A letter to Ali Mahin-Torabi,  sentenced to death at 16 

Hi Ali,

My name is Azarin Sadegh and I am a friend of your aunt. I live in LA and since October I have been trying to help you.

I just found out about your blog. Your words are heartbreaking and I wish I had read it before…It is so unfair.

I cannot pretend to know how you feel, or I am unable to justify this injustice. Unfortunately, I cannot even give you any false hope of heaven or to tell you about the possibility of the life after death. I wish I could. Your life on earth has already been hell and you don’t deserve to be treated with so much cruelty.

You should know about the high number of people who do care about you, who worry about you and if you fail, they are going to take it as their personal failure. I am not even talking about your parents. Not even Nikoo my friend  (Because in their case, they are already losing parts of their flesh and bones, slowly, like an infection, like losing a leg or going blind, like becoming paralyzed, and they are going to remember and to relive –every morning they wake up and every night they fall asleep– the hell you lived in, for the rest of their life. That noose on your neck is going to make them collapse forever. They are going to die every night to wake up the next day to die again.) No. not them. I am sure you already know everything about their love.

But I am talking about the ones who have never known you, the ones who don’t even speak your language, the ones who through their work in the humanitarian organizations, still childishly believe in a universal justice and struggle hard for the dispersion of their own definition of kindness. These strangers — you don’t even know their names – who don’t stop their fight for the innocents and for the weakest and stand up again every time they fall down. They are the ones who define the true meaning of our humanity to the rest of us.

Dear Ali Mahin Torabi, Don’t despair. They are fighting for you and their struggle is a fight not only for you and for anyone else like you, but it is also a fight for their own sake and sanity. 

So please, don’t stop to dream and don’t stop to hope. Those walls surrounding you would never be able to confine dreams. They would never be able to stab humanity and compassion. They would never be able to hang hopes.