02/03/2026
A lot of non Iranian friends ask me: How are you?
And the only honest answer is: I am Iranian.
I carry hope and fear.
Excitement and exhaustion.
The fire of someone who refuses to give up and the weight of someone who has seen too much.
We live inside a paradox.
We celebrate as a dictator falls, yet we mourn our heroes who fought for the sunrise.
We turn their graves into resistance.
We turn our grief into movement.
We are watching our homeland from afar, trying to make sense of what is happening.
To be Iranian is to live in this surreal state.
For years we whispered about freedom while trapped by a machine built to silence us.
But the truth is simple.
We are a people of contradictions.
Wounded but unbreakable.
Exiled but rooted.
Silenced but never quiet.
For almost five decades, victimhood was forced onto us.
Now defiance is becoming our new face.
What choice do we have but to rise?
Araz
This photo was taken in Paris yesterday.
Alongside Iranians in fashion and music, I walked and echoed the words our compatriots shouted in Iran before they were brutally killed. .no.one .afr .n .shahbazi
Long live a free and prosperous, democratic Iran. We will not stop until we can reunite in our motherland, and then we won’t stop protecting and appreciating her freedom.
