In the Shadow of War, the Light of Cyrus

Witness to War: Remembering Iran’s Past and Hoping for a Different Future

I remember.
Not from the news.
Not from a headline.
I remember because I lived it.

I was a little girl in Iran when the bombs started falling. I remember waking in the middle of the night to the sound of sirens, then silence… then explosions lighting up the sky.
I remember sleeping under that lit-up sky, watching the streaks of missiles, hearing the booms echo through the night and praying they wouldn’t fall on us.

My school was bombed. We were so thankful it was a holiday and no one was there.
I remember seeing a glove in the dirt and thinking it was a severed hand, torn from someone in the chaos of bombings.

We once drove past a house where a birthday party had just been held. Nine-year-olds.
The bomb came after the cake.
When the parents arrived, there were no children left to bring home.

These are the things I carry.
Not something I read in a book. Not an exaggeration.
It’s my story.
And the story of many who live somewhere in this world, in the middle of a war zone.

Now, as I watch war unfold between Iran and Israel, it’s like watching old wounds tear open in a new body.

I ache for the innocent lives on both sides — because I know what it’s like to be one of them.
And yet, in the middle of that ache… something rises.

They speak of regime change.
And part of me dares to believe:
Could it be… finally?

It’s been 46 years of the Islamic Republic shouting “Death to America,” “Death to Israel,” while stealing the future of the Iranian people.

But that’s not who Iran is.
Iranians are the people of Cyrus the Great, the king who freed the Jewish people from Babylon, who helped rebuild their temple.

A King who declared the world’s first human rights proclamation, still displayed in museums as a symbol of freedom, tolerance, and dignity.
He is remembered in scripture not as a tyrant, but as a protector.

This is Iran’s true history.
Not the hate.
Not the fear.
Not the blood-stained fists of the regime.

We come from something better.
And Iran deserves much better.

I don’t know what’s coming.
But I know this:

I want my children to one day walk through the land I left behind without fear.
To know Iran, in all of its beauty.

Right now, my heart is heavy.
A heartbreak for what could have been, for what it has become, and for the innocent lives taken away as these words are written..