Mohamad Faridi's story starts in a family of martyrs.
An uncle killed in the Iran-Iraq war, streets named for the dead, a cousin's face painted on the local mosque.
He grew up, he says, idolizing a 13-year-old who strapped a grenade to himself and ran at a tank, and at 21, fresh out of IRGC service, his nightly prayer was to be granted the same death.
Then an old friend, calmer than he remembered, told him the sacrifice he'd been chasing was already paid. That was the hinge.
He converted to Christianity, got caught praying by his father, and ran, three years underground in Iran's home-church network before fleeing to Turkey ahead of the arrests.
From the inside, he describes a country most of his generation has quietly left behind, mosques shuttered, faith abandoned, a people he says are exhausted by financing wars they never wanted.
His read on what comes next is bold and contested, and it's where the conversation got its sharpest.
He left me sitting with one image in particular: a hostage, bound and buried in a basement, while the world shouts at him to free himself.
Is that help, he asks, or just a clean conscience?
@FaridiMohamad
