For The Sun After Long Nights is an unflinching record of Iranian women’s resilience and strength against their country’s oppressive regime. The authors, Nilo Tabrizy and Fatemeh Jamalpour, are Iranian journalists who corresponded and—in Jamalpour’s case—reported from the ground as the largest uprising in the history of the Islamic Republic unfolded.
The book centers the revolutionary moment when the “Woman, Life, Freedom” movement erupted in 2022 after a young Kurdish woman, Mahsa Jîna Amini, was arrested and beaten to death by the city’s morality police for not adhering to Iran’s hijab rule. Suddenly, at least two million Iranians, led by young women and members of Gen Z, took to the streets to express their outrage.. These young women, Jamalpour included, exchanged notes with poetry and slogans that fueled the resistance even as the regime cracked down with arrests, tear gas, and rubber bullets. Miles away in self-imposed exile, Tabrizy started covering the protests for The New York Times, analysing video and images shared by Iranians on social media. Caught in the cascade of events, Jamalpour and Tabrizy started exchanging emails despite the risk to Jamalpour, who could be imprisoned for communicating with a Western journalist. Together, they bore witness to young girls and elderly women standing up to police; young women cutting their hair; Iranians chanting “Death to the Islamic Republic.” This book captures that moment and then expands outward, recounting stories from the authors’ lives and those of the women who came before them. Together, Tabrizy and Jamalpour unveil the role of women in Iran’s revolutionary past, and deftly illuminate the blurry line between the personal and political.
I spoke with Fatemeh and Nilo via email about poetry as reclamation of Iranian identity, honor under patriarchy, the western gaze on Iran, and more.
Bareerah Ghani: It was fascinating to learn about the role of poetry and music in Iran’s revolutions. What are your thoughts on poetic expression as reclamation of land and identity, particularly in connection with Iranian women and their revolutionary spirit.
Nilo Tabrizy: Like many Iranians, I grew up in a home filled with the 14th century poet Hafez’s words. I wrote about the intersection between Persian poetry and Iranian identity for Guernica in 2020. Language is such an important point of connection to identity. For the many of us who can’t return to Iran, poetry is a lifeline to our land and history. When my parents recite classic Persian poetry for me, or when I hear lyrical protest chants, I can almost see and feel myself there. It’s the strongest way that I can connect with Iran from afar. The long history we have, dotted by many social movements and political upheaval, the way that our people always find hope after the darkest nights, all these moments being captured in verse is so very moving. It may seem impossible now to imagine a country where Iranians can live peacefully, journalists can report without state pressure, and people like me can return safely, but if Hafez’s own turmoil with hypocritic religious rulers moved and made way for important poetry, then Iranians can also find a path beyond this system that harms so many of its own.
Fatemeh Jamalpour: Poetry has always been political for us Iranians. For centuries, we’ve used literature and verse to challenge authoritarianism. Words have long been our weapons—more enduring than bullets, batons, or tear gas.
For the many of us who can’t return to Iran, poetry is a lifeline to our land and history.
During the One Million Signatures campaign against discriminatory laws in 2006, Iranian women introduced one of the first feminist anthems, with lyrics like: “I sprout on the wounds upon my body, Simply because I am a woman, a woman, a woman.”
During the “Women, Life, Freedom” uprising, lyrics and performances embraced a new language of agency and defiance. The protest songs, slogans, and symbols show how much ordinary Iranians are moving away from theocracy and toward secularization. This is no longer a nation passively waiting for change and a good day to come—it’s one rising to create it. In Iran, poetry is never just art. It’s survival. It’s rebellion. Its identity reclaimed.
BG: Beyond systemic oppressions like the hijab law, you also mention honor killing, domestic violence and forced marriages. As a Pakistani, I witness this in my country too and continue to be baffled by such mistreatment of women. How do you deconstruct the concept of honor as it’s defined and applied under a patriarchal regime?
NT: This is such a moving question, thank you. To me, honor is a communal concept. To define and redefine it, all members of a society need to be involved in its shaping, not just the few men in power. Women during the “Woman, Life, Freedom” movement challenged it by taking back their streets and voicing a refusal to let the Islamic Republic govern their dress and their society. To me, that’s exactly what honor and a feminist movement are—not just toppling a current system of power but envisioning something new in its place.
FJ: I came terrifyingly close to being killed by my educated father and older brother—an experience that, tragically, is not uncommon for women in Iran. Like you, I’ve seen firsthand how the concept of “honor,” shaped by patriarchal and religious ideologies, is used to justify violence and control over women’s bodies and lives. Yet a growing grassroots feminist movement—particularly in provinces like Kurdistan and Khuzestan—is challenging this brutal status quo. Local Kurdish and Arab NGOs and activists have been at the forefront, documenting honor killings, naming victims, sharing their photos, and demanding public attention. Their work has pushed both domestic and diaspora Persian-language media to cover these tragedies with greater empathy and urgency. And domestic journalists like Niloufar Hamedi have played a vital role in bringing these stories to light. She reported extensively on the murder of 16-year-old Romina Ashrafi, who her father beheaded with a sickle in northern Iran— in the name of honor. He was released just months later, protected by legal loopholes that grant leniency to male relatives under Iran’s Sharia-influenced penal code. In a system governed by deeply patriarchal laws, justice for victims like Romina is rare.
BG: As you two reflect on the revolutionary legacy of women in your own family, a chapter ends with this verse from Nigerian writer Ijeoma Umebinyo, “Nobody warned you that the women whose feet you cut from running would give birth to daughters with wings.” I would love for you two to talk about what inheritance means to you as Iranian women.
NT: I feel so grateful to have a strong connection with my family, and to have spent time with my grandparents before their passing. This is not always the case for immigrants who resettle to a faraway second country. I was perhaps the closest with my maternal grandmother whom I called Mamani. She was always incredibly independent. She lived with us for years at a time in Canada, going back and forth to Iran while being primarily based in Tehran. Widowed at a young age, she always reminded us that we need to carve our own paths and be able to face anything in this world. There was also an emphasis on education for the women in my family. My maternal and paternal great grandmothers were educated at a time when most girls didn’t know how to read.
In short, those are the two things I carry with me—independence in the sense of self-sufficiency and of creating one’s place in the world, and education, constantly being curious and learning as an endless life project.
FJ: That verse has always been deeply inspiring to me, because, as I wrote in the book, my mother was a professional sprinter before the 1979 Islamic Revolution. She dreamed of becoming a champion, but the revolution and the restrictions it placed on women’s lives stole that dream from her. Still, she never stopped encouraging me to pursue mine. Unlike many women of her generation, she never pressured me to marry or have children.
To me, that’s exactly what honor and a feminist movement are—not just toppling a current system of power but envisioning something new in its place.
I also learned the importance of education, independence, and self-reliance from my illiterate grandmother. I still hear her words in my head: “As a woman, your hand must be in your pocket.” But the fight for liberation is a collective one. We are the inheritors of that ongoing struggle, and it’s our responsibility to carry this unextinguished flame forward. It is the legacy of women who, even when bent under the weight of religious patriarchy, did not break. Instead, they sprouted again from their wounds.
BG: While discussing the killing and mistreatment of Balochis, a minority in Iran, an eye-witness notes that their marginalization continues because of a lack of media coverage. How can independent media help Iranians, especially minorities, achieve justice?
FJ: One of my most unforgettable memories as a journalist was the day I traveled to Ahvaz, in Khuzestan Province, to cover the spring floods of 2019. I went to the NGO coordination center to join volunteers heading to flood-affected areas. But no one was going to the Arab-majority neighborhood of Malashieh, on the outskirts of the city. No aid had reached them. No media had covered their plight. I was told, “They are Arab and Sunni and angry, it’s not safe to go there!” So I went there alone, with my camera rolling. I saw men, women, children, and older people—everyone—filling sandbags with their bare hands, building makeshift levees to protect their homes from the rising water. When I approached them for interviews, they told me they would only speak in their mother tongue—Arabic. Though I don’t know Arabic, I agreed immediately and later added Persian subtitles to the interviews. I respected their language, they trusted me. And then something beautiful happened—they began to dance the traditional Yazleh, jumping rhythmically on the levees while singing in Arabic, “this is our homeland and we protect it”. It was a decisive moment. These weren’t “minorities.” They were a united people facing a disaster with nothing but courage and bare hands and triumphing.
To me, this is precisely why we need local media that publishes in the native languages of Iran’s diverse communities—media that amplifies their voices. But for 46 years, the Islamic Republic has systematically denied such platforms. The regime’s policy has been consistent: suppress minority voices and erase their presence from the local and national narrative.
BG: You note that The New York Times, when covering women’s protests, would publish pictures of only those with their heads covered which was “the antithesis of the women’s stated values and beliefs.” What are your thoughts about the Western gaze on Iran? How have you navigated working for western media outlets?
NT: Since immigrating as a young child to Canada, I’ve gotten very used to living in an explanatory mode—always having to give detail and context about my culture and where I come from. This has served me quite well in the different newsrooms I’ve worked in because I’ve had to get comfortable with thoroughly explaining news stories about Iran and making the case for why we should be covering them. I was reluctant to cover Iran for years as it would mean living in self-exile. But when President Donald Trump first took office in 2017 and rolled out the Travel Ban which barred many Iranians from entering the US, I felt it was my duty to start reporting on my country. Especially when I looked around and saw that I was one of the only Iranian reporters at The New York Times. I realized that if I wanted the coverage to be more reflective of what my fellow Iranians were experiencing, I had to start meaningfully contributing to the report. Many editors that I spoke with were eager for nuanced views of Iran as it’s a difficult country to access language-wise and unsafe for journalists. I’ve been lucky to have many supportive and empowering editors who have pushed me to share my expertise on Iran.
FJ: While the Islamic Republic’s regime silences us, we are often erased by Western media as well. Many editors are more interested in numbers than names—statistics rather than stories. We’ve been asked by our American editors: “Were there more than ten casualties?” As if only when a body count crosses a certain threshold does it become newsworthy. That kind of framing reduces human lives to headlines. Even when Western journalists do cover Iran, the representation is often flattened. Iranians—and more broadly, Middle Easterners—are depicted as veiled, devout, anonymous figures, rarely afforded full complexity. After years of contributing to Western outlets, I’ve realized this isn’t simply a byproduct of censorship—it’s the legacy of a colonial gaze that continues to shape how our region is portrayed.
BG: The memoir mentions impartiality and journalist-activist binary as a central tenet in Western journalism. Both of you approach this aspect of journalism differently, can you elaborate on your approaches?
NT: Part of the reason why I moved to almost exclusively covering Iran using open source reporting methods in 2022 is because I want to work with digital evidence, which is much more irrefutable than traditional reportage. The latter type of reporting often relies on interviews and unnamed government sources. Open source reporting means using available material such as videos uploaded to social media, satellite imagery, ship tracking data, etc. It’s an accountability-based reporting. This is how I’ve navigated impartiality. Impartiality doesn’t mean that one has to be a robot. We’re all humans doing this work. Of course I have feelings about covering Iran, and indeed my compassion and empathy make me a stronger reporter who can connect with people in sensitive situations. Centering on a visual documentation approach is what keeps the reporting fact-based—I’m limited by the evidence at hand and therefore don’t inject opinions into investigations.
FJ: I don’t believe the core issue is impartiality—it’s about the dignity and responsibility of doing honest, responsible journalism. The kind of “impartiality” emphasized by Western editors tends to be selectively applied for their national coverage. For instance, during the recent Israel-Iran conflict, major outlets like CNN devoted airtime to regime-approved rallies, amplifying state narratives. Meanwhile, just blocks away, anti-war protests—where ordinary Iranians risked everything to voice dissent—went completely unreported. Where is the impartiality in that? Who is given visibility, and who is systematically erased?
As an Iranian journalist, I don’t see neutrality as a viable or ethical stance when we’re reporting on state violence, censorship, or human rights abuses. We’re not observing from a distance—we live with the consequences of the repression we report on. There’s no illusion of balance when you’re facing a regime that jails, tortures, and kills its critics. We don’t have the luxury of standing in the middle. In this environment, so-called “objectivity” can become a tool of erasure. For me, the priority isn’t detachment—it’s truth, integrity, and bearing witness. I’m not neutral in the face of injustice. I stand beside my people.
BG: What impact do you hope this book will have on Iranian community and solidarity?
NT: What’s beautiful and freeing for me is thinking about how from the moment the book is out in the world, it no longer belongs to Fatemeh and me. It belongs to our community. Our diaspora includes many resilient people living in exile. I immediately think of the Paris-based Kurdistan Human Rights Network that documents injustice against Kurdish people in Iran, or Haalvsh which does the same for Baloch people in southeastern Iran. I hope that by reading our reporting and personal narratives our wider community can connect with the resilience and strength of our people, both in and outside of Iran.
FJ: My hope is that this memoir sparks awareness and opens a space for empathy, not division. That it can serve as a bridge—just as Nilo and I found each other across the regime’s walls—especially between generations of Iranians. I deeply believe in the power of honest storytelling to remind us of what connects us, beyond fear or suspicion.
In a time when the regime has worked so hard to fracture our communities—at home and in exile—I hope this book helps rebuild a sense of solidarity. That it invites us to imagine and work toward a shared future, much like the vision of justice and freedom that Narges Mohammadi and so many of our sisters continue to hold onto, even from behind prison walls.
