For Navid Afkari 1992-2020

The name Navid means glad tidings or a fortunate promise.

His mother gave him this name twenty seven years ago. He grew up in the suburbs of Shiraz to become an athlete, a wrestler, and to bear the Iranian flag with pride when he brought home Olympic medals.

He was Javanmard and Pahlavan (Athlete, a strong man who does good for the community).

Where is he now?

He has been executed and buried in silence in the middle of the night by the brutal regime of the Islamic Republic of Iran.

They accused him of murder, something they had no evidence of. They tortured and forced him to confess to a crime he didn’t commit. They broke him by imprisoning his two brothers and threatening they would kill them under torture.

This healthy, mighty young man was broken by the brutality of his own leaders. The true crime he committed was to stand by his people and take to the streets for a peaceful protest.

My heart breaks into shards of sharp pieces. The pieces shatter and each flies in a different direction. Impossible for me to gather them back and unable to even begin try to put the pieces back together.

All I feel is enormous pain and darkness. I am drowning in my pain. No one can see the depth of my wound. Everyday it seems like a fresh wound opens up in me.

It is grief. My old friend grief – we have become intimate friends during these past eight years.

Grief over someone I didn’t even know personally, yet it’s no less powerful and gripping for that. Navid seemed so familiar to me, I knew him from somewhere. Perhaps he was a dream for Iran, a wishful dream that came true.

He could have been my son.

I follow the news closely on twitter and other social media platforms. People are writing about him and many more athletes before him who were also executed for believing in something that the government didn't approve of. My head spins. I feel physically sick, my brain gets foggy.

I cannot even think properly.

I reach out to my friends. The majority of them claim not to follow the news any more. They can not bear it.

Some listened to me in sad silence, I could hear their pain and agony through the silence, yet no words could console me or them. We just have to bear witness to this unjust deep grief.

My pain turns to anger. An incredibly deep dark anger. I struggle with this anger, I do not know what to do with this eruptive energy. All my life I have been taught to suppress it and push it down, to numb it by ignoring it, finding ways of distracting myself, at times by eating too much or escaping into the oblivion of sleep.

Once again I fall back into numbness, the only way I am able to cope and function.

Yet I can’t stop reading and following the news. The more I read, the more sad I become. I find out that many human rights activists, both from inside and outside of Iran, did what they could to delay his execution, or even to stop it, and they were hopeful. Sadly they were all taken by surprise as his execution was rushed through, brought forward and not announced. He wasn’t even granted a last goodbye with his parents.

I share what I read with my Iranian friends and talk about him to my non Iranian friends. I feel weighed down. A dear friend reminds me to just bear witness and sit with this uncomfortable pain, allow it to take me to where it needs to go.

Navid started to appear in my dreams, his body broken, his strong and mighty body restless underneath Iran’s soil. It felt as if there was a lot of movement underneath, like a rumbling volcano, a volcano that will bring about a much needed change. This is Navid’s true name taking shape, this is why his mother gave him this name. Once again I visit the Iranian Epic Book of Kings (Shahnameh).

He is like Siavash, his blood will nourish Iran’s ancient soil and like a phoenix she will arise again. Iran will claim back her power and her beauty.

My homeland has been through a lot. This dark period will pass. All I can do for now is to bear witness and to document my pain in my own tiny way. To raise awareness and not to sit quietly and carry on as if nothing has happened. My promise to Navid is not to numb out my pain but to allow it to take shape and to land through my work.