🩸Daryā-ye Khoon: Why This Song Had to Be Written

There are nights when sleep feels like a betrayal.

The last days have been like that - heavy, fractured, impossible to rest through. As news from Iran filtered through broken connections, rumors, images, and messages that vanished as quickly as they appeared, it became clear that something larger than exhaustion was at work. Silence was being enforced. And silence, when imposed, is violence.

What we have been witnessing in Iran is not new - but it is escalating. Protests that began with economic despair and long-standing injustice have been met with overwhelming force. Streets have been flooded not with answers, but with fear. Communication has been cut. Trials have been rushed. Hospitals have filled. Families have been left with questions instead of bodies, with memories instead of goodbyes.

In moments like these, art is not a luxury. It is a necessity.

Daryā-ye Khoon was written as a response to that enforced silence. The phrase itself - “Ocean of Blood” - is not poetic exaggeration. It reflects the scale of pain, the feeling that grief has overflowed its banks and touched everyone, whether they are inside Iran or watching helplessly from the outside.

The song moves between English and Persian because this pain moves between worlds. Between those who live it daily and those who carry it from afar. Between public outrage and private mourning.

Lines like “ما دیدیم… ما شنیدیم…” (“We saw… We heard…”) are not metaphors. They are refusals. Refusals to accept denial. Refusals to forget. Refusals to let history be rewritten by those in power.

The Azadi Tower on the cover art stands wrapped in the colors of the Iranian flag, rooted in blood. It is not there to shock. It is there to remind us that symbols belong to people, not regimes - and that freedom is not an abstract idea when its cost is counted in lives.

This song does not pretend to save anyone. Music cannot stop bullets or undo executions. But it can remember. It can carry names across borders. It can say, clearly and without apology: this happened, and it matters.

If you are listening from Iran, know that you are not invisible.

If you are listening from elsewhere, know that attention is a responsibility.

The night will end.

But memory must not.