There were no nurses at 3 am. Only the creak of tiles and my own hands learning how to measure breaths. In Tehran, caregiving became the final act of bearing witness. My grandfather's last words were not private grief; they were an accusation that moved through the house, through walls thin with heat and dust, carrying the politics in his voice before anyone else did.
Iranian life has long been charged by the proximity of gham (غم — primarily means sorrow, grief, or sadness in Persian, Urdu, and Hindi, often appearing in poetry and literature to express deep emotional pain). It is both a prison and a guide, teaching how sorrow wrenches through bodies, homes, and streets.