A Bitter Truth

What has happened to us…? What a fever there was… The streets were packed. Video after video came in, and we cried and said, “It’s coming to an end…” News, videos, demonstrations, one after another… We couldn’t even keep up with every city… Spaces and the day’s news, one after another… “My Iran, I’d give my life for you.” “Long live the Shah…” We could hardly contain ourselves. Inside Iran, young people kept pressing forward. Abroad, demonstration after demonstration, outside embassies and parliaments… Someone would post a tweet, and a Space would pin it to the top with such excitement. We all retweeted and supported it together… Groups and working groups, exclusions and attacks… support groups… Coming up with ideas for the struggle and the way forward… I made podcasts, and they played from one Space to the next. We either cried or shouted, “Long live the Shah!” I made videos, and before a night had passed, I was buried in mentions, retweets, and notifications… I’d made so many friends I came to believe I had a huge family… I remember writing a story about people defecting from the regime’s ranks. It sparked such lively talk in the Spaces. One person read it to everyone else; another started a wave of tweets to spread it… Someone said my voice was magical, that it stirred everyone up… Someone said, “Join our group. We’ll support you and your writing and your videos…” Then we looked around and saw one group had turned shallow, another smelled of betrayal. One person had become a financial con artist, another a victim, pushed out… I remember how, if even one person’s account was restricted, a flood of support and mentions came in to free them from Twitter’s unfair limits… Someone’s account would get taken down, and, honestly, the support was so strong that their new account ended up with even more followers than the old one. Yes, in less than a week… Analyzing and counting the thousands at the demonstrations was everyday conversation for us… But… what happened? Little by little, there were fewer of us… Either they got to us, or we got to ourselves, or we grew sick of being there… Groups once alive with colorful conversation faded, then disappeared one by one… “Did you hear so-and-so took money?” “Block that one, they were an agent.” “This one said such-and-such.” “That one didn’t say ‘Long live the Shah.’” “Block and report this person because they retweeted a leftist.” Or someone whose slogan had been “Long live the Shah” until yesterday now said “the Prince” instead of “the Shah” at every turn… One by one, we dwindled. Or, better put, we became alone… We were thrown out of groups, or our attention drifted to another group… We lost patience. You know, in a way we became corpses lying at the edge of Twitter’s streets, doing nothing but watching the fights at the end of the alley and counting the cats by the garbage… Night turned to day and day to night while we only watched… I don’t have to look far. I went from making videos in ten languages to one language, and finally to a video that was written and recorded in pieces but never edited or released… The crowds at demonstrations shrank a hundred people at a time. Someone said, “Don’t bring flags.” Someone said, “Don’t say ‘Long live the Shah.’” Someone else said, “Say it, but quietly…” Parties either formed or came forward. Instead of seeing them for what they were, we only grew more hostile to one another… Don’t tell me, “Enough. Why are you spreading despair?” No, my brother, my sister, a piece of my own flesh: we have to face reality. We have to see how little we’ve done, how cold we’ve grown. We have to see that even I, Khan Dadash, who once wrote so well, have no ink left in my pen… I need to shake myself awake, and you too. We’ve gone cold. We’ve faded. We’ve lost hope. In short, we’re running out of strength. They’ve afflicted us with that old pain of waiting. We sit and wait for someone else to tweet so we can retweet, for someone else to host a Space so we can talk, for someone else to go into the street so we can make a hashtag for them… Worst of all, we sit waiting for someone to come and get rid of the Islamic Republic for us. Then we’ll stretch out our legs and say, “Ah, at last it’s over…” Through all this dwindling and cooling, have you asked yourself whether the Shah has taken even one step back? Not only now: in all these forty-six years, has he ever stayed silent? So why can’t we see the example right in front of us, the model for our lives, fighting so plainly? Maybe we need to begin again… because retreat and defeat have no place in our future or Iran’s… Long live my homeland, Iran. Long live the Shah.