I stopped breathing before the car even stopped rolling.

The only sound in the universe was the deafening hammer of my own heart striking against my ribs.

It was a rhythm of pure terror.

Thump, thump, thump, thump.

Outside the windows, the Zagras mountains were swallowed by a darkness so complete it felt physical.

But inside the car, the air was suffocating.

The heater was blasting, trying to fight off the 20° below zero temperature of the border.

But sweat was pouring down my back, soaking my shirt and making my skin crawl.

Through the frosted glass, I saw them.

The silhouettes that haunt the nightmares of every Iranian who dares to think differently.

The revolutionary guard, the se.

They stood like shadows in the mist.

Their rifles slung over their shoulders, their faces hidden by the night.

We were at the final checkpoint before the Turkish border.

This was the line between life and death.

The line between being a refugee and being a corpse.

My hands were gripping the door handle so hard my fingers had lost all feeling.

I tried to swallow, but my throat was dry like I had eaten sand.

Instinctively, my hand moved to my chest.

Right there, hidden underneath the heavy layers of my winter coat and pressed directly against my skin.

Burning like a hot coal, was a small forbidden object.

It was not a bag of heroin.

It was not a stack of stolen cash.

It was not a weapon of war.

It was a book.

A small paperback New Testament Bible.

In the eyes of the men standing 10 ft away from me, possessing this book was a crime worse than murder.

Murder might get you prison.

Apostasy gets you the rope.

The car in front of us moved forward and the guard waved us in.

My driver, Ammana, had paid my life savings to shifted gears and we rolled onto the patch of illuminated snow.

A sword just stepped out of the booth.

He looked young, maybe no older than 20, but he wore the uniform of absolute authority.

He held a heavy flashlight in his hand.

He walked slowly toward my window, his boots crunching loudly on the frozen gravel.

Each step sounded like a countdown.

3 2 1.

He tapped on the glass with the metal end of his flashlight.

The sound rang through the car like a gunshot.

I lowered the window.

The freezing mountain air rushed in, stinging my cheeks and making my eyes water.

The soldier shown the beam directly into my face, blinding me instantly.

I flinched, turning my head away, but he didn’t move the light.

He was studying me.

He was looking for fear.

He was looking for guilt.

A papers, he demanded, his voice rough with exhaustion and cold.

I handed him my passport with a hand that I willed to be steady.

He took it, he opened it.

He shone the light on the photo and then on my face.

Then he looked at the name Noanisur.

Time seemed to stop.

The world narrowed down to the small rectangle of paper in his hand.

He didn’t know.

He couldn’t know that solder standing there with the power of life and death in his hands didn’t realize the irony of this moment.

He didn’t know that the man who signed his paychecks.

The man who sat at the right hand of the Supreme Leader in Tehran.

The man who helped write the very execution orders for people like me was my own father.

I was the daughter of the regime’s inner circle.

I was the princess of the palace.

and I was running for my life from the very empire my family helped build.

The soldier frowned.

He looked at the back seat.

He looked at the driver.

Then his eyes came back to me.

He narrowed them.

He reached for the door handle.

Step out of the car, he said.

My heart shattered.

This was it.

He was going to search me.

He was going to pat me down.

He would feel the book on my chest.

He would pull it out.

He would see the cross on the cover.

And I would be on the news by morning.

The headline would be a national scandal.

Daughter of Supreme Leader Adviser Cotwood Christian Propaganda.

My father would not save me.

To save his honor, he would be the first one to demand my punishment.

I closed my eyes.

I could smell the stale cigarette smoke on the soldier’s uniform.

I could feel the vibration of the car engine beneath my feet.

In that split second of total hopelessness, I didn’t pray to Allah.

I didn’t recite the shahada.

I whispered the name that had cost me my family, my country, and nearly my life.

“Jesus!” I braced for the hand to grab my arm.

I braced for the cold metal of handcuffs.

But then, a voice shouted from the booth.

Another guard was leaning out, holding a radio.

“Let them go!” he yelled over the wind.

The commander is calling for a briefing.

The soldier hesitated.

His hand was still on the door handle.

He looked at his friend.

He looked back at me.

For a second, I thought he would ignore the order.

I thought he saw the terror in my eyes, but then he sighed.

He let go of the handle.

He tossed the passport back onto my lap.

“Go,” he grunted.

The driver didn’t wait.

He slammed his foot on the gas.

The tires spun on the ice for a terrifying second before catching grip.

We lurched forward past the barrier, past the soldiers, past the line of doom.

As the lights of the checkpoint faded into the rear view mirror, I let out a sound that was half scream, half sobb.

I touched my chest.

The Bible was still there.

My heart was still beating.

To understand why a girl who had everything money, power, and status could offer ended up trembling at a border, crossing at 2 in the morning with a death sentence strapped to her chest.

You have to understand who I was before.

You have to understand the guilded cage I was born into.

Most people when they think of Iran think of sanctions and riots and angry men shouting on television.

But there is another Iran.

A secret Iran hidden behind high walls and security gates.

This was my world.

I grew up in Famine, one of the most exclusive districts in Tehran.

While the rest of the country struggled to buy bread, we imported silk from Italy and chocolate from Switzerland.

Our home wasn’t just a house.

It was a fortress of marble and gold designed to keep the world out and keep us in.

My father, Ahmed Mobaso, was a man who commanded silence.

He wasn’t loud.

He didn’t need to be.

When he walked into a room, the air changed.

Men who commanded armies bowed their heads to him.

He was a senior adviser, a religious scholar, a man who helped interpret the will of the supreme leader for the maces.

To the public, he was a pillar of piety and moral strength.

To me, he was a shadow that covered the sun.

I remember my childhood as a blur of luxury and loneliness.

I had everything a girl could want and nothing that she needed.

My bedroom was larger than most apartments in Tehran.

I had a closet full of designer clothes that I could only wear inside the house because outside I had to be a ghost draped in black chatter.

I had tutors, drivers, and servants who anticipated my every need.

But I didn’t have a voice.

In our world, women were jewels.

We were to be polished, protected, and kept in a box until we were handed over to another owner.

Religion was the atmosphere we breathed.

It was not a choice.

It was the law of gravity in our home.

Five times a day, the call to prayer would echo through the marble hallways.

Five times a day, we would stop everything to bow towards Mecca.

I was the perfect Muslim daughter.

I memorized the Quran in Arabic before I even understood what the words meant.

I learned exactly how to position my feet, how to hold my hands, how to lower my eyes when a man entered the room.

I was a performant, a perfect porcelain doll created to reflect my father’s honor.

But deep inside there was a void that terrified me.

It started when I was a teenager.

I would finish my prayer, stand up from my prayer rug, and feel absolutely nothing.

No peace, no connection, just the cold silence of the room.

I was talking to Walla, but it felt like I was speaking into a disconnected phone line.

I looked at my father and his colleagues, these men who claimed to be so close to God.

I saw their anger.

I saw their pride.

I saw how they treated the servants like furniture.

I saw how they hoarded power while preaching sacrifice to the poor.

I started to wonder if God was just a tool they used to control people.

By the time I was 22, the emptiness had turned into a dark depression.

I was attending university studying literature, but I felt like a zombie walking through life.

I couldn’t sleep.

The nights were the worst.

The silence of the palace amplified the noise in my head.

I started taking sleeping pills.

First one, just to take the edge off, then two, then three.

I needed to numb the feeling that I was slowly suffocating.

I remember one night specifically, it was winter and snow had fallen on Terran, covering the grime of the city in a sheet of white.

I stood on the balcony of my room, looking down at the courtyard three stories below.

The marble pavement looked so hard, so final.

I gripped the railing.

A seductive thought whispered in my ear.

Just let go.

Just lean forward.

It would be so quick.

The pain would stop.

The pretending would stop.

I wouldn’t have to be the perfect daughter anymore.

Wouldn’t have to marry the man my father was choosing for me.

I would be free.

I stood there for a long time, tears freezing on my cheeks.

I wanted to end it, but fear held me back.

Not fear of death, but fear of what came after.

My father taught me that suicide was a grave sin that led straight to hellfire.

But wasn’t I already in hell? Wasn’t this cold, empty existence, a kind of hell? I stepped back from the lead shaking.

I went back inside and swallowed another pill.

I cried myself to sleep, praying to a god I wasn’t sure was listening.

Allah, if you are there, please kill me or save me.

I don’t care which one.

Just don’t leave me here.

I didn’t know it then, but that desperate prayer coming from a drug adultled mind in the middle of the night was the first honest prayer I had ever prayed.

And it was about to be answered in a way that would shatter my entire reality.

The answer didn’t come in a bolt of lightning.

It came through a whisper from the most invisible person in our household.

We had a maid named Fatima.

She was a woman in her 50s from a poor village in the south.

Her hands were rough from years of scrubbing floors and her face was lined with the map of a hard life.

She had lost her husband in the war and her children lived far away.

By all accounts, she should have been the most miserable person in that house.

But she wasn’t.

I started to notice something strange about Fatima.

When she thought no one was watching, she would hum.

It wasn’t a sad song.

It was a melody that sounded like dot dot dot joy.

When she cleaned my room, she moved with a lightness that didn’t make sense.

And her eyes, when I looked into her eyes, I didn’t see the fear and submission I saw in the other servants.

I saw peace, a deep settled oceang deep piece that I would have given my father’s entire fortune to possess for just one minute.

One afternoon I found her in the kitchen polishing the silver tea set.

My parents were out at a political function so the house was quiet.

I sat at the table watching her.

Fatima, I asked suddenly why are you happy? She stopped polishing.

She looked at me surprised.

Miss Nosani and she said lowering her head.

I am content.

No, I pressed.

It is more than that.

You have nothing.

I have everything.

Yet I want to die.

And you look like you are living in paradise.

What is your secret? She looked around nervously.

She knew the rules.

Servants were not supposed to discuss personal matters with the family, especially not matters of the heart.

But she saw the desperation in my eyes.

She saw the dark circles under them from the sleepless nights.

She put down the silver teapot.

She walked over to the table and wiped her hands on her apron.

She leaned in close, her voice dropping to a whisper.

I used to be like you, Miss Nazin, she said.

I used to see darkness.

I used to be afraid of the grave.

But then I met him.

I frowned him.

You met a man? She smiled.

A secret knowing smile.

Yes, but not a man like your father.

Not a man like the Mlas.

I met the man in white.

A chill went down my spine.

I had heard rumors, whispers in the university, stories of people seeing a figure in their dreams.

Who is he? I asked, my voice barely audible.

She looked me straight in the eye and said a name that was dangerous, a name that was forbidden.

It is Isa Jesus.

He came to me in a dream when I was sick.

He touched my forehead and the fever left.

He told me that I am his daughter.

He told me that he is the way to us.

He was just a prophet, a good man who pointed to Muhammad.

He wasn’t a savior.

He wasn’t God.

And he certainly wasn’t appearing to cleaning ladies in Tehran.

Fatima, that is blasphemy, I whispered, looking at the door, terrified my father would walk in.

If father hears you saying that Jesus is God, he will have you arrested.

You know the penalty.

I know, she said calmly.

But I cannot deny what I have seen.

I cannot deny the love I feel.

He is alive, Miss Nazin.

He is not dead.

He is knocking on the doors of Iran.

And maybe, just maybe, dot dot dot, he is knocking on your door, too.

She went back to her work, leaving me sitting there with my heart pounding.

Jesus.

The name stuck in my mind like a hook.

I tried to shake it off.

I tried to go back to my core unreading, but the words on the page felt dead.

Fatima’s words felt alive.

That night, I couldn’t take the sleeping pills.

My curiosity was burning stronger than my depression.

I did something that was strictly forbidden.

I locked my bedroom door.

I turned off the lights.

I opened my laptop and activated the VPN, the software we all used to bypass the government’s internet censorship.

My hands were shaking as I typed into the Google search bar.

Jesus dreams, Iran, I expected to find nothing.

Maybe some American propaganda sites, but what I found shocked me to my core.

The screen filled with thousands of results, videos, articles, testimonies.

I clicked on one.

It was a man, his face blurred, saying he was a former Hezbollah fighter who saw Jesus in a vision.

I clicked on another of a woman in Mashed saying Jesus healed her daughter.

I scrolled and scrolled.

There were hundreds of them, thousands.

It was an epidemic, a secret wave of fire spreading underneath the surface of the Islamic Republic.

I read about the underground church.

I read about ordinary Iranians meeting in basements, risking their lives to read the Bible.

I read about how the government was terrified of this movement.

Why, if Christianity is weak, why is my father’s regime so afraid of it? Why do they imprison pastors? Why do they burn Bibles? You don’t fight something that is dead.

You fight something that is dangerous.

I sat there in the blue glow of my laptop screen, realizing that my entire world was built on a lie.

They told us we were the chosen ones.

They told us we had the truth.

But looking at the piece on Fatime’s face and reading these stories, I realized we were the ones in the dark.

We were the ones in chains.

I closed the laptop, but I couldn’t close my mind.

The dangerous hope began to rise in my chest.

If Jesus could save a Hezbollah fighter, if he could visit a maid, could he save me? Could he fill this void in my soul? I decided then and there to find out.

I didn’t know how to pray to him.

I didn’t have a Bible, but I had a desperate heart.

And as I lay in bed that night staring at the ceiling, I whispered one sentence into the dark.

Jesus, if you are real, if you are who Fatima says you are, dot dot dot, come and find me because I am lost.

I fell asleep not knowing that I had just issued an invitation to the King of Kings.

And unlike the dissent of my childhood, this king was listening and he was already on his way.

The atmosphere in our house changed after I started my investigation.

The walls seemed to get closer.

The shadows seemed to get longer.

I was living with a secret that burned inside me.

And every day felt like walking through a minefield.

But the true danger wasn’t just the secret itself.

It was the man who sat at the head of our dinner table every night.

My father.

A few weeks after I began searching for Jesus online, my father announced that we were hosting a very important dinner.

It wasn’t unusual for us to have guests.

We often had diplomats, military generals, and high-ranking moolas at our table.

But this time was different.

My father was agitated.

He was pacing the living room, shouting at the servants to make sure everything was perfect.

He told us that a high commander from the sea, the revolutionary guard intelligence unit was coming to discuss matters of national security.

Nazanin, he told me his voice stern.

You will join us.

You will sit quietly.

You will show them what a model daughter of the revolution looks like.

Wear your best chhatter and do not speak unless spoken to.

I nodded, keeping my eyes on the floor.

Yes, Baba.

That evening, the dining room looked like a scene from a movie.

The long mahogany table was set with our finest china imported from France.

The crystal glasses sparkled under the light of the massive chandelier.

The smell of saffron rice and lamb stew filled the air mixed with the expensive cologne of the men who entered our home.

The commander was a short, stocky man with cold eyes that seemed to strip you bare.

He didn’t smile.

He walked with the heavy steps of a man who carried a gun and knew how to use it.

He greeted my father with a kiss on both cheeks and they sat down.

I sat opposite them feeling small and exposed.

I felt like a spy who had infiltrated the enemy s headquarters.

Only the headquarters was my own home.

Dinner began with small talk about politics, the economy, and the sanctions.

But soon the conversation turned to darker things.

The commander put down his fork and wiped his mouth with a linen napkin.

“Ahmmed,” he said to my father, his voice dropping an octave.

“We have a problem.

A growing cancer in our society.

” My father leaned in, listening intently.

“What is it, commander? Is it the student protesters again?” The commander shook his head.

“No, we can handle students.

We have prisons for them.

This is something else.

It is invisible.

It is spiritual.

We are seeing a massive spike in reports from all over the country.

People are leaving Islam.

My heart skipped a beat.

My hand which was holding a spoon started to tremble.

I quickly put it down under the table and clenched it into a fist.

They are becoming Christians.

The commander spat the word out like it was poison.

And it is not just the poor or the uneducated.

We are finding Bibles in the homes of army officers.

We are finding underground prayer groups in the universities.

It is a contagion, a virus from the west.

My father frowned, his face darkening.

But how? We have closed the churches.

We have arrested the pastors.

We control the media.

How are they being recruited? That is the disturbing part, the commander said.

He looked around the room as if checking for eavesdroppers.

They claim dot dot dot.

They claim they are seeing dreams.

They claim a man in white is visiting them.

I stopped breathing.

The room suddenly felt very hot.

The sound of the clock ticking on the wall sounded like a sledgehammer.

Tick tock.

Tick tock.

They knew.

They knew about the dreams.

They knew about Fatima.

They knew about the man in white.

My father laughed.

A harsh humalous sound.

Dreams.

You are telling me the national security of the Islamic Republic is threatened by fairy tale.

Do not laugh, Ahmad.

The commander said sharply.

These people are willing to die for these dreams.

Last week, we raided a house church in Mashad.

We found 12 people.

We told them to renounce Jesus or face execution.

Do you know what they did? They sang.

They sang hymns while we handcuffed them.

This is not normal rebellion.

This is fanaticism.

And we must crush it.

We must route them out.

We must show no mercy, not even to our own families.

My father nodded slowly, his expression hardening into stone.

You are right, commander.

If I found a traitor in my own house, if I found that my own flesh and blood had been infected by this filth, dot dot, I would be the first to hand them over.

Honor is more important than blood.

Allah is more important than family.

He said it with such conviction, such absolute icy certainty that I felt the blood drained from my face.

I looked at my father, this man who had bought me dolls when I was a child.

This man who had taught me to ride a bicycle in the garden.

And in that moment, I saw him not as a father, but as an executioner.

I realized then that there was no safety for me.

If he knew what was in my heart, if he knew what I had been searching on my laptop, he wouldn’t hesitate.

He wouldn’t send me to therapy.

He would send me to Eban prison.

I felt a wave of nausea rise in my throat.

I stood up abruptly, my chair scraping loudly against the marble floor.

The sound echoed like a gunshot in the quiet room.

Both men turned to look at me.

The commander’s eyes drilled into mine suspicious calculating.

My father’s eyes were filled with annoyance.

Now, Zanin, sit down, he commanded.

I I am not feeling well, Babai stammered, my voice barely a whisper.

Please excuse me.

My father waved his hand dismissively.

Go then.

Do not embarrass us.

I walked out of the dining room trying to keep my steps steady.

But as soon as I was out of sight, I ran.

I ran up the grand staircase, my chatter flowing behind me like a dark wing.

I ran past the portraits of the Ayatollas, staring down from the walls.

I ran into my room and locked the door behind me.

I collapsed against the woods, sliding down to the floor, gasping for air.

I was trapped.

I was living in the lion’s den.

The enemy wasn’t just the government out there.

The enemy was downstairs eating lamb stew with my father.

And I was alone.

I had no one to talk to.

I couldn’t tell Fatima because I didn’t want to endanger her.

I couldn’t tell my friends.

I was completely, utterly alone with the truth that could get me killed.

That night, the terror was so bad, I couldn’t even think.

The darkness of my room felt heavy, like it was pressing down on my chest, crushing my lungs.

I reached for the bottle of sleeping pills on my nightstand.

My hands were shaking so bad, I spilled them on the floor.

I scrambled around picking them up, swallowing them dry one after another.

I didn’t care about the dosage anymore.

I just wanted the fear to stop.

I just wanted to sleep and never wake up.

But sleep didn’t come.

Instead, a strange clarity came.

A feeling of absolute desperation.

I realized I had reached the end of myself.

Money couldn’t save me.

My father’s name couldn’t save me.

Islam couldn’t save me.

And the pills couldn’t save me.

I was falling into a black hole.

And there was nothing to grab onto.

Before we enter that locked room where everything changed, I want to ask you something.

Have you ever felt trapped like that? Have you ever felt like you were surrounded by darkness with no way out? Maybe you are facing a situation right now that looks impossible.

Maybe you feel like you are alone in a lion’s den.

I want you to know that you are not alone.

What happened next in my room is proof that when we reach the end of our rope, that is exactly where God begins.

If you are ready to see how God breaks into the darkest prisons, make sure you are subscribed to this channel because this story is your reminder that no wall is too high for him.

I crawled to the center of my Persian rug.

I was weeping uncontrollably now, my body shaking with sobs that tore through my throat.

I curled up into a ball, my forehead pressing against the cold floor.

I felt small.

I felt dirty.

I felt lost.

And from that place of total brokenness, I cried out one last time.

God, I screamed into the silence.

You have to help me.

I cannot do this anymore.

If you are Jesus, if you are the one Fatima saw, save me.

Show me you are real or just let me die.

I closed my eyes, waiting for the darkness to take me.

But the darkness didn’t come.

Instead, something else entered the room.

It started with the atmosphere.

You know how the air feels before a thunderstorm, heavy and electric.

I felt like that but multiplied by a thousand.

The sobbing stopped.

My breathing stopped.

I lifted my head from the rug.

The room was locked.

The windows were shut tight against the winter cold.

But suddenly, the temperature in the room began to rise.

It wasn’t the dry heat of the radiator.

It was a living heat, a warmth that seemed to wrap around my shoulders like a heavy blanket.

Then came the smell.

In the middle of a closed room in Tehran, in the middle of winter, I smelled flowers.

It was the scent of roses and jasmine, intense and sweet, overpowering the smell of the old dust and the sleeping pills.

I looked around confused.

Was I hallucinating? Was this the effect of the drugs? And then the light came.

It didn’t come from the chandelier.

It didn’t come from the lamp.

It came from the corner of the room.

At first, it was a soft glow like the dawn breaking over the mountains.

But it grew brighter and brighter until it filled the entire room.

It was a white light, blindingly pure, yet strangely it didn’t hurt my eyes.

It was brighter than the sun, but soft as moonlight.

I shielded my face, terrified.

In our culture, we are taught to fear the supernatural.

We are taught about jin and spirits that come to harm us.

I thought I was being haunted.

I thought maybe the angel of death had come to take me.

I pressed my back against the bed, trembling.

Who are you? I whispered into the light.

What do you want? From the center of that brilliance, a figure emerged.

I could soon see his face clearly because the light radiating from him was too intense.

But I could see his form.

He was wearing a robe of shimmering white.

He didn’t walk on the floor.

He seemed to stand suspended in the glory that surrounded him.

And then he spoke.

He didn’t speak with a voice that vibrated the airwaves.

He didn’t speak Farsy or Arabic or English.

He spoke directly to my spirit.

It was a voice that sounded like the sound of rushing waters, powerful and majestic, but at the same time, it was as gentle as a father.

Whispering to his sleeping child, Nazanine, he said, “He knew my name.

The God of the universe knew my name.

Do not be afraid.

” As soon as those words entered my heart, the fear evaporated.

It didn’t just fade away.

It was instantly replaced by a piece so profound, so deep that my physical body relaxed.

The tension in my neck, the shaking of my hands, the racing of my heart, it all stopped.

“I am the way, the truth, and the life,” he said.

I looked up at him, tears streaming down my face.

Not from sadness this time, but from awe.

I knew who he was.

I didn’t need anyone to explain it to me.

I didn’t need a theology book.

My spirit recognized its creator.

Lord, I whispered, “It is really you.

You are Jesus.

” He didn’t answer with words.

He answered with love.

Imagine the most love you have ever felt in your life, maybe from a mother or a spouse, and multiply that by infinity.

That is what washed over me.

It was a love that had weight.

It was a tangible liquid love that poured into the cracks of my broken soul.

It washed away the shame.

It washed away the guilt of my double life.

It washed away the years of empty rituals.

It washed away the fear of my father.

I saw in a flash that all my efforts to be perfect.

All my striving to earn God’s favor were useless.

He didn’t love me because I was good.

He didn’t love me because I prayed five times a day.

He loved me because I was his.

He loved me in my mess.

He loved me with the pills on the floor and the suicide thoughts in my head.

Give me your burdens, he said.

I felt a physical sensation of something being lifted off my shoulders.

The heavy backpack of depression I had carried for years was gone.

The chains of addiction were broken.

I felt light.

I felt clean.

I felt free.

I don’t know how long he stayed.

It might have been 5 minutes.

It might have been 5 hours.

Time didn’t exist in that glory.

But as the light slowly faded and the room returned to its normal dimness, I remained on the floor weeping.

But these were new tears.

These were tears of joy.

Tears of a prisoner who sees the cell door open and realizes the guard is gone.

I stood up.

My legs were steady.

My mind was clear.

I looked at the bottle of sleeping pills scattered on the floor.

I picked them up.

I walked to the bathroom and flushed them down the toilet.

I didn’t need them anymore.

I didn’t need to numb the pain because the pain was gone.

The hole in my heart, the void that I had tried to fill with everything else was full.

It was overflowing with the presence of Jesus.

I looked in the mirror.

The girl staring back at me was the same on the outside.

Same dark eyes, same hair, but inside she was a completely different person.

The daughter of the regime was dead.

The daughter of the king was alive.

I went back to my room and sat on my bed.

The sun was starting to rise over Tehran, casting a pale gray light over the city.

I heard the call to prayer starting from the minouetses outside.

Alahhu Akba.

Alahu Akba.

Usually that sound filled me with dread and obligation.

But this morning, it sounded different.

It sounded like a reminder of the darkness I had just escaped.

I looked out the window at the city waking up.

Millions of people out there were preparing to bow down to a distant god, hoping to earn enough mercy to escape judgment.

My heart broke for them.

My heart broke from my father sleeping down the hall.

They didn’t know.

They didn’t know that the living God was not in the minouetses or the mosques.

He was right here.

He was accessible.

He was love.

I knew then that my life would never be the same.

I knew that I couldn’t keep this a secret forever.

You cannot hide a fire in a library.

Eventually, everything will burn.

I knew that by accepting this love, I was signing a warrant for my own persecution.

I knew that if my father found out, he would kill me.

But as I sat there bathed in the morning light, I realized something terrifying and beautiful.

I didn’t care.

I was willing to lose everything.

I was willing to lose the palace, the money, the status, the family because I had found the pearl of great price.

I had found Jesus and he was worth more than all the gold in Iran.

But finding him was the easy part.

Following him in the heart of the Islamic Republic was about to become the most dangerous challenge of my life.

The honeymoon was over.

The war had begun.

And the enemy was sleeping in the room next door.

This is the moment everything changed for me.

If you believe that one encounter with God can rewrite your entire destiny, I want you to hit the like button right now.

Let it be a signal that you believe in miracles because what I had to do next required a miracle every day just to survive.

I had to learn to live as a spy in my own home.

I had to learn the art of the double life, not to hide my sin, but to hide my savior.

The morning after the encounter, I woke up in a different world.

The physical world was exactly the same.

The sun still rose over the Zagrass mountains.

The traffic in Tehran was still chaotic.

The portraits of the Ayatollah still hung on the walls of our living room, staring down with their stern, judgmental eyes.

But I was different.

For the first time in 23 years, I woke up without the heavy blanket of dreads suffocating my chest.

I woke up with a melody in my head.

But reality has a way of crashing in very quickly.

As I walked down the grand staircase for breakfast, I heard my father’s voice booming from the dining room.

He was on the phone discussing a crackdown on western influences with a colleague.

I froze on the stairs.

My hand gripped the banister.

Yesterday that voice was just my father.

Today that voice was the enemy.

I realized with terrifying clarity that I was now a spy.

I was an agent of the kingdom of light operating deep within the territory of the kingdom of darkness.

And my cover was Nazanin, the perfect Muslim daughter.

For the next 6 months, I lived a life of exhilarating terror.

Every day was a performance.

When the call to prayer sounded, I unrolled my prayer rug facing Mecca.

I went through the motions.

I bowed.

I kneled.

I touched my forehead to the ground.

But while my lips whispered the Arabic verses of the Quran, my heart was having a secret conversation with Jesus.

Lord, hide me in the shadow of your wings.

I would pray silently while my father watched me from the doorway approvingly.

blind their eyes so they cannot see the light burning inside me.

The hardest part wasn’t the fear.

It was the hunger.

After meeting Jesus, I had a starving appetite for his word.

But bpples are illegal in Iran.

Possession of one can get you 10 years in prison.

Smuggling one can get you executed.

I had the digital Bible on my secure laptop, but I craved the physical book.

I wanted to hold the promises in my hands.

I went back to Fatima the maid.

One afternoon while she was folding laundry, I whispered, “Fatima, I need to meet them.

” The other she didn’t ask who.

She knew.

She slipped a small piece of paper into my hand.

Oh, and it was an address in a rough part of town and a time Thursday, 6:00 p.

m.

Knock three times.

That Thursday, I told my parents I was going to the library to study with a friend.

My driver dropped me off blocks away from the address.

I waited until he drove off.

Then I walked.

I swapped my expensive silk hijab for a plain rough one.

I wanted to blend in.

I walked through narrow alleyways, my heart pounding.

I felt like I was in a spy movie, but there were no cameras here, only the secret police.

I found the building.

It was a nondescript apartment block with peeling paint.

I climbed the stairs to the third floor.

I knocked three times.

Pause.

Knock once more.

The door opened a crack.

A suspicious eye looked out.

Then the door swung open.

I expected a church.

I expected pews across maybe a pulpit.

What I walked into was a small living room with blackout curtains taped over the windows.

There were about 12 people sitting on the floor on cushions.

There were old women, young students, a mechanic still in his grease stained overalls.

And in the corner sitting with a guitar was a man who looked like he had spent time in prison.

When I walked in, the conversations stopped.

They looked at my clothes.

Even though I tried to dress down, they could see the quality of my shoes, the cut of my coat.

They knew I came from wealth.

They looked fearful.

Was I a spy for the regime? Was I here to ent trap them? Fatima stepped forward from the kitchen.

It is okay, she said, her voice trembling with emotion.

She is one of us.

She is the daughter of the palace, but now she is a daughter of the king.

The tension in the room broke.

A woman rushed forward and hugged me.

Then another, then the mechanic.

They wept.

They held me like a long lost sister.

For the first time in my life, I wasn’t the supreme leader advises daughter.

I wasn’t a title.

I was just a sister.

That night, sitting on that crowded floor, I experienced the true church.

We sang in whispers so the neighbors wouldn’t hear.

Asteris Jesus loves me.

This I know.

We didn’t have a full band, just one acoustic guitar played softly.

But the presence of God in that room was thicker and more powerful than anything I had ever felt in the grand mosques of calm.

The pastor, the man in the corner, opened a worn, battered Bible.

He read from the book of Acts.

He read about how the early church was persecuted.

How they were beaten and thrown in jail and yet the word of God grew.

They can chain our bodies, the pastor whispered, looking directly at me, but they cannot chain the word.

They can kill the messenger, but they cannot kill the message.

Before I left, he handed me a gift.

It was wrapped in newspaper.

I opened it.

It was a small New Testament.

The cover was worn.

The pages were dogeared.

It had been passed down through many hands.

Guard this with your life,” he said.

Literally, I took that book home, hidden inside my clothes, pressed against my ribs.

I felt like I was carrying a nuclear weapon if my father found this.

And that is exactly what almost happened.

It was 3 months later.

I had become careless.

Confidence does that to you.

You think because God protected you yesterday, he will make you invisible today.

I was in my room reading the Gospel of John.

The door was closed but not locked.

I was so absorbed in the words, “I am the light of the world.

” That I didn’t hear the heavy footsteps on the thick carpet of the hallway.

The door handle turned, my heart stopped.

There was no time to hide the book under the mattress.

No time to throw it in the drawer.

My father was opening the door.

In a panic, I threw a fashion magazine over the Bible just as the door swung open.

My father stood there.

He was wearing his home robes, but his face was stern.

He looked at me sitting on the bed.

He looked at the magazine on my lap.

Nazanine.

He said, “Why is the door closed?” I I was changing Baba.

I lied.

My voice sounded high and unnatural to my own ears.

He stepped into the room.

He looked around suspiciously.

The atmosphere in the room was heavy with the presence of what I had just been reading.

To a spiritual man like my father, he could sense it.

He could smell the rebellion.

He walked over to my desk.

He picked up my phone.

He checked the screen.

And then he put it down.

He walked towards the bed.

He stood right over me.

I could smell his cologne mixed with the scent of old paper.

“You have been distant lately,” he said, staring down at me.

“You disappear for hours.

You are not focused on your prayers.

Your mother is worried.

” “I am fine, Baba,” I said, gripping the magazine so hard my knuckles turned white.

Underneath the thin glossy paper, I could feel the outline of the Bible.

just university stress.

He narrowed his eyes.

He reached out a hand for a terrifying second.

I thought he was going to grab the magazine.

I thought he was going to expose my secret right there.

If he lifted that magazine, my life as I knew it was over.

Do not forget who you are, he said slowly, his hand hovering inches from my lap.

You are a moaser.

We do not have secrets and we do not tolerate betrayal.

He patted my shoulder.

It was meant to be affectionate, but it felt like a threat.

Then he turned and walked out, closing the door behind him.

I sat there for 10 minutes, unable to move.

I was shaking so violently, my teeth were chattering.

I realized then that the net was closing.

My father knew something was wrong.

He didn’t know what yet, but he was hunting.

He was sniffing the air.

It was only a matter of time.

This moment taught me a lesson about the cost of truth.

I realized that my faith wasn’t just a private feeling.

It was a declaration of war against the powers that controlled my family.

And in war, there are casualties.

I want to pause here and ask you a question.

We live in a world where we can open a Bible app on our phone while waiting for a coffee.

We can go to church and complain if the air conditioning is too cold.

But imagine if owning a Bible meant sleeping with one eye open.

Imagine if going to church meant risking a rest.

Would you still go? Would you still read? If this story is challenging your faith, I want you to share it with a friend who needs a wake-up call.

Sometimes we do and to realize how precious our freedom is until we see someone willing to die for it.

The final straw came 2 weeks later.

It wasn’t my father who found me out.

It was my engagement.

My father called me into his study.

The walls were lined with books on Islamic Jewish prudence.

He sat behind his massive oak desk.

It is settled, he said without looking up from his papers.

The arrangement has been made.

You will marry the son of General Sullemani next month.

It is a good match.

He is a pious man, a guardian of the revolution.

I felt the blood drained from my face.

I knew the man.

He was cruel.

He was a fanatic.

He was known for beating his servants and enforcing the strictest interpretation of Sharia law.

If I married him, he would own me.

He would discover my secret within a week.

and he would kill me himself to cleanse his honor.

“I cannot,” I whispered.

My father looked up slowly.

His eyes were cold.

“Excuse me, I cannot marry him, Baba.

I do not love him.

” My father stood up.

He slammed his hand on the desk.

“Bab, you think this is a western movie? This is about duty.

This is about alliance.

You will marry him because I say so.

” “No,” I said.

My voice was trembling, but my spirit was standing up.

“I will not.

” My father walked around the desk.

He grabbed my face in his hand, squeezing my jaw until it hurt.

He looked deep into my eyes, searching for the source of this sudden rebellion.

And he saw it.

He saw the change.

He saw the light that I had been trying to hide.

“There is someone else,” he hissed.

“Who is it who has corrupted you?” He wasn’t talking about another man.

He was talking about an influence, a spirit.

Is it the Westerners? Is it the internet? He let go of my face and shoved me backward.

I will find out.

Nazanine, I will tear this house apart until I find the rot.

And when I do, I will cut it out.

He locked me in my room that night.

He told me I was not to leave until I agreed to the marriage.

I sat on my bed knowing that the clock had run out.

He would search my room tomorrow.

He would find the Bible.

He would check the laptop logs.

He would find the VPN history.

I had two choices.

Stay and die or run and live.

I looked at the window.

Beyond the high walls of our compound, beyond the city of Thyron lay the mountains, and beyond the mountains, lay Turkey, freedom.

But to get there, I would have to cross 500 m of hostile territory.

I would have to pass through checkpoints manned by my father’s colleagues.

I would have to leave my mother, my home, my identity.

I open my Bible to Psalm 23.

Even though I walked through the valley of the shadow of death, I will fear no evil.

I packed a small bag.

I put on my warmest clothes.

I took all the cash I had hidden.

And I waited for the house to go to sleep.

The escape wasn’t glamorous.

I didn’t repel down the wall.

I bribed the night guard, the one who had a sick daughter I had helped pay medicine for in secret.

He looked the other way for 5 minutes.

Just enough time for me to slip out the side gate and into the waiting car of a smuggler Fatima had found for me.

As the car pulled away, I looked back at the palace.

It looked beautiful in the moonlight, but it was a tomb.

I turned my face toward the mountains.

I was no longer the princess of Tehran.

I was a fugitive, and the longest night of my life had just begun.

And so, we are back where we started.

2:00 in the morning.

the Zagrass mountains, the freezing cold, the border, the car was idling, the heater was humming, and the soldier was standing there, his hand hovering over the door handle.

“Step out of the car,” he had said.

“This is the moment where movies cut away.

” But real life doesn’t cut away.

You have to live through every second.

I closed my eyes.

In my mind, I saw the face of the general son I was supposed to marry.

I saw my father’s rage in the study.

I saw the hanging cranes in the public squares of Thrron where they executed traitors.

I knew that if I stepped out of this car, I was stepping onto one of those cranes.

The soldier pulled the handle.

The door clicked.

It opened a few inches.

The cold air rushed in, biting my exposed skin.

Please, I whispered.

It wasn’t a plea to the soldier.

It was a plea to the man in white asterisk you called me.

You saved me in the bedroom.

Did you save me just to let me die here? The soldier leaned down.

His face was inches from mine.

I could see the pores on his skin.

I could see the red veins in his tired eyes.

He looked at me.

Really looked at me.

And then something strange happened.

His eyes glazed over.

It was as if a veil had been dropped over his vision.

He blinked, shaking his head slightly as if he was dizzy.

He looked at my passport in his hand again.

The name Natsanin Malbaso was staring right at him.

The name of the most famous family in the regime.

But he didn’t see it.

It was like he was looking at a blank piece of paper.

Or maybe he saw a different name.

I don’t know what miracle happened in his retinas in that moment.

I only know what happened next.

He slammed the passport shut.

He didn’t ask me to get out.

He didn’t search me.

He didn’t find the Bible burning against my chest.

He looked at his comrade, the one who had yelled about the commander calling.

He looked annoyed.

“Fine,” he grunted.

He tossed the passport onto my lap.

“Get out of here.

” Before I changed my mind, he slammed the car door shut.

The sound of that door closing was the sweetest sound I have ever heard.

It sounded like chains breaking.

It sounded like a prison door swinging open.

My driver didn’t need to be told twice.

He floored the accelerator.

The car skidded on the ice fish tailing slightly before the tires found traction.

We shot forward past the guard booth, past the concrete barriers, past the sign that marked the limit of the Islamic Republic of Iran.

I did you and breathe until the lights of the checkpoint faded into tiny red dots in the rear view mirror.

I watched them disappear, swallowed by the vast darkness of the mountains.

We drove in silence for 10 minutes.

Then tw the road became smooth.

The signs changed language.

We were in Turkey.

I let out a breath that I felt I had been holding for 23 years.

My body, which had been rigid with terror, suddenly collapsed.

I started to shake.

uncontrollable violent shaking.

It wasn’t cold.

It was the adrenaline crash.

I reached into my coat.

I pulled out the Bible.

I held it up in the darkness of the car.

The dim light of the moon illuminated the cross on the cover.

I had lost everything.

I had left behind a fortune and inheritance.

I had lost my status as royalty.

I had lost my parents.

I would never see my mother again.

I would never walk in the garden of my childhood home.

I was a refugee now, a stateless person.

I had no home, no plan, and no protection.

But as I clutched that Bible to my chest, I felt a joy that was sharper and more real than any pleasure the palace had ever given me.

I was poor, but I was rich.

I was homeless, but I was found.

I was an orphan, but I was a daughter of the king.

I looked out the window at the new country passing by.

The sun was just starting to crest over the horizon, painting the snowcapped peaks in shades of pink and gold.

It was a new day, a new life.

I thought of my father back in Tehran probably waking up right now discovering my empty room finding the note I didn’t leave.

He would be furious.

He would hunt me, but he couldn’t touch me because I had crossed a border that was more than just a line on a map.

I had crossed from death to life.

And the man in white, the one who visited me in the locked room, the one who blinded the eyes of the soldier, he was sitting right there with me in the back seat.

I knew it.

I could feel him.

I am with you, he whispered in my heart always, and that was enough.

Today, I live in a small apartment in a city I cannot name.

I do not have servants to brush my hair.

I do not have a chauffeur to drive me to the mall.

I work a normal job and I cook my own meals.

To the world, I am nobody, just another immigrant face in the crowd.

But when I look in the mirror, I don’t see a refugee.

I see a woman who is freer than the man sitting in the palace in Tehran.

I often think about my father.

I hear news about him sometimes.

He is still there still advising the supreme leader, still building higher walls and stricter laws to keep the light out.

I pray for him every day.

I pray that one night the man in white will walk into his room just like he walked into mine.

Because if Jesus can save me, he can save anyone.

If he can walk through the security gates of the most guarded house in Iran, he can walk into your situation, too.

I know why you are watching this video.

Maybe you didn’t click on it because you care about Iranian politics.

Maybe you clicked because you are sitting in your own version of a gilded cage.

Maybe you have everything the world says you should have, money, success, reputation, but inside you are swallowing sleeping pills just to shut off the noise.

Or maybe you are on the other side.

Maybe you are facing a checkpoint of your own, a sickness, a financial crisis, a family that has turned against you, and you are waiting for the hand of God to blind the eyes of the enemy.

I want to tell you that the Jesus I met in Tehran is not a fairy tale.

He is not a western religion.

He is a living breathing person who is hunting for you with a love that is more dangerous and more beautiful than you can imagine.

He is not afraid of your darkness.

He is not intimidated by your mistakes.

He is standing at the door and he is knocking.

We are seeing a fire spread across Iran right now.

It is a fire that no water cannon can extinguish.

It is a fire that burns in the hearts of women in prisons and men in secret basements.

It is the fire of the Holy Spirit.

And that fire is available to you right now wherever you are sitting.

You don’t need a visa to enter his kingdom.

You just need a surrendered heart.

I have one request for you.

If this story has sparked something in your soul, if you believe that no darkness can extinguish the light, I want you to make a declaration with me.

Go to the comments section right now and write one sentence.

My light cannot be chained.

Let that be your testimony.

Let it be a signal to the algorithm and a signal to the world that you are part of this unstoppable movement.

And if you want to hear more stories like this, stories of miracles that the news will once show you, make sure you subscribe to this channel.

We are building a community of believers who know that the impossible is just God’s starting point.

I left everything behind in the Zagris Mountains.

My inheritance, my title, my past, or I gained the only thing that matters.

I found out that the man in white was real and he is worth it.

He is worth every tear, every loss and every mile of the journey.

The tomb is empty, the palace is empty, but my heart is full.

My name is Nan and I am free.