There’s always a distance

For several years I have been trying to answer others why I don’t immigrate. In the beginning, I had countless answers but now I have nothing left to say in response except a hidden cry within a smile. The concepts of loving the homeland, dependence on the soil, and staying to build and develop the motherland have become so abstract that they are less likely to be the starting point for conversation, especially in the era when artists, writers, and intellectuals of my country either live outside Iran or die gradually in their silence and isolation.