My family fled Iran. These protests are personal to me. | Opinion

For decades, I carried anger and heartbreak about Iran so deep I thought it had become an unmovable part of me. Watching the current protests has brought up emotions I thought were long buried. The familiar ache that comes from loving a country that’s caused so much pain for so many.

The protests in Iran began on a Sunday, Dec. 28, first among shopkeepers and bazaar workers, then involving university students. Within days, demonstrations spread to cities across the country and have continued for almost three weeks. As in previous times in the past two decades, the government’s response has been swift. Security forces have escalated violence to intimidate protesters. Unarmed civilians have been killed.

These protests are the product of years of ongoing economic collapse layered onto decades of repression. Iran has been trapped in an economic crisis marked by persistent inflation, low growth, corruption and international isolation. The national currency, the rial, has steadily disintegrated. About a decade ago, it traded at roughly 32,000 to the dollar. On Dec. 28, it fell to a disastrous level of 1.4 million to the dollar, wiping out purchasing power and making ordinary life almost impossible. 

These conditions have drawn Iranians back into the streets at enormous risk. But many Iranians outside of the country, including members of my family, have remained quiet. Not because we don’t support the people fighting and dying, but because decades of brutality have left us numb. Silence has become a form of self-protection after incredible loss.

I understand that silence. I also know it can’t be the solution.

Iran's people deserve the world's voice

My mother always says I was American before I knew what America was. She tells the story of when I was 7 years old and stormed into our living room, where my relatives were gathered to divide my grandfather’s estate. The men’s voices drowning out the women’s. 

I interrupted.

“Why is everyone saying my mom and my aunts get less than my uncle?” I said. “Why should they get less than the one man? It’s not fair!”

The room froze. Embarrassed, my mother apologized, grabbed my arm, and pulled me out of the room.

She tells the story now with a hint of frustration and a big dose of pride. “You were a difficult child,” she says. “You didn’t listen to anyone. You were so opinionated, always ready to fight.”

A few years later, in 1979, because of protests, strikes and demonstrations across Iran, followed by violent government crackdowns, my family and I left. Once it became clear my homeland would be controlled by a theocratic authoritarian regime, we decided not to go back.

Leaving Iran didn’t mean forgetting. It’s always with me.

That’s why the latest protests feel deeply personal. They’re not just about inflation, corruption or economic collapse, even though those are real and devastating. 

They’re about people who’ve reached the breaking point after years of repression and shrinking economic opportunities. Those of us who left are watching heartbroken and helpless. For many of us, silence feels safer than speaking up. But we can’t turn away. Because attention matters. And remembering matters. Authoritarian regimes thrive when the world stays silent. And Iran’s people deserve more than our quiet grief.

Don't let Iran isolate the protesters

I watch as Iranians show incredible courage in their fight for basic human rights. And I mourn from the safety of my adopted country as they are beaten, imprisoned and killed for demanding these rights.

“Nothing will change,” my mother told me during one of our daily calls recently. “The government will arrest and kill them until they stop.” 

I hope she’s wrong.

I remember flashes of the day we left Iran. Driving down Pahlavi Road (now named “Valiasr Street”), the main boulevard of downtown Tehran, I watched the city blur past the window. The snow-capped Alborz Mountains, towering in the distance. The smell of roasted chestnuts and corn cooking over charcoal by street vendors. I couldn’t have imagined that day, 47 years ago, that I would never return.

My mother was right: I was meant to be American. But I am also of Iran, my place of birth, the land of my ancestors, history and culture. 

Iran wants to isolate protesters, censor its bloodshed and cut off its people from the outside world. It has shut down internet access across the country. The regime is counting on fatigue, on distraction because of other geopolitical conflicts, on the world not seeing the plight of Iran’s citizens risking their lives to protest their government. 

I will keep talking about Iran because attention is one of the few forms of protection protesters have. I’ll keep watching. Keep sharing. And keep saying the name of a country whose people are asking for what should never be extraordinary, the right to live without fear.

Rebecca Morrison's work has appeared in The New York Times, The Washington Post, NBC News and HuffPost, among others. Her debut novel, "The Blue Dress," based on her childhood as an Iranian immigrant trying to fit into her new American homeland as well as her family’s expectations of beauty, is coming out March 24. You can find her at rebeccakmorrison.com