🧣 More Myth Than Man

An Open Letter to the One We Can’t Reach

What is an Imam for,
if you cannot reach him?

What is the point
of devotion, allegiance, title,
if when your people cry out,
you cannot hear them?

What is the use of spiritual leadership
if it must pass through a dozen filtered hands,
each more polished and polite than the last—
until nothing of the truth survives?

What is the point
if I cannot tell you
that a member of your congregation
is dragging your name through the mud—
while wearing your symbol,
while invoking your authority,
while tarnishing the name
of your so-called friend,
the Shah?

What kind of friendship is that?

What kind of father leaves a locked door
and calls it a palace?

What kind of light says
“I am always with you”
while your followers are trapped in darkness
with no way to call your name
and hear something back?

They say you are kind.
They say you care.
They say you are always thinking of us.

But when I ask how to reach you,
every face goes blank.
Every voice stutters.
Every answer is silence
wrapped in protocol.

“I don’t know how to reach him.”
“You’d have to know someone.”
“Try writing to the Mukhi. Maybe it will travel up the chain.”

But what is the point of fatherhood,
if the child cannot call out
and be heard?

A child does not need palaces.
Does not need foundations.
Does not need TED Talks and press releases
and charities on other continents.

A child needs their father.
To be reachable.
To be real.
To be present.

And if the child cannot reach their father—
not through prayer,
not through pain,
not through any living voice—
then what remains?

An icon?
A photograph?
A man behind a curtain?

Because that is not fatherhood.
That is myth.
And I don’t need a myth.

I needed a father.

And don’t tell me to say Ya Ali or Ya Mohammad.
Because let me tell you something—
Iranians have been saying it,
mindlessly,
for 1,400 years.

And we are met
with silence.

Not salvation.
Not justice.
Not truth.

Just silence.

And so I became a Zoroastrian.
Not because I expected answers—
but because I stopped expecting anything at all.

Expectations are the bane of disappointment.

Zoroaster, unlike you,
is dead.

He cannot speak.
He cannot hold us.
He cannot tweet or broadcast or make appearances.
He came and went.

And so, we know:
we must do everything ourselves.
There is no one coming.

But you—
you are still alive.
And yet, somehow,
you are more myth than man.

More symbol than soul.
More echo than voice.