Emel’s version begins with words that feel like a quiet plea: If I could close my eyes and let the doves take me, I would rise and fly into a new sky and forget my sorrows. If I could travel in my imagination, I would build palaces and nights where love and hope could grow, where pain could be erased.
Since its release, I have chosen this version over the original every time. I cry because I feel the urgency in it. The sadness. The hope. I may not have lived Emel’s life, but I understand what she is carrying. I am certain we understand each other without speaking.
Being away from those you love, losing people, known or unknown, this is an experience that exists beyond words. If you can find the words for it, you are an artist. But even without language, the feeling remains. Present. Heavy. Real. Can you deny its existence?
