My name is Firuz Bahram. A common name in Iran that reminds everyone of Firuz Bahram High School for Zoroastrians in Tehran. My job is accounting; I am a Muslim , live in Tehran and work in two companies.

You must be familiar with the hardships of life in Iran today. For me, who has wife and two kids, life does not go on with one salary and I have to find a night job in a restaurant. Of course, I am an accountant there too..... I gave you a headache. I have a repetitive and boring life. My love is football and I watch European leagues, especially the English Premier League.

Early in the morning of Friday, June 13, 2025, around 5 am, I was returning home from the Parrot's Beak restaurant (my second job). As soon as I got close to home, I heard a big explosion and......... nothing more.

When I opened my eyes a few hours later, I was in purgatory. Purgatory is a place like triage in hospitals. The place where you are determined according to your deeds in the material world, whether you are from heaven or hell, or the summation of your performance is such that you are fifty-fifty. Here, your heart's desire, whether you want to go to heaven or hell, and the opinion of the higher authorities are important. According to authentic narrations, if the results of the investigation are such that you should go to hell, there are reputable law firms in the netherworld that will lobby for you to go to heaven on condition that you pay heavy attorney fees.

In the netherworld, there is a large hall, just like the Vancouver airport arrivals; of course, with crappy ventilation. The netherworld employees will review your file for a while and ask you questions. I immediately understood from the words of the officer in front of me that at the same time as I reached the door of the house; a powerful missile hit the third floor of our building, where one of the high-ranking government officials lived, and as a result of the shrapnel from that car, I was also blown to pieces.

I tried very hard to understand from the officer's eyes what my fate would ultimately be? Heaven or hell?

It was as if he had also noticed my concerns; He cleared his throat and said: Unfortunately, your name does not appear in the list sent by the Martyr Foundation for June 13. I think because you were a leftist in your youth, the Martyr Foundation did not recognize you as worthy of martyrdom. If you were confirmed as a martyr, you would have gone straight to heaven and would have been bathing with the maidens by the Kowsar spring, drinking mocha coffee with honey from Mount Lebanon, betting with Jesus and Moses on the results of next week's Premier League matches, and responding to the smiles of Andalusian girls who have the last chicory flowers of the Iberian Peninsula in their hair,

 You are Blackcliff.

 We have received the forensic report on your death. You are truly a martyr; you were killed during the war and by enemy projectile weapons. ..... Anyway, purgatory also has its own rules and regulations. We have written to the Martyr Foundation and asked for their explanation about you. In similar cases, the name of the protester in question would have been immediately added to the list and sent. But as the old saying goes, we have not yet received a cable about you. Be patient. Tonight, Moliere's comedy The Miserly Man will be performed at the Barzakh Amphitheater. It's free; if you're looking for variety, you can watch the film A Night in Hell by Arham Sadr.... Next person.... That is, get up and go. The interviewer warned that you should not disturb the women in the barzakh. If you file a complaint, you will get into trouble. If we receive a new message from the Martyr Foundation, we will send you a message on WhatsApp. Don't turn off your mobile phone. The barzakh officer looked at me and said: A 26-digit code that is a combination of letters, numbers, and conventional English characters will be sent to you; in future correspondence, just mention it.

Firuz Bahram is practically dead. Someone will recognize you here and even in heaven and hell with that code.

There was a kind of empathy and compassion in the eyes of the barzakh officer. He offered me a cold soft drink with a green straw and said that you should go to the Z shed. It is exactly like the African-Asian refugee camps on the Greek island of Samos. You must stay until there is enough evidence to reject or accept your admission to heaven, or you will end up in hell.

I stared at the face of the purgatory officer. I didn't even have the nerve to get up from my seat. One of the security guards came to me and somehow told me that it would be better to leave the hall and go to the prison. That's what I did.

When I entered the Z saloon, the first thing that bothered me was the strong stench. I was only a spirit and my body was powdered, and it was almost as if I didn't have a spirit and it was already turning into smoke. The smell of rotten eggs, stables, chicken coops, and... pigsties...

It was semi-dark inside the prison. When my eyes got used to the darkness, the first thing I saw in the crowd was a young man who looked exactly Iranian, but he had a white kippah (sweatshirt) on his head, just like the Jews, and a tallit shawl on his shoulders. I thought he was an Iranian Jew, but when I went further, I realized that he had a small David flag on his chest and looked very Iranian; about 40 years old, almost my age. He was trying to dial a number on his mobile phone. He was shouting in Persian. I went near him. I waited until he calmed down. The only difference between him and me was that he wore a Jewish kippah and tallit.

I happily extended my hand to him and said: How are you, friend? It seems that you have the same problems as me. He spoke Persian very fluently and like a Tehrani. He quickly explained to me that he is a Jew and lives in Israel, but is originally Iranian. He immigrated to Israel from Iran a few years ago... He knows Persian better than Hebrew and has memorized his songs, especially those of Ahdiyeh, Wigan, Aref, and of course, Agassi and Sousan. He introduced himself: Moshe Carmel..

He still had a business card from that day with him that he gave me. I managed to get it. Moshe Carmel; Moshe Carmel 

Of course, I couldn't read the Hebrew title of משה קרמל. I really wanted to hear his story.

I forgot to mention that all residents of the Barzakh are given a credit card or a daily allowance of $65.50 upon arrival to cover their immediate needs, and they can get food and drinks from the Barzakh free shops until their situation is clarified. I invited Moshe to a cup of coffee at the Hazrat Ibrahim Cafe, which has a monopoly on selling drinks here. There is no Starbucks here.

Finally, I was surprised to see that Moshe Carmel, just like me, had been killed on his way home from work, just a few hours after me, around noon on a Friday, when an Iranian missile hit his building in the suburbs of Tel Aviv. Moshe's problem was that the letters sent by the Israel Civil Defense Organization did not mention Moshe's name as a martyr קָדוֹשׁ מְעוּנֶה or kadosh me'une. The letter stated that Moshe had received an air raid warning message; He could have gotten himself to the shelter and saved his life. So it was his own negligence that killed him; in short, Moshe was counted as one of the casualties of the war, not a martyr. He could not use the services of the Israeli Martyr Foundation and go to heaven. The Israeli government does not provide any legal protection to careless people in purgatory.

Moshe was trying to file a protest with the Forbidden Apple of Purgatory law firm. Moshe’s argument was that he could not have gotten himself to the nearest shelter in the short time he had and would have been killed anyway (sorry, martyr).

Over the next few days, Moshe and I became very close. He explained to me that his friends in Tehran knew him as Parviz, and that Moshe was a title that was only common in religious circles and among family members.

A month after the war ended, Parviz and I came to the conclusion that pursuing our protests in court was a waste of time. There must be a shortcut that would get us to heaven.

Last night, Parviz gave us some good news. He said that one of his friends and relatives is a high-ranking Mossad employee......... I didn't understand at all what this connection had to do with solving our problem. When he saw me eager, he explained to me again that there was an energy crisis in Paradise as well. The traditional power plants in Paradise cannot produce enough electricity to keep it cool. Since the time of Prophet Yunus, who had gone into the belly of the fish, these power plants have not been overhauled or repaired....... Again, I didn't understand the connection between this crisis and our own form..... Finally, Parviz said the key sentence: At night, fuel tankers from hell carry gasoline, diesel, fuel oil, and liquefied gas to Paradise and pass through purgatory. Most of their drivers are Belgians. We can get along with them. We get their account numbers in Brussels and transfer money for them from Iran through exchange offices. What's the deal? Firuz Khan.

Now that I'm talking to you, we've been living in Paradise for about 10 days. It's even more boring here than in the real world..

The nymphs here are beautiful, but as Hafez says, they have no sense of humor. No man in heaven enjoys the company of these nymphs. They are just like the talking dolls of artificial intelligence on earth. Milk and honey flow in the rivers, but no one has anything to eat.

Now I understand why Eve was in such a hurry to leave here. Heaven is really boring. Parviz and I sit every day and look for ways to escape from heaven. We went to Aristotle, Einstein, and Socrates, and they all said: If you were a doctor, you would have cured yourself... If we knew a way, we would have escaped from heaven ourselves.

The final solution that came to our mind is to repeat the story of Adam and Eve. We look for the forbidden tree to eat and be expelled from heaven. I'm wondering what Adam and Eve did the first day they arrived on earth after being expelled from heaven. If I were them, I would have eaten street food and drunk lemonade with Parviz, as the French say, and choked ourselves. An earth full of problems, war, and death is much better than a monotonous and boring paradise.

Parviz and I go to Villa Street in Tehran every day in our imaginations. Maragheh Alley. The building and headquarters of the Israeli Airlines Company, or El Al, in that four-story building that has been empty and abandoned for so long. We hope that in the near future they will hire the two of us as employees.

Most of the time I whisper a poem to myself:

If only we had burned the apple orchard of Paradise

All this humiliation and shame was not the answer for man

In a world of war, shame, and seventy-colored people

There was no way to the destination of faith

Grief became a human twin and sadness became a duty

All our lives, happiness was not possible

Our Joseph Iqbal died in the well

If only this generation of mankind was not in the longing for Canaan