A Nation That Refuses Silence
There are days that do not end when the crowd disperses. Days that follow you home, sit beside you in silence, and return again in the early hours when sleep refuses to come. The second of May in Dublin was one of those days. It was not simply a protest. It was an act of remembering, of resisting erasure, of standing in a city that has given us safety while carrying a country that has been taken from us.
For three years now, since the uprising the world came to know as the Women, Life, Freedom movement, Iranians have been gathering across cities like this one, not out of ritual, but out of necessity. Because silence is not an option when your people are being tortured, raped, and executed. Because when a regime strips a nation of its voice, those outside its borders inherit the burden of speech. And so we come together again and again, not because it changes quickly, but because not coming would mean surrendering to the quiet that the regime depends on.
On that day, we stood shoulder to shoulder near the General Post Office, a line of displaced hearts bound by something deeper than geography. There is a particular recognition that passes between Iranians in exile, a silent understanding carried in the eyes. You can see it immediately: the exhaustion, the vigilance, the grief that never fully settles. We are people who continue to live our daily lives, working, speaking English, participating in a society that has offered us refuge, yet beneath that surface, our nervous systems are on fire. We function, but we do not rest. We sleep, but we do not recover.
Among us was Roshin, tireless as always, moving between people, organizing, holding the fragile structure of the protest together. It is always individuals like her who refuse to let exile turn into silence.
Among us were not just participants, but those who have refused to let this movement collapse into silence, even when hope has thinned and numbers have shrunk. Because there are days when only a few Iranians show up. Days when exhaustion wins. When disappointment settles deeply, not only with the regime that has taken everything from us, but with a world that appears to watch Iran from a distance, as if waiting for something else to happen first.
There are reasons for this absence, and they are not simple. Some believed, in the early days, that Iran would be free soon, that they would return home, rebuild their lives, reclaim what was taken. But as time stretches, and the conflict prolongs, that hope has been replaced with something heavier: fear. Fear that their presence here, their faces, their voices, might be seen by the regime’s network beyond Iran’s borders. Fear that by standing here, they are closing the door forever on returning home. Fear that even from afar, their lives, or the lives of those they love, might be placed in danger.
And still, despite all of this, there are those who come. Always.
Rasool is one of them, the first person I had the honor to know three years ago, when all of this began to take shape. It was people like him who turned scattered gatherings into something structured, something visible, something that could not be easily ignored. He did not wait for certainty. He did not wait for numbers. He simply began, and never stopped.
Roza is always there too, quietly carrying another kind of responsibility. Capturing moments, documenting truth, sending fragments of our reality into the world through videos and photographs. While others chant, she ensures that what happens here does not vanish into memory alone. She turns presence into evidence.
And then there are all the others, my brave friends—who continue to show up, again and again, not because it is easy, but because their love for Iran refuses to fade. They arrive carrying exhaustion, fear, and uncertainty, yet they stand with a quiet strength that does not seek recognition. They are not driven by hope in the conventional sense. They are driven by something deeper, something that does not allow them to turn away.
Roshin approached me and asked if I would speak to a journalist from RTÉ. I felt that familiar tightening in my chest, not fear of speaking, but the weight of being understood.
Because explaining Iran is not simply a matter of language. It is a confrontation with narratives that are already decided. I did not need to rehearse what I would say, I have memorized the anatomy of terror in my land since I was a child. But translating that reality into words that the West is willing to hear is something else entirely. There is always a barrier, invisible but present, where you feel that what you are about to say will either be misunderstood, reshaped, or quietly dismissed.
Ireland has been good to me. I carry that gratitude with sincerity. But in recent years, something inside me has broken, not because of cruelty, but because of selective compassion. I have watched as some suffering becomes global, urgent, and visible, while other suffering remains distant, negotiable, or ignored. And it creates a silence of another kind—the silence where you begin to measure your own words, afraid that speaking your truth will place you into a category that has nothing to do with you. Afraid that your pain will be filtered through narratives that were never yours.
And yet, how can one remain silent when reality is so stark?
As we chanted, I watched the people passing through O’Connell Street. Some slowed down, curious. Some raised their phones, recording us as if we were a moment to be captured and consumed later. Others walked past without even a glance. It is not their fault. Life continues where suffering is not immediate. But there is a moment—sharp, almost unbearable, when you want to interrupt that flow and say:
We are not here to entertain you. We are here because people are dying.
Because in Iran, a mobile phone is no longer a neutral object. It is evidence. It is risk. It is a potential death sentence. Accessing information, sharing it, even witnessing, it is all redefined as terrorism by a regime that fears visibility more than anything else. Phones are confiscated. Histories are examined. People are executed not for violence, but for connection.
And in the past months, that silence has become absolute. Entire populations cut off. A nation reduced to fragments of videos smuggled out through risk and fear.
We carried with us the knowledge that in January 2026, tens of thousands were reported killed. Not numbers, lives. Children. Futures. Entire families left with absence where life once existed.
Across from us, beside the GPO, another protest was taking place. Irish voices raised in solidarity with Gaza, Palestinian flags lifted high, calls for boycotts and justice echoing clearly through the street. Palestinians deserve solidarity, no human being living under suffering should be ignored. But standing there, the contrast cut deeply. Their voices were heard. Amplified. Protected. Ours struggled to even be understood.
And at times, it did not stop at contrast. It became interference.
A few individuals approached, not to listen, but to disrupt. As if our grief required permission to exist. As if suffering must compete for space.
Then suddenly, the fragile line we had formed was broken. A man rushed into the front row, stepping over posters, over faces, over names, and collapsed into the space, shouting, cursing, his presence aggressive and chaotic. For a moment, everything felt exposed. Vulnerable. As if even here, even in exile, we could not hold a space without it being violated. When the Gardaí arrived, they removed him, but he continued shouting, cursing everyone, including those trying to restore calm.
And then, another confrontation, quieter, but heavier.
A man approached and asked: Why are you standing here shouting for Iran? What does Ireland have to do with this? It is a simple question. But it carries a deeper misunderstanding, not just of us, but of exile itself.
We tried to explain. That we are here because we cannot be there. That we are here because our voices have been taken away. I asked him: Don’t you want to go home one day? He said no. He works here. He has no problem with his country. And in that moment, I realized something that cannot be explained in a conversation: We are not the same.
We told him: we have a problem. That is why we left. And that is why we stand here now. Because we want to return. Because we are not building a new identity, we are trying to reclaim a stolen one. But the words did not land. They dissolved into noise, and I stepped away, because something inside me could no longer carry it.
How much explanation must we endure on top of our grief? How much pressure must we tolerate just to justify our pain? Why must we stand in foreign lands and scream for the right to live freely in our own? We did not leave Iran because we wanted to. We left because our love for it was too deep to survive watching it be destroyed. Leaving was not escape. It was rupture.
Around us, Dublin continued. People walking, shopping, laughing, planning holidays, watching football, rugby, living their lives. And there is nothing wrong with that. But standing there, you feel the dissonance so sharply it almost cuts through your body, two realities existing side by side, one visible, one completely unseen.
Among us, a few girls were crying quietly. Because there is a limit. A limit to what the human nervous system can hold before it breaks. And ours has been stretched across decades.
Those in exile know this pain in its most relentless form—not only as memory, but as ongoing threat. To live far from home while those you love remain within reach of a regime that governs through fear is to exist in a state of suspended breath. It is the knowledge that distance does not protect, that a word spoken here can echo back there, that a face seen in a crowd can place someone else in danger. It is to understand the paranoia of a system that does not hide its cruelty, that arms young men with certainty and rewards obedience with promises of heaven, that teaches them to see dissent as sin and youth itself as something to be disciplined, watched, and punished. And so the weight of exile is not only separation—it is the constant, quiet awareness that those you love remain exposed, while you are left to carry both their fear and your own, and still find the words to explain it.
And still, we come, we come not because it will change everything. But because it refuses disappearance. Because it insists that Iran is not silent, even if those inside it are forced to be.
There is a dignity in this persistence. Not loud. Not recognized. But unbreakable.
We are not here because we are strong, we are here because we have no other choice.
Because somewhere, inside Iran, someone is still trying to speak, and until they can,
we will stand here, in foreign streets, carrying a country that refuses to die.
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