Death in the Streets of Utrecht

A letter to my beloved father, Siamak Pourzand, whose precious heart stopped beating in Tehran tonight in a torturous solitude imposed on him by the current rulers of Iran.


Your nightmare comes true when you are sitting at a café with your friend, enjoying your drink on a sunny day in Utrecht when your phone rings, you pick up, you hear your sister sobbing and screaming, “Dad is now finally free. He is not in their hands anymore. He died, my love.” You scream, cry, the world spins around your head. Your friend watches you in disbelief. All of a sudden a beautiful country like the Netherlands becomes hell. You die. You close your eyes, hold your head in your hands and wish to die. But you stay alive, because you turn into his "legacy". All of a sudden you gain strength, you open your eyes, look at the world with courage and decide to never let him die. You begin to shake and sob. Your mind begins to race. Years turn into seconds and your life with him begins to march in front of your eyes like a chaotic movie. And this is how it all ends: on a lazy sunny afternoon in Utrecht.

I am filled with hatred, with anger, with the exhausting desire to avenge. But, I know I will not avenge. It is not in our blood to do to them and their families what they do to us. Or, maybe I say that the desire to avenge is not in my blood to comfort my being helpless. I could only watch him suffer. In fact, I was not even granted the right to watch him suffer. I had to imagine him suffer. This was all I was permitted to do in the name of Allah. Oh, Allah, if only you are as cruel as they make you be…

I do not even know where his dead body is lying tonight. Sitting in a forest in the Netherlands, wanting to go to Iran to at least hold his fragile dead body and hearing my family and friends forbid me to go to Iran. They say that I will not get the chance to even hold his dead body. Apparently, holding your father's dead body is also against the Islamic revolutionary values.

And this is how Planet Earth proceeds.This will be the first night without me thinking of him before going to bed. I wish my insomnia could bring life back to his eyes. But he is gone. Forever and ever. I recorded his voice for 20 hours on the phone three years ago. He told me the story of his childhood and youth. I will push the play button, let his words and his voice comfort my disturbed soul and let him put me to bed like he did with his lullabies every single night for years.

I love you dad. You will never die. You are a part of me. They were able to finally kill you. But I will keep your legacy alive in this world. It is the most important promise I have ever made in my life. You will live. I promise. You will live more than ever.

I cannot stop my tears. But I know you will finally fly to me tonight and wipe off my tears with your invisible hands; just like 5 years ago when the Islamic Republic let me come and see you for 10 days. Remember how that first night I put my head on your lap and you patted me all night when I cried away all the years of having had you in their hands and secret prisons? You knew and I knew that this was the last time we were seeing each other. But, we pretended that things will change. They never did. But now things will change. Now you will finally fly to me.

I will never forget what they did to you. I will never forget how they tortured you with their disgusting hands. This is a promise! I will not let the world forget.