Today my uncle informed me that he wanted to visit his homeland again. That he wanted to see Iran - a country where he had helped raise his siblings, where he had laid his fathers remains to rest, where he had married and started a life - a country that he had not, since the passing of 32 years, been allowed to return to.
"But I'm scared for you. What if something happens? You can't go back!"
He knows and I know that the political situation in Iran is not one that allows anyone not professing the Islamic faith as their religion to live, or travel for that matter, without harassment.
"I want to see my village. I want to see what it is like, what life is like. It has been so long. I want to see what has changed."
I couldn't imagine. Ripped away from any home he ever knew. Forced to create a new life in a land so foreign. To raise kids somewhere that he, himself, didn't know.
He is a man of faith. You see the faith in his eyes and hear it in the vibrations and intonations of his voice.
"And so what if they take me. They throw me in jail. They kill me. Who cares. So what. Let them." Such tenacity. Such determination. Such love, actually.
He made it seem so simple. And maybe it is. Maybe when it comes down to it, it's about love. About allowing that love to make you fearless. Regardless of what that fear may be.
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