Broken Melodies

    Their untold story hovers over our dining table as our guests thank us for dinner and compliment my mother's baked bread. As my father cleans the table, my mother and I replace the rice with fruit and the kabobs with cakes and nuts. I am waiting for the perfect moment to speak, and the couple across the table waits patiently for me to find it. 

    “Would it be okay if I ask the questions in Armenian and you translate them into Farsi?” I ask my father beside me. He smiles and nods and repeats my words to our guests, who assure me that it is perfectly fine. My mother had told me to prepare a list of numerous questions so that nothing would be left out. 

“I have only one question for you.” 

    The man places his tea on the table and looks at me, his creased dimples outlining his smile as he waits for me to continue. 

    “Ask us anything.” His wife’s soft eyes land on mine and I speak the simple question I have prepared.

    “Why did you leave Iran?”

    They look at each other, and I can see a halo of their shared memories make its way to the centre of the conversation as they try to find the beginning of their story. I notice his shoulders tense ever so slightly, and her fingers begin to fidget. 

    “I will keep your names out of everything. No one will find you. I just want the truth if you’ll let me hear it.”

    He nods with a knowing smile, pauses, and his voice softens. “We were victims of a religion. Today we are here, redeemed because He called us by name. Our story is a long one so if you need clarification about anything let us know.” 

    He looks at me and points to my notes.

    “You must remember the things I am telling you. I have known Islam and what it stands for. You must remember that not everyone believes these things and not everyone lives by them. However, this is the truth and it is the religion that almost killed our family.” 

    My father translates these words from Farsi to Armenian and I listen and engrave all his words in my mind.

    “There are a few differences between Islam and Christianity. One of the key details you need to know is that In Islam, god has no son. Muslims do not know God as a father. In Christianity, we call God our father and know that he calls us his children. In Islam, the veil is still up. We don’t commune with Allah. Even the prophets didn’t speak to god - they spoke to angels who spoke to god. In Christianity, the veil was torn. We commune and live with God in relationship to a father.”

    Some of this I already know. The rest is partly new to me.

    He speaks with his hands and looks directly at me. My mother has a discerning expression on her face; this is information she is very familiar with. A lifetime of ministry in Iran to England is engraved in her palms as she lifts her tea and takes a sip. 

    “I was around seventeen years old when my brother left Islam for Christianity. I remember not knowing how to respond and not knowing what to do. How dare he? I was very religious. I lived by the Quran and was close to my religious teacher at the Mosque. I studied Islamic theory. I was very devout.”

    The lines around his eyes crease as he speaks expressively. All his words are both personal and heavy. 

    “It is difficult to leave Islam. In Iran, if you convert to Christianity, your family leaves you. Your relatives leave you. Do you know how difficult it is to find a job?”

    I pause and think about all of the people I know who have lived through this. The men and women who have known our family and have sought refuge in churches and immigrated to America and England.

    “I went to my Mullah and told him about my brother. I asked him, “What do I do?” 

    My father translates and I listen eagerly. 

    “He told me I must kill him. He told me I would be blessed and rewarded by Allah. He told me that I had the option of someone else killing him instead but that my blessings would be mine no longer.”

    The room goes quiet and I nudge my dad's shoulder to translate. 

    “I went and spoke to my brother. 

        ‘He told me to kill you.’ I told him.

        He looked at me and said, ‘So kill me then.’

    He told me that I was mindless to follow a religion that tells me to kill my own brother.”

    I nod at my father's translation and take a deep breath. It is 10 o’clock and we have only just begun. 

    “This is the beginning of my testimony. It marks the time when I began to question Islam and read more about Christianity. I am telling you this because it sets the foundation for everything else that happened in Iran.

    As Muslims, we believed that Islam is the ultimate religion. There is Judaism and Buddhism but Islam is the only true religion. It is the ‘last complete’ one.”

    His hands move to symbolise the brackets and I notice that the gentleness in his voice never dies down.

    “After the conversation with my brother, I found a book at the mosque and began to read more about Christianity and what the Bible says. Only then I realised the difference. In my experience with Islam, I was taught that Christians are unclean. I was taught force and violence against enemies and against those who pose a threat to our faith. But I read that Jesus says to love our enemies and to pray for those who persecute us.”

    He pauses. “I couldn’t believe it. Jesus’ teachings and what I was reading; it was the first time I had read it for myself. It was as though someone had taken my blindfold off and I could see clearly for the first time in my life.

    I started to question what was true and from there, I started to walk toward the Truth that had found me.”

    His wife places a hand on his shoulder and rubs her thumb against his white-collared shirt. 

    “This is also just a backstory because when we met Jesus our lives changed.” She begins. “Not only in the context of Islam and that leaving it was almost impossible, but our involvement in the church grew and we soon became familiar with the danger that comes with being a Christian under the Islamic Regime of Iran.”

    With her soft way of implying that her husband may be trailing away from my original question of why they originally left Iran, he chuckles and gestures a sweet ‘thank you’ to her. 

    “As you all know there is the Iranian and Armenian church in Iran.” He looks at my mother and father and we all nod knowingly. One is led in Farsi and one is led in Armenian. The Islamic Regime is particular about keeping them separate because of the preservation of Islam in the Iranian people. 

    “I preached in the Iranian church. I led worship sometimes and we also had youth nights and prayer groups at our home.” He gestures to his wife who smiles back at him.

    “I knew that the government was watching us. We all did. We knew it was a matter of time before something happened.” He stops speaking and glances over his wife who squeezes his hand before she continues their story. 

    “There was a day where Iran's intelligence services confronted pastor Edward.” This pastor led the Armenian church my family and I attended in England and was heavily involved in the Iranian church both in London and in Iran. 

    “They had marched into his home and demanded a list of every person who served in the church.” I nearly miss the crack in her voice. There seems to be a fear disguised perhaps as exhaustion. I wonder what it must be like, to survive with so much grace. 

    “Pastor Edward spoke to us and told us what had happened. He told us that they had threatened him and all of us with our lives if we didn’t comply. He gave us the list of names to add onto.”

    For the first time in what seems like an hour, I speak up. “Did you? Give your names, I mean.”

    “We knew that would give them our names.” She gestures to herself and her husband. “ I cut a little of my palm and wrote my name in my blood. We both did. We wanted them to know that they could not threaten us with our lives. That if it came down to it? We would gladly lay our lives down for our faith.”

    “Why?” It is the only thing I can manage to whisper.

    This time her husband looks right at me and smiles as though I am asking him his most beloved question.

    “There is a truth to hold onto and it is this: ‘The Lord is with me; I will not be afraid. What can mere mortals do to me?’ It is written in Psalm 118. The Islamic Regime wanted us to be afraid. But for what? Our lives? 

    Tell me what is the biggest act of love?”

    I say nothing.

    “To lay down your life for someone. Would you do it for a stranger? For someone guilty of the worst crime imaginable. Would you stand in front of the judge and say, ‘Take me instead.’ Would you lay your life down for someone who didn’t deserve it? Would I?”

    He smiles in disbelief. “That is what Jesus did on the cross, remember? He gave up his life so that through him we are saved. And in his resurrection, He is our salvation. I could never deny the truth that saved me, Noella.”

«وقتی آزادی را می‌شناسی، چرا به سوی اسارت روی می‌آوری؟ وقتی حقیقت را از طریق فیض بشناسی، آیا از آن فرار 

می کنی؟»

When you know freedom, why turn toward captivity? When you know the truth through grace, would you run from it?”

    I stay silent.

    “Their demand was an invitation of fear. So we wrote down our names in the blood they sought to shed because fear and anxiety cannot live here. Jesus said I am the way and the truth and the life. Don’t you see? They could not take anything from us.”

    My father asks his first question. “Was this during Brother Hayk's arrest?” 

    I look over at my mother with a confused expression, silently begging her to explain. She quietly reminds me of this man she has mentioned before. The man that was killed in Iran for his faith and I remember the stories of fear that crept into the lives of Christians in Iran at the time.

    The woman across the table speaks up. “Before we talk about Brother Hayk you need to know that it wasn’t only Iran. This persecution expands to other countries. I am telling you this in brackets.” She motions the parentheses with her hands. “This is for you to understand the bigger picture here. It was not only a matter of government control but of religion.” 

    I don’t blink.

    “Türkiye is one example of an experience we had. There was one time when we were going there and they stopped us to ask why. They said, ‘Are you missionaries or visiting?’ We told them missionaries.”

    I hold my breath.

    “You tell them this part.” She looks at her husband and takes a deep breath and begins.

    “They said to us, ‘Look, we bear no responsibility for you. You are Christian and here to act as missionaries. If people beat you on the street you are on your own. If people kill you on the street you are on your own.’”

    Her husband looks over at me and my father. “They told us that there was a priest who had been in Türkiye previously - not too long ago. He was invited by a group of Muslims to have dinner and they had cut off his head and put it on the table right then and there.”

    I feel the colour drain from my face as I picture the bloody head on the table. I can almost smell the drops of blood as she tells the story. My father mutters to himself in disbelief and my mother is speechless. 

    “I am telling you this so that you know the truth. It was not only Iran. It was also Islam. Do you understand? This is why we are telling you about Türkiye. It was never safe for us”

    I feel a sort of anger rush through me. I cannot fathom that these realities are invisible to so many people in the Western world. I scribble down more notes and I feel him watching me. He stays quiet and waits for me to respond. I have nothing to say. 

    “As important as it is for us to tell you this story, it is important for you to remember two things.” 

My hand stops moving and my eyes meet his wife’s. “One,” she smiles gently, “you shall never fight and bicker with Muslims.” I realised that she was not advising me, but telling me. 

    “There are good people with strong minds and kind hearts. We know of many who are honourable and compassionate - those who welcome others with open arms and gentleness. We are telling you about Islam and the blood that has been spilt because of it. We sitting here talking to you is to explain to you that we almost died because of this religion. This is what we know. The religion that claims peace in the west, murdered people in front of our eyes and forced us to flee to America.” 

    I don’t think I blinked once as she spoke; the softness in her voice never left her. 

    “The second is this. The reason we are alive to tell you all of this is not because we were careful. It is not because of our commitment to each other and the survival of our family. It was because of Jesus. You know him just as I do. His love? It led us out of Iran to your home today.” 

    The man across the table sits with calm eyes that soften every time he speaks. He looks straight at my father and puts his hand on the table. “You asked about brother Hayk earlier. Hayk had just been arrested. He wasn’t killed yet and none of us had any idea of what they were doing to him. There was a day at church when I had been asked to lead prayer since Hayk had been detained and wasn’t present to lead that day. Right before I went up I was secretly delivered a note from an usher that said that three men were sitting in the back row who were recording everything we were saying. It warned me not to mention anything about Hayk or of the recent events.”

    His fingers outline the shape of the small paper. “They are watching you.” He quotes the last sentence of the note.

    His words are more tangible for my parents who have lived through similar threats during their time living in Iran. There was a time when my dad was handing out a Bible to a man who happened to be a member of Iran's intelligence service. 

    “What you are doing is punishable by death.” He had told my father. 

    They understand what it means to tiptoe the line that could cost them their life. One wrong word, one wrong step. I try to grasp every word before they float away as my father translates the words that I cannot help but gasp at. 

    “But it wasn’t just us.” The woman next to my mother mentions in a quiet voice. “They would follow our daughter home - the intelligence agency. Do you know how many times she came home and said, 

‘Mum there was a man who watched me as I left school? He follows me, always a few steps behind. I don’t know who he is and I am scared he will do something to me.’”

    Her voice is breaking as she recites her daughter's words and my father is holding back

tears as he translates the few words I don’t understand. And as our guests slash open the wounds of their past, I notice their vacant eyes avoiding the gaze of those who have wronged them. Yet they wear no anger or malevolence but rather a peace in their recollection. 

    “Her teachers and classmates would talk about how unclean she was - that she was a Christian.” There is a shadow of unspeakable grief in her words and I tilt my head and look down in sympathy.

    She then gestures toward her husband who sits with furrowed brows, his mind drifting away on account of resurrected memories. “He has been arrested three times. They told us they would kill us if we didn’t leave the country. They had hacked our phones. I would be on the phone and could hear a third person muttering, wait wait- what is she going to say? We found minuscule cameras hidden in plant pots and etched between cracks in the walls. Our lives could be taken from us at any moment but we knew the One who holds them. Despite what they heard from walls and devices, our lives were never in their hands. But we had children to think about, and a future to plan.

We knew that something had to change.”