“War on Iran: The Persia Hidden Inside Iran”, Open the magazine, April 10, 2026
“In my small night, ah/ the wind has a date with the leaves of the trees/in my small night there is agony of destruction/ listen—do you hear the darkness blowing?
—Forugh Farrokhzad
I know the olive groves in the village of Koker by the White River near the Caspian Sea. I can see with eyes shut the hilly outskirts of Tehran, as I imagine the taste of cherries in my mouth. I can feel the wind on my face in the arid, barren land of the village of Siah Dareh, near the Iraqi border. I remember the green of the North, the sands of the West. Yet, I’ve never set foot in Iran. All I can talk about is Persia.
This is not just an Orientalist’s dream. These are words trying to explain why some countries are able to exist in words and images, capable of becoming a homeland for those who have never even been there, seduced by history, poetry, and landscapes that have been conjured with such longing by their artists and exiles that you can fall in love. And you feel like you know. Yet, I know nothing of Iran. But I like Persia.
I do know something of Iran. That it’s a political entity, an Islamic Republic, a regime defined by borders, ancient powerful land, the Shah, then Khomeini all the way to Khamenei, the Pasdaran (Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps or IRGC), the sanctions, the nuclear programme, the UN resolutions, the Strait of Hormuz, the bombs thrown and received. That’s Iran. But Persia is a civilisation carrying the weight of more than three thousand years of poetry, mathematics, architecture, gardens, delicious cuisine, carpet weaving, mysticism. Here we find Hafez and Rumi, the Achaemenid Empire, Persepolis, miniature paintings and Chahar Bagh, the garden divided in four sections which became the template of paradise for three religions. This is not ‘about’ Iran. It’s ‘around’ Persia……”
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