Professor Kazem Kazerounian,
Translation of the Farsi version: فدا: هدیهٔ تاریخ به بقای انسانیت
This is a tribute, simple, unadorned, and from the heart, to the supporters of the People’s Mojahedin Organization of Iran (PMOI/MEK): a generation that gave sixty years, burned, and endured. A generation that taught us a timeless truth, that humanity is beautiful when it gives, and kept that beauty alive for decades. It was through these years of giving that we rediscovered the essence of being human. From the act of giving sprang the understanding of sacrifice.
Sacrifice speaks without sound. It is a light that illuminates the path, not itself. And it is this quietness of giving that, in a simple moment, when a child shares a piece of candy with a friend, makes humanity beautiful again. For in that instant, the purity of humanness blossoms anew. This devotion was born from the heart of evolution, from the depths of history, from that moment when humankind transcended the animal and understood that life grows heavy with taking and becomes free with giving. To be human does not come from a clenched fist; it comes from an open hand.
For sixty years, the supporters of the Mojahedin have lived this truth—beneath scorching suns, under cutting snow, in nameless streets and cities without spectators. Yet they stood, worked, and ran—silently, without expectation. No rank, no name; only one wish: that Iran would not stand alone. This band of dreamers is sometimes a candle—burning so that the room where a nation is lost remains lit. Sometimes they are soil—holding rain within so that a flower may rise. No one asks their names, yet without them no light shines and no flower blooms.
These are not ordinary people; they are the nameless pillars of resistance, and the imprint of their steps lies upon the conscience of the world. To stand in winter is struggle; to stand in summer is struggle; and to smile in heavy air is victory. Sixty years have passed, and they did not tire, for their souls were made of the road. They did not sell out; they did not retreat, for retreat was not in their lexicon. They were wounded, but never broken; and every wound became a page in the history of defiance. In every step was the trace of evolution, and in every stand the voice of history. And in each of their faces shines the grandeur of humanity upon which history leaned to stand taller.
For sixty years, the People’s Mojahedin have been the steadfast pillar of the Iranian people’s resistance—from the dark days of SAVAK to the fiery years and executions of the 1980s; from the massacre of 1988 to Ashraf and the sieges that sought to erase its name from history. But it was not erased; it endured; it grew taller. Every time dictatorship tried to crush it, it stood stronger. Every time the world sought to impose silence, its voice rose louder.
And beside this pillar stood the supporters—a silent yet unwavering generation that bore the weight of this path for sixty years. They worked, they stood, they did not sink into hardship. Their presence was strength, the reliance of the road, an honor that never left the organization alone. This generation proved that the power of the Mojahedin lies not only in their history, but in the hearts that have kept this path alive and luminous for sixty years.
Sixty years have passed, and the name of the Mojahedin stands tall upon the summit of history; and there were hearts that never withdrew their shadow from this name. These lines are a salute to that band of dreamers, and to that enduring loyalty.