Pathways with Saloomeh: The SAZ Method

03/20/2026

03/19/2026

I watched Hamnet the night before last. Then I watched it again last night. I’ll watch it again.

What Chloé Zhao did with this film is not something the rest of us can explain, or replicate, or fully understand. She is neurodivergent, and she has said it herself, that it is a superpower. That she feels everything more. That she sees what others miss. That emotional truth is not something she has to look for. It finds her first.

And it shows. God, it shows.

She took Shakespeare’s oldest language, the weight of Hamlet, four hundred years of grief already encoded in those words, and made it feel like it was happening right now, in your chest, for the first time. Only someone who feels the world the way Chloé Zhao feels it could have made this. The rest of us would have made something beautiful. She made something true.

Jessie Buckley carries the film in her body. Not her words. Her body. The way a mother holds a coat that will never be worn again. The way a room changes size when the person you love is gone from it forever.

I kept thinking about Iran.

About the mothers there, right now, tonight, learning how rooms feel different now. Whose children went into the streets believing in something and didn’t come home. Whose grief is not allowed a sound, not allowed a name, not allowed to exist out loud.

Agnes in that film screams with a grief that has no bottom.

Iranian mothers are carrying that same scream. In silence. In exile. In the dark.

A regime can take a child. It cannot take what that child meant. It cannot touch the love that outlives everything, that becomes art, that becomes memory, that becomes history.

Goodnight, sweet prince. All of them.
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03/16/2026

There is a trembling that comes before courage. A silence before the first word is spoken. This book is for those who walked toward the fire — not because the flames did not frighten them, but because the cold of silence was worse.
Black Sheep. Coming soon.
— Saloomeh Saz

03/16/2026

Some stories are not written. They are lived — in the streets, in the silence, in the space between fear and the first step forward.
Black Sheep is coming.
A book for every soul who was told to sit down and chose to stand. For every voice that trembled and spoke anyway. For every heart that burned in a world that demanded it stay cold.
This is not just a book. This is a reckoning.
Coming soon.
— Saloomeh Saz saloomehsaz.com

03/15/2026

They Called Him the Black Sheep — a book about the fierce courage and transformative power within those who dare to stand apart.
For everyone who was ever called “too much.”
You were always enough.
Coming soon.
StandApart HealingJourney CourageOverSilence BookAnnouncement TransformativePower

03/05/2026

مردم ایران همه چیز را فدا کردند. فقط دو طرف وجود دارد. تو کدام طرفی؟
آزادی_ایران اعتراضات_ایران دموکراسی بی_طرفی_خیانت_است ایرانیان_دیاسپورا

03/05/2026

The people of Iran gave everything for this moment. There are only two sides. Which one are you on?
IranProtests NoNeutral IranianDiaspora IRGC FreedomForIran

03/01/2026

We waited. We survived. Now we watch it fall. And we will not forget. And we will not forgive.
FreeIran

02/28/2026

For over four decades, the Islamic Republic has ruled Iran through fear, torture, imprisonment, and murder. For over four decades, Iranians inside Iran have risked everything — their lives, their families, their futures — to cry out for freedom. And for over four decades, those of us in exile have carried Iran in our hearts, waiting for this moment.
That moment is now.
I want to be clear about something. There were those who said we should not accept outside help. That Iran should free itself alone. I want to ask those people — how do you tell a prisoner locked in a cell to open the door and walk out by themselves? You cannot. Freedom sometimes requires support. It requires allies. It requires courage from those outside the walls as well as those inside them.
The help came. And I am grateful. To the United States. To Israel. To everyone who stood on the right side of history when it mattered most.
I have always stood on this side. I have always known where I belong. But I will be honest — I was too patient. Too tolerant of the noise, the obstruction, the ideology-driven opposition that has done nothing but throw sand in the path of Iranian unity for years. The lefties who romanticized a regime that tortured and killed their own. The ones who couldn’t set aside their ego or their envy long enough to stand with 90 million Iranians who are screaming for a secular, democratic future.
History already showed us what happens when we are too tolerant. Reza Shah was too tolerant. He left Iran with tears in his eyes rather than spill blood. And look what filled that vacuum. We cannot afford to repeat that lesson.
There is one transitional path forward. One voice of unity. And it is time for every Iranian — inside Iran and in the diaspora — to make a choice. Stand with the people of Iran, stand with unity, stand with a free and secular Iran. Or step aside.
I am picking my side. Loudly. Proudly. Unapologetically.
We will remember who stood with us. And we will remember who didn’t.
Zero tolerance. Not anymore.
— Saloomeh N. Saz

01/26/2026

“1001 Nights” feels like a prayer for a homeland forced to survive too many nights.

Tonight I’m thinking of Iran — of innocent lives taken, of families shattered, of names that should still be here: children, students, workers, sisters and brothers… stolen by bullets, prisons, and enforced silence.

But One Thousand and One Nights is also a story of survival. Scheherazade stays alive by refusing to stop telling the truth — one night, one story, one breath at a time. And that is what Iranians are doing now: voice after voice, name after name, refusing to disappear.

To every grieving mother. To every father searching hospitals and prisons. To every person who stood with empty hands and full courage: you are not forgotten. Your lives are not statistics. Your names are a vow we carry.

This regime can blackout the internet and rewrite the headlines, but it cannot erase what happened. Justice has a long memory. One day, those who ordered and carried out these crimes will answer for every life stolen.

Until that day: we listen, we remember, we sing — night after night — until Iran sees morning. امشب با «هزار و یک شب» (علیرضا قربانی و سحر بروجردی) یادِ ایران می‌افتم؛ یادِ سرزمینی که انگار باید بیش از توانش شب را تاب بیاورد.

به یادِ جان‌های بی‌گناهی که گرفته شدند… به یادِ خانواده‌هایی که از هم پاشیدند… به یادِ اسم‌هایی که نباید خاموش می‌شدند: کودک، دانشجو، کارگر، زن و مرد — قربانیِ گلوله، زندان، و سکوتِ تحمیلی.

اما «هزار و یک شب» فقط قصۀ تاریکی نیست؛ قصۀ ماندن هم هست. شهرزاد زنده می‌ماند چون از روایتِ حقیقت دست نمی‌کشد — شب به شب، قصه به قصه. و مردم ایران هم همین کار را می‌کنند: صدا پشت صدا، نام پشت نام، برای اینکه سکوتِ جهان شکسته شود و این شبِ بلند تمام.

به هر مادر داغدار، به هر پدر چشم‌به‌راه، به هر انسانی که با دستِ خالی و دلِ پر از شجاعت ایستاد: فراموش‌تان نمی‌کنیم. شما عدد نیستید. نام‌های شما پیمانِ ماست.

این رژیم می‌تواند اینترنت را قطع کند و حقیقت را پنهان کند، اما نمی‌تواند آن را نابود کند. عدالت حافظه‌ای بلند دارد. روزی خواهد رسید که آمران و عاملان این جنایت‌ها پاسخ خواهند داد — برای تک‌تک جان‌هایی که از ما گرفتند.

تا آن روز: گوش می‌دهیم، یاد می‌کنیم، می‌خوانیم — شب به شب — تا صبحِ ایران