.Neutralized.Iran.War.
Peaces/Pieces from a War Diary

By B|I

Watercolor, *Book of Magic and Astrology*, Isfahan,1921. Princeton Department of Rare Books and Special Collections (Islamic MSS 3rd Series No. 349 fol. 74b).
Image description: A red, six-headed demon with a human body rides a brown. single-horned, four-legged beast with tusks.

Preface

(Who writes a preface to a diary, you wonder!? It’s not to a diary. It’s a “Preface” for you)

My dear, dear readers,

Due to another indeterminate internet blackout in Iran and War, I don’t know if my messages can find you. On my side, it looks like sending everything into a dark void. Had it not been for the larger-than-life help and support of AO, my words would have never reached you. In the previous War, i.e., War II (2025), when I still had a figment of hope that things might be back to normal, I was panicky. I’m not panicky now. I am not calm either. The cobwebs are cleared. War III (2026) taught me that I don’t have the right to have the right to be human.

As an Iranian, my official source of news, the only available one, is the hardliner, far-right State TV, which I don’t watch. But it’s not difficult to understand what’s going on. Since War is getting more serious, I thought it’s better to send my creative writing before I’m “neutralized”. It may seem sensitive, at times offensive, and raw, but maybe its “urgency” and “anonymity” entice you.

The reason for my “anonymity” is two-fold: 1) if the current government and I survive this war (and even if they don’t, they will be replicated), I won’t survive this piece, and suspension from my job and losing my livelihood would be the least of my worries. 2) I was cautioned that this piece will alienate international academia and Iranian diaspora because it’s “unfair” and “critical” to them. And the future outcome of this piece will be either “remorse”, or the loss of future overseas connections, or even both. Being the citizen of a country that is either banned from US or EU soil or winning their visas is almost impossible—where the administrative process and clearance is a Minotaur’s labyrinth that takes months, even years; being the citizen of a country where internet blackout is a common dopamine-hit practice, words like “planning”, “overseas”, and “future” are absurd. As for the “remorse,” my dear connections, if you are reading this piece, you know that during wartime, unconventional measures must be taken. I have an obligation to share what Iranians have witnessed for years. I cannot, and never claim to, represent what 92+ million people have faced, but at least I can give you a glimpse.

To be more exact, the reason for my anonymity is: once lived under a dictatorship, always lived under a dictatorship! (1) I have to censor anything that is not pro-governmental because I live in Iran, and (2) I have to censor anything that may refer to one of my connections because they may get offended. What would be left of my Iranian voice, politely muffled for so long? So, I decided to censor myself and salvage my writing. To be a voice in the void.

The redundancies, cramped sentence structure, coinages, and errors are intentional and a part of the characterization of the narrator. They try to reveal the insufficiency of language and its traumatized narrator’s limitations. That is the whole point of saying what war is. It is bluntly and unabashedly “critical”.

My writing peace/piece is in a non-chronological, text-message-app format because the only way a few Iranians can have access to the outside world is through text messages. The structure of this pack of words is the factual part. The rest is facticity. It’s not a prose-poem, memoir, diary, chronicle, manifesto, article, writing therapy, or Lyrical Ballad’s“spontaneous overflow of powerful feelings”. It just is!

As for the disgruntled intellectual narrator, who is at times snobbish, conceited, and self-pitying, who draws characters, comments on the events, and gives historical references, do the fact-checking yourself, my dear gentle readers, my future friends, my overseas connections, who I’m sure will not be offended because I don’t exist. I really don’t.

Critical I am. But offensive no. Unfair no. Politically correct, never! Not only because I can’t afford to be, but also because I think it’s conceited and overrated, especially during the time of War. Despite being proven, time and again, the unreliability of my status as “human”, I still believe in what we share as friends: a human voice. Let there be a voice, even if it’s nonhuman!

Best regards,
B|I (i.e., Banksy-Impersonator / Besotted-Idealogue / Best-Invalid / Bombed-Intellectual)
A pseudo-memoir writer, living happily ever after in a War Zone

Contact: What is the point? No internet anyway, and I’m anonymous.
Short Bio: I was born in Iran, and I’m still alive. Living is my tragic flaw! Be it!
Disclaimer: Everything is fiction, but any similarity is fact.

Day 3, War III: “When You’re Drowning, It Doesn’t Matter ...”

Hello, internet blackout!

My mother tongue is Farsi/ Persian. That is the language to address my mother. As for everything else, it is English. My logos, ethos, and pathos. Professionally, I must publish in English because that is what Iranian academia dictates: international publication. Personally, I can’t write about my feelings in Farsi because I must be graceful, regal, poetic, courteous, and cautious. If I want to defy that “must”, I have only English to get by.

As a mildly-paranoic, closeted-dyslectic academician, addicted to internet searching, AI editing and superscript-subscript-strikethrough-fancy fonts — who doesn’t have access to pirated spell-checker Microsoft Word Document because the license is revoked and can’t be fixed because there is no internet, whose online phone dictionary is kaput, whose teenagerhood paper-and-ink dictionary was dedicated to the library trashcan— all I can do is using the clumsy spell-checker in the “Private Space” of my web-based Iranian massaging app which is as private as any messaging app is for any terrorist. As an Iranian, my government recognizes me as a potential Israeli-American spy terrorist, and other governments, especially the Israeli, American, European, and Arab ones, recognize me as a natural-born terrorist.

If I don’t write, I’ll explode; I may explode by a bomb anyway. As Iranians say, “When you’re drowning, it doesn’t matter if you are 1 meter or 1001 meters below”.

5 Years and 7 Days Before War III: From “I Treasure Our Friendship” to “I’m Busy, Maybe Later”

You, my inseparable friend; you, my childhood soulmate; you, my sibling!

How passionately we used to weave past-present-and-future threads, in our every-week, then every-month, then I’m-busy-sometime-later calls. I was a university professor, and you were a student, but you were too busy to talk. I was a university professor, and you were offered a job, so you were busier than too busy to talk; you became a university professor, and naturally, you were too busy to say you’re too busy to talk. At some point, I ran out of our childhood and college horseplay memories, ran out of plagiarizing Rumi, Shelley and Wilde and repacking them as my witty aphorism, ran out of critiquing Arendt’s The Origin of Totalitarianism; at some point, I stopped being “a person” and you got bored with how hard I tried not to cry while saying ‘Great to hear your voice’ and you said, ‘Don’t worry, this too will pass’ but you never called or picked my phone. You reacted to my weekly or monthly messages with 😂/😊 or 👍🏻 or ❤️ or 🙏, with your week-long delay. What about our next call? “Next” anything is too demanding. Maybe never, will “never” work for you?

Day 8-9, War III: The 13-Minute Call to the US and Happy Birthday

Yes. I prefer “Sibling”. What else do you expect from an incessantly and systematically “neutralized” nation?

Iran is famous for its “centrifuges”, which some high-officials-turned-to-meme called “centirifigigous/ cenfitirigegousous”. At home, I’m living in a centrifuge of shifting emotions. Too fast and always un-neutralizable by my power domain.

- ‘I called at 5 am. The telecommunication center said international phone calls are cut off. But I gave it a try. Thank God it was miraculously working. I managed 13 minutes. Full 13 minutes! Can you believe it? I’m so happy I could talk with my child. I didn’t want to wake you up.’

- ‘Mom, I couldn’t sleep last night. You knew it when you opened the door to say, “Sweet dreams”.’

- ‘It was nothing. I didn’t talk much. I just answered all the questions. I said we are really safe and everything is fine. Nothing to worry. How thoughtful of my kid to give me the name of this website. It shows the “sensitive” places that might be bombed. So, if we avoid those places, we’ll be safe. I wrote it in Persian. I’m not sure if I wrote it correctly or what. I said, you’ll check it for us. I said my phone is outdated, and my internet doesn’t work. But you’ll surely check. You are in charge of all these.’

- ‘I was in charge mom. You know there has been an internet blackout for more than a week. The previous one lasted for 46 days. You were very angry about being kept in the dark, not knowing the news, remember?’

- ‘No, I didn’t. I mean, I was not sure— completely. I thought it was my phone. I didn’t want to wake you up. I just wanted to make sure my child is all right. Living on the other side of the globe.’

- ‘Perhaps, if you asked about the street and region, at least we would have known where is dangerous.’

- ‘I didn’t call for myself. I don’t want anything for myself. You have no idea how expensive it is! Why don’t you call her for a change??’

- ‘Mom, your phone is the only phone that can connect! Mine can hardly send text messages, let alone make overseas calls. You have a golden cellphone mom, congratulations!’

- What are you suggesting? You call this outdated thing a golden phone?!?! I just needed to check up on my baby. Living so far away. Living on one’s own. With no support from a family. Do you know how hard it is? How inconsiderate and improper to deliver messages of stress and depression to my baby! I must check if my baby is all right.’

- ‘Your baby is all right mom. Very safe. Your baby is a US citizen who never jeopardized the Green Card by coming to Iran even once, which was a very wise decision.’

- ‘What on earth are you suggesting? I’m talking about my baby. You are not a mother. You don’t understand what it means to wait for a call from your child for a whole week. Two weeks. Three weeks.’

- ‘That is not true mom. You had a busy social life before retirement. Don’t you remember how I dedicated my PhD dissertation to you and your years of “mentorship and role modeling,” to which you said, “It makes me feel old”? Your English is B2. You know how to surf the net even in English. You can’t play the stay-at-home-mom card which you’ve never been. Neither the empty nest syndrome, because I’m still here. This, whatever this is, is not your life! I think I should wash the government-subsidized potato dad bought.’

- ‘“Subsidized potato”, ha? I can’t talk with my own child in my own house because you feel insulted or jealous for whatever God-knows reason. Don’t you dare touch those potatoes! Your father and his craze for this God-forbid government, who are subsidizing this God-cursed potato that is not even decent for a mule, let alone people! I hope, by God, I hope I will be bombed today! You are like your father. Both of you are worse than any dictator I know or have read about. You are intolerant of a simple talk in this God-stricken house when the New Year Noruz is coming, and my home is messy. Your father who spends all his money on groceries and finishes everything by the 5th day of the month still backs them up, drilling “We stand strong in Ramadan, the month of martyrdom” into my nerves and you, with your war-hoarding obsessions making my kitchen messy with 8 bottles of water, 20 loaves of bread, 5 packs of cheese and butter in the freezer, 8 bottles of milk that will go sour any day. Grocery and bread must be bought daily. Fresh. Should we come to this new low? Food is getting more expensive every day, so what? Will we run out of money on the 15th of the month and starve? To hell! I’d rather starve with dignity in a clean, neat, well-lighted house. I’ll be bombed before being starved anyway, and now with Khamenei’s fictitious son at the wheel in this God-forsaken country, we will get bombed soon. Your father will be martyred, I will be dead, and you will— what are you doing anyway? You, creeping into your room, barely talking to anyone with your nonsensical “I’m busy” excuse? What are you busy with when universities are closed, and the internet is cut off?!— Of all people, Jews know about Noruz but they bombed us anyway. Being bombed in the New Year Noruz, the indecency of that!’

***

I thought with all the moments of sharing literature and philosophy and art and Middle Eastern politics with mom, together watching State-TV bowdlerized European movies when I was a teenager, together shopping and clothes fitting rituals, together home designs, together New Year cookies and together birthday surprises— all odd enough for a man but not for a son—, if mom dies, as her mantra for 5 years shakes me every day, ‘I’m tired of this life. I hope I die soon. I’m sure I will die soon’; if mom dies, when mom dies, I will ‘leave this country’ which was later modified to ‘leave this house’ to ‘leave this life’. Now I think, my decision to ‘leave’ is not bound to mom anymore. Maybe it never was.

***

- ‘You don’t understand. I just want to make sure my kid is safe. Living far away. All alone.’

***

When I was in the US for a self-sponsored sabbatical during Obama's term, I was never approached by any Iranian girl because I looked very Iranian.

One of my connections invited me to an Iranian-American cultural gathering where “-American” was an ingenious commercial label. Even Green Card holders and Iranians who were recently graced with American citizenship were rare. The only girl who approached me was a fellow colleague from another Iranian university who courteously tried to survive the cavemanly flirtations of an Iranian guy, at least 10 years her senior. Inserting himself into our table, he threw his swashbuckling faculty member position at us. The ranking of our Iranian universities was much higher than his. None of that mattered since he was an American visa anchorage. I knew the plot line because one of my friends had narrated his euphoric experience, back then, when we were still talking.

- “Having your Green Card is nothing unless you date an Iranian girl. The young stuffs are too demanding. They may send a nude photo, but…I mean, you can’t verify; maybe it’s somebody else. They want lovey-dovey talk and all. You and I are too old for this shit. I’m giving you a golden piece of advice here. Go for the older ones. Faculty members. Literature departments are the best. Late 20s, if any, or early 30s. When they hit 30, they think they are old, and you are their last chance. Here in America, even an Iranian girl in her early 30s is a self-congratulatory bitch. Check her university website. Make sure she is not an adjunct who poses as a faculty member. She has to be an affiliate, you know why? Because she won’t cling to your pants to help her leave. Masters and PhD students are the worst. They waste all their time on their applications. They have no dignity. They keep begging you day and night to guide them for every single recommendation letter and every damned paragraph of the SoP. Even for the sexiest girl, it’s not worth it. They don’t spend time on you. They are not selfless like faculty members. The older ones, mid-30s, I mean, they treat you with emails written at the level of literary masterpieces. Poetry and wit drip from their short Telegram messages, and they don’t pressure you to respond.”

- ‘Wow. Good for you. I never thought you could be poetic!’

- “Naaaa! That’s the great thing about it. I don’t need to be poetic. I am myself. Honest. Direct. What I sent her daily was different variations of: ‘Send me a photo!’, ‘What are you wearing?’, ‘What are you doing right now?’, ‘Are you thinking about me?’”

- ‘But being poetic never hurts. You can count on my help. Jane Austen’s courtship playbook. Shakespeare and Elizabeth Browning quotations. Take your pick!’

- “No need. I just stopped sending her messages.”

- ‘Why? What happened?’

- “Nothing. My girlfriend and I got back together.”

- ‘Was she the rebound?’

- “No. I don’t call it rebound. I was so depressed. It was nothing but a harmless flirtation. My messages never implied anything. I sent some of her messages to my girlfriend, telling her, ‘Can your American dude be so poetic?’ She returned. But I don’t trust her.”

- ‘So what about that girl?’

- “She’s living in Iran. She understands. I don’t think those messages were even composed for me. You know that Iranian girls are Green-Card hunters. She must have sent those messages to many men. I know somebody who used the same girl, three times, as the rebound.”

- ‘Did the rebound ever work?’

- “Oh, yeah! Every time. That is an ethically gray area, and I don’t go there, but I keep asking myself, how can any girl accept being a rebound multiple times unless she’s still hunting for an American Visa?”

- ‘How can you be so sure?’

- “Of course they do know about the rebound. Their eyes are wide open. Or maybe it’s the American Visa that makes them so dumb. And so fuckning romantic. They are good for a break. But not for real. They belong to another world. They can’t survive in America. A guy like me is doing them a favor. But there is a dark side to all this. A poetry trap. You’ll never know which is which. I know their kind. They come here and dump us as soon as they have their Green Card, especially the younger ones. So I’m doing myself a favor too. It’s a win-win. They are safe in Iran. We are safe in America. It’s just some poetry break.”

- ‘What about your friend, the rebound master? How did he do all this? He must be so good.’

- “Not really. The last time, he sent her a LinkedIn message after 9 years: ‘I still remember you and your beautiful self-designed visit card, which I kept all these years’.”

- ‘And she responded?’

- “Apparently. Some chic literary stuff. Iranian girls are weird creatures. She treated this sick prick with such courtesy, but if she were your colleague, she would always snub you, let alone date you. That’s the problem when women are your equals. You could have had any Iranian girl if you hadn’t stayed. You should have left Iran once you could!”

***

How could I? When could I? Could I?

***

- ‘You are like your father. You don’t understand it might be the last time I can talk to my baby. I must know my kid is safe. I love my baby so much. Living so far away. My child shouldn’t feel alone.’

***

In a day like this, the never-acknowledged International Women’s Day in Iranian calendar because “Iran is self-sufficient in everything” including calendrical occasions, because there is an official grudge against “international”, “women”, “International Women”, or because nobody cares; in a day like this— wired enough for a man to be born; in a day like this, I would be stalked by dozens of Happy-Birthday text messages: banks, insurance, mortgage institutes, etc. would confess their “love” since early morning reminding me that I’m born, which I was too busy to remember. But not this time. No poetic happy birthday messages.

Since War III and during every internet blackout, I receive daily, even hourly, text messages from “KHABAR”, “PRESIDENT”, “KHAMENEI” replaced by “IRAN” since Day 2 replaced by “KHAMENEI.IR” since Day 9, and “POLICE”— that I should report any “suspicious activities and drones”, report the “American and Israeli slaves who film the bombed rubble”, that the “Crisis Management Supreme Council has supplied enough food”, that “Though a peace-seeker, Iran is ready and prepared for a prolonged war”, that the “Government is intolerant to rumor-distributors, spies, and thieves”, that “Iran loves its neighbors but must defend itself against the American army in the neighboring countries”, that “Iran’s tactful and charismatic foreign policy in the Strait of Hormuz will pay off”, that “While world stock-market is crashed, oil and gas prices skyrocketed, in Iran the prices are stable”, that the “Whole world has risen against US-Israel warmongering” because “they bombed Iranian hospitals and schools”, that “Trump gave green light to Iran’s being divided into multiple countries”, that I “Should report the doctors who don’t charge the patients” and “the engineers who invent energy-efficient gadgets” so they will win a “State-TV full news coverage”, that KHAMENEI’s son “is unanimously chosen as the new Supreme Leader”.

“Unanimously”. “Chosen”.

To be forced-reported and to report is what any war news is, but the absurdity of THEIR “#War_Dignity_Iran” and “#Mr_Iran” even surpasses the senselessness of banks’ birthday messages of love.

***

My birthday has been “neutralized” some years ago when my birthday wish has gone astray, from ‘I will make it’ to ‘I will fake it’ to ‘Help me leave’ to ‘I can’t stand one more year’ to ‘fuck’ to ‘pleeaaase’ to a simper.

Day 11, War III: Literature of Diaspora Conundrum and World Politics

Many Iranian college kids seem to connect with the brooding in-betweenness and the bared racism in the Literature of Diaspora, but when it comes to the Iranian literature of diaspora, things become aggressive:

“Why don’t you come and live in Iran to get your ‘identity crisis’, ‘solidarity with Iranians’, and ‘terrorist accent’ fixed?”; “You, the older pre-Revolution generation and your 2nd generation privileged offspring have Ghormehsabzi syndrome: do you think we can afford to roll on Persian carpets, recite Hafiz and bathe in Ghormehsabzi, saffron drink and watermelon juice every day?”; and “You, the younger ones who left 10 years ago, you think you graced us with your ‘admin’ position in many WhatsApp and Telegram groups because you earned it? Never! It was just because of your privileged internet access; you hide your Iranian identity, bury your Iranian nationality, but keep bullying us in social networks with your brand-new citizenship as the greatest achievement against us, the morons who didn’t want to or couldn’t leave. If your Green Card is annulled, if your American citizenship is revoked, you must return. And then, we don’t need to bully you because you will become suicidal by living in the Iran you’ve checked out 10 years ago, which went back to 85 years ago.”

For Iranians— overseas close friends, family members, childhood sweethearts— meaningful conversation and connection, a shared us, have been impossible for a long, long time. That means our good-old-days mutual “understanding” was replaced by trauma and dictatorship to play our unconscious in weird ways, to shape practical defense mechanisms and safe surrogates to get by. Once lived under a dictatorship, always lived under a dictatorship! For us in Iran, for you in the diaspora. You are coping with your own diaspora trauma out there. We’re coping with our own Iranian trauma here. Both are valid, and both have the “right” to be voiced, heard, and shared. Never in the same circle! Alas! Alas!

I don’t wonder why some Iranian diaspora gather in “Free Iran” demonstrations begging the US, EU, Israel, whoever to “Neutralize”/ “Take out” the “Regime”/ “Ayatollahs”, forgetting that Iran is not the State TV but a country with actual people making ends meet. Maybe actual people are the State TV: State TV shouts “martyrdom honor” at people’s faces, actual people envy the luckily dead who didn’t have to witness all this. The 50+ years of inflation taught Iranians a joke, “Buy anything, any time, at any price, and you are a winner!” which is revised to “Die of anything, any time, at any price, and you are a winner!” You, my fellow Free-Iran Iranian diaspora, the Iranians inside Iran are not Hollywood “suicidal bombers”/ “martyrdom seekers”. They can’t afford it. All they can afford is making human shields around bridges, hoping to save them for the next generation. All they can afford is different levels of “not”. They are caught in a video game where every next level unlocks a new lower level.

When Iran is in the process of “neutralization”—from “visa banns”, 100+ “UN resolutions”, “sanctions” since 1979, “War(s)” since the 1980s including Iraq-Iran War I (1908-1988), Israel-Iran War II (2025) and Israel-US-Whoever-Iran War III (2026), to getting “bombed” among “105+% inflation in food”, “internet blackout”, “the 21st-century successful handling”/ “crackdown” in 1999, 2009, 2018-2020, 2022-2023, 2024, 2025-2026, no bunkers and no sirens— when the rumors of “high official relatives for EU/ US visa application” is denied in their X and Instagram posts, and when they are “safe” and all the “people of Iran are united”, words like “People”, “Iran”, “Safe”, “Bomb”, “Resolutions”, and “Internet” turn into a menopausal brain fog divorced of age or gender. What happens to a country deferred? Will it fester like a wound? Or will it turn into a brain fog and get mooned?

**Watercolor, *Book of Magic and Astrology*, Isfahan,1921. Princeton Department of Rare Books and Special Collections (Islamic MSS 3rd Series No. 349 86a).**
**Image description**: A spotted lavendar demon with horns like leaves and a red skirt holds the strings that bind a swaddled infant on the lower right. Inscriptions in Persian hover above on the left.

Day 48, War III: The Win-Win-Win War

The uranium-enrichment-halt-FOR-sanction-lifting Negotiations (II) and (III) between Iran and the US were having “meaningful progress”— diplomatically; but during the negotiations, Iran faced “preemptive” bombs— tactically.

Iran’s already obliterated uranium enrichment facilities were re-obliterated. Israel re-obliterated the capital, Tehran. The US and Israel announced that Iran went back to the Stone Age: Tehran, Isfahan, Shiraz, Tabriz, Arak, and Iran’s harbors, South, West, North, East, and Center are/were obliterated.

Iran announced that the 19th, 18th, 16th, 15th, and 14th-century palaces, museums, historical buildings like banks, medieval citadels, and some other historical heritages are/were partly obliterated.

It was announced that Iran’s casualty was/is 5000+, including Supreme Leader Khamenei I, all the first and second-ranked high officials, civilians, hospital patients, pregnant women, and the schoolgirls of “The Tree of Truth” elementary school; Israel’s casualty was/is 30; US casualty was/is 13.

The US announced that the death of Iranian protesters— ranging from 3.000 to 45.000, depending on your source of news— was avenged by American might.

US AND ISRAEL WON!

Arab States, who helped the US and Israel, passed a UN resolution against Iran for shooting missiles at the US bases located in the “neutral” Gulf States and against the blockade of the Strait of Hormuz. It was supported by 13 votes, including the most trusted allies of Iran: China and Russia.

ARAB STATES WON!

The whole world was at war with Iran, but Iran did not “capitulate”. Did not ask for a ceasefire. Israel and all US bases and companies in the Middle East were targeted by the Iranian missile might.

IRAN WON!

Iran closed the Strait of Hormuz to everyone except for the Chinese oil tankers. If and when opened, the tax for the passage will be in Yuan.

CHINA WON!

To alleviate the crisis caused by the closure of Hormuz, Russia’s oil sanctions, imposed because of a “preemptive” War against Ukraine, are lifted.

RUSSIA WON!

The ships of Pakistan, India, Egypt, and Turkey could pass the Strait of Hormuz. They are working on a deal during the 2-week ceasefire.

PAKISTAN, INDIA, EGYPT, AND TURKEY WON!

Day 1-12 War II, Day 1-whatever War III: “Death Once, Wailing Once!”

“Won” is dramatically and grammatically correct.

The passive form, “It was announced” is more accurate than using subjects like “They”, “We”, “Iran”, “America”, “Israel”. What version of Iran, America, or Israel did announce, or bomb, or shoot missiles?

Similarly, all “obliteration(s)” need a passive verb. But should I use “are” or “were”? Both “are” and “were” seem grammatically wrong for the war rubble of a life. Something that “is” and “is not” there at the same time.

How irresponsibly insufficient of the English language to call “die” an intransitive verb! Is the nearest verb “kill”? Why is “kill” always used in its passive form in the context of war? Why does war remove the doer from the act and the action? Should I use “was” or “is” for the dead? Will things end when people die?

You, my dearest gentle reader, my dear friend, you know what the internet is. There is no verb to describe the internet in Iran, as there is no verb for living-in-the-constant-state-of-war Iran, either. You my Palestinian fellow human, my Israeli fellow human, what do you think?

What kind of verb? “Would have been”, “had been”, “had been being”, “could have had been being”? War demands “past” time and “continuous” tense for generations. War confiscates “is”, “going to” and “will” for generations. An Iranian expression says, “Death once, wailing once”, which means pull yourself together, stop nagging, and do the hard job. That expression is safe if only it stays on the metaphorical level. Literally, “death [is] once”—but— “wailing [is never] once”.

Months after War III

You, my sibling; you, my soulmate; you, my past or non-existent-future connection; you, my fellow Iranian in diaspora; you, my fellow NPC in video games!

If I offended you in any shape or form, I’m truly sorry. I didn’t mean to. But do not mistake my politeness and respectfulness for an apology. Do not mistake the chronicles of my constant state of “war living” for “pity fishing”. Do not mistake my desperassion (=desperate+depression) for indignity. I cannot be the master of my fate, but I am still the captain of my soul because War doesn’t believe in soul.

***

You, my caring anti-war American, European, or Canadian friend!

Do not think I am an almost-obliterated, “Stone-Age”, noble savage with no knowledge of hot bath, the internet, civilization, democracy, or progress. I have read it all. I have seen it all— before I turn into your cautionary tale, before this obliteration-proof wall between us has shapeshifted into bombs and missiles— I have seen it all and I know, no matter how safe you think you are, how prophylactic your ammunition is, how democratic your governments are back home, the totalitarian bombs in here are a Petri dish to interpolate totalitarianism in your freedom-of-speech home: had Iranian officials not “neutralized” every voice of the 85%-voting participation diluted to 10% only in 15 years and drove 5 million to diaspora, nobody would have bombed Iran to “democracy” or “peace” and nobody would have to shoot “defensive” missiles.

—— “Democracy” is only working when those in charge can get richer with every re-election. Otherwise, safe elections will take over. And to preserve that safety, there must be war.

—— I am your cautionary Handmaid’s Tale, and I know it can happen anywhere; anytime; faster than you can ever imagine. It can happen: the banality of the banality of evil!

***

You, my sibling; you, my soulmate; you, my close college friend!

Time will betray your heart when I’m dead. You need to pay for a therapist for weeks or months. Share the hardships of the “impossibility of bereavement,” and your friends will sympathize with you. Iran and I will safely (be the) root for all your traumas while you may—or may not —participate in a writing-therapy club or meditation-breathing class, take part in a demonstration in the US or Europe to annul the citizenship of the offspring of some Iranian hotshots, or Iran’s China-Russia-US-Israel-EU-ArabStates-Turkey division, or endless war in the Middle East, or another safe diaspora/ middle age crisis.

This, too, will pass. No pressure to answer my call. This, too, will pass. You will get by. Stand by! Good luck! Adieu!

February 28 – April 24, 2026

B|I was born in Iran, and still alive.
B|I’m the vitiligo of night:
—The Morning!

*

These watercolours of Persian demons are from the bound manuscript Kitāb-i ʻAjāʾib-i makhlūqāt. Iṣfahān (Book of Magic and Astrology,1921), a treatise on spells, demons, and creatures associated with signs of the zodiac produced by a rammal (soothsayer) in Isfahan, held by Princeton University Library’s Department of Rare Books and Special Collections: Islamic Manuscripts, Third Series no. 349: https://catalog.princeton.edu/catalog/9955757973506421

.Neutralized.Iran.War.

.Neutralized.Iran.War. Peaces/Pieces from a War Diary