Some people don't choose to leave. Leaving chooses them.

Post revolution Iran has its own quiet logic. Keep your head down. Blend in. Survive. But for those whose very existence puts them at odds with the state, invisibility is not a long-term strategy – it's only a matter of time.

Behrooz has built a carefully constructed life in Tehran. Educated in Paris, working as an interior designer, he moves through the city with practised caution. Then a single night – a raid on a private club, an officer with a camera, a list of names – tears that careful life apart. Everything he has protected about himself is suddenly exposed.

Far to the east, near the Afghan border, Solayman has grown up knowing a different kind of hardship. The youngest son in a large farming family, he is quick, curious and hungry for a world larger than his village. Working at a market stall in Zabol opens a door – but the door he eventually walks through leads into trafficking, and then into something far more dangerous. The Taliban do not forgive a failed shipment.

Two men. Two lives shaped by forces they didn't invite and can't control. Each, alone, reaches the same conclusion – that staying in Iran is no longer possible. The journey toward the West is desperate and uncertain, the papers forged, the risks real. And somewhere along the way, their paths finally cross.

Iran, We Ran is a novel about what people leave behind and what survival actually costs. It is told with restraint, precision and a deep understanding of the human stories behind headlines about migration, persecution and displacement. A novel that draws you into lives shaped by politics, identity and the need to belong.