The First Sunrise After The Dictator

This morning, I woke up in exile, as I did in the last 42 months. The same winter light over a Canadian sky. The same distance — thousands of kilometers away — from the country that still lives inside my bones.

As an astronomer, I know that the sun rose the same way it always has.

And yet, something had shifted. And yet, it did not feel the same when I reminded myself that this is the first sunrise after the dictator.

For the first time in decades, the sunrise did not pass over the shadow of a man who believed himself permanent. A man who believed he is the representative of God on Earth. A man whose portrait watched over classrooms, courtrooms, prisons, and graves. A man whose decisions shaped the rhythm of fear in everyday life.

Dictators cultivate the illusion of eternity. They speak in absolutes. They wrap themselves in history, religion, destiny. They convince a nation that they are as immovable as mountains.

But even mountains erode. And this morning, the sun rose over a world without him.

When I heard the news, I did not believe it until the authorities of the still-existing regime confirmed his death a day later. But still, I could not celebrate. I could not cry. I could not shout.

I felt something far more unfamiliar: stillness.

For decades, life has been suspended in a kind of political limbo. Iranians measured time not by seasons, but by crackdowns. By internet blackouts. By arrests. By the names of the killed. By the names of the executed. By the silence that followed.

Exile teaches you to live in parentheses. You continue your work. But a part of you remains paused in the month and year you forcibly left your beloved homeland, your loved ones. For me, that was August 2022, when I packed a suitcase not knowing that departure would not be temporary. Not knowing that return would become a question mark. It is waiting in limbo for a moment you are not sure will ever arrive.

This morning, that pause shifted. But it is still unclear when this rejoining of my body to my soul, which remained in Iran, will happen, since the regime still exists.

For years, the structure of power in Iran felt immovable — like geology. Like something older than protest, older than grief, older than courage. A regime that survived uprisings, sanctions, global condemnation and a massacre. A dictator who seemed to feed off crisis.

And then this morning, the illusion of permanence cracked.

The dictator did not die a normal death. He was killed, and that makes his death hopeful, since there is hope for regime change. The creaking power structure then announced 40 days of public mourning. What a calamitous conflict. They still believe they will survive after all this murderous brutality unleashed over 47 years, and the massacre in January, just 50 days ago, that killed tens of thousands of Iranians. And they expect us to be sad about the death of someone many consider to have been the most brutal dictator in history.

But for generations that grew up under one face, one voice, one permanent authority, this is more than a political event. It is a psychological rupture. It is the breaking of an assumption that power is immortal.

But with the hope in his death, there is still fear.

Because one man’s death never repairs decades of repression. Because injustice never dissolves overnight. Structures still remain. Networks of power remain. Those who enforce repression remain. And the country is at war. Fear remains.

It carries questions heavier than answers.

Will the regime collapse?
What comes next?
Who will claim authority?
Will violence escalate?
Will hope be manipulated again?

And yet, beneath the uncertainty, there is something quietly radical: possibility.

This sunrise does not guarantee freedom.

But it reintroduces imagination.

Somewhere in Iran, a young girl woke up today under a sky no longer governed by the same dictator who killed girls because of their hair. Somewhere, a student who once whispered freedom in dormitories, allowed themselves a moment to breathe. Somewhere, a mother who lost her child to state violence, watched the light change and wondered if history is shifting in her favor.

This sunrise belongs to them more than anyone.

For those of us in exile, we live with a particular ache: the ache of not being physically present in the decisive moments of our country’s history. When protests erupted, I was watching from a distance. When students were beaten, arrested, and killed, I was writing statements. When universities were closed, I was speaking about academic freedom abroad.

In exile, this sunrise is complicated. We carry grief, distance, survivor’s guilt, and responsibility. We know that the end of a dictator is not the end of a system. We know transitions can be dangerous.

But we also know this: permanence was a lie.

Authoritarianism depends on inevitability. Today, inevitability cracked.

I remain in exile this morning. The distance has not shrunk. The grief has not disappeared. The country I love is still wounded.

But I allowed myself one unfamiliar thought:

Perhaps history is moving again.

The first sunrise after a dictator is not a victory. It is not bright with triumph. It is fragile. Uncertain. Almost quiet.

But it is the reopening of history.

And history, unlike dictatorships, belongs to the people.

Today, I do not claim joy.

I claim change, which I hope will lead to freedom.

From afar, I imagine Iran waking up with this sunrise.

And all this reminds me of the poem by Baktash Abtin, a poet who was in prison during Covid and who passed away because the regime denied him treatment when he caught Covid:

His shadow
had swallowed the whole city;
we thought
he was a mountain…
He collapsed — and we saw
he was only a bubble
that had leapt
from the mouth of darkness.

Let them say death is the end,
but I say:
the death of a dictator
is the only day
when calendars
truly touch spring.

And the spring, which is the season for celebrating the new year in Iran, is coming without the dictator and hopefully, without this regime.