In the years of my life I have read sentences that occupied my mind for months, touched my heart, caused me pain and healed me, moved me into action and, for weeks, deprived me of the ability to move. Sentences that have remained inscribed in my mind for the rest of my life.

Yet among all the powerful sentences I have read in my life, nothing has shaken my entire being like these few words, filled with will and pain.

Two short and complete sentences that, only recently, a student at the University of Tehran wrote for me and for us on a small placard placed upon one of the university pools that had been coloured like blood.

This small cardboard placard and these two handwritten sentences are the most powerful image and words I have encountered and experienced in my whole life.

Many times each day this image returns to me, accompanied by the flood of images of hundreds of beautiful young people who left this world to us, with all that must still be changed within it, and passed on.

It is no longer within my power, as one person, to live ordinarily. Behind all the moments of my ordinary life something is taking place that is not ordinary. I feel pain, grief, hope and motivation with equal intensity—an experience that is itself no longer ordinary.

The soil of this country is soaked in blood. I will take care not to live ordinarily.

Aydin Areta