My motherland Iran is bleeding, but I still believe in peace and dialogue

I’m Sophie — an Iranian American born and raised in Georgia to two Iranian immigrants. I married Michael, a Jewish American, and we’ve been together since we were 16.

Now, two decades, two kids and a lifetime of love later, we’re raising our children in a home full of culture and contrast.

They know the scent of saffron and the meaning of Shabbat. They eat tahdig and challah. They’ll grow up knowing their roots stretch across oceans and through generations of resilience.

From the start, we knew being in a multicultural, interfaith marriage would come with complexity. Now, that complexity has been met with heartbreak, confusion, anger and fear.

We’ve heard it all before: “All Muslims are terrorists.” “He should’ve married in the tribe.” Sometimes those words came from people we loved most. Maybe they meant harm. Maybe they didn’t. But still, we chose each other — and built a life that made space for both of our truths.

My family and friends have evacuated their homes in Tehran

We’ve worked hard so that our children see what peace can look like in the everyday, through dialogue, patience and love.

But lately, that peace feels fragile.

Credit: Sophie Kaufman

Sophie Kaufman

Tehran, where most of my family still lives, is under threat. My immediate family — my parents and brother — are the only ones here in America. Unlike many who grew up with their cousins and grandparents around the corner, I had to cross an ocean to see mine.

Every summer, I’d go to Iran. I learned early on that I was the lucky one — to be born in a country where I could travel freely, speak my mind and become who I wanted to be.

Now, Iran is under attack. The fear isn’t distant or abstract. It’s in my chest. It’s on my phone. It’s in the silence between texts from my family.

My aunts, uncles, cousins and childhood friends have evacuated their homes in Tehran. For now, they are safe. But safe is temporary in times like these.

They wait and pray; so do I.

Not a day goes by that I don’t think about Iran. It is in my DNA. In the recipes of my childhood. In my father’s bedtime stories about Persian poetry and his time in the army. Though I spent summers there as a child, though I carry its beauty in my bones — I’m a stranger to that land that lives inside me.

It doesn’t make sense to me how humans can choose violence

It’s a strange kind of knowing: to belong deeply to a place you don’t really know. I’ve only ever seen Iran in pieces — visits, conversations, memories — and yet I carry it with me always. It’s a place of beauty. Of dreams. Of reverence for art, language, history. A country that aches for peace but is suffocated by oppression.

I wish more people could know that Iran — the Iran of hospitality, poetry and soul.

And yet, I find myself constantly having to explain: Iranians are not the regime. The Iranian government does not speak for its people. In fact, it represses them the most. The Iranians I know are women rising with courage. Students risking everything for freedom. Artists creating through heartbreak. They are people full of light.

It will never make sense to me — how humans can choose violence. How we can watch others suffer and look away. Mothers across every border want the same thing: for their children to live in peace, with dignity and freedom.

And peace is possible. It starts in our homes, at our tables, in our willingness to listen. Let’s ask, let’s unlearn and let’s see people over politics.

Recently, our house has been full of tears and questions. We’ve cried. Argued. Talked. Hugged. And cried some more. I’ve felt the sting of silence from some who are closest to me — and the surprise of compassion from those I never expected.

Still, I return to the root of what I want my kids to understand: You don’t have to choose a side to feel someone’s pain. There is room for grief and grace. For Jewish and Iranian. For heartbreak and hope.

And who knows, maybe one day, we’ll take that trip to Israel. And then to Iran. That is the dream I hold on to. This is the thread of hope I refuse to let go of.