They say twins share everything.

A womb, a birthday, a soul.

My sister Paresa and I shared all of that.

And on October 17th, 2023 in the courtyard of our family home in Thran, we almost shared a grave.

My name is Arasha Seni.

I am 27 years old and I am speaking to you from a location I cannot disclose in a country that has granted me asylum on the grounds of religious persecution.

What you are about to hear is not a story I wanted to tell.

It is a story I was commanded to tell by my sister as she burned alive in front of me, her voice impossibly clear through the flames.

Her final words, a prophecy that would shatter everything I thought I knew about God, about death, and about the price of truth.

If you have ever loved someone so deeply that losing them would destroy you, if you have ever wondered whether faith is worth dying for, then what happened to my sister Parisa will either break your heart or rebuild it.

Stay with me.

Her story, our story needs to be heard.

Because right now, at this very moment, there are thousands of parisers across Iran, across the Middle East, across the world, living in the shadows, worshiping in whispers, waiting for someone to tell the truth that could cost them everything.

Parisa was not just my sister, she was my twin.

And if you have never had a twin, you cannot fully understand what that means.

We were not simply siblings who happened to be born on the same day.

We were two halves of the same hole.

When we were children, our mother used to tell us that we had our own language before we could speak.

Falsy, a series of sounds and gestures that only we understood.

When Parisa fell and scraped her knee at school, I would feel a phantom pain in mine, even though I was in a different classroom.

When I had nightmares, she would wake up in the bed across from mine, already knowing, already reaching for me in the darkness.

We shared everything.

Our toys, our secrets, our dreams of escaping the suffocating expectations of our family, of Tehran, of a country that felt more like a prison than a home.

We used to lie on the roof of our house in the Ekbatan neighborhood, staring up at the stars that barely penetrated the smog of the city.

And we would whisper about the future.

Parisa wanted to be a doctor.

I wanted to be an engineer.

We both wanted to be free.

But freedom in the Islamic Republic of Iran is not a right.

It is a crime.

I need you to understand the world we grew up in.

Because without that context, you cannot understand the magnitude of what Parisa did or why our own family became her executioners.

Iran is not just a country with strict religious laws.

It is a theocracy where every aspect of life, what you wear, what you say, who you love, what you believe, is controlled by a regime that claims to speak for God.

And my family was not just complicit in that system.

We were part of its machinery.

My father, Reza Husseini, is an officer in the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps, the IRGC.

If you do not know what that means, let me explain.

The IRGC is not just a military force.

It is the ideological backbone of the Islamic Republic, the enforcers of the supreme leader will.

The guardians of the revolution that transformed Iran from a monarchy into a religious dictatorship in 1979.

My father was a true believer.

He prayed five times a day without fail.

He fasted during Ramadan with a discipline that bordered on fanaticism.

He believed with every fiber of his being that he was serving Allah, that the Islamic Republic was the manifestation of divine will on earth.

And my uncle Benam was even worse.

He was a member of the Basig, the volunteer paramilitary force that acts as the regime street enforcers.

You have seen them in the news beating protesters, arresting women for improper hijab, raiding homes in the middle of the night.

My uncle was one of them, and he was proud of it.

This was the family Parisa and I were born into.

A family of loyalists, a family of enforcers, a family that would rather kill their own children than allow them to betray the revolution.

My mother, Mariam, was different, though I did not realize how different until it was too late.

She was devout, yes, but her devotion was quieter, softer.

Um, she prayed, but I never heard her speak of God with the same fervor as my father.

She wore her hijab, but I sometimes caught her staring at foreign women in the streets of Tehran, women who were visiting from Europe or America, women whose hair flowed freely in the wind.

And I saw something in her eyes that I could not name.

Longing perhaps or regret.

We also had a younger brother, Omid, who was only 15 years old when everything happened.

He was the baby of the family, sheltered and naive, still young enough to believe that our father was a hero and our uncle was a righteous man.

He worshiped them both.

And uh and he worshiped Parisa and me too in the way that younger siblings do, always trailing behind us, always wanting to be included in our whispered conversations and secret plans.

And Omar would become the most important witness to what happened.

But I am getting ahead of myself.

Parisa and I were 25 years old when the first cracks began to appear in the facade of our perfect pious family.

It was September 2022 and Iran was on fire.

Not literally, though there were plenty of fires burning in the streets, but metaphorically, spiritually, in a way that the regime could not extinguish no matter how many protesters they arrested or killed.

A young woman named Maka Amini had died.

You may have heard of her.

She was 22 years old visiting Tehran with her family when she was arrested by the Gash de the morality police for wearing her hijab improperly.

They took her to a detention center and 3 days later she was dead.

The regime claimed she had a heart attack but the photographs of her bruised and battered body told a different story.

She had been beaten to death for showing a few strands of her hair.

Her death ignited something that had been smoldering in Iran for decades.

Women took to the streets, ripping off their hijabs, cutting their hair, chanting woman life, freedom in Farcizan, Zindi, Azadi.

Men joined them, students joined them, even some clerics joined them.

It was the largest uprising Iran had seen since the revolution itself.

and Parisa was transfixed.

I remember the night we watched the protests on the news together in the living room of our family home with our father sitting in his chair, his face dark with anger, and our mother standing in the doorway, her hands twisting the fabric of her chador.

The television showed women dancing in the streets, their hair uncovered, their faces defiant, and my father spat on the floor and said, “These will burn in hell.

” But Parisa did not look away.

She stared at the screen with an intensity I’d never seen before.

And when I glanced at her, I saw tears streaming down her face.

Not tears of sadness, tears of something else.

Something I could not name.

That was the beginning.

In the months that followed Masa Amini’s death, Parisa changed.

It was subtle at first, so subtle that I almost did not notice.

She had always been the more rebellious of the two of us.

the one who pushed boundaries, who questioned authority, who dared to dream of a life beyond the walls of our family’s expectations.

But this was different.

This was not rebellion.

This was transformation.

She started spending more time away from home, claiming she had extra shifts at the hospital where she was completing her medical residency.

She stopped engaging in our father’s dinner table discussions about politics and religion, offering only polite nods and murmurss of agreement.

And when we were alone together in the privacy of our shared childhood bedroom, she would stare at me with an expression I could not read.

Part fear, part hope, part desperation.

Arash.

She said to me one night, her voice barely above a whisper.

Do you ever feel like we are living a lie? I was sitting at my desk working on a design project for my engineering program at Sharif University of Technology.

I looked up at her, confused.

What do you mean this? She gestured around the room, at the walls covered in Arabic calligraphy, at the prayer rug folded in the corner, at the photograph of the supreme leader hanging above the door? All of this? Do you ever feel like it is not real? Like we are just playing roles in a script someone else wrote? I should have asked her more.

I should have pressed her to explain.

But I was tired and I had an exam the next day and I assumed she was just going through a phase, a moment of existential doubt that would pass as quickly as it had come.

So I shrugged and said, “Everyone feels that way sometimes, Parisa.

It is normal.

” She stared at me for a long moment and then she nodded and turned away.

But I saw the disappointment in her eyes.

She had been reaching out to me, offering me a glimpse into whatever was happening inside her, and I had dismissed her.

I would regret that moment for the rest of my life.

It was not until 2 months later in November 2022 that I discovered the truth.

Parisa had been acting even stranger than usual, leaving the house at odd hours, returning with a lightness in her step that seemed out of place in the grim reality of postprotest Tehran, where the regime had cracked down with brutal efficiency, arresting thousands, executing dozens.

I was worried about her.

I was afraid she was involved in something dangerous, something that could get her killed.

So, I followed her.

It was a Friday afternoon, the Islamic day of rest, and our father was at the mosque for Juma prayers.

Parisa told our mother she was going to visit a friend from medical school, and she left the house wearing her black Chadore, her face barely visible beneath the fabric.

I waited 5 minutes, then slipped out after her, keeping a safe distance as she walked through the crowded streets of Ecbatan, past the rows of identical apartment buildings, past the shops and cafes that were shuttered for the holy day.

She did not go to her friend’s house.

She walked for nearly an hour, taking a bus to the northern part of Tehran, to the foothills of the Alb Mountains to a neighborhood called Darband.

It is a popular area for hiking and picnics.

A place where young people go to escape the oppressive atmosphere of the city, to breathe the cleaner air of the mountains, to pretend for a few hours that they are free.

But Parisa was not going hiking.

She turned off the main road and walked down a narrow alley, glancing over her shoulder as if to make sure she was not being followed.

I pressed myself against the wall, my heart pounding, and watched as she approached a nondescript metal door set into a high concrete wall.

She knocked three times, paused, then knocked twice more.

The door opened, and she slipped inside.

I waited.

I did not know what to do.

Part of me wanted to storm in after her, to demand to know what she was doing, to drag her home before she got herself killed.

But another part of me, a part I did not want to acknowledge, was curious.

What was behind that door? Who was she meeting? What secret was she keeping from me, her twin, the person who was supposed to know her better than anyone else in the world? I waited for an hour.

And then the door opened again and Parisa emerged along with a small group of people, maybe 10 or 12 of them, men and women, young and old, all dressed in ordinary clothes, all looking around nervously before dispersing in different directions.

I followed Parisa home, keeping my distance, my mind racing with questions.

When we were both back in our room that night, I confronted her.

Where were you today? I asked, trying to keep my voice calm.

She looked up from the book she was reading, her expression carefully neutral.

I told you I was visiting a friend.

Do not lie to me, Parisa.

I stepped closer, lowering my voice so our parents would not hear.

I followed you.

I saw you go into that house in Darband.

What is going on? Her face went pale.

For a moment, I thought she was going to deny it, to make up some excuse to shut me out the way she had been shutting me out for months.

But then her shoulders sagged and she closed her book and looked at me with eyes that were filled with tears.

“I cannot tell you,” she whispered.

“It is too dangerous.

” “Dangerous?” I felt a surge of anger.

Parisa, if you are involved in something political, if you are working with the protesters, it is not political, she interrupted.

It is it is something else.

Something bigger.

Then tell me.

I sat down on the edge of her bed, taking her hands in mine.

We are twins, Parisa.

We share everything.

You can trust me.

She stared at me for a long time, searching my face, weighing her options, and then finally she spoke.

I have been attending a church.

I blinked.

A church? An underground church? She clarified.

For Christians, secret Christians, Iranians who have converted.

I felt like the floor had dropped out from beneath me.

You You converted to Christianity? She nodded, tears spilling down her cheeks.

I know what you are thinking.

I know how insane it sounds.

But Arash, I have found something I did not even know I was looking for.

I have found truth.

I have found peace.

I have found God.

The real God, not the God our father talks about.

The God of rules and punishment and fear, but a God of love.

A God who died for me.

A God who sees me, who knows me, who loves me exactly as I am.

I pulled my hands away from hers, standing up, backing away from her as if she had just confessed to having a contagious disease.

Do you have any idea what you are saying? Do you have any idea what will happen if anyone finds out? I know, she said quietly.

I know the risks, but Arash, I cannot go back.

I cannot pretend anymore.

I cannot live a lie.

You are going to get yourself killed.

I hissed.

And not just killed.

Do you know what they do to apostates in this country? They will torture you.

They will make an example of you.

And it will not just be the regime.

It will be our own family, our father, our uncle.

They will be the ones holding the match.

I know, she said again.

And there was a strange calmness in her voice, a resignation that terrified me more than anything else.

But I would rather die for the truth than live for a lie.

I stared at her, this person who looked like my sister, who sounded like my sister, but who had become someone I did not recognize.

And then I said the words I would regret for the rest of my life.

If you do not stop this, I will tell father.

Her face crumpled.

Arash, please.

I mean it, Parisa.

I will not let you destroy this family.

I will not let you destroy yourself.

You have one week to end this insanity or I will tell him everything.

I walked out of the room slamming the door behind me and I did not speak to her for 3 days.

But on the fourth day, she came to me with a proposition.

Come with me, she said just once.

Come to the church with me.

Meet the people I have met.

Hear what I have heard.

And then if you still want to tell father, I will not stop you.

I should have said no.

I should have gone to my father immediately, told him everything, let him deal with it.

But I did not.

Because despite my anger, despite my fear, despite everything I had been taught about Christianity being a false religion, a tool of Western imperialism, a corruption of the truth, despite all of that, I was curious.

And so on a cold Friday evening in December 2022, I followed my sister through the streets of Tehran up into the mountains of Darband to that same metal door.

She knocked three times, paused, knocked twice more, and when the door opened, I stepped inside.

What I found there would change my life forever.

The room was small and dimly lit with thick curtains covering the windows to block out any light that might attract attention.

There were about 15 people sitting on cushions on the floor arranged in a circle.

They were ordinary Iranians, young and old, men and women, some dressed in traditional clothing, others in jeans and sweaters.

They looked like people I might pass on the street without a second glance.

But there was something different about them, something I could not quite name.

a lightness, a peace, a joy that seemed completely out of place in a country where joy was a rare and dangerous commodity.

A man stood at the front of the room, middle-aged with graying hair and kind eyes.

He smiled when he saw Parisa, and then his gaze shifted to me, and his smile widened.

“You must be Arash,” he said in Farsy.

“Paresa has told us so much about you.

Welcome.

My name is Yousef and this is our family.

” I did not know what to say.

I just nodded and sat down next to Parisa.

My heart pounding, my mind screaming at me to leave, to run, to get as far away from this place as possible.

But I stayed.

And for the next 2 hours, I listened.

I listened as Yousef read from a book, a Bible translated into Farsy, its pages worn and dogeared from use.

I listened as he talked about a man named Jesus who claimed to be the son of God who performed miracles, who taught about love and forgiveness, who was crucified by the authorities and who rose from the dead 3 days later.

I had heard of Jesus before.

Of course, in Islam, he is called Issa and he is considered a prophet, though not the final prophet.

That honor belongs to Muhammad.

But the Jesus that Ysef described was different from the Issa I had learned about in school.

This Jesus was not just a prophet.

He was God himself walking among humanity offering salvation not through obedience to religious laws but through faith, through grace, through love.

It sounded absurd.

It sounded blasphemous.

It sounded like everything I had been taught to reject.

And yet, as I listened, something inside me began to crack.

I listened as the others shared their stories, how they had found Christianity, what it had cost them, why they continued to believe despite the danger.

One woman, her face scarred from an acid attack by her own brother, spoke about forgiveness.

One man, who had spent 2 years in heaven prison for possessing a Bible, spoke about hope.

One young girl, no older than 16, spoke about a god who loved her not because of what she did, but because of who she was.

And uh I listened as Parisa stood up and spoke, her voice trembling but clear.

I was lost, she said.

I was drowning in a sea of rules and expectations and fear.

I did not know who I was.

I did not know why I existed.

I prayed five times a day, but I never felt like anyone was listening.

I fasted during Ramadan, but I never felt closer to God.

I wore my hijab.

I obeyed my parents.

I did everything I was supposed to do, but I was empty.

I was dying inside.

She paused, wiping tears from her eyes.

And then I met someone who told me about Jesus.

And for the first time in my life, I felt seen.

I felt known.

I felt loved.

Not because I was good enough, but because he was good enough.

Not because I earned it, but because he gave it freely, and I cannot go back.

I will not go back, even if it cost me everything.

When the meeting ended, Yousef approached me.

“What did you think?” he asked gently.

“I did not know how to answer.

My mind was a storm of conflicting thoughts of doubts and curiosity and fear.

I I do not know,” I admitted.

He nodded as if he had expected that response.

That is okay.

Faith is not something that happens all at once.

It is a journey and you are welcome to walk that journey with us um for as long as you need.

He handed me a small book, a copy of the Gospel of John printed on thin paper, small enough to hide in a pocket.

“Read this,” he said, “and then decide for yourself.

” I took the book, slipping it into my jacket, and I left with Parisa walking back down the mountain in silence.

I did not tell my father.

I did not know why.

Maybe it was because I wanted to protect Parisa.

Maybe it was because I was curious.

Or maybe it was because deep down in a place I did not want to acknowledge, I had felt something in that room.

Something real, something true.

That night alone in my bed, I opened the Gospel of John and began to read.

In the beginning was the word, and the word was with God, and the word was God.

I read until dawn, and when the sun rose over Tehran, I was no longer the same person I had been the night before.

The Gospel of John became my secret companion.

I read it in stolen moments in the bathroom with a door locked on the bus to university with a book hidden inside a textbook late at night under the covers with a flashlight.

I read it with the hunger of a man who had been starving his entire life without knowing it.

I am the way, the truth, and the life.

No one comes to the father except through me.

Those words haunted me.

In Islam, there are many ways to God through prayer, through fasting, through pilgrimage, through good works, through submission to the will of Allah.

But Jesus claimed there was only one way, through him.

Not through religion, not through ritual, through relationship.

It was blasphemy.

It was heresy.

It was everything I had been taught to reject.

And yet, I could not stop reading.

Parisa noticed the change in me before I was ready to admit it to myself.

We were sitting together one evening in January 2023 in our room and she looked up from her medical textbook and said, “You have been reading it, haven’t you?” “I did not need to ask what she meant.

” “Yes, I admitted.

” Her face broke into a smile so radiant that it hurt to look at.

And and I do not know what to think.

I set down my engineering notes and turned to face her.

Everything I have been taught tells me this is wrong.

That Christianity is a corruption.

That the Bible has been changed.

That Jesus was just a prophet.

But when I read his words, Pereza, when I read what he said, what he did, how he loved people, I feel something I have never felt before.

What do you feel? She asked softly.

Hope, I whispered.

I feel hope.

She reached across the space between our beds and took my hand.

Then keep reading, keep seeking, keep asking questions.

The truth is not afraid of questions, Arash.

Only lies are.

Over the next few months, I attended more meetings with Parisa.

I met more members of the underground church.

I learned their stories, their struggles, their reasons for believing in something that could get them killed.

And slowly, gradually, like ice melting under the spring sun, my heart began to thaw.

Pastor Yousef became a mentor to me.

He was patient with my doubts, gentle with my questions, never pushing, never demanding, always pointing me back to Jesus.

Do not take my word for it.

He would say, “Read the scriptures, pray, ask God to reveal himself to you, and then decide.

” I did pray.

At first, my prayers were awkward, uncertain, filled with doubt.

I did not know how to pray to a God who was not Allah, who did not require me to wash before approaching him, who did not demand that I face Mecca or recite prayers in Arabic.

But Yousef taught me that prayer was simply talking to God as a child talks to a father.

Just speak to him, Yousef said.

Tell him what you are feeling.

Tell him your doubts.

Tell him your fears.

He already knows them anyway.

He is just waiting for you to invite him in.

So I did.

And one night in March 2023, alone in my room, I prayed a prayer that changed everything.

Jesus, I whispered into the darkness.

If you are real, if you are who you say you are, if you really died for me and rose again, then I need you to show me because I cannot do this on my own.

and I cannot keep living this lie.

I need to know the truth.

Please show me.

I did not hear an audible voice.

I did not see a vision.

But I felt something shift inside me.

Like a door opening in a room that had been locked my entire life.

And I knew I I with a certainty I cannot explain that I was not alone.

That I had never been alone.

that there was a God who loved me, who saw me, who had been waiting for me to turn to him.

I wept that night.

I wept for the years I had wasted.

I wept for the lies I had believed.

I wept for the freedom I had finally found.

And when Parisa woke up and saw me crying, she did not ask what was wrong.

She just climbed into my bed and held me the way she had when we were children.

and she whispered, “Welcome home, brother.

Welcome home.

” But our joy was short-lived because in Iran, joy is a dangerous thing and freedom is a crime punishable by death.

It was April 2023 when everything began to unravel.

The regime had intensified its crackdown on the hijab laws, responding to the continued defiance of women across the country.

The gashed airshad, the morality police were everywhere stopping women on the streets, in shopping malls, in universities, checking to make sure their hijabs were properly worn, their bodies properly covered, their submission properly displayed.

Parisa had always worn her hijab loosely, pushing the boundaries of what was acceptable.

But after her conversion, after the protests, after Masa Amini, she began to wear it even more loosely.

Not enough to attract immediate attention, but enough to make a statement.

Enough to say without words, I do not accept this.

I do not submit to this.

I am more than a body to be covered.

I warned her to be careful.

Parisa, please.

I begged.

I know how you feel.

I understand.

But you are putting yourself in danger.

If they arrest you if they find out about the church, about your faith.

I am tired of being afraid, she interrupted.

I am tired of hiding.

I am tired of pretending to be someone I am not.

Arash, we have found the truth.

We have found freedom.

What is the point of freedom if we are too afraid to live it? Freedom does not mean anything if you are dead, I shot back.

She looked at me with those eyes, those eyes that were identical to mine, that had seen everything I had seen, that reflected my own soul back at me.

And she said, Jesus said, “Whoever wants to save their life will lose it, but whoever loses their life for me will find it.

I would rather lose my life living for the truth than save my life living a lie.

” I did not know how to argue with that because deep down I knew she was right.

But knowing she was right did not make what happened next any easier to bear.

It was a Thursday afternoon, April 27th, 2023.

Parisa had finished her shift at the hospital and was walking through Vanuk Square, one of the busiest areas in northern Thran, uh a place filled with um shops and cafes and young people trying to carve out small spaces of normaly in an abnormal world.

I was not with her.

I was at the university working on a project in the engineering lab.

But I would later watch the video of what happened.

Recorded by a dozen different phones, uploaded to social media, going viral within hours.

Parisa was stopped by two female officers of the Gash Ershad.

The video shows them approaching her, pointing at her hijab, which had slipped back on her head, revealing more of her hair than was permitted.

The video shows Parisa adjusting it, trying to comply, but the officers were not satisfied.

They grabbed her arm, pulling her toward their van, shouting at her, accusing her of being a a corrupting influence, a disgrace to Islam.

And then something inside Parisa snapped.

The video shows her pulling her arm free.

It shows her reaching up to her hijab.

And it shows her in one swift deliberate motion removing it completely.

Her hair fell around her shoulders dark and long and beautiful.

And she stood there in the middle of Vanak square surrounded by hundreds of people with her head uncovered, her face defiant, her voice clear and strong.

I am not your property, she said in Farsy loud enough for everyone to hear.

I am not your slave.

I am a human being created by God, loved by God, and I will not cover myself to satisfy your twisted interpretation of his will.

The crowd erupted.

Some people cheered, some people gasped, some people started filming.

The morality police officers lunged for her, but Parisa stepped back, holding her hijab in her hand.

Like a flag of surrender, she refused to wave.

My name is Parisa Husini, she continued her voice rising above the chaos.

And I am a Christian.

I follow Jesus Christ who died to set me free.

And I will not be silent anymore.

And then the officers tackled her to the ground.

The video cuts off there.

But I know what happened next because I received the phone call from my mother 20 minutes later, her voice shaking with terror and rage.

Your sister has been arrested, she said.

And there is a video, Arash.

There is a video of her removing her hijab and declaring herself a Christian.

It is everywhere.

Your father has seen it.

Your uncle has seen it.

Everyone has seen it.

My blood turned to ice.

Where is she now? They brought her home.

My mother said the officers, they did not take her to the station.

They brought her here.

They said it is a family matter now.

They said we need to deal with it ourselves.

I knew what that meant.

In Iran, when the authorities decide something is a family matter, it means they are giving the family permission to restore their honor in whatever way they see fit.

It means they are washing their hands of responsibility for what happens next.

It means they are sanctioning murder.

Iran.

I left the university without a word to anyone, without gathering my things, without thinking about anything except getting to Parisa.

Um, I took a taxi, my hands shaking so badly I could barely hold my phone.

And I called her number over and over, but she did not answer.

When I arrived at our house in Ecbatan, I found the front door locked.

I pounded on it, shouting for someone to let me in.

And finally, my younger brother, Omid, opened it, his face pale, his eyes wide with fear.

Where is she? I demanded.

In the basement, he whispered.

Uncle Benham is here.

And he brought others.

Arash, they are talking about, they are saying.

He did not need to finish.

I pushed past him and ran toward the basement door, but my father stepped in front of me, blocking my way.

Move, I said.

No.

His voice was flat, emotionless.

But his eyes were filled with something I had never seen before.

Pain.

You will not interfere, Arash.

She is my sister.

She is your daughter.

You cannot let them.

She is an apostate, he interrupted.

She has betrayed Islam.

She has betrayed this family.

She has brought shame upon our name.

The video has been seen by thousands of people.

My colleagues at the IRGC are asking me how I raised such a daughter.

Your uncle’s friends in the bas are questioning our loyalty to the revolution.

Do you understand what this means? I understand that you are choosing your reputation over your daughter’s life.

I spat.

He slapped me.

It was not a hard slap, but it was enough to shock me into silence.

You do not understand anything, he said quietly.

This is not about reputation.

This is about survival.

If we do not deal with this, the regime will and they will not be merciful.

They will arrest her.

They will torture her.

They will execute her publicly.

And they will make an example of our entire family.

At least this way.

At least this way.

It can be quick.

Quick, I stared at him in horror.

You are talking about killing her.

I am talking about mercy, he said.

And there were tears in his eyes now.

Tears I had never seen before.

I am talking about doing what must be done to protect the rest of this family, to protect you, to protect Omid, to protect your mother.

If you do this, I said, my voice shaking, you will lose me too because I am just like her, father.

I am a Christian, too.

The words were out before I could stop them.

And the moment they left my mouth, I saw my father’s face change.

The pain in his eyes turned to something else, something colder, something final.

“Then you are both dead to me,” he said.

He stepped aside and um I ran down the stairs to the basement.

Parisa was sitting on the floor, her hands tied behind her back, her face bruised, her hijab gone.

Standing around her were my uncle Benham and three other men I recognized as members of the barage.

They were arguing among themselves, their voices harsh and angry.

We should take her to the authorities.

One of them was saying, “Let them handle it.

” “No,” my uncle said.

If we do that, it becomes a public trial.

It becomes a spectacle.

The family’s shame will be broadcast for the entire country to see.

This needs to be handled privately, quietly.

You mean we should kill her? Another man said, and there was uncertainty in his voice, as if he was not entirely comfortable with the idea.

I mean, we should do what Islamic law demands, my uncle replied.

The punishment for apostasy is death.

The Quran is clear.

The hadith is clear.

She has rejected Allah.

She has um rejected the prophet.

She has chosen hell.

We are simply sending her there.

Stop.

I shouted.

And all of them turned to look at me.

You cannot do this.

She is a human being.

She is your niece.

She is my sister.

My uncle’s face twisted with contempt.

She is a traitor.

And so are you.

Apparently, your father told me what you just confessed.

You are both apostates.

You both deserve to die.

Then kill me too, I said, stepping forward.

If you are going to kill her, you will have to kill me first.

Parisa’s head snapped up and she looked at me with wide, terrified eyes.

Arash, no.

Do not I will not let them hurt you, I said, kneeling beside her, trying to untie her hands.

I will not let them.

One of the besiege members grabbed me by the collar and hauled me to my feet, slamming me against the wall.

You want to die with her? Fine.

We can arrange that.

Enough.

My uncle said, “We are not barbarians.

We will give them a chance to repent.

If they renounce this Christian nonsense, if they return to Islam, if they publicly declare their loyalty to Allah and the prophet, then we will spare them.

” He turned to Parisa.

What do you say, niece? Will you repent? Will you save your life? Parisa looked at him and then she looked at me and then she looked up at the ceiling as if she could see through it through the house, through the sky, all the way to heaven.

And she smiled.

I will not repent, she said quietly.

I have nothing to repent of.

I have found the truth.

I have found Jesus, and I would rather die with him than live without him.

My uncle’s face darkened.

Then you have chosen your fate.

He turned to me.

And you, Arash, will you die with her or will you save yourself? I looked at Parisa.

I looked at her bruised face, her tied hands, her defiant eyes.

I looked at the sister who had shared my life, my secrets, my soul.

And I knew that I could not abandon her.

Not now, not ever.

I am a follower of Jesus Christ.

And I said, my voice steady despite the terror coursing through my veins.

And if that means I die, then I die.

But I will not deny him.

I will not deny the truth.

My uncle stared at me for a long moment, and then he nodded slowly.

So be it.

He turned to the other men.

Bring them upstairs.

We will do this properly.

They dragged us up the stairs, through the house, and out into the courtyard.

It was evening now, the sky turning purple and orange as the sun set over Tehran.

The courtyard was small, enclosed by high walls, hidden from the view of neighbors, a place where family gatherings were held, where my mother grew herbs and flowers where Parisa and I had played as children.

It was about to become our execution ground.

My mother was standing by the door, her face buried in her hands, sobbing.

My father stood beside her, his expression unreadable.

And Ommed, my one 5-year-old brother, was pressed against the wall, his face white with shock, his phone clutched in his hand.

I did not know it then, but Omid was recording everything.

Um, he would later tell me that he did not plan to.

He did not know what he was going to do with the video.

He just knew that someone needed to witness what was happening.

Someone needed to remember.

My uncle and his men forced Parisa and me to our knees in the center of the courtyard.

One of them brought out a can of gasoline, the kind used for generators during power outages.

The smell of it filled the air, acurid and suffocating.

“This is your last chance,” my uncle said, standing over us.

“Renounce Christianity.

Return to Islam and you will live.

Parisa looked up at him and there was no fear in her eyes, only peace.

I told you already.

I will not deny Jesus.

He did not deny me when he died on the cross.

I will not deny him now.

My uncle turned to me.

And you? I wanted to be as brave as Parisa.

I wanted to speak with the same conviction, the same certainty, but I was terrified.

My whole body was shaking.

I could feel the cold metal of the gasoline can against my leg.

I could smell the fumes.

I could see the matches in my uncle’s hand.

I was going to die.

We were both going to die.

And yet, in that moment of absolute terror, I felt something else.

A presence, a peace that made no sense, that defied every logical explanation.

And I heard a voice, not audible, but clear as day, speaking into my heart.

Do not be afraid.

I am with you.

Even in the fire, I am with you.

I took a deep breath and I looked my uncle in the eye.

I will not deny Jesus, I said.

Do what you have to do.

My uncle’s jaw tightened.

He nodded to one of his men who stepped forward with the gasoline can.

Wait, my mother cried out, rushing forward.

Please, Benham.

Please.

They are children.

They are confused.

Give them time.

Give them silence, woman.

My uncle snapped.

This is not your decision.

This is a matter of honor, a matter of faith.

They have made their choice.

My mother fell to her knees, weeping, and my father pulled her back, holding her as she collapsed against him.

The man with the gasoline can pour it over Parisa first.

She gasped as the cold liquid soaked through her clothes, her hair, her skin, and then he poured it over me.

The fumes burned my eyes, my throat, my lungs.

I could barely breathe.

My uncle struck a match.

“In the name of Allah, the most merciful, the most compassionate,” he said, his voice flat and ritualistic.

“We cleanse this family of the stain of apostasy.

” He dropped the match.

The world exploded into fire.

I have tried in the years since that night to find words to describe what it feels like to burn alive.

But there are no words.

Pain is too small a word.

Agony is too small a word.

It is a sensation beyond description, beyond comprehension, beyond anything the human mind is designed to endure.

I screamed.

I thrashed.

I tried to roll to smother the flames, but they were everywhere, consuming me, devouring me.

I could hear Parisa screaming too.

And I tried to reach for her, but I could not see, could not think, could not do anything except burn.

And then through the roar of the flames and the roar of my own screams, I heard her voice.

Arash.

It was impossible.

She should not have been able to speak.

The fire should have stolen her breath, her voice, her consciousness.

But I heard her clear and strong, cutting through the chaos like a blade of light through darkness.

Arash, listen to me.

I forced my eyes open, though the heat seared them, and I saw her.

She was engulfed in flames, her body a silhouette of fire, and yet she was looking at me.

She was looking at me, and she was smiling.

Do not be afraid, she said.

And her voice was filled with a joy I had never heard before.

A joy that did not belong in this moment, in this horror.

I see him, Arash.

I see Jesus.

He is here.

He is reaching for me.

And it is beautiful.

It is so beautiful.

Parisa, I choked on smoke and pain and disbelief.

You will survive this,” she said.

And now her voice was taking on a strange quality as if it was coming from somewhere beyond the fire, beyond the courtyard, beyond the world itself.

“You will tell our story.

You will tell them what happened here.

You will tell them that heaven is real, that Jesus is real, that love is stronger than death.

Promise me, Arash.

Promise me you will tell them.

” I promise.

I gasped.

and I did not know if she could hear me if the words made it past my burning lips, but she nodded as if she had heard.

And then she spoke one last time.

“I forgive them,” she said, looking up at the sky, at the stars that were beginning to appear in the darkening heavens.

“Father, forgive them.

They do not know what they are doing.

” And then her eyes closed and her body went still and the flames continued to burn.

I do not know how long I burned.

It felt like hours, like days, like an eternity.

But it could not have been more than a minute or two before someone I later learned it was my father threw a blanket over me, smothering the flames.

I collapsed onto the ground, my skin charred and blistered, my lungs filled with smoke, my mind shattered by pain and grief.

I could hear shouting, chaos, my mother screaming, my uncle yelling orders, but it all sounded distant, muffled, as if I was underwater.

I crawled toward Parisa.

Her body was still burning and no one was trying to stop it.

They were just standing there watching, as if they were afraid to touch her, as if the fire that consumed her was holy and terrible and not to be interfered with.

I reached her and I pulled her into my arms, ignoring the pain, ignoring the flames that still licked at her clothes.

I held her and I felt the moment her spirit left her body.

It was like a light going out, like a door closing, like the final note of a song fading into silence.

She was gone.

My twin, my sister, my friend, the other half of my soul, she was gone.

I do not remember much of what happened next.

I remember my father pulling me away from her body.

I remember my mother collapsing her whales filling the courtyard.

I remember my uncle standing there staring at Paris’s burnt corpse, his face pale, his hands shaking.

And I remember Ommed pressed against the wall, his phone still recording, tears streaming down his face.

They carried me inside and laid me on the floor.

My father called a doctor, a family friend who could be trusted to keep quiet, who would not ask questions, who would treat my burns without reporting them to the authorities.

The doctor worked on me for hours cleaning the wounds, applying ointments, wrapping me in bandages.

The pain was unbearable, but I barely felt it because the pain in my body was nothing compared to the pain in my soul.

Parisa was dead and I was alive.

Why? Why had I survived when she had not? Why had the flames released me but consumed her? Why had God allowed this to happen? I wanted to die.

I wanted to close my eyes and never open them again.

I wanted to follow Parisa wherever she had gone to see the Jesus she had seen to escape this nightmare of a world where sisters are burned alive for believing in love.

But I could not die because I had made a promise.

You will tell our story.

As I lay there wrapped in bandages, my body broken, my heart shattered, I heard a knock on the door.

My father answered it and I heard voices, official voices, authoritative voices.

The morality police had come, but they were not there to arrest anyone.

They were there to collect Paris’s body.

We have been informed of an incident involving an apostate.

One of them said, “We are here to take the body for proper disposal.

” She has already been dealt with, my uncle said, his voice cold.

The family has taken care of it.

“Nevertheless, we need to document the incident,” the officer replied.

“And we need to ensure that the appropriate measures were taken.

” They went out to the courtyard and I heard them talking, taking photographs, asking questions, and then they left, taking Paris’s body with them.

I never saw her again.

I do not know where they took her.

I do not know if she was buried or cremated or simply thrown away like garbage.

The regime does not give proper burials to apostates.

They do not mark their graves.

They erase them from existence as if they never lived at all.

But Pissa did live and uh her life mattered and uh I would make sure the world knew it.

Three days later, as I lay in bed, my body slowly healing, my soul still drowning in grief, my mother came to me.

She sat on the edge of my bed, her face gaunt, her eyes red from crying.

“I need to tell you something,” she whispered, glancing at the door to make sure no one was listening.

Before they before they took her outside, I gave Parisa something.

A seditive, a strong one.

I crushed it into water and made her drink it.

I told her it would help with the pain.

I stared at her, not understanding.

She was unconscious before the fire started.

My mother continued, tears streaming down her face.

She did not feel it, Arash.

She did not suffer.

I made sure of it.

But that was impossible because I had heard Parisa speak.

I had heard her voice clear and strong telling me about Jesus, telling me to survive, telling me to tell our story.

She spoke to me, I said while she was burning.

She spoke to me.

My mother shook her head.

That is impossible.

The seditive I gave her would have knocked her out within minutes.

She could not have been conscious.

But she was.

I knew she was.

I had heard her.

I had seen her.

And that was when I understood what I had witnessed was not natural.

It was not explainable by medicine or science or logic.

It was a miracle, a divine intervention.

God had allowed Parisa to remain conscious, to speak, to prophesy, to comfort me in my darkest moment.

Heaven had intervened.

And if heaven had intervened for her, then heaven would intervene for me, too.

I just had to survive long enough to to fulfill my promise.

But surviving, I would soon discover, would require another miracle because my uncle was not finished with me yet.

On the fifth day after Parisa’s death, I overheard my uncle talking to my father in the hallway outside my room.

The boy is a liability.

My uncle was saying he confessed to being a Christian.

He tried to save her.

If word gets out, if anyone finds out that we let him live, it will raise questions.

It will make us look weak.

We need to finish what we started.

He is my son, my father said, and there was anguish in his voice.

He is an apostate, my uncle replied, just like his sister.

And the law is clear.

I have already lost one child, my father said.

I will not lose another.

Then you are choosing him over your duty to Allah.

My uncle said coldly, “You are choosing him over your position in the IRGC, over your standing in the community, over your own salvation.

Is that what you want?” There was a long silence.

And then my father said in a voice so quiet I almost did not hear it.

Do what you must, but give me one day, one day to say goodbye.

My blood ran cold.

My father had just signed my death warrant.

I had to escape.

But how? I could barely walk.

My burns were still healing.

I had no money, no documents, no way to contact the underground church.

I was trapped.

That night, as I lay in the darkness, praying desperately for a way out, my mother came to me again.

“You need to leave,” she whispered urgently.

“Tonight, your uncle is planning to take you to Evan Prison tomorrow.

Once you are there, you will never come out.

” I cannot walk, I said.

I cannot.

I will help you, she interrupted.

She pressed something into my hand.

A watt of cash and a piece of paper with an address written on it.

This is the address of a man named Yousef.

Parisa told me about him once, she said.

He helps people like you.

Go to him.

He will know what to do.

Why are you helping me? I asked, staring at her in the dim light.

You are risking everything.

Her eyes filled with tears.

Because I’ve already lost one child to this madness.

I will not lose another.

And because uh because I think Parisa was right.

I think she found something real, something true, something worth dying for.

She leaned down and kissed my forehead.

Go Arash, live and tell her story.

Tell the world what they did to her.

Tell them that she did not die in vain.

And then she left and I heard her lock the door behind her, buying me time.

I forced myself out of bed, biting back screams of pain as my burned skin stretched and cracked.

I dressed in the darkest clothes I could find, pulled a hood over my head, and climbed out the window.

The streets of Tehran were quiet at 2 in the morning.

I walked slowly, painfully, keeping to the shadows, avoiding the main roads where police and besiege patrols might see me.

Every step was agony.

Every breath was a struggle, but I kept moving because stopping meant death.

It took me 2 hours to reach the address my mother had given me.

It was a apartment building in the Shadeia district, old and nondescript.

I climbed the stairs to the third floor and knocked on the door three times, then twice.

The door opened and Pastor Ysef stood there, his eyes widening in shock when he saw me.

“Araj,” he breathed.

“We heard what happened.

We thought you were dead.

” “Paresa is dead,” I said.

And saying the words out loud made them real in a way they had not been before.

“They burned her.

They burned us both.

But she she spoke to me while she was burning.

She told me to tell our story.

She told me, “Heaven is real.

” Yousef pulled me inside and I collapsed into his arms.

And for the first time since that terrible night, I wept.

I wept for Parisa.

I wept for myself.

I wept for the family I had lost, for the life I would never have, for the sister who had been taken from me.

But even as I wept, I felt something else.

A presence, a peace, a whisper in my heart that said, “I am with you.

I will never leave you.

And your sister is with me, whole and healed and home.

” Parisa was gone, but her story was not over.

And neither was mine.

Right now, thousands are watching this, but only a few will have the courage to acknowledge what is happening to Christians in Iran, in Afghanistan, in Somalia, in North Korea, in dozens of countries around the world where faith is a crime punishable by death.

If you believe these stories matter, if you believe Parisa’s defiance meant something, if you believe her life and her death should not be forgotten, then leave one word in the comments, just one word, Piza.

Let her name be remembered.

Let her sacrifice be honored.

Let the world know that she lived and that she died for something greater than herself.

Because silence is complicity.

And your voice, your simple act of typing her name might be the thing that gives another Parisa the courage to stand firm, to speak truth, to choose Jesus over safety.

Do not scroll past this moment.

Type her name.

Parisa.

I know what you are feeling right now.

Anger, grief, maybe even doubt that a loving God would allow this to happen.

I felt all of that.

I screamed at God.

I cursed him.

I demanded to know why he let my sister burn, why he did not stop it, why he did not send angels to rescue her.

But if you stop watching now, you will miss what happened next.

You will miss the miracles.

You will miss the redemption.

You will miss the proof that Parisa did not die in vain, that her prophecy came true, that heaven really did intervene.

Stay with me.

The story is not over.

And what comes next will show you that even in the darkest valley, even in the shadow of death, God is there and he is good.

Stay with me.

Pastor Ysef did not waste time with questions.

He saw my condition, heard my story, and immediately activated the underground network that had been helping persecuted Christians escape Iran for decades.

“You cannot stay in Tehran,” he said, “cleaning my wounds with fresh bandages.

Your uncle has connections everywhere.

The IRGC will be looking for you.

We need to move you north toward the Turkish border.

How? I asked.

I have no passport, no documents, and I can barely walk.

We have ways, he said quietly.

The church has been doing this for a long time.

You are not the first, Arash, and you will not be the last.

Within hours, I was in the back of a delivery truck hidden beneath crates of produce being driven out of Tehran.

The driver was a Christian brother named Resza, a man who had been smuggling believers out of Iran for 15 years.

He did not speak much, but his eyes were kind, and when he looked at me, I saw the same peace I had seen in Paris’s eyes.

The journey to Tabas took 2 days.

We traveled only at night, avoiding checkpoints, taking back roads through the mountains.

Every bump in the road sent waves of pain through my burned body.

But I bit down on a cloth and endured it because the alternative was death.

In Tabre, I stayed in a safe house run by an elderly Armenian Christian woman named Anahit.

She fed me, prayed over me, and told me stories of other believers who had passed through her home on their way to freedom.

Your sister’s video is everywhere,” she said one evening as she changed my bandages.

“The one from Vanak Square.

It has been shared thousands of times.

People are calling her a martyr, a hero.

” “She was,” I said quietly.

“She is.

” “And there is another video.

” Anahit continued, her voice dropping to a whisper.

“Someone in your family recorded what happened in the courtyard.

It was uploaded anonymously 3 days ago.

The regime is trying to take it down, but it keeps getting re-uploaded.

People have seen it, Arash.

The world has seen what they did to her, what they did to you.

My blood ran cold.

Who uploaded it? No one knows.

But whoever it was, they are very brave or very foolish.

I knew immediately who it was, Mid.

My little brother had kept his promise to bear witness.

He had shown the world the truth.

But that meant he was in danger now, too.

I wanted to contact him to warn him, to tell him to run, but I had no way to reach him without putting him at even greater risk.

All I could do was pray that God would protect him the way he had protected me.

After a week in TRIZ, Pastor Ysef arrived with new instructions.

We have arranged for a guide to take you through the Kurdish region to the Turkish border.

It is a dangerous journey.

The terrain is rough and the border guards shoot on sight, but it is your only chance.

When do I leave? I asked.

Tonight.

The guide’s name was Karim, a Kurdish Christian who had made the crossing dozens of times.

He was a man of few words.

But his confidence was reassuring.

He gave me dark clothing, a backpack with water and food, and a simple instruction.

Stay close.

Stay quiet.

Do what I say when I say it.

If we are caught, you are on your own.

We left Tabreze at midnight.

Driving west toward the mountains that marked the border between Iran and Turkey.

The landscape grew more rugged, more desolate as we climbed higher into the Zagros range.

Finally, Karim stopped the car in a remote valley and said, “From here we walk.

” The next 6 hours were the most physically grueling of my life.

We climbed steep mountain paths in complete darkness, guided only by Karim’s knowledge of the terrain and the faint light of the stars.

My burns screamed with every step.

My lungs burned from the thin mountain air.

Several times I stumbled and fell, and Kareem had to pull me back to my feet.

“Keep moving,” he hissed.

“We are close.

” As dawn began to break, we reached a ridge overlooking the border.

Below us, I could see the fence, a tall barbed wire barrier patrolled by Iranian border guards.

Beyond it, the hills of Turkey stretched into the distance, bathed in the soft light of morning.

“That is freedom,” Karim said, pointing.

“But first we have to get past them.

” He pointed to a section of the fence where the terrain dipped into a small ravine.

There is a gap there.

The fence is damaged.

We can slip through, but the guards patrol this area every 20 minutes.

We have to time it perfectly.

We waited, crouched behind rocks, watching the gods.

My heart pounded so hard I thought it would burst.

After what felt like an eternity, Kareem grabbed my arm and whispered, “Now move.

” We ran down the slope, half sliding, half falling toward the fence.

I could see the gap, a section where the wire had been cut and poorly repaired.

Kareem reached it first and pulled the wire apart, creating an opening just wide enough for a person to squeeze through.

“Go,” he urged.

I crawled through, the barbed wire, tearing at my clothes, scraping against my burned skin.

I bit back a scream and kept moving.

And then I was through.

I was on the other side.

I was in Turkey.

I was free.

Karim came through behind me and we ran up the opposite slope, putting as much distance as possible between us and the border.

Behind us, I heard shouting.

The guards had spotted us.

Gunshots rang out, bullets kicking up dirt around us.

But we kept running and the shots grew more distant and finally we crested a hill and collapsed on the other side, gasping for breath.

“Welcome to Turkey,” Karim said, grinning despite his exhaustion.

“You made it.

I lay on the ground staring up at the sky and I wept.

Not from pain, not from fear, but from relief, from gratitude, from the overwhelming realization that I was alive, that I had survived, that God had brought me through the fire and across the mountains and into freedom.

But even as I wept, I felt the weight of my promise.

Parisa’s voice echoed in my mind.

You will tell our story.

I was free.

But my work was just beginning.

If you have made it this far, you are part of a small percentage of viewers who refuse to look away from hard truths.

Most people have already scrolled past.

Most people do not want to know what is happening to Christians in closed countries.

Most people prefer comfortable ignorance.

But you are still here and that means something.

Before we finish the story, I need you to do two things.

First, subscribe to this channel.

Not for me, but for the Parisas of the world whose stories need to be told.

Every subscriber is a signal to the algorithm that these testimonies matter, that persecution is not something we can ignore.

Second, share this video.

Send it to one person, just one, because Parisa’s story and the stories of thousands like her will only spread if people like you refuse to stay silent.

Do not let her death be forgotten.

Subscribe, share, and stay with me for the final part of this testimony because what I am about to tell you will prove that heaven really did intervene.

And that Parisa’s prophecy came true.

From the Turkish border, Karim took me to a refugee center in Van, a city in eastern Turkey that had become a way point for thousands fleeing persecution in Iran, Iraq, and Syria.

I registered with the UNHCR, the United Nations Refugee Agency, and began the long uh bureaucratic process of applying for asylum.

It took 8 months, 8 months of of living in limbo in a in a cramped apartment with five other Iranian refugees, waiting for interviews, for paperwork, for a country to say, “Yes, we will take you.

You can start over here.

” During those months, I healed.

Not just physically though, my burns slowly faded into scars that I carry to this day.

But emotionally and spiritually, I connected with a Turkish church that ministered to refugees.

I met other believers who had lost everything for their faith.

And I began to process the trauma of what I had experienced, the grief of losing Parisa, the guilt of surviving when she had not.

One day, a package arrived for me at the refugee center.

It had been sent anonymously with no return address.

Inside was a book charred and damaged.

Its pages blackened at the edges but still readable.

It was Parisa’s Bible, the Gospel of John that Pastor Ysef had given her.

There was a note tucked inside written in Farsy in handwriting.

I recognized immediately.

My mother’s Arash, I found this in the courtyard after they took her body.

It survived the fire.

I do not know how, but I think it is a sign.

I think she would want you to have it.

I am praying for you.

And I am reading it too.

Your mother.

I held that Bible in my hands and I wept because it was impossible.

The fire had consumed everything.

Parisa’s clothes, her hair, her skin.

But this book, this fragile collection of paper and ink had survived.

It was scorched.

Yes.

Damaged.

Yes.

But the words were still there.

The truth was still there.

It was a miracle.

a tangible physical miracle that I could hold in my hands.

And it was proof that what Parisa had said was true, that heaven had intervened, that God was real, that her sacrifice had not been in vain.

Over the following months, I received encrypted messages from my mother.

She told me that she had begun reading the Bible in secret, that she was asking questions, that she was praying to Jesus tentatively, uncertainly, but sincerely.

I do not know if I can call myself a Christian yet, she wrote.

But I know that what they did to Parisa was wrong, and I know that the God she believed in is not the God I was taught to fear.

He is something else, something better.

She also told me about Omid.

After uploading the video of Parisa’s burning, he had been questioned by the authorities.

But he had played dumb, claiming his phone had been hacked, that he had not uploaded anything.

They could not prove otherwise.

So they let him go.

But my father and uncle were watching him closely now, suspicious, waiting for him to make a mistake.

He asks about you, my mother wrote.

He wants to know if you are safe.

I told him you are.

I told him you are alive.

And I think I think he wants to follow you.

But he is afraid.

2 years after I escaped Iran, I was granted asylum in Germany.

I moved to Berlin, learned German, found work, and began rebuilding my life.

But I could not forget my promise.

I could not forget Paris’s words.

You will tell our story.

So I started speaking.

I contacted Christian organizations that work with persecuted believers.

I shared my testimony at churches, at conferences, at universities.

I told Parisa’s story, our story to anyone who would listen.

And people listened because Parisa’s story is not just about persecution.

It is about courage.

It is about faith.

It is about a young woman who looked death in the face and chose Jesus anyway.

It is about a God who is present even in the fire, even in the darkest valley, even when everything seems lost.

In 2024, I received a message that changed everything.

It was from an unknown number sent through an encrypted app.

Brother, it is me, Omid.

I am in Turkey.

I escaped.

Can you help me? Uh, I could barely believe it.

My little brother, the boy who had witnessed Paris’s death, who had risked everything to record the truth, had made it out.

He had followed the same route I had taken through the same network um, across the same mountains.

I flew to Turkey immediately and met him at the refugee center in Van, the same place I had stayed years before.

When I saw him, I barely recognized him.

He was no longer a frightened one, 5-year-old boy.

He was a young man, hardened by suffering, but with a light in his eyes that I had not seen before.

I am a Christian now, he told me, as we embraced.

After I saw what happened to Parisa, after I saw her courage, after I saw the peace on her face, even as she burned, I knew it was real.

I knew Jesus was real.

So I um I started reading the Bible in secret and uh I prayed and he answered.

We wept together, my brother and I.

We wept for Parisa.

We wept for the family we had lost.

We wept for the years of separation, but we also wept with joy because we were together again because we were free.

Because God had been faithful.

Omid now lives with me in Berlin.

He is studying theology, preparing to become a pastor.

And together we run a ministry called Parisa’s Light, a network that helps Iranian Christians escape persecution and find asylum in Europe.

We have helped over 200 believers make the journey so far.

200 people who, like us, chose Jesus over safety.

200 people who, like Pereza, refused to deny the truth even when it cost them everything.

My mother is still in Iran.

She cannot leave.

My father would never allow it and she is too afraid to try.

But she continues to send me messages.

And in her last message, she wrote something that made me weep with joy.

I have decided I am a follower of Jesus now.

I do not know what this means for my future.

I do not know if I will ever be able to say it out loud, but I know it’s in my heart.

And I know that one day I will see Parisa again.

and I will tell her that she was right, that it was all worth it.

As for my father and uncle, I do not know what has become of them.

I have not spoken to them since the nights I escaped.

Part of me wants to hate them for what they did.

Part of me wants to see them punished, to see them face justice for their crime.

But then I remember Pissa’s last words.

Father, forgive them.

They do not know what they are doing.

And I remember that Jesus said we must love our enemies.

That we must pray for those who persecute us.

That we must forgive as we have been forgiven.

So I pray for them.

I pray that they will come to know the truth.

I pray that they will encounter the same Jesus that Parisa encountered, the same Jesus that saved me, the same Jesus that is transforming my mother and my brother.

Because that is what the gospel does.

It transforms.

It redeems.

It takes broken, burned, scarred people like me and makes them whole.

3 years ago, I stood in a courtyard in Tehran and watched my sister burn alive.

I felt the flames consume my own body.

I heard her prophesy that I would survive, that I would tell our story, that heaven would intervene.

And she was right.

I survived.

I am telling our story.

And heaven did intervene not by stopping the fire, but by being present in it.

By giving Parisa supernatural peace and clarity in her final moments.

By preserving her Bible as a sign.

By orchestrating my escape.

By protecting Omid.

By softening my mother’s heart.

Um, by bringing me to a place where I can speak freely about what happened.

Parisa is not here, but her legacy is.

Every person we help escape Iran is a testament to her courage.

Every person who hears the story and chooses to follow Jesus is a fulfillment of her prophecy.

Every time someone types her name in the comments, they are ensuring that she is not forgotten.

I do not know why God allowed Parisa to die and allowed me to live.

I do not know why he did not send angels to rescue her from the flames.

I do not know why he allows thousands of Christians around the world to suffer and die for their faith every year.

But I know this.

God is good.

Jesus is real.

Heaven is real.

And the suffering of this present time is not worth comparing with the glory that will be revealed in us.

Parisa saw that glory.

In her final moments, she saw Jesus reaching for her.

She saw heaven opening to receive her.

And she went home.

One day I will go home too and when I do I will see her again and I will tell her that I kept my promise that I told our story that her death was not in vain.

Until then I will keep speaking.

I will keep helping.

I will keep pointing people to the Jesus who was with us in the fire who was with us in the valley who will be with us until the end of the age.

And because that is what Parisa would want.

That is what she died for.

and that is what I will live for.

This is the end of my story.

But it does not have to be the end of yours.

Maybe you are watching this and you are facing persecution for your faith.

Maybe you are in a country where being a Christian could cost you your life.

Maybe you are afraid and you are wondering if Jesus is worth it.

I am here to tell you he is.

He is worth everything.

He is worth the fire.

He is worth the loss.

He is worth the suffering because he is real and he is good and he will never leave you.

Or maybe you are watching this and you do not know Jesus.

Maybe you have never understood why anyone would die for their faith.

Maybe you think Christians are crazy or deluded or brainwashed.

I am here to tell you we are not crazy.

We have simply encountered something someone so real, so true, so beautiful that everything else fades in comparison.

And that someone is Jesus Christ.

He died for you.

He rose for you.

He is calling you to come to him, to know him, to experience the same freedom that Parisa experienced, that I experienced, that millions of believers around the world have experienced.

You do not have to clean yourself up first.

You do not have to be good enough.

You just have to come just as you are, broken, burned, scarred, lost.

He will take you.

He will heal you.

He will make you whole.

If you want to know more about Jesus, leave a comment below.

Say, “I want to know more.

” And I will personally respond to you.

I will send you resources.

I will pray for you.

I will help you take the first step because that is what Parisa would do.

That is what she died for so that people like you could hear the truth and have the chance to choose.

Do not waste this moment.

Do not scroll past this opportunity.

Eternity is real.

Heaven is real.

Hell is real and the choice you make today will determine where you spend forever.

Choose Jesus.

Choose life.

Choose freedom.

And if you are already a believer, then I have one final request.

Do not stay silent.

Share this story.

Support ministries that help persecuted Christians.

Pray for Iran, for Afghanistan, for North Korea, for Somalia, for all the places where faith is a crime because there are thousands of Parisas out there right now facing the same choice you faced.

And they need to know they are not alone.

They need to know their sacrifice matters.

They need to know that heaven is watching, that the church is praying, that their stories will be told.

Be the one who tells them.

Thank you for watching.

Thank you for listening.

Thank you for caring.

And may the God who was with Pereza in the fire be with you wherever you are, whatever you are facing.

His name is Jesus and he is