In the beginning, there was fire, and it came in the shape of a young man writhing and wriggling on the steps of a municipal office. His name was Mohammad Bouaziz. He was 26 years old. He was a street vendor. He lived in the white and blue town of Sidi Bouzid in Central Tunisia. With his cart of fruit and vegetables, he provided for his mother and six siblings. 

Humiliation drove him to the flames on that crisp sunny morning. A beating by the police, the confiscation of his cart. He walked up those steps hoping to get his cart back, to speak to someone, to ask for help. No one would listen to him. 

Mohammad Bouaziz set himself alight outside the municipal office right where the palm trees grew. As the blaze swallowed up his body, he was unaware that this act of rage and desperation would soon set in motion the largest wildfire of revolts the Arab world had seen in decades. It was December 17th, 2010.

Rage turned into hope, and hope stole into the ancient lands like a morning mist. It did not stop until it had spread throughout palm trees and pyramids, tourist beaches and moonlit deserts, bazars and hookah bars, lines of soldiers and street vendors, teachers and barbers, doctors and lawyers, workers and farmers. Demonstrations followed, courage was rekindled, city squares taken, shots heard, chants of “Get out!” erupted on every street corner, tyrants were on the run: the Arab Spring was born. 

We come from a history of suffering, the protesters exclaimed as they held hands and sang songs and kept to the streets. From centuries of exploitation, of degradation. It is up to us to end it differently. The country’s future, they said, depends on us. 

In the year that followed, these revolts sent a shock wave into the hearts of authoritarian regimes throughout the SWANA region. From Tunisia to Egypt to Yemen and Syria, people rose demanding justice, freedom, equality and democracy, and they refused to leave until the dictatorial regimes, which had ruled their countries for decades unchallenged, had been dismantled. 

And yet, as it always seems to be the case in the tragic history of our lands, the demands of the people went systematically unheard, their rage discredited, their grief vilified, their hopes unacknowledged, and their courage was answered with nothing but bullets and batons. Soon that was not enough. Soon tanks rolled in where just a few months ago people were reciting poetry, and villages were shelled where people had refused to give up rebellion, and mass graves were dug where students had once staged sit-ins.

Bombs.

Tanks.

Gunshots.

The smell of burnt flesh. 

It is not easy to fight where your adversary is armed to the teeth, and all you have is the street stretching back behind you. It is not easy to fight where your adversary has the power of reincarnation, and all you have is one life, which has never been easy. It is not easy to fight where your adversary thinks the world belongs to it, and all you have is the unrelenting belief that it doesn’t, because you’re there and as long as you’re there, the fight is not over. 

The Arab Spring was born out of a people’s audacious vision for a just and democratic future. It did not know borders, nationalities, nor religion. The slogan “Get out!” which later traveled throughout the world roared the rejection of dictatorships, oppression, corruption and violence. It was a courageous demonstration to the world that contrary to popular belief, the people of our region are not mere victims bereft of agency and aspiration. We are not all battered souls and broken wings. We are not all fragmented aftereffects of yet another mayhem rocking our lives.

The Arab Spring was significant, not only because it ousted two ferocious dictators, but because it bespoke our resilience, our capacity, that we know we deserve better, that we yearn for a world where we can all live with dignity and safety, that we know freedom is weaved in with equality and prosperity, that we are not resigned to our destiny and have the audacity to dream of a better future. 

And yet, none of this was truly the beginning. Not the flames, not the revolts, not the spring. To understand the story better, we have to go back even further, before the revolts, before the dictators.

In the beginning, there was the earth, and it came in the form of lands trodden under the boots of colonizers, protectors and foreign-backed rulers. The boots spoke English, French, German, Italian, Russian and Spanish. Sometimes the boots were multilingual. Sometimes they promised roads. Sometimes oil refineries. Sometimes they built schools to teach us how to better hate ourselves. Always, they refused to leave.

They bombed if necessary. They threw bodies into the river if necessary. They raped and pillaged. Sometimes, they dreamt that these lands were truly their God-given right and woke up believing in their dreams. The dreams made it easier to spill blood. They dug in their heels, closed their eyes, and let the terror take over. 

The loss.

The indelible inheritance of trauma.

The open wounds.

It is impossible to tell the story of our region without going back in time. It is impossible to talk about the misery, the relentless violence, the rise of extremism, authoritarianism, poverty, persecution, the continuous stifling of progressive movements without going back to the moment where lands were taken then returned emptied of their pride and future.

History was never meant to be about the past. It is not about forgiveness, oblivion, nor peace. History is about why we are the way we are today, why we live the way we live and die the way we die. 

The legacy of colonization and imperialism in our region is a dizzying myriad of fake borders, heartless nationalism, and religious fanaticism. Those who promised us liberation turned into dictators once in power, and those who promised us a new self out of the ashes of foreign rule, gave us nothing but the words of God to hold on to.

Soon we were out of options. Our liberation was postponed to unknown futures. We were gaslighted into thinking prosperity had already been achieved, and that the security of our newborn nation was more important than our own safety, its stability than our integrity, its welfare than our basic human rights.

What happened next throughout the SWANA region, from Egypt to Libya to Syria to Iraq, and similarly in the non-Arab countries, such as Iran and Afghanistan, was not merely the disheartening linearity of history, but the shocking lack of mystery in the way tyrannies rose and planted their roots in the debris and disgrace left behind by colonizers. The people were once again trapped, taken hostages in their own land by despotism and greed, by false narratives, by fear and made-up enemies kept alive generation after generation as boogeyman against liberation and progress.

And the people of the land endured. At times, they rebelled. At times, they tolerated. At times, they believed in the lies of those in power. At times, they sank deeper into the wreckage generated by these lies. Always, they struggled to survive, to find meaning in the mayhem around them, to build something dignified they could call life.

But it is not easy to build when you’ve never been given a chance to mourn what you have lost. It is not easy to build when there’s never been any reckoning for the destruction left behind, any healing, any proper words for the scale of your loss. And what you have lost was taken away from you so ferociously and carefully that it will take decades if not centuries to get back on your feet. Because this is not like starting from scratch; this is like opening your eyes and rising from the dead.

Tyrannies thrive on death and ruins. They thrive on marginalization, despair and exclusion. Tyranny is inherently immune to crisis of conscience. Its only way of survival is through violence and repression. It is the only way to exist, the only way to keep going, and none of the regimes ruling these lands in the past decades have been an exception to this rule. 

From torture rooms in Egypt to mass graves in Iran, from shelling of villages in Syria to floggings and public executions in Afghanistan, from Israeli bombs and atrocities in Gaza to slave markets of refugees in Libya, from Kurdish villages gassed in Iraq to Armenian enclaves besieged in Azerbaijan, from the breaking of civil wars everywhere to refugee children drowning over and over again in European seas, tyranny in our lands is in continuous metamorphosis.

At times, it appears in the shape of a ruthless dictator, at times in the form of extremist groups passing off as liberation movements, and other times in the form of occupiers whose sense of home is so destructive that they don’t hesitate to raze villages to the ground for its sake. Death seems to be everywhere. It seems to be everything. Like it has only been biding its time, ready to strike the land at any moment.

And yet, we are the children of this land. 

We are here. 

We are alive. 

We are the children of its olive groves, its mountains, its seas, its jasmine trees. We are the children of its history. Its revolutions. Its fury and frenzy, its prisons, its terror and loss. We are the children of its dreams. Of the tomorrow it once envisioned. Of the fight that continues to be silenced, buried for posterity. 

The revolution in Tunisia was born on the ashes of Mohammad Bouazizi’s body. The revolution in Egypt on the broken face of the 28-year-old Khaleh Said beaten to death by security forces for posting a photo on social media. The revolts in Syria erupted when little boys were arrested and tortured by the police for writing anti-regime graffiti. The revolution in Libya when Fethi Tarbel, a human rights lawyer, was imprisoned. The revolts in Iran when a young Kurdish woman, Mahsa Zhina Amini, was murdered by Morality Police for wearing her hijab too loosely.

The sparks are endless, and so are the revolts. And nothing in the magnitude of their fury, courage and demands is different from each other except the artificial borders drawn by others to separate and isolate us. 

Nothing ever disappears. Neither the loss nor the dream. What we must build is not only what has been destroyed, but the hope that once was, the struggle that still is, and an unfinished revolution that has no alternative but to keep growing, keep moving forward, keep spreading its wings far and wide across this land. Because that is what we are. That is what we have. A single scream. A single dance. A single force against those who kill and think we will let them be. That is what brings us together: our stories, memories, future, the promise of our long undying dreams.

And we must own them, stand up for them, and know that our fight is no different to that of our neighbors and that of their neighbors. That happiness is not a solitary thing, and neither is freedom. That only together we can prevail. It is all we have. Our only alternative.

We must know that there will never be freedom in Iran if millions of Afghan refugees are abandoned without a home. Never freedom in Turkey if Kurds are oppressed and humiliated over and over again. Never freedom in Azerbaijan if Armenians are under siege. Never freedom anywhere if Palestinians bleed to death, their limbs, spirits and homes shattered to pieces.

We must know this, and we must hold on to it, believe in it. And we must always remember where our dreams are, that they’re not an instant failure of God, that they are anchored, and they are anchored to something beautiful.

A bonfire in Tehran. Women dancing around it. Arms outspread, heads held high, gyrating like whirling dervishes. Yet, there is something different about this. It isn’t in spiritual ecstasy that these women whirl, sweeping the headscarves off their hair. It isn’t a call to divinity that they laugh and chant, frolic to the fire. It isn’t to receive holy beneficence that their hands turn, weightless, flinging the hijabs into the flames.

This isn’t a ritual in remembrance of God.

It isn’t an act of becoming one with the divine spirit.

In this early evening in Tehran, surrounded by an applauding audience and the fire that burns buoyant and free accompanying their dance, these whirling women are in the midst of a revolution.

You’re alone. Dusk has fallen in Manhattan. The only thing that glows, lighting up your face is the screen of your phone. You’re watching the fire. You’re watching the women. You’re not one of these women. You’re far from them. Thousands of miles of deep blue ocean. The phone in your hand is your only connection, and you cannot put it away. You feel like you’ve seen this in your dreams. These women and the blaze. You watch the video until you begin to feel the flames crawling on your face. The heat. The smell of burning fabric.

Days pass.

The women’s whirling dance has transformed into countrywide protests, a wildfire of “Death to Dictator!”, “Freedom Freedom Freedom!” and “I will kill whoever killed my sister!” Now when you watch the videos, there are not only women protesting but men too. Not only the young but the elderly too. Not just Tehran but Kurdistan, Zahedan, Khuzestan, Isfahan, Shiraz. Not just the cities but towns and villages. Not just the students but workers and teachers and singers and writers taking to the street against a violent, corrupt, theocratic, patriarchal dictatorship. There are even children out there, stamping their feet, swinging their headscarves in the air, shouting, “Woman Life Freedom!”

These are my people, you keep muttering to yourself. I am one of them. What do I do now? How do I respond? What is my responsibility? What is my role?

It’s a starry night.

The internet has been shut down for months and what you see are videos sent painstakingly through different VPNs from protestors in Iran. You don’t know their names. Most times, you don’t even see their faces as for safety reasons they’re either covered or are being recorded from the back. You know they risk their lives by being in these videos, by recording them, even by sending them. And all you can do is watch. At least to watch. You want to keep them safe. You want to keep them alive.

You feel like there is a lifeline connecting you to them, a lifeline of history and songs and late-night stories and collective memory and poetry and embraces and grandparents and date stones and solidarity and defiance and the hope of one day hearing the receding echo of boots and batons in the streets when a dictatorship is toppled.

That is your connection. That is what pulsates over the oceans and reaches you, enfolds you. You’re one of them, you think. You feel it so deeply, you stop living your life. The one you’ve built far away from them. The one you’ve struggled for and have come to know far better than the one unfolding in those brief videos. But it matters no longer. This is about life and death. It’s about the future. It’s about breaking free. And those in the videos, those chanting and dying and rising are telling you to forget everything else and choose them.

“No veils, no oppression / Freedom and equality!”
“You’re the pervert / You’re the filthy / I’m a free woman!”
“This is the year of blood / Khamenei will be overthrown!”
“You cannot wash off blood with paint!”
“Behind every person you kill stands a thousand people!”
“We don’t want an Islamic Republic!”
“Free political prisoners!”
“Death to Khamenei!”
“Death to the Republic of executions!”

Five months have passed.

You’re exhausted.

You cannot sleep.

You live in a constant state of alarm, helplessness and grief.

Your thoughts cannot go anywhere but to the spilt blood on the streets, to the packed prisons, the gunshots, the torture, to women blinded by rubber bullets during protests, to bodies turning up in rivers, to kidnappings and abductions, to executions and shattered families, to the senseless suffering and violence the regime in its desperate attempt at survival has unleashed on the population.

In the past five months, almost 20,000 protestors have been jailed, tortured, interrogated. Over 500 gunned down by security forces, 70 of them children. Four protestors have been executed charged with crimes of “waging war against God” and “corruption on Earth.” Hundreds face the death penalty charged with similar crimes.

And yet, despite all the pain, the fire keeps burning. The sparks keep twirling.

And you cannot keep away.

A mother bangs on a prison door demanding to see her daughter, “You’ll have to take my dead body away from here! Let me see my child!” A father dances in the graveyard, bidding the wish of his martyred son. A sister chops off her hair. A brother calls on everyone to not be silent. “Your silence will be the noose around the neck of this land’s children!” Students stage sit-ins, take over university auditoriums, singing freedom songs, “Our darkest night will become dawn!” Supporters drive to prisons in solidarity with families waiting to get news of their loved ones behind bars.

The parents of a young man hanged by the regime lays flowers on the grave of another executed victim, who does not have a family of his own to bring him flowers. At the funerals of killed protesters, thousands join to pay homage. No one wails funerary songs anymore. Now they applaud. Now the mother of a killed protestor holds the photo of her child aloft and chants, “We swear to the blood of our comrades / We will stand to the end!” The mourners chant along with her.

If this is not a revolutionary cry, what is? A mother buries her son swearing she will not back down, swearing she will stand to the end. You realize the question is not whether what is happening in Iran is a revolution or not. The question is whether you will stand by this woman and her courage. Whether you will stand by her dead son.

“You can kill a revolutionary / But you cannot kill a revolution!”

You are alone. Dusk has fallen. From the window of your home, you see streetlights slowly coming to life. You see a young couple walk past hand in hand. Someone is playing loud music in their car. A dog barks. People are stomping down the stairs. A gale of laughter.

You wonder how it was when you lived a normal life. You wonder how it felt to live without death and courage and glory constantly breathing the same air as you, breaking bread with you every morning. You wonder what it is that you live for. What are your priorities in life?

“In the name of Woman / In the name of Life!”
“Freedom is to be planted / And we have the seeds!”
“Resistance is life!”

A witness.

That is what you have become.

There to keep watch, to bear testimony when everything else is out of reach. At times, you wish you could be there with them, in those booming streets, submitting to the audacity of the crowd. But you cannot go back. For so many reasons. And you’re too ashamed to name them, to choose a word for your shortcomings.

A distance of a thousand miles separates you from those streets, from the struggle, the one that reeks of blood and bullets and torture and solitary confinement. It is not a symbolic distance. It is a real one. It’s what’s keeping you safe. It’s what’s keeping you alive. And you end up living with the shame of it, with the guilt. It’s your destiny of an outsider.

Yet, all is not lost. You’re not alone. You’re not unarmed. You have language, movement, media, speech. You have memory, history, past and present. There is a revolution in the making, and you must rush to make impressions of its traces, its familiar faces. You must learn to listen to its heartbeat, memorize it, keep it safe. For, this is for you too. This struggle. It encompasses your life, your freedom, your beliefs, your dreams of a better world. There is nothing abstract about it, nothing apart.

It is about you, about all of you, and how far you’re willing to go to ensure another’s wellbeing, to protect another’s dignity. This is what those women and men rising to tyranny have done. This is what they will do. Save you from a life of resignation and despair. From a life of thinking there is no alternative to inequity, no path out of injustice. It is their gift to you, and you shall accept it with humility, and let them take you away and make you part of the grand cycle of the unrelenting human strife for freedom.