I’ve thought about our conversation a lot since then.

Shortly after, the internet in Iran was shut down for three weeks.
Tens of thousands were killed, disappeared, or silenced.
People lost contact with their families.
Truth itself was cut off.

There was no space for “understanding first.”
No room for public thought.
No safe distance to analyze systems.

Only fear, bullets, and silence.

You spoke about “dead bodies vs dead minds.”

After that, we got both.

And personally, I feel dead inside.
My heart is still beating, but there is no life force in it.

I respect your intellect, and I understand your skepticism.
Democracies fail people in real ways.

But what we live under is not stagnation.
It is erasure.

We are not fighting for perfect systems.
We are fighting for the right to exist, speak, and remember without being hunted.

This isn’t theory for us.
It’s names, faces, prisons, graves.

I’m not trying to convince you.
I’m just documenting what it costs when power cannot be challenged.