Advance International, Inc.

We saw the real day of the dead. Nine months later, part of me is still there. Kahrizak. A world I had not known could exist until I found myself inside it. Everywhere I looked were bodies in black bags and families wandering among them. Every bag had a number. Behind every number was someone whose name meant home to another human being. Someone with plans. Someone a family would spend the rest of their lives missing. During the uprising, a bullet missed me by an inch. I watched my compatriots die. I saw the streets of my hometown drown in their blood. I know how little distance there can be between telling this story and having someone else tell it about you. So when I say January has not ended for us, this is what I mean. The calendar moves. We try to work, to love, to pull ourselves and one another out of the depression. We try to make plans while carrying the knowledge that people we loved will never make another one. I keep saying I want an ordinary life in my own country. It hurts to ask for something so simple while remembering everyone who should still be here to ask for it too. The terrorist Islamic Regime occupying Iran forced us to live inside a horror other people get to finish watching. I saw it with my own eyes. For me, nothing will ever be more frightening than a black body bag. I know that a number can be written in seconds, while the life behind it leaves an absence no family can fill. For Nika. For the friends I lost. For the thousands whose lives were stolen, and everything they should have lived to become. I will set my own soul ablaze just to burn this regime to ashes.