Your nightmare comes true when you are sitting at café with your friend, enjoying your drink on a sunny day in Utrecht when your phone rings, you pick up, you hear your sister sobbing and screaming, “Dad is now finally free. He is not in their hands anymore. He died, my love.” You scream, cry, the world spins around your head. Your friend watches you in disbelief. All of a sudden a beautiful country like the Netherlands becomes hell. You die. You close your eyes, hold you head in your hands and wish to die. But you stay alive, because you turn into his "legacy". All of a sudden you gain strength, you open your eyes, look at the world with courage and decide to never let him die. You begin to shake and sob. Your mind begins to race. Years turn into seconds and your life with him begins to march in front of your eyes like a chaotic movie. And this is how it all ends: on a lazy sunny afternoon in Utrecht....
I am filled with hatred, with anger, with the exhausting desire to avenge. But, I know I will not avenge. It is not in our blood to do to them and their families what they do to us. Or, maybe I say that the desire to avenge is not in my blood to comfort my being helpless. I could only watch him suffer. In fact, I was not even granted the right to watch him suffer. I had to imagine him suffer. This was all I was permitted to do in the name of Allah. Oh, Allah, if only if you are as cruel as they make you be…
I do not even know where his dead body is lying tonight. Sitting in a forest in the Netherlands, wanting to go to Iran to at least hold his fragile dead body and hearing my family and friends forbid me to go to Iran. They say that I will not get the change to even hold his dead body.
And this is how planet Earth proceeds.This will be the first night without me thinking of him before going to bed. I wish my insomnia could bring life back to his eyes. But he is gone. Forever and ever. I recorded his voice for 20 hours on the phone three years ago. He told me the story of his childhood and youth. I will push the play button, let his words, his voice comfort my disturbed soul and let him put me to bed like he did with his lullabies every single night for years.
I love you dad. You will never die. You are a part of me. They were able to finally kill you. But I will keep your legacy alive in this world. It is the most important promise I have ever made in my life. You will live. I promise. You will live more than ever…
I cannot stop my tears. But I know you are will wipe them off with your invisible hands tonight.
I will never forget what they did to us. This is a promise! I will not let the world forget.
