He had filled his ears with the sounds of mynahs and sparrows. A black image had taken shape in his mind. He was thinking of nothing, seeing nothing, only sharpening his ears to listen, one last time, to sparrows chirping. The air was growing darker. The sun had passed above his head and was moving west. Even the sun did not want to sit beside him in the east and let him rejoice forever in its light. The sun moved on; the sky behind it turned yellow, then red, and in the end, both yellow and red surrendered themselves to black.
He pulled a crumpled piece of paper from his pocket and stared at it for a while with his brown eyes. Between the black lines on the white page, he was searching for something. Reading something. Wanting something. Something like the red colour of the carpet in his parents’ house that he had seen when he had gone to visit them. Back then, when he would sit in front of the television, idly tracing the patterns of the carpet with his fingers. His mother would arrive with a tray of tea, and he would sip while staring at the deep crimson designs woven into the rug.
Now he was staring at one of those patterns again. A motif of a flower. Almost smelling it. A rose. A red rose, dark as blood.
His eyebrows tightened. He closed his eyes. His breath caught. A lump hung in his throat, and his chest would not rise again. He lifted his right hand from the paper and covered his eyes. His head lowered.
“Hold your head up, Pouria, don’t lower your head!” He chewed these thoughts under his breath. His voice broke, and then he began to read the text on the paper out loud:
“The will of Nafas Konkoori, killed on the 18th of Dey (January 8) by a shotgun.”
A grotesque smile settled on his lips. How fitting that Nafas wrote from her last nafas (breath), he thought. He continued reading:
“In the name of the Rainbow God. Hello, my dears. Are you well?”
He had read only the opening lines when the black image in his mind replaced itself with the faces of Nika and Kian. Out of exhaustion, he closed his eyes, and when he opened them again, Nika stood before him.
Nika… Oh Nika! How could they attack a face so delicate? How could they beat you down? How could they climb over your body? Oh Nika…
His gaze was fixed on her eyes as she began to speak, “I want to sing, don’t laugh!”
A childlike voice pulled Pouria’s gaze toward Nika’s hands. “In the name of the Rainbow God.”
Kian… Oh Kian! How could they open fire on a car, knowing a child was inside? How could they bear to kill a nine-year-old? Oh Kian…
Kian’s hand in Nika’s hand. Both of them were staring at each other. Then they turned their eyes away from one another and fixed them on Pouria. Kneeling, while light raindrops hit his shoulders.
He moved his hands closer to embrace them, but just before his hands could reach them, they vanished into the air like smoke. He felt his breath fracture. His heart was pounding, his breath shortening. He pressed his hand against his knee and stood up, trying hard to steady himself in his place. He brought the crumpled paper closer once more and read loudly, though with a broken voice:
“With all my heart, I hope you are all safe and sound while reading this letter. If you’re reading this text now, it means I am no longer with you. Today is Dey 18, 1404 [January 8, 2026]. Tonight we are rising in Gorgan, to calm the fire in the hearts of the mothers of [the victims of Ukraine Flight] 752 and of 98 [2019] and 401 [2022] with the fire we ourselves will ignite. I am very excited. And since it’s my first time writing a will, I don’t know what I should say, so forgive the improvisation.”
Seeing the smiley face at the end of that sentence, he too smiled, but somehow his heart was crying. He continued reading before his heart’s tears could find their way to his eyes:
“Today I promised myself not to push too hard so my wounds can heal, but if I see them hurting others right in front of my eyes, I can’t just stand by. So if I die, it’s probably because of that.”
Oh, Nafas! These smiley faces slit through my heart, he thought.
After seeing the next sentence, his eyes began to burn. He closed them for a few seconds. His hand, clutching the paper tightly, struggled to reach the balcony wall. He did not want to fall. He did not want to weaken before reading Nafas’s final words. With his left hand, he rubbed his eyes hard. After a few seconds, he opened them again, smoothed the paper a little, and continued:
“I don’t want you to cry! I’m fine.”
As he weighed that sentence in his mind, he noticed his tears merging with the sky’s rain and crashing onto the ground. He let out a scream, thin from what remained of his masculine voice. The pigeons on the wall took flight, leaving him alone in this swamp. It was the first time. Yes, the first time since his childhood that he was crying. And he was not afraid of his tears. This time, accompanied by sobs that shook his voice, he continued:
“I decided to go so that I become a part of the soil of this country… But I love roses more than tulips. I hope roses grow from my blood.”
At this line, he burst into laughter. After the mad smile faded, he whispered softly, “Nafas, I sing for you.
“Az khoon-e Nafas-e vatan, rose
Vatan, rose
Vatan, rose damideh.”
He sang his own version of the Az Khoon-e Javanan-e Vatan¹ for Nafas. Repeating to himself, “From Nafas’s blood, roses bloom.”
He returned to her will:
“If you know where my grave is, please bring me flowers… I really love flowers :)
“I wish I could see you all in person, hug you, and celebrate freedom together… but if that day begins without me, celebrate with all your hearts, kiss your love, and keep my memory alive :)
“Now I am with Mahsa and Nika and Saghar and the others, and I am well. Please be well, too. Please don’t forget me, and always try to be good people.
“To the last breath for Iran!”
These final words of Nafas slammed again and again into the ruined walls of Pouria’s mind, until with the last blow, he was displaced from himself. His eyes were still open. The blue chair beneath him slid across the balcony yard as he fell. The burning in his throat suffocated him. His eyes reflected image after image, over and over.
***
He found himself staring at the flowers on the red rug in his parents’ house. A cup of freshly brewed tea in front of him. The television was on a news channel, yet all he could hear—all he wanted to hear—was his parents’ voice: politics, inflation, the unbearable cost of living, and the occasional laugh at old memories.
“Why are you silent, son? Don’t think too much, everything will get better,” his mother said. “Drink your tea, dear! It gets cold.”
***
He returned from the thought of them. Pressed a hand to his forehead and counted its furrows. Now he found only himself, alone in his room. Much time had passed since that day. Much. He moved his eyes around the room. His computer lay on the desk. The curtain moved from side to side as if saying goodbye to him. Everything was unsettled. He adjusted the light toward his black chair and, for the last time, brought the cup of tea to his lips and took a sip. He interpreted the golden color of the saucer and the white cup in his hand as a happy ending.
Three, two…
Pressed the record button.²
And, one.
His eyes slid over the lines he had written, and his tongue shaped them into words:
“If you are watching this, then I am not around anymore.” He paused, touched his temple, and leaned back confidently in his chair. “If you don’t know, I am from Iran.”
He straightened his collar and glanced at his room through the camera. Many thoughts danced in his head. Was last night the last time he had slept in his bed? Was that tea the last tea made by his mother’s hands?
“And a massacre happened in the past few weeks, by our government, which is more like a bandit group.” A wry, half-laugh of disbelief left his lips.
His thoughts could be read in his eyes. He thought of yesterday, when he passed the street and saw traces of someone’s blood on the side of an electric pole. Or the night of Dey 18 (January 8), when he glanced at a plainclothes officer holding a shotgun, shooting to kill the unarmed. It was strange to him that they looked like ordinary people, yet killed without any hesitation. His tongue kept speaking. But in his mind, images walked through his sentences.
“More than forty thousand people died. Killed. Massacred.” His voice trembled, he barely swallowed the lump in his throat as he continued, “More than the Russia–Ukraine war. And more than the Israel–Palestine war.”
He thought of hope, the hope he felt in his veins as he witnessed the power of courage in the numerous protesters in the streets. And he thought of despair, the despair that settled in his bones when he heard the shots of street executions at night, the mark of bullets on foreheads. He thought of anger, grief, and a mixture of all his emotions resurfacing from the last news he had read minutes before starting the recording. About the US–Iran negotiations.
He cracked his knuckles. The image of Raha Bohloulipour passed through his mind, how much she loved life and narenj³ blossoms.
“I want to make this video to send a message to America and the West in general. Tomorrow, on Friday, President Trump is going to make a deal with this regime.” He held his breath, every last bit of air trapped inside his chest. He swallowed, staring at the camera in disbelief. “I mean, he told us to keep protesting. And we did it. We trusted him.”
Lowering his head, shaking it faintly. His voice tightened. “To make a deal with this regime is to betray all those people who died.”
The words scraped on their way out. He swallowed back tears gathering behind his eyes, an ocean he refused to let spill.
“So please… I beg you. Do whatever you can to stop this deal,” he said these words, staring at the eyes of all who would watch his last message, all who he didn’t know, and all who didn’t know him yet.
“I mean, many people say that we should take matters into our own hands, but how can you fight people with guns? I mean, it’s not just the government; the government itself hired terrorist groups—muslim terrorist groups—to kill people. And we still don’t know what they did with the bodies.”
The sheer pain laced his voice as he continued with his video message. After minutes of describing his viewpoint, he finally had to face the memories playing on repeat in his mind.
“Finally, I want to speak more personally. This decision to end everything… It’s not something new. I’ve been thinking about it for years. I’ve even attempted it, but it felt meaningless. I mean, life is still meaningless. Living here is so sad and empty. But creating this video, it feels like I can give this meaningless life some meaning. And it wasn’t all bad. I mean, I made some very good friends, and I hope they take care of each other after I’m gone. My parents would be very mad. I mean, I’m taking away their only child,” he sighed.
“I guess I’m at least happy that I’ve lived a healthy life. I mean, I’ve never drunk much; I’ve never smoked anything; I’ve kept a healthy diet; I’ve exercised. I’ve been a douchebag for some years, but I guess I’m not that much of a bad guy. I tried a lot in my life… to find a job, to create something meaningful, and it was blocked by this regime in the end. I mean, it was never me, and that’s most people in Iran.”
His trembling voice made him stop.
“I can’t even cry about it because it’s so, you know, laughable,” he let out a broken laugh, “to be born in a place like this, to have no future. But I hope the people of my country would finally have a future after all this. We basically lost our childhood. We will never get it back, but you know, maybe ten or twenty years of good life. Not for me anyways, but for my friends and other young people.”
He got up from his chair and walked to the other side of the room. He picked up a gray overcoat and returned, sitting down again.
“You know, I never got to use this overcoat. I bought it to use it in a snowy day—” he paused briefly, correcting himself, “on a snowy day… and I never got to see snow because I never traveled in winter. And where I live, it barely even rains.”
He set the overcoat aside. Outside, a thin rain tapped softly against the window. He thought of himself. Of the kind of day this overcoat was meant for. Of how little he believed in life anymore. Then, in his own language, in Persian, in the language of his pain, he spoke to all those who would listen:
“Ma, mardom-e Iran, adamhay-e tanhaei hastim. Hickkas ro nadarim. Pas lotfan, havay-e ham ro dashteh bashim.” (We, the people of Iran, are lonely people. We have no one. So please, take care of each other.)
A bitter smile crossed his face, carrying all the weight of absence surrounding him, and of his own soon-to-be absence.
“Payandeh Iran!” (Long live Iran.)
He stood up, pushed his chair into a corner, turned off the light, and said goodbye to everything in the room. He put on his gray overcoat and went to the balcony. Taking the crumpled white paper out of his pocket, he read Nafas’s final words again and again. The final sentence echoed in his mind:
“To the last breath for Iran!”
He took a deep breath and, with his exhale, opened his eyes. All his years passed before him against the background of Bushehr’s sky and the lights of neighboring houses. He looked at Bushehr from the balcony. He listened to Bushehr. The sound of the city was loud, yet he could almost hear the sound of waves drifting away in the distance. He thought of the scent of narenj blossoms he would no longer feel. Of eyes that would no longer look from Bushehr’s shore to the Persian Gulf. He sharpened his ears again and was startled. It was the sound of a smile. A childlike smile from around him. Several voices blended together: A woman’s? A man’s? Who?
“Pouria, it was a mistake…”
“Pouria, you should have stayed…”
“Pouria, your life shouldn’t have ended like this…”
“Pouria, your life matters…”
The smile dried on his lips. For a moment, he was separated from his thoughts. He cursed himself. The voices began again:
“But now that you have come, you will not be alone. We will not leave you.”
“Pouria, it’s not your fault. They have many ways to push you to death.”
His heart pounded in his throat. His breath caught. His hand touched the air. A drop of sweat fell from his forehead. He fell to the ground. The sound of rain sharpened, yet he heard the voices of people, saw women scattering flowers in the streets. Lying on the ground, he witnessed the people’s dance of grief⁴ from the corner of his half-open eyes. It reminded him of gisuboran. Women who had cut their hair, like Farangis did after Siavash’s⁵ murder, were now dancing hand in hand with parents, brothers, and sisters, mourning the Siavashs of their time. They were alive. He opened and closed his eyes. Again! It was not an illusion. It was real. A tear fell from the corner of his eye. He thought perhaps death had not been waiting for him. He listened to them singing, ululating, and dancing. He witnessed the pain in their eyes as they wiped off their tears, kissed the white petals, and released them into the streets. He understood that the street was still alive. Still hopeful.
He whispered to himself, “To the last breath for Iran.”
- Az Khoon-e Javanan-e Vatan is a tasnif (Persian equivalent of the ballad). You can listen to a version of it here.
- On Thursday, February 5, Pouria Hamidi ended his life. Before doing so, he uploaded a video on his YouTube channel in which he spoke at length about the situation in Iran. Parts of his message were used in this story. You can see the full video here.
- Narenj (Citrus aurantium): sour orange, a common tree found across West Asian countries, particularly in Iran.
- Dance of grief is a traditional mourning ritual among Persians in which, rather than grieving in silence, people dance, ululate, and sing in remembrance of a loved one, celebrating their life. After the Islamic regime massacred thousands of civilians in January 2026, this ritual resurfaced among the families of the victims. It serves as a form of defiance—carrying the message that while a life may be taken, the spirit cannot be killed.
- Siavash is a major figure in the Shahnameh who was unjustly executed on the orders of Afrasiab, the tyrant of his time. According to the legend, when Siavash was beheaded, his blood fell upon the earth, and from that spot plants grew, symbolizing countless sprouts of courage born from the innocent blood unjustly shed.
