Some areas of Tehran sustained heavy damage during the ongoing protests in Iran, such as this building shown on Jan. 10.Getty Images/Getty Images
Amir Zadeh is an Iranian-Canadian living in Vancouver.
The family WhatsApp chat is usually a circus. On a normal day, it’s my uncle forwarding news from sources that definitely do not exist, my aunt sharing medical advice from 2003 about herbs that can cure anything from heartbreak to heart attacks (“Just boil it and drink”), and cousins sending memes that would get them disowned by elders if they knew what they meant. It’s loud, it’s chaotic, it’s home.
And then suddenly, silence.
When the protests started in Iran, the government shut down the internet and jammed phone lines across the country. It isn’t the first time, but it never stops feeling unreal. One minute you’re watching shaky videos from the streets, the next minute the entire country falls off the map.
If you don’t know Iranians, silence might seem harmless. If you do, you know they’re not sitting at home bored, drinking tea and watching state TV, waiting for things to fix themselves. Iranians don’t do quiet resignation; they do stubborn survival. They push, even when it scares them.
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There’s a feeling now that life has drifted into a kind of limbo, a place with no horizon. For all the disagreements about politics, religion, ethnicity, and everything else under the sun, it’s hard to find anyone who thinks this current reality is the future. Even if no one agrees on what comes next, most agree that this cannot be it, and uncertainty, even with all its risks, is better than a future that already feels denied.
Before the blackout, the last message I got from a loved one was: “I am heading out. I will be fine. Don’t worry.”
He’s young enough to believe that the world can be changed, and old enough to know he needs to be the agent of that change. Which is exactly the combination that terrifies me.
After that, nothing. No voice notes. No memes. No sarcastic commentary. Just that last message frozen in the chat like a warning wrapped as reassurance.
Outside the blackout, you hear fragments. Hospitals overwhelmed. People carried in with gunshot wounds. ERs running out of hands and supplies. I picture those I know working in those ERs, moving from one room to the next until their hands shake or their bodies force them to sit down. And in that blur of stretchers and shouting, the person being rushed in could be anyone. It could be someone from my family. It could be a friend from childhood. It could be someone’s daughter who said they’d be back soon and never sent another message.
Iranians gather during a protest in Kermanshah, Iran, on Jan. 8.KAMRAN/AFP/Getty Images
Then come the darker stories. Automatic weapons fired into crowds. Snipers on rooftops. Children caught in the crossfire. The cruel part is that you don’t know how much of it is true, because in a blackout rumour travels faster than verification. You refresh half-loaded videos and anonymous reports and your mind fills in the missing pieces on its own.
Meanwhile, I’m here in Vancouver, safe but feeling sick about it. Safe feels like a blessing and a betrayal at the same time. There’s no guidebook for this kind of distance. You wake up and check your phone. You see nothing. You check again 15 minutes later, just in case the country has reappeared.
What gets lost in headlines is that Iranian identity has become transnational. Protests in Tehran echo in Vancouver apartments and Berlin metro stations and on Los Angeles freeways. Revolutions now unfold in two places at once: In the streets, and on the screens of those who would give anything to be there. There’s grief in that distance, but also a pride that refuses to disappear.
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And I am not the only one. There are millions of us scattered across the world, all staring at our phones for signs of life. The diaspora has its own kind of helplessness. We refresh the news, we share the videos, we argue in group chats, and then we fall quiet again because we are not the ones breathing tear gas or running from gunfire. We have opinions, but we do not know if we have the right to speak them. We want to help, but we do not know what that help should look like. We live in the strange space between love and guilt, safety and shame.
I imagine the day the chat lights up again. Someone will drop 20 messages in a row. My aunt will swear turmeric saved someone’s life. My cousins will post blurry photos. Someone will say, “Khoda ro shokr” (“Thank God.”) Someone will complain about the price of tomatoes. And all the noise will come flooding back. Messy. Alive. Familiar.
Until then, the silence is not calm. It is not peace. It is the sound of a country refusing to stay in limbo any longer, and the sound of those of us far away holding our breath.
And I hope the breath we are holding is not in vain. I hope that this bravery does not evaporate into history unclaimed. I hope that the future, whatever shape it takes, has room for dignity, for safety, for sunlight. I hope that one day I can open my phone and find something simple and extraordinary waiting for me: A message from a loved one saying, “I am home.”