Chapter 8: Unjust Blood Always Finds Its Way
We live in the most technologically advanced era humanity has ever known. We solve problems daily that once felt impossible. And yet, death remains the greatest mystery. There is no final answer to prevent it, and almost no certainty about what follows it. What happens to a person after death remains the oldest question we carry one that religions and spiritual traditions attempt to answer in countless ways.
Perhaps this uncertainty is what makes death feel so unbearable. Or perhaps it is because death means absence. It means no more conversations, no more presence, no more shared time. Funerals, in this sense, are not for the dead but for the living. For those left behind to hold their grief together.
In my country, goodbye is often more dramatic than in many other places. We live in deep communities, in shared lives. Mourning is never private. Even when death is expected, through age or illness, it is heavy. But when death is sudden, and more than that, unjust, we are no longer speaking of death at all. We are speaking of murder.
Across cultures, people try to make sense of injustice through belief. Some trust in karma. Some in divine will. Some in cosmic balance, the idea that life must eventually correct itself.
These days, my country is covered in darkness. Thousands have been killed unjustly. And this is how my people respond: they bury their loved ones with tear-filled eyes and then they dance. They stand beside graves and dance while crying.
It feels impossible to understand from the outside. But they dance because they are proud. Their loved ones died while defending their beliefs, while fighting for freedom. To them, there is no purer act than this. No higher form of dignity. They also dance because they believe that balance will return. That justice will come. To understand this, you have to step into our stories.
In the Shahnameh (The Book of Kings), written by Ferdowsi, there is the story of Siyavash, a prince of Iran, a symbol of innocence. He is unjustly killed by order of the king of Turan.
In one version of the story, the king orders that Siyavash’s blood must not touch the ground, warning that if it does, a plant of vengeance will grow from the soil. In some tellings, his blood never reaches the earth. In other versions, his blood spills onto the ground and gives birth to a plant called Parsiyavoshan, a symbol of justice and revenge for innocent blood. Another myth says his blood spread beneath the stones, marking the land itself as witness; a silent sign that innocence had been taken. It does not matter which version you choose. The meaning remains the same. Innocent blood does not disappear.
There is an old song Iranians have whispered for more than a century through every national movement, every uprising, every wound. It begins with these words:
“Tulips have bloomed from the blood of the country’s youth.”
This image comes directly from the story of Siyavash — blood sinking into the soil and giving rise to red flowers. A forest of tulips. A landscape of remembrance.
These are not just words, poetry or songs. They are beliefs; our way of living. They are inheritances carried through generations. Just like dancing at such funerals which is not celebrating death but speaking of injustice.
In our culture, losing a loved one is unbearable especially when that loss is born of injustice. But this is the paradox of my people: they mourn, and rise. They cry, and dance. Because they believe that unjust blood always finds its way back to justice.
