A Revolution of Words S. Rouzbeh ۲ مرداد ۱۴۰۵ Three expressions — Child of Iran, One Who Gave Their Life for the Homeland, and One Whose Name Lives On — carry grief from private rooms into a nation’s shared memory. A Revolution of Words S. Rouzbeh The sound of a gunshot, like the sudden crushing of a tin can underfoot, echoed in the narrow alley. A red stain settled on the concrete wall, and the steam of blood in the cold air rose slowly. At that same moment, in another room, white papers with blue stamps and terse signatures were spread across metal desks. Headlines, like fresh wounds, settled on the faces of pages, and a hand tried to hide a life inside a few typed lines: a name, a date, a number, and the end. But we knelt on the cold asphalt, took his name from among the shoeprints and the stains of blood, wiped the dust from his photograph, and said: No, you have not been left behind in this alley. Your name is stitched into this soil’s veins and in our memory like a footprint in wet clay will remain. Child of Iran Grief is no longer only a hidden sob in a dark room. The mother, without a headscarf, her hair stuck by tears to her face, turns in the earthen courtyard, and her feet in the hot ground cut furrows. Each turn she makes is a question whose answer she demands of the sky. The father leans against the mud-and-straw wall, his voice hoarse with so much weeping, and repeats a verse from the Shahnameh, like a pillar beneath his heart’s broken roof. From the end of the alley comes the sound of clapping, of cries, and of a local lament rising. The people do not want their tears stifled behind closed doors. They do not want their grief spoken in a language their killer made for them. So they choose a new name: Child of Iran. Child of Iran means a mother is not left alone in her grief. It means a son’s photograph does not hang only on the wall of one home. It means a little girl stands beside the frame, with eyes that do not yet know death’s full meaning, and gazes at a face that should have held her hand for years, called to her, told her stories, and watched her grow. Now the girl places her little finger on the glass of the frame; as though she wants to fill the distance between herself and that silent face with the warmth of her hand. Child of Iran means the light of one home stays on until midnight and the sound of weeping passes from window to window; like an invisible thread stitching a nation’s homes together. He is no longer only one mother’s child. He is the brother of a city that has cried his name, the sister of a people who have carried his photograph aloft, and the child of a land that feels his absence in every home. He is not a file in an office drawer. Not a number in a daily report. Not a brief line in the margin of a news story. He was a branch of the tree of Iran; and when it broke, its leaves fell on all our shoulders. No one could say: This sorrow has nothing to do with me. Iran is no longer only a line on a sheet of geography. It is a home with cracked walls, uncurtained windows, and eyes watching the street from behind the glass. A home where, each time one of its children falls, the sound of a breaking branch echoes through its whole forest. Child of Iran means pain has come out of one home. It means the mother turns within a circle of people and each person takes a little of her sorrow’s weight upon their own shoulders. One Who Gave Their Life for the Homeland Life is a human being’s sweetest possession. It beats in the breast, creates hope in the eye, and in the hand holds the warmth of touch, and in the foot the longing to walk towards tomorrow. No one wakes in the morning to go in search of death. No young person puts on their shoes so that they will never again come home. He too did not call for death. He looked into the cold mouth of a gun, was afraid, but did not step back. For something heavier than fear was beating in his breast: freedom. He did not love death; he loved life. He loved life so much that he would not agree to give the name of life to a chain. One Who Gave Their Life for the Homeland means a person who wanted to live, to fall in love, to build a home, to hold their child, to plant a tree, to travel, and to see their mother’s hair turn white; but a day came when he understood that if everyone bowed their head, no tomorrow fit to live in would remain. For him, the homeland was more than soil. It was the scent of the earth after the first rain. It was a morning whose light was not yet complete. It was an alley where children with plastic balls ran. It was the sound of a vendor coming from afar. It was a window from behind which a mother every evening waited for her child to return. The homeland was a tomorrow not yet built, whose bright outline breathed in his mind. That was why he stood. Beneath the fierce glare of cars that burned the eyes. Among cries that split the air. Before a hand that wanted to bring him to his knees. He stood so the enemy could not complete its smile. One Who Gave Their Life for the Homeland means we should not glorify death, but should not forget the price of standing firm. It means knowing that he did not think his life worth little; he found freedom dearer even than his own life. He did not fall because he did not want life. He fell because he wanted life for others too. For a child not yet born. For a girl who wanted to walk the street without fear. For a mother who did not want to see another child’s body on the people’s shoulders. For a generation that must one day open its windows without terror. Before cold earth settled on his face, his name passed from lip to lip. It passed from mouth to mouth, from alley to alley, from city to city. His name, before his body, passed through the siege. One Whose Name Lives On Power counts people: one person, ten people, a hundred, a thousand… The numbers like cold counters spill across a metal table. Their dry clatter echoes in the room, and death in the tables is made small. Power counts so that faces fade. It counts so that mothers become columns of statistics. It counts so that people’s conscience tires of the repeated numbers. But a name breaks the number. A name says: Here a human being lived. Their eyes sparkled when they laughed. Their shoes are still paired beside the door. Their shirt is still on the hanger. Their phone, on the table, rings unanswered. And someone behind that same door is still waiting to hear the key turn. One Whose Name Lives On means death has been unable to write the final sentence. It means a bullet could stop a heart from beating, but could not erase a name from memory. It means a gravestone is not the end of the road. The stone is a cold page whose letters cast shadows beneath the cemetery’s yellow light. It needs no wire, no antenna, no password. You cannot close its account, cut off its voice, or delete it from a page. It stands in silence and tells every passer-by: Here rests a human being who once stood firm. Here sleeps someone who had hopes. Here remains a name that must not be forgotten. Each grave is an address. An address for remembrance, a meeting place for fellow feeling, a point on the map of the quest for justice. A place where flowers slowly dry, candles melt drop by drop, but feet do not forget the way there. The government does not fear an empty street. It fears a street where footsteps beat time on the asphalt. It fears a throat whose veins pulse beneath the skin. It fears a piece of cloth that in the wind becomes a flag without permission. It fears a hand that rises, whose fingers become a fist. But more than anything it fears a stone standing beside fresh earth with a name upon its breast. A name written with a trembling hand in black letters, yet beneath the cemetery’s dead light like a wakeful eye it shines. They come at night. With a sledgehammer, a torch, and a fear they hide behind their faces. They hammer the letters, break the edge of the stone, scratch the picture, and imagine that by breaking stone memory too will break. But the echo of each blow rings through the morning’s silence. Each broken piece becomes fresh testimony. And the name rises from the broken stone and settles on walls, on flags, on lips, and in hearts. Memory does not die under a sledgehammer. The more they hammer at the name, the further its voice travels. One Whose Name Lives On means a name freed from the prison of stone. A name that is no longer only on one grave; it walks in the street, is heard in a song, breathes in a poem, and in a mother’s voice is born again. They are three expressions: Child of Iran, One Who Gave Their Life for the Homeland, One Whose Name Lives On. But behind each expression stands a world. Behind ‘Child of Iran’ is a mother pressing a photograph to her breast, and people who will not let her be alone. Behind ‘One Who Gave Their Life for the Homeland’ is a young person who did not want death, but would not accept humiliation, and saw the future of others in freedom. Behind ‘One Whose Name Lives On’ is a stone that breaks, but a name that cannot be broken. These expressions do more than replace old words. Each opens a door. ‘Child of Iran’ opens the door of grief from one home to another. ‘One Who Gave Their Life for the Homeland’ opens the door of resistance towards the future. And ‘One Whose Name Lives On’ closes the door of memory against forgetting. This revolution, before it triumphed in the squares, began in the people’s language. The people swept aside the words that power had made for their deaths. They took the names out of the reports. They took grief from closed rooms to the courtyards of homes, to the alleys, to the squares, and into the heart of a nation. They did not fall for one figure or for one small group. In different alleys, in different shoes, with different dreams, they fell on the same soil. One was still a student. One a worker. One had a child who could not sleep at night without hearing their voice. One was to wear wedding clothes in a few days’ time. One was taking medicine to their mother. One had the key to a new home in their pocket. But when they fell, the earth did not ask them which group they belonged to. Nor did the mothers ask which home they were children of. Their grief did not stay in one room. It passed from city to city, from a hand that lit a candle to a hand that held a frame aloft, from a mother who turned upon the earth to a mother who silently stroked her son’s hair in his photograph. And one day, when the doors open, when the windows open towards the light, when the streets no longer fear free footsteps, their names will pass across Iran’s lips: Children of Iran, those who gave their lives for the homeland, those whose names live on, who rose from the soil and in a nation’s memory, like an inscription in stone, became enduring. On that day the mothers will know their children were not left alone in that alley. Their names passed through the bullet, passed through the report, passed through the broken stone, and reached the future. A future they may not have seen themselves, but with their own lives they lit the way towards it. Source: https://srouzbeh.com/en/posts/archive-b089b1f1-a9d9-7435-6194-471ec5eead10 Please credit the author and link to this edition.