Iran International
Journalists are not supposed to become the story. We are usually on the other side of it. Someone lives through an event and we write about it. Someone is gone and we report their passing. A crisis unfolds and we try to find the right words to tell its story.
But sometimes life reverses the roles. The narrator becomes the subject of the story.
Today, Farahnaz Espad, one of Iran International’s finest news anchors, died of cancer at the age of 37. Hearing the news, I found myself thinking of Reza Haghighatnejad, an editor at RFE/RL’s Radio Farda and one of Iran’s most accomplished political journalists, who also died of cancer in 2022.
Perhaps because I see a bitter similarity in their fates. Two Iranian journalists; two young, talented and hardworking people whose lives were deeply bound up with Iran — with its news, its people, their concern for what was happening to it, and their hope that perhaps tomorrow life for Iranians might be a little better than it is today.
Both developed cancer far from Iran, and both died far from home.
I remember Farahnaz for her calm. For a dignity that even illness could not take from her. There was an unassuming humility and kindness in the way she carried herself, the kind some people bring into every room without even trying. She was hopeful. She was calm.
She wanted to go back to work.
Perhaps “going back to work” sounds like a small wish. But for Farahnaz, work was not merely a job. She wanted to stand in front of the camera again, read the news from Iran, begin her day with Iran and end it with Iran. Illness had kept her away from the newsroom, but it had not severed the thread connecting her to her professional life.
Reza’s death a few years ago was a reminder of much the same thing.
Reza was one of those journalists for whom Iran was never merely the subject of his work. Iran was his abiding concern — something he read about, wrote about, researched and worried about. He lived in exile, but much of his mind and his work remained in the country where he could no longer continue his professional life.
Even after death, his fate remained bitter. Reza died of cancer in Berlin at the age of 45. His body was sent to Iran so he could be buried in the soil he came from. But security forces seized his body after it arrived, preventing his family from saying goodbye to him as they wished and from burying him in his hometown.
Sometimes I think exile, for an Iranian journalist, is more than geographical distance.
One day, you begin working as a journalist in Tehran, Shiraz, Isfahan or another city, with the simple idea that you will write about the society in which you live. Then a day comes when, to continue doing that same work, you have to leave your country. Your desk moves. Your newsroom moves. The language spoken on the street you walk down every morning changes. Your home changes. Your friends scatter. Years pass.
But the subject of your work does not change.
It is still Iran.
You wake up in a city thousands of kilometers from Tehran, and the first thing you read is news from Iran. You spend your day immersed in the crises, protests, elections, prisons, hopes and disappointments of people you may not have seen in person for years. You talk about the future of a country when you yourself do not know when you will be able to return to it without fear.
It is a strange contradiction: sometimes you spend most of your years away from your homeland while devoting most of your professional life and your thoughts to that same homeland.
Farahnaz and Reza were like that. And I do not want to remember them only through their illness and death. Cancer was the final chapter of their lives; it was not the whole book.
What came before mattered more: curiosity, work, concern, hope, friendship, laughter, long hours in the newsroom, stories written and read, questions asked, and that essential belief every journalist carries — that knowing the truth, telling it and understanding it more deeply still matters.
But there is something in both their stories that I find deeply painful.
They were people who thought about Iran, worked on Iran and wanted a better life for the people of Iran. Yet they themselves were denied one of the most basic possibilities of an ordinary life: to live at “home,” to work there, to grow old there and one day, when the time came, to close their eyes in their own country, surrounded by family and memories.
That should not be something one has to wish for.
Staying in your homeland should not be a privilege.
Exile should not be the price of journalism.
No one should have to choose between their profession and their country simply for speaking and writing.
And perhaps that is why today, as I write the news of Farahnaz’s death, I am not grieving only the loss of a friend and colleague. I grieve for a generation of Iranian journalists who packed their bags, built homes in other cities, spoke about their homeland from distant studios and newsrooms, and spent years of their lives waiting for an Iran they might one day be able to return to freely.
Some of them never got to see that day.
Reza did not.
Neither did Farahnaz.
A journalist is meant to bear witness to history, not become a victim of geography. A journalist is supposed to tell the news, not have their illness or death in exile become a headline written by their colleagues.
But sometimes that is exactly what happens.
Today we read Farahnaz’s name in the news, just as we read Reza’s a few years ago. And behind those two names, for me, one simple wish remains:
That one day Iran will be a place where its journalists can stay; where they can ask questions, write, make mistakes, write again, live, grow old — and not be forced away from “home” to do the work they love.
A day when an Iranian journalist’s share of their homeland is more than having it as the subject of their stories.
Until that day, we are left with the memory of those who are gone — and with stories that, this time, contrary to our professional habit, we have to write about the storytellers themselves.
May the memory of Farahnaz Espad and Reza Haghighatnejad live on.
For many, life now divides in two: before January, and after. The same images return again and again in their accounts: the sound of gunfire, the people killed beside them, the friends and children who went out to protest and never came home.
“Time stopped for me after January 9,” one respondent wrote. “My life was divided into before and after the protests, and I never became the person I was before,” another said.
The responses vary widely. Some describe depression, recurring nightmares, anger and an inability to return to ordinary routines. Others say the experience made them more politically engaged and more determined to join future protests.
Together, they offer a picture of an upheaval whose consequences for some participants and witnesses have extended from the streets into private life.
‘All those scenes keep playing like a film’
Descriptions of psychological distress were among the most frequent responses.
One person who said they witnessed young people being killed described recurring nightmares, depression, crying at night and a sense that there was no future.
“I can no longer walk with a good feeling on streets where blood was spilled or do the everyday things I used to do,” the respondent wrote.
Another described being unable to escape the memories.
“I could never return to normal life. All those scenes keep playing in front of my eyes like a film – those streets and the faces of people who were dying.”
For some, particular dates have themselves become reminders. One said seeing the numbers 8 and 9, corresponding to the dates of the protests, now causes their heart rate to rise.
Others described guilt over having survived.
“Every day, I have to answer to my conscience for breathing,” one person wrote.
The effects described went beyond grief. Some said their relationship with ordinary pleasures, familiar streets and even other people had changed.
“I don't make fun of young people anymore,” one wrote. “I realized that anyone, regardless of their job, style or appearance, can be a Kaveh the Blacksmith against Zahhak.”
The reference draws on two figures from Persian mythology: Kaveh, a blacksmith who leads a revolt, and Zahhak, a tyrannical ruler.
Anger, but also determination
Anger repeatedly accompanied grief in the responses, with some saying executions, rising prices and what they see as continuing injustice had deepened rather than diminished it.
“At first I was very happy, then angry and hopeless, and then hopeful,” one wrote. “Now I am waiting and angry, with flames of suppressed anger; sometimes hopeless and sometimes hopeful. But we know we have to go to the end.”
Another wrote: “Those two nights ended, but a piece of me broke away and remained alone somewhere.”
Yet despair was not the only consequence described. Some said January had made them more willing to take risks and participate again.
“I became braver and more determined to achieve freedom,” one person wrote.
“Other than some of my hair turning grey, the biggest change is that I have prepared myself to repay my debt with the next call,” another said, referring to a future call for protests.
For these respondents, the memories of January have become a reason to continue rather than withdraw.
Politics enters personal relationships
Some responses described a shift in political understanding, including greater attention to the Islamic Republic's institutions, propaganda and political currents.
“January made me understand the propaganda system of this regime and its operatives,” one person wrote. “My political knowledge increased greatly. I learned about left and right. I understood how I was being played and why this regime has lasted 47 years.”
Political divisions have also entered friendships and family relationships.
One described the biggest change simply as: “Cutting ties with fence-sitting relatives and friends!”
For some, the reaction of people around them to protesters being killed, the crackdown and arguments about Iran's political future became a new measure for deciding which relationships to maintain.
Others described the opposite effect: a stronger sense of connection with fellow Iranians.
“In one sentence, I am proud of my Iranian compatriots because on January 8 and 9 we stood together,” one wrote.
Another cited the “courage, strength and self-sacrifice of a nation” as one of the enduring impressions of the protests.
‘We are alone’
Several said January also changed their expectations of foreign powers and whether outside intervention could alter Iran's future.
“We are alone and should not hope for any power to save us or bring us freedom, except through our own efforts,” one person wrote.
For others, grief, anger and political determination now coexist rather than replacing one another.
“The January protests changed something in me forever,” one respondent wrote. “Since that day, I have become angrier, more wounded and more depressed, but I have not been broken.”
For those who sent responses to Iran International, January remains more than a date marking a political confrontation. It has become a dividing line in their own lives – separating who they were before the protests from who they became afterward.
