She wanted to stand in front of the camera again, read the news from Iran, begin her day with Iran and end it with Iran.
Reza was one of those journalists for whom Iran was never merely the subject of his work.
You wake up in a city thousands of kilometers from Tehran, and the first thing you read is news from Iran.
They were people who thought about Iran, worked on Iran and wanted a better life for the people of Iran.
A day when an Iranian journalist’s share of their homeland is more than having it as the subject of their stories.
But sometimes life reverses the roles. The narrator becomes the subject of the story.
Today, Farahnaz Espad, one of Iran International’s finest news anchors, died of cancer at the age of 37. Hearing the news, I found myself thinking of Reza Haghighatnejad, an editor at RFE/RL’s Radio Farda and one of Iran’s most accomplished political journalists, who also died of cancer in 2022.
Perhaps because I see a bitter similarity in their fates. Two Iranian journalists; two young, talented and hardworking people whose lives were deeply bound up with Iran — with its news, its people, their concern for what was happening to it, and their hope that perhaps tomorrow life for Iranians might be a little better than it is today.
Both developed cancer far from Iran, and both died far from home.
I remember Farahnaz for her calm. For a dignity that even illness could not take from her. There was an unassuming humility and kindness in the way she carried herself, the kind some people bring into every room without even trying. She was hopeful. She was calm.
She wanted to go back to work.
Perhaps “going back to work” sounds like a small wish. But for Farahnaz, work was not merely a job. She wanted to stand in front of the camera again, read the news from Iran, begin her day with Iran and end it with Iran. Illness had kept her away from the newsroom, but it had not severed the thread connecting her to her professional life.
Reza’s death a few years ago was a reminder of much the same thing.
Reza was one of those journalists for whom Iran was never merely the subject of his work. Iran was his abiding concern — something he read about, wrote about, researched and worried about. He lived in exile, but much of his mind and his work remained in the country where he could no longer continue his professional life.
Even after death, his fate remained bitter. Reza died of cancer in Berlin at the age of 45. His body was sent to Iran so he could be buried in the soil he came from. But security forces seized his body after it arrived, preventing his family from saying goodbye to him as they wished and from burying him in his hometown.
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Sometimes I think exile, for an Iranian journalist, is more than geographical distance.
One day, you begin working as a journalist in Tehran, Shiraz, Isfahan or another city, with the simple idea that you will write about the society in which you live. Then a day comes when, to continue doing that same work, you have to leave your country. Your desk moves. Your newsroom moves. The language spoken on the street you walk down every morning changes. Your home changes. Your friends scatter. Years pass.
But the subject of your work does not change.
It is still Iran.
You wake up in a city thousands of kilometers from Tehran, and the first thing you read is news from Iran. You spend your day immersed in the crises, protests, elections, prisons, hopes and disappointments of people you may not have seen in person for years. You talk about the future of a country when you yourself do not know when you will be able to return to it without fear.
It is a strange contradiction: sometimes you spend most of your years away from your homeland while devoting most of your professional life and your thoughts to that same homeland.
Farahnaz and Reza were like that. And I do not want to remember them only through their illness and death. Cancer was the final chapter of their lives; it was not the whole book.
What came before mattered more: curiosity, work, concern, hope, friendship, laughter, long hours in the newsroom, stories written and read, questions asked, and that essential belief every journalist carries — that knowing the truth, telling it and understanding it more deeply still matters.
But there is something in both their stories that I find deeply painful.
They were people who thought about Iran, worked on Iran and wanted a better life for the people of Iran. Yet they themselves were denied one of the most basic possibilities of an ordinary life: to live at “home,” to work there, to grow old there and one day, when the time came, to close their eyes in their own country, surrounded by family and memories.
That should not be something one has to wish for.
Staying in your homeland should not be a privilege.
Exile should not be the price of journalism.
No one should have to choose between their profession and their country simply for speaking and writing.
And perhaps that is why today, as I write the news of Farahnaz’s death, I am not grieving only the loss of a friend and colleague. I grieve for a generation of Iranian journalists who packed their bags, built homes in other cities, spoke about their homeland from distant studios and newsrooms, and spent years of their lives waiting for an Iran they might one day be able to return to freely.
Some of them never got to see that day.
Reza did not.
Neither did Farahnaz.
A journalist is meant to bear witness to history, not become a victim of geography. A journalist is supposed to tell the news, not have their illness or death in exile become a headline written by their colleagues.
But sometimes that is exactly what happens.
Today we read Farahnaz’s name in the news, just as we read Reza’s a few years ago. And behind those two names, for me, one simple wish remains:
That one day Iran will be a place where its journalists can stay; where they can ask questions, write, make mistakes, write again, live, grow old — and not be forced away from “home” to do the work they love.
A day when an Iranian journalist’s share of their homeland is more than having it as the subject of their stories.
Until that day, we are left with the memory of those who are gone — and with stories that, this time, contrary to our professional habit, we have to write about the storytellers themselves.
May the memory of Farahnaz Espad and Reza Haghighatnejad live on.
