I still remember the children in the courtyard of our apartment building. There were only two boys among a larger group of girls, and yet one of the most serious negotiations of their small world revolved around a strangely precise question: who would play the husband. What appeared, from the distance of adulthood, as a [...]
I am not particularly interested in football, which is perhaps precisely why it began to interest me as something other than football, since there are subjects that announce themselves through passion, through expertise, through a prior attachment that legitimizes one’s engagement with them as if understanding could only follow from caring, and there are others [...]
In Iranian family gatherings, geopolitics rarely arrives through academic language. It emerges through instinct, irritation, memory, and the peculiar intimacy with which ordinary people discuss the fate of nations while passing tea across a crowded room. That evening had begun like many others: fruit on the table, the television murmuring in the background, someone complaining [...]
“A man with an unpleasant voice was reciting the Qur’an loudly. A wise-hearted passerby said to him, “What salary do you receive?” He replied, “None.” The man said, “Then why do you give yourself so much trouble?” He answered, “I recite for God’s sake.” The wise man said, “Then for God’s sake, do not recite.” [...]
Editor’s Note: This op-ed was submitted to JURIST prior to the joint US-Israeli military strikes on Iran that began on February 28, 2026. The author is based in Tehran. JURIST has confirmed that he is safe. Due to ongoing internet disruptions and security conditions on the ground, he is currently unable to file. He will [...]
In December 2025, I (born in 2002) logged in from Iran to speak to students gathered in “Arts Tower LT5” at the University of Sheffield. The screen flickered; their winter coats rustled in a distant auditorium I could not see. I told them something that felt obvious and astonishing at once: look how close we [...]
I feel lost, as if I have misplaced myself somewhere between silence and clamor. The world withdrew the moment the internet was cut off, not merely into disconnection but into a condition of being unwitnessed. What disappeared was not information, but circulation, visibility, and political presence. In that imposed solitude, an old question returned with [...]
It has been a month since the internet was cut off in Iran. I know nothing—and it is precisely this not-knowing that allows me to think from multiple positions at once: from myself, from my brother, from my father, and from my mother. Each of us occupies a different role, a different exposure, a different [...]
