By JUAN COLE

Nothing takes me from the butterflies of my dreams
to my reality: not dust and not fire. What
will I do without roses from Samarkand? What
will I do in a theater that burnishes the singers with its lunar
stones? Our weight has become light like our houses
in the faraway winds. We have become two friends of the strange
creatures in the clouds … and we are now loosened
from the gravity of identity’s land. What will we do … what
will we do without exile, and a long night
that stares at the water?   — Mahmoud Darwish

Ebrahimi Nabavi was an Iranian satirist.  On January 15, 2025,   he took his life at the age of sixty four in Silver Spring, Md.   He never felt at home, whether in Brussels or in the vicinity of Washington, D.C.  He always wanted to go back to Iran. He was one of the reformists who took on the mantle to criticize the Islamic Republic.   He was imprisoned.  He shared the same block with other famous prisoners.

He did stand-up comedy.  He wrote satirical views on different media outlets, first in Iran and later in Europe and in the U.S. 

I didn’t always agree with him.  He wrote an article to which I felt the need to reply.  I wish I had known him better.

But what happens to luminaries who die in exile, either naturally or by taking their own lives?

In 1942, Stefan Zweig took his life in Brazil.   He had seen the devastation of his homeland Austria and, later Germany, by the Nazis.  He could not tolerate it.

Such people tend to be more sensitive than others.  They are not weak but more emotional perhaps.  Or this world of ours is too much for them to handle.

Gholamhossein Saedi, a renowned playwright, a physician from Tabriz was one of them.  He immigrated to Paris. He never liked the city, even though he tried.   He wrote his essays and tried very hard to become part of Parisian intellectual life.  He said, I can relate to Paris, but Paris is not Tehran.  My pen does not write well in Paris. 

“All the buildings in Paris are like a theatre décor.   I feel as if I am living in a post card,” he wrote.

In a way he also committed suicide.  He died at the age of 49.

I met him in Tehran after the Revolution at his house and then, much later, in Paris.  He was not the same man.

He was laid to rest in Père Lachaise where many famous people are buried.   A few weeks ago, his tombstone was desecrated in a terrible way. Someone urinated on it.

Saedi was a famous person; he had been incarcerated by the Shah and then by the Islamic Republic.  A few of his plays were turned into films, among them the Cow by the famous film maker, Dariush Mehrjoui.

Ebrahim Nabavi took his life perhaps because he could not stand to be away from his homeland.

Who knows?

What drives some people to suicide?  

They both shared one thing:   A long-lasting love for Iran.  An Iran they could neither live in nor leave behind.

Juan Cole is the founder and chief editor of Informed Comment. He is Richard P. Mitchell Professor of History at the University of Michigan He is author of, among many other books, Muhammad: Prophet of Peace amid the Clash of Empires and The Rubaiyat of Omar Khayyam. Follow him on Twitter at @jricole or the Informed Comment Facebook Page