Meytham Ale Mahdi was working for the National Steel Group in 2018 when Iran’s economy collapsed and unemployment reached 60%. As wages went unpaid for months and life became increasingly impossible, Mahdi did what so many Iranians have done during 45 years of authoritarian rule: he took to the streets. The protests spread across the country and expanded into an organised strike movement. The hunger for change in Iran was, once again, insatiable.
Then came the crackdown. Mahdi was arrested, interrogated and forced to confess that he was a separatist leading the riots. He was ordered to tell the workers to stop striking. But when he returned to the protests, the fear he had experienced in the interrogation room evaporated. Mahdi smiles as he recalls the speech he made that day: “Together we can stand against all the powers. We are like raindrops, but together we turn into the sea.” After he spoke those words, he never went home again. In exile, he scrolls through photos of his children, who were seven and nine when he fled Iran five years ago. “Is there any suffering greater than this?” he asks.
