I didn’t expect to cry. I was doing dishes, half-listening, when the last lines of The Lion Women of Tehran stopped me completely. I stood there, with wet hands, and just… wept.
Yes, Iran is in the news for all the wrong reasons right now. Which made immersing myself in the story of a beautiful friendship between two women feel like an even more special gift. The book was recommended at work, it’s a New York Times bestseller, and I almost skipped it. I’m so glad I didn’t.
Little did I know that Ellie and Homa would accompany me for a few days, taking me into their lives in Tehran — into political situations that reminded me of my own Brazil during the dictatorship. Sadness, distance, and a love bigger than anything else.
Stories like this feel like fiction, but they aren’t. Not really. They are real life, raw and painful, the kind that makes you wish it was made up. Films like I’m Still Here — a political drama based on a true story — tell these same stories. History repeating itself, in different countries, in different languages, with different names.
I grew up during the dictatorship. I have memories of stories whispered at the dinner table, headlines that frightened adults who tried to hide their fear from children. Ellie and Homa took me back to that time.
But they grew, just like I did. They moved forward, carrying the consequences of their choices — and so did I. I chose to become an immigrant, to leave my country and find my place somewhere distant and marvellous.
I’m not going to tell you why I cried at the end. I don’t want to take that from you.
But I will ask you this: what do you take for granted today? And if you only had one sentence to write to someone you love — just one — what would it say?
Go read the book. Then come back and tell me if you cried too.
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