In my introduction for Fakhravar, I stressed that despite our differences in language and ethnicity, we as students are one. The student generation is always the generation of liberty because it is the generation of prosperity, progress, innovation, knowledge, and dreams. Fakhravar captivated the audience with his personal stories and then surprised them with a seemingly unexpected denunciation of war. “I don’t want war. No one wants war,” he explained, “but it is the Islamic Republic who does.” After Fakhravar was through, he received a standing ovation––as the Natan Sharansky of our time rightly deserves.

As I watched him absorb the admiration of the audience, I was reminded of a time I, too, was captivated by Fakhravar’s story.

Over the summer, he invited me to his apartment in Washington, D.C. I wore a tee-shirt with an image of the Statue of Liberty painted on it. I remember the smirk that shot to his face when I pointed it out to him. He remembered that when he saw the Statue for the first time, he was stunned by its beauty. As a student in Tehran, he had only seen it depicted with a blood drenched skull for a face.

During a delightful Iranian meal, I remember a joke he told me, one that is enjoyed amongst the people of Iran. A Mullah was found drowning in a pool. One man went to save him and said, “Here, give me your hand.” The Mullah gave no response and continued to flail his arms. Again, this time with more urgency, the man said, “Give me your hand!” Still, no response. Another man who had been watching this, called out to the man trying to save the Mullah: “Don’t you know that’s a Mullah? Don’t say ‘Give me your hand,’ tell the Mullah to take your hand!” It reminded me of the jokes those behind the Iron Curtain used to tell each other, just to keep from going insane.

Before the evening was through, I asked to see his written “confession” from prison. He smiled and fetched it out of his room. In the meantime, I was told by his friends that he wrote it not as a confession, but as an attempt to convince his torturers of the power of freedom. Fakhravar remembered that when he told his captors he had written a poem, one of them prepared to hit him, but on second thought, sat down and permitted him to read it. As Fakhravar read the multiple paged poem, complete with doodles, I noticed that he had returned to that very day at Evin prison. At times, Fakhravar’s Persian was so engaging and fluid that it became too difficult for his friends to translate for me.

Almost on cue, Fakhravar broke from the Farsi and began to read in English. He told me that the leaders of freedom in Iran, perhaps a reference to himself, are like shooting stars in the sky. They are stars which “all the stars in the sky could gather around and follow.”