From lundimatin #504, 12/01/2026
These lines are being written while the internet has been down for three days throughout Iran.
Telephone lines are cut.
Electricity is also cut, so the darkness of this period reaches its peak.
It is Sunday, 11 January 2026. It is 8 p.m.
When an Iranian hears the name Kahrizak, they are overwhelmed with anxiety, rage and traumatic memories. I don’t know how to write this word so that it can be pronounced in French — or in any other language.
Kahrizak is south of Tehran. In 2009, protesters were taken there.
They were tortured. At length. Violently. Brutally.
The year is 2026.
In Kahrizak, the forensic centre is filled with black body bags. Dozens. Hundreds. Lying on the floor.
Relatives discover the bodies riddled with bullets.
Disfigured faces.
The open eyes of the dead.
Dried blood.
It is reported that the regime is demanding seven hundred million tomans to return the bodies to their families.
For the bullets fired.
We do not write about the screams.
*
What do we do with all this?
After fifty years of tyranny.
Fifty years of fascism.
Fifty years of loneliness in the face of death.
What do we do?
Despair is total. There is no hope that a humanitarian organisation will perform a miracle. No hope that the West will do more than it has done for fifty years. No hope that these cries will be heard.
No hope that a miracle will happen.
But there is a kind of despair that liberates.
I expect nothing from Amnesty International.
Nothing from online petitions.
Nothing from Change.org.
Nothing from the Human Rights Commission in Geneva.
Nothing from the United Nations.
Nothing from humanists.
Nothing from humanitarians.
Nothing from kind people.
Nothing from philosophers.
Nothing from melancholic poets.
Nothing from artists.
Nothing from internationalists.
Expecting nothing is sometimes the beginning of liberation.
*
Democracy — that hollow word.
Keeping people in poverty, crushing their dignity and freedom, then asking them to cry over themselves. Giving them the impression that everything is fine “in democracy”, that they should hope, dream and believe in this democratic paradise.
One must be very naive to pay tribute to this crumbling world, to these principles that are leading to their downfall.
*
A blow.
A helping hand.
A helping gesture.
A show of force.
Coming from Trump.
Coming from Netanyahu.
Is it embarrassing?
Uncomfortable?
Shameful?
No.
We are not ashamed of anything.
We have known this for a long time.
*
It is urgent to stop the bleeding. But how?
A country without established political parties.
Without structured protest movements.
Without a language capable of voicing its refusal loud and clear.
This country is left with a default choice:
the son of the fallen king as the promised saviour.
It’s almost comical.
*
Regression.
For decades, the common thread running through these historical sequences has not been the failure of peoples.
It has been the Western and militant fantasy of pure rupture.
The Arab Spring is now a thing of the past.
Overthrow has never been enough.
Necessary, but never sufficient.
*
Revolution is thought of as an event.
But it is a long process. Conflictual. Painful. Sometimes thankless.
We believed that the fall of power was enough to bring about politics.
But what falls, more often than not, is the last wall before the void appears.?
What happens in this void? Ideally, emancipation, but more often:
Regression.
The return of the clan.
Of the militia.
Of religion.
Of the leader.
Of the strongest.
Not because of cultural backwardness, but because of a lack of collective symbolism.
*
Trauma is a political blind spot.
Iranian society is not only oppressed.
It is traumatised: wars, dictatorships, colonisation, repeated humiliations.
A traumatised subject acts in a state of urgency.
They confuse relief with transformation.
They accept the least worst option as their horizon.
And we know that nothing is easier than manipulating the traumatised.
We tell them: overthrow the regime.
We tell them: just leave the Islamic Republic.
We tell them: throw yourselves into the arms of royalism.
Trauma makes people short-sighted.
It demands immediate relief from pain, not the construction of a common good.
This applies to peoples.
To activists in exile.
To intellectuals in solidarity.
To all of us.
*
Trauma.
Repetition.
Compulsion.
The return of the worst in the form of protection.
*
Being satisfied with little — that is the scandal.
You are asked to pay with your life in the streets, then you are promised elections without institutions.
Vote!
That is democracy.
That is freedom.
Let’s say it plainly: Western democracy has hit a wall.
And we dare to export it to Iran.
After Iraq.
After Afghanistan.
After Libya.
The list is too long.
Time is too short.
*
The overthrow of power is often the moment when politics disappears.
Elections organised in a symbolic vacuum do not produce democracy.
They produce a spectacle.
*
A revolution is not interference.
To seek support between a movement for emancipation — Woman, Life, Freedom — and the declared enemies of Woman, Life, Freedom, is to spit on fifty years of struggle against dictatorship.
A revolution takes time.
It must give itself time.
It must remember the failures.
The missteps.
The mistakes.
The hastiness.
The short-sightedness.
In despair, as it counts its dead behind closed doors, it will know how to rely on itself.
And nothing else.
Parham Shahrjerdi
Parham Shahrjerdi – Iran: Woman, Life, Freedom — and nothing else
From lundimatin #504, 12/01/2026
These lines are being written while the internet has been down for three days throughout Iran.
Telephone lines are cut.
Electricity is also cut, so the darkness of this period reaches its peak.
It is Sunday, 11 January 2026. It is 8 p.m.
When an Iranian hears the name Kahrizak, they are overwhelmed with anxiety, rage and traumatic memories. I don’t know how to write this word so that it can be pronounced in French — or in any other language.
Kahrizak is south of Tehran. In 2009, protesters were taken there.
They were tortured. At length. Violently. Brutally.
The year is 2026.
In Kahrizak, the forensic centre is filled with black body bags. Dozens. Hundreds. Lying on the floor.
Relatives discover the bodies riddled with bullets.
Disfigured faces.
The open eyes of the dead.
Dried blood.
It is reported that the regime is demanding seven hundred million tomans to return the bodies to their families.
For the bullets fired.
We do not write about the screams.
*
What do we do with all this?
After fifty years of tyranny.
Fifty years of fascism.
Fifty years of loneliness in the face of death.
What do we do?
Despair is total. There is no hope that a humanitarian organisation will perform a miracle. No hope that the West will do more than it has done for fifty years. No hope that these cries will be heard.
No hope that a miracle will happen.
But there is a kind of despair that liberates.
I expect nothing from Amnesty International.
Nothing from online petitions.
Nothing from Change.org.
Nothing from the Human Rights Commission in Geneva.
Nothing from the United Nations.
Nothing from humanists.
Nothing from humanitarians.
Nothing from kind people.
Nothing from philosophers.
Nothing from melancholic poets.
Nothing from artists.
Nothing from internationalists.
Expecting nothing is sometimes the beginning of liberation.
*
Democracy — that hollow word.
Keeping people in poverty, crushing their dignity and freedom, then asking them to cry over themselves. Giving them the impression that everything is fine “in democracy”, that they should hope, dream and believe in this democratic paradise.
One must be very naive to pay tribute to this crumbling world, to these principles that are leading to their downfall.
*
A blow.
A helping hand.
A helping gesture.
A show of force.
Coming from Trump.
Coming from Netanyahu.
Is it embarrassing?
Uncomfortable?
Shameful?
No.
We are not ashamed of anything.
We have known this for a long time.
*
It is urgent to stop the bleeding. But how?
A country without established political parties.
Without structured protest movements.
Without a language capable of voicing its refusal loud and clear.
This country is left with a default choice:
the son of the fallen king as the promised saviour.
It’s almost comical.
*
Regression.
For decades, the common thread running through these historical sequences has not been the failure of peoples.
It has been the Western and militant fantasy of pure rupture.
The Arab Spring is now a thing of the past.
Overthrow has never been enough.
Necessary, but never sufficient.
*
Revolution is thought of as an event.
But it is a long process. Conflictual. Painful. Sometimes thankless.
We believed that the fall of power was enough to bring about politics.
But what falls, more often than not, is the last wall before the void appears.?
What happens in this void? Ideally, emancipation, but more often:
Regression.
The return of the clan.
Of the militia.
Of religion.
Of the leader.
Of the strongest.
Not because of cultural backwardness, but because of a lack of collective symbolism.
*
Trauma is a political blind spot.
Iranian society is not only oppressed.
It is traumatised: wars, dictatorships, colonisation, repeated humiliations.
A traumatised subject acts in a state of urgency.
They confuse relief with transformation.
They accept the least worst option as their horizon.
And we know that nothing is easier than manipulating the traumatised.
We tell them: overthrow the regime.
We tell them: just leave the Islamic Republic.
We tell them: throw yourselves into the arms of royalism.
Trauma makes people short-sighted.
It demands immediate relief from pain, not the construction of a common good.
This applies to peoples.
To activists in exile.
To intellectuals in solidarity.
To all of us.
*
Trauma.
Repetition.
Compulsion.
The return of the worst in the form of protection.
*
Being satisfied with little — that is the scandal.
You are asked to pay with your life in the streets, then you are promised elections without institutions.
Vote!
That is democracy.
That is freedom.
Let’s say it plainly: Western democracy has hit a wall.
And we dare to export it to Iran.
After Iraq.
After Afghanistan.
After Libya.
The list is too long.
Time is too short.
*
The overthrow of power is often the moment when politics disappears.
Elections organised in a symbolic vacuum do not produce democracy.
They produce a spectacle.
*
A revolution is not interference.
To seek support between a movement for emancipation — Woman, Life, Freedom — and the declared enemies of Woman, Life, Freedom, is to spit on fifty years of struggle against dictatorship.
A revolution takes time.
It must give itself time.
It must remember the failures.
The missteps.
The mistakes.
The hastiness.
The short-sightedness.
In despair, as it counts its dead behind closed doors, it will know how to rely on itself.
And nothing else.
Parham Shahrjerdi