Tag Archives: dying regime

Before the Revolution ©️

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I am Ayatollah Ali Khamenei. And I will speak once, not to persuade the masses, but to let the truth burn its imprint on history’s unrepentant scroll.

The West calls me a tyrant, a fanatic, a relic of a failed ideology. But what I have always been is a mirror—held up to the face of a world that does not wish to see itself. I watched from the walls of Qom as Shahs were fed to lions in palaces made of Western gold. I was there when America sold our sovereignty for oil. You speak of democracy, but it was your CIA that overthrew our elected government in 1953. You installed a king. You taught him to kill. And now you ask why I do not trust you?

America—your empire is not new. It is Rome with digital teeth. You colonize not with soldiers but with sanctions, not with armies but with algorithms, not with bombs—but with dreams you own and sell back to the world. You speak of human rights while building walls of steel around your morality. You create your enemies by demanding their obedience. And when we refuse—when we say no to your version of history, your version of God—you brand us terrorists.

Now to Israel. The Zionist regime, as I call it—not because I deny the right of Jews to live, but because I reject the right of any regime to define its existence through permanent war. Let me be clear: I do not hate Jews. I oppose the violent machinery of expansion, of erasure, of occupation. You built a state atop the bones of a people who still cry out in the dark. You respond to every stone with a missile, to every protest with a bullet, and call this security. But your fear is your prison. You are not secure—you are surrounded by mirrors you have shattered.

You say I fund terror. I fund resistance. Resistance is not terrorism—it is the shadow cast by your drone. Every time you level a home in Gaza, every time your soldiers break the limbs of a teenager in Hebron, you write a new verse in the scripture of my justification. I do not have your bombs, but I have memory. I do not have your satellites, but I have martyrs. I do not need the world’s approval. I need only its conscience.

Let the world hear this now: I do not seek apocalypse—I seek balance. I do not want the world to burn—I want it to see. What we call jihad is not war—it is the refusal to be forgotten. It is not the hunger to kill—it is the hunger to exist without being told we must apologize for breathing.

And if I fall tomorrow, if America rains its fire upon Tehran and you hoist your flags on our mosques, understand this: I was the last dam between your empire and a world that still believed it had the right to say “No.”

You may not believe me. You don’t have to. But history will.

Puff of Power ©️

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It begins before the sun rises.

The floor is cold under my feet when I step from the quilt, thin as memory. My husband’s breath is slow beside me, my son curled up like a comma at the far end of the mat. The air tastes of dust and cabbage. I dress quietly—brown jacket, skirt, socks I sewed myself—and smooth my hair. In the mirror, my face looks older than I remember. Maybe it’s the hunger, or maybe it’s just how time clings to women here.

I boil water from the pump outside, watching my breath puff like a ghost above the pot. Breakfast is rice porridge, mostly water. If we’re lucky, there’s a hint of kimchi, cabbage fermented in old glass jars beneath the stairs. I don’t speak while we eat. Speaking wastes energy. My son eats slowly, watching me with his big dark eyes. He doesn’t ask why I only take a few spoonfuls. He knows.

We leave together—he for the school, me for the textile factory. The streets are gray veins through the city, lined with murals of the Great Leader smiling above us, his hand outstretched as if to catch the sky. We bow when we pass them. A woman was beaten last month for forgetting. The snow is dirty, pressed down by boots and cart wheels. Music plays from loudspeakers hidden in the trees—national hymns, songs of labor and love.

In the factory, the air is thick with fiber dust and the scent of grease. I take my seat behind the sewing machine, same one I’ve worked since I was nineteen. I’m thirty-six now, though I sometimes feel much older. My hands move automatically. Thread, pedal, fold. We make uniforms. We make them always.

There is little talk on the line. We whisper sometimes, short things about children or old dreams, but even that can feel dangerous. I remember once, two years ago, I laughed too loudly and the manager stared at me for the rest of the week. I never laughed again in that room.

When I sew, I sometimes imagine I am somewhere else. Paris. Tokyo. Even Seoul. I imagine food in markets so bright with color it hurts to look. I imagine books, and music without speeches in them. Sometimes, I imagine myself as a girl again, before the flood took our home and we were sent here to the city, before my father died building the dam.

Lunch is more porridge, with pickled radish today—rare. Someone must have done well in the quotas. I feel guilty for thinking it, but I am thankful. My stomach feels full for once, which only reminds me how long it has been.

After work, I walk the long road home. The factories release steam into the sky like wounded animals. The cold bites through my coat. I stop by the community board to read the news—a poster of the Supreme Leader visiting a hospital, a new slogan: “Work is Glory, Obedience is Freedom.” I say it aloud, just loud enough that a passerby hears me. It’s safer that way.

My son is home before me. He’s studying. I kneel beside him and correct his strokes. His calligraphy must be perfect if he ever wants to leave this neighborhood. He tells me they sang a song about unity today, and I smile. I do not ask how he feels. Feelings are too dangerous to name.

Dinner is more of the same, though we add a few wild greens I found on the way home. We eat slowly. We talk even less.

At night, when the electricity is out—which is most nights—I sit by the window, watching the moon drift through smoke. I imagine someone watching me from the other side of that sky. I imagine telling them my name. I imagine telling them I am tired, but I am still here.

And then I sleep.

And then I wake.

And then I live again.