A Home Called Iran
S. Rouzbeh
2026-10-09

Iran is not the inheritance of a single lineage, group or slogan. It is the shared home of everyone whose heart belongs to this land. A home cannot be built through hatred and shouting; it can be lit again through responsibility, empathy, understanding, hands joined together and each person's willingness to carry a share of its burden.

S. Rouzbeh
This soil
is more than soil;
it is the wounded brow of a home
that fell so many times
and again
from among the dust
called out its own name.

Many are those
who lie in wait for it;
with a folded map
in the pocket of politics.

But Iran
is a name that still
on grandmothers' tongues
stays warm.

Here
is a home of many voices;
languages in which mothers
have sung their lullabies,
hands that have baked bread,
eyes that have wept over their dead,
and footsteps
that still
have not lost the way back to tomorrow.

In this long night
their names
like a hidden lamp
burn in the earth's breast;
those who left
and behind them
left a path to the light
open.

We have come
not for little flags,
not for all those cries of ‘long live’ and ‘death to’
that built nothing
but walls.

We have come
to open our hands
from the clenched fists of fear and hatred,
to lay bread on a table
with room for everyone,
and to remember:
a home raised on hatred
will bring its roof
down on those who built it.

Iran
is not the inheritance of a single lineage;
it holds in trust the wounds, the bread, the lullabies
and the lives
that in this soil
have taken root.

Whoever
holds this home dear
must, before any cry is raised,
take up a lamp,
lay a brick upon the earth,
and carry their own share
of this land's burden
on their shoulders.

Source: https://srouzbeh.com/en/posts/entry-1791634604794-262f7fcb
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