Far-Flung Postcards is a weekly series in which NPR's international team shares moments from their lives and work around the world.
Walking the streets of eastern Turkey, I stumbled across an underground Iranian disco.
Inside I met a Sufi dervish, a young protester, a former prisoner — men, women and entire families came to dance to a lively Persian, Arabic and Turkish DJ set.
The festive atmosphere hid stories of pain. Some of the revelers had moved to Turkey years ago, lured by higher wages and a freer political climate than in Iran. For some, their life here is one of exile; they finished prison sentences or fled the threat of imprisonment and left their families behind.
One young man I met had just left Iran the week before, with his sick mother. He described intense bombing and shelling in Tehran, where he's from, as U.S. and Israeli strikes began on his country in February.
He described harshly conflicting emotions about the war: "I love my country. This is my home. This is my everything … but this government destroy[ed] my youth and my future," he said.
And under the strobing disco lights, he felt hope tinged with homesickness as he pondered his future outside of Iran.
See more Far-Flung Postcards from around the world:
- Greetings from Nyeri, Kenya, where grandmothers help coach the next generation
- Greetings from a Shanghai temple where you can ward off bad luck in the Year of the Horse
- Greetings from Southwest Papua, which has some of the world's richest marine biodiversity
- Greetings from Jordan's Wadi Rum desert, where patches of green emerge after winter rains
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