The Fig Tree

Recited

I was a toddler in June, 2009.
I had no understanding of the world around me. Of green armbands and political rallies, of where my young uncle would go at nights to get my grandma hollering at him. Of my parents and the fight they put up with the rest of our relatives as well. I didn't know and I wouldn't understand why the atmosphere had suddenly turned so tense, so agitated.

In 2017, I was 10 years old.
I had no knowledge of any political parties or oppositions. So much so that I didn't even fully understand the murky arena of those days and only read the news about it in short, fragmented pieces later.

In 2019, I was 12 years old when the grim happened. I was 12 years old, but it still feels crystal clear to me that when the internet went out, I leaned back on the couch and stared at the satellite TV, which was reporting on the busy streets of those days.

When the internet came back online, I heard that 1,500 people had died in 3 days alone, and I shed tears for the dead of that day and the seemingly endless dead of the days and years that followed.

I think it was from the moment I became political- at the age of 12- when the pressure of politics managed to hop into my life, baring its teeth and claws at me.

I was 12 years old when I heard the news of the ps-752 plane crash, when I cried for Arash and Puneh, -the newly weds- Reera, and for all those 176 strangers I had happened to know overnight.

Too late.

That vile, odious crash that wasn't caused by an enemy strike but by a fellow countryman, a compatriot, a soul I shared a culture with. When I got home from school that day, my mother was standing in front of the TV, staring at the news that said the plane had been targeted by unfriendly, government rockets. She stood there crying.

It was that day, that second that my school bag, my tears, and all my childish, teenage enthusiasm fell crashing to the ground. I had grown up prematurely and suddenly became political.

In 2022, I was 15 years old. Pursuing a lofty dream that I saw as more distant than ever from achieving. But I was more eager than ever for it.

I wanted to be a gynecologist. Study overseas. Get my IELTS certification. I wanted to fulfill my first and biggest childhood dream, when Mahsa was killed. The moment I saw the news on Instagram, the food in my mouth rotted, and I think from that moment on, no food ever tasted the same again.

In those days, I wrote, talked, debated, ran, made hashtags on Twitter, dodged government pellets, and did everything I could. I hid my graphic dream in a closet, because having a dream seemed too unattainable and too farfetched for me; a 15-year-old, star-burnt foolish girl thinking she has any place in the world.
There's no place for us.

In those days I was sad and mad but hopeful. I was 15 years old when I heard the worst insults from vile people thrown my way; people who considered themselves to be committed to values. They targeted my dignity and pride, mouths forming like weapons, syllables, words, trying to make me back down from even a shred of my beliefs. Beliefs that demanded an end to this repetitive path forced upon other children. Beliefs containing fight against the lack of basic human rights, lacks that Nordics would laugh at.

Those seemingly righteous, pious religious gits were attacking the forcibly politicized youth of those days, perhaps to cover up their own shame with that volume of verbal filth. But I didn't break. Didn't break and endured.

80 million others and I experienced the digital blackout again and tried to write so that maybe someone would demand a little more freedom with these writings and words. Any soul counts for a revolution, right?

Then came the 12-day spring war. Right when I thought I could grow wings and fly.

Another internet shutdown, another blackout, another dirty tool of oppression for the people who were under the shadow of war. One side was the real war and the other side was the internal war over which side to support now. The foreign alien or the internal alien.
No one seemed to fully apprehend that they are both aliens. Add PTSD to the pile.

And now it's 2026. Almost 18.

And currently in a total internet blackout.

Today is the eleventh day in a row that the internet has been cut off, signal is down at certain times of the day- which means no calls whatsoever- and SMS is unusable along with the internet. Now I am still watching the news and thinking about all the young people who are being killed in this deadly and repetitive process and narrative.
And also at untouched test books ready to be done.

But let me tell you future generations who have fled the war; never assume that in our time the agony of being killed ever became repetitive.

I hardly hear from my friends. I haven't heard from many of them until now. And I look at the screen in front of me, which broadcasts the voices of Iranians abroad, desperate to reach their families back home. They say they don't know about the well-being of their loved ones, breaking into tears mid speaking.

Those who have escaped the homeland, but never the successive blackouts in their lives.

Those who have left their homeland for a normal life, not for something extraordinary. But right at this moment, they realize that a normal life has denied them for years. Probably will forever.

Home follows you everywhere, it hunts you, molds you into olive skin and black eyes and strands of twisted brown hair, leaving no space for you among whites.

And I?
I watch.
My irritated father.
My younger uncle itching for being at the fronts.
My mother's fear when she saw the police surrounding a place we call 'ours'.
I watch.
The streets.
Normal civilians. Protesting. Screaming. Fists in air. Getting shot in throats, hearts, legs, arms, livers, stomachs, eyes, brains. Arrested. Dragged away.
I listen.
To "death to mullahs!" and "death to the dictator!" and "don't be afraid, don't be afraid, we're all together".
I listen to the gurgling sound a young man -barely in his 30s- made when he was shot in the throat by a sniper at the top of the local mall's roof. He was the leader.
I listen to fire being set to smelly street garbages, of a protesting young girl thrown and burnt alive in it.

And the most ironic of all, I watch the process of my arrogant little brother becoming politicized. And I think; what a sad, repetitive story.

Because I am not a troublemaker, I am not a rebel, I am not a traitor, I am not deceived by foreign medias, I am not a terrorist, I am not a saboteur, I am not a Westerner, I am not a rogue, I am not a robot, I am not a mercenary, I am not a scoundrel.

I am a protester;
I protest for the teenager I never was,
For the youth I don't have,
For the dreams I'm moving further away from every day,
For the news I don't have from my friends,
For the eyes that have cried more than they've laughed,
For my pocket empty of our shit-worth money,
For all the happy memories I could have made but circumstances didn't allow me to.

I am now;
Political,
Frustrated,
Sad,
Confused,
Aching old,
Tired,
But I am not and never will be any of the meaningless patches you stick on me.
And that is the last thing I am proud of in this melancholic land that instead of the passionate adolescents, nurtures a bunch of pitiful old people.
•;Jan 18th, where dreams are buried;•