Goodbye to a Son

Our emails and chats began with these words: A motherly greeting, a greeting from a son. I am talking about Rashid Ismaili, an adopted son I never met but who had been introduced to me by a dear friend who himself happens to be in prison nowadays. “He is educated and writes well. Now that he has been expelled from the university it would be a waste if he is not given the opportunity to continue to write,” she wrote to me about him.

This is how Rashid Ismaili became a writer for Rooz: He did not write regularly because he was in prison on several occasions but whenever he was out, he would certainly email me a story. I do not know what they did to him or told him during his last arrest but this is what he wrote to me in his last email, “I will not be able to write for a while now.”

I became sad and wrote him back, “Times don’t stay the same … things will get right … and even if they don’t this too shall pass.”

Now the news has reached us that things did not turn out right. He passed away.

I am shaken and shocked. I re-read his every email. Every one of them has a different sender’s address because of fear from the security agents. But the message of his emails display the same:  concern for Iran and other children of Iran. His writings were for all the political prisoners and more than anybody else for Mehdi Karoubi who had made a deep imprint on this student activist who was banned from continuing his higher education. Here was a student who loved to read, learn and be in the academia, precisely where he belonged, even though they had barred him from studying and pursuing his educational dreams.

How I wish I could take his hand and bring him to the big university that I myself attend, a place where people like him are always needed and will be missed. In my emails to him, I had to write about the details of my school and classes; the last lecture by the professor, my thoughts, ideas, … . I knew from his silence how attached he had grown to my university even though from his writing I also knew that he had tied his life to the future of Iran: A future for which he had a thousand plans, but one that never came.

In one of his last emails he wrote, “I am really tired now. I have to tackle issues from the morning. Misery and suffering have taken over our lives. I feel I no longer have the energy to discuss and argue. I am tired. You have no idea under what conditions we live here. But despite these issues, we continue to pursue our goals and tackle the issues. I explore every door, every opening, I write … but feel I cannot continue. I feel like an over flown cup.”

Still, he himself too knew that he was not of the type to give up. He created his own waves, just as he derived energy from other waves: from Khatami to Rafsanjani, from Mousavi to Abdullah Nouri, from Karoubi to Rowhani. Whoever came in line with his cause, he supported and strode along. He believed in the flight, not the bird. He believed that change and reform had to be imposed onto the regime. But instead, death was imposed onto him? How come? How come, he left home and two hours later life left him while he was in bed?

Mehdi Karoubi is a leader of Iran’s Green Movement who has been under house arrest since early 2011.