The Role of Visibility in Iranian Liberation
Editor's Note: This piece is reprinted with the author's permission. It is a deep reflective note illustrating the importance of power of uplifting our identity and people in the face of oppression.
By Maryam Khojasteh
There is so much I have to say that the weight of it has paralyzed me into silence. Every time I want to say something, I am pulled down into my chest. I need to write a book not a LinkedIn post to walk you through the history, beauty, sheer pain, resilience, resistance, and richness of Iran and Iranian people.
“Our liberation is interconnected” is not an abstract motto. It is a deeply personal matter. When we talk about justice, the horizon for me has always been transnational and a literal calculation of how many years, decades, and centuries it will take to go from a transformed U.S. to a free Iran? I am now convinced by the time it happens; we will be extinct.
What I carry as an Iranian in diaspora is not comparable with what my sister carries at home. But it illuminates a truth - that our pains are either deemed “irrelevant” or a “personal matter.” Where the reality cannot be further from the truth.
The calls from home all points to one thing - don’t let the world forget about us. And I don’t know how to break the news to them that the world has already moved on.
My wise mother always says, “thank god for forgetfulness, without that humans could not survive.” But I will make it my job to fight against the comfort of erasure. When I make myself invisible, I make my people invisible.
“There is a
gravity to grief.
it
pulls
you down.
past hunger,
past reason.
past the places instinct should save you.
a kind of drowning
that happens on dry land.”