My name is Grace, but that was not always my name.

I was born Sak Sakane, daughter of Imam Muhammad Hassan in a city in Iran that I cannot name for reasons you will understand as my story unfolds.

When I tell people I was declared dead by my own family, they look at me with confusion and disbelief.

How can someone be declared dead when they are still breathing, still walking, still living? But this is my story.

This is what happened when I chose to follow Jesus Christ.

Let me take you back to the beginning to the girl I used to be.

My earliest memories are filled with the sound of the call to prayer.

Hello viewers from around the world.

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Before Grace continues her story, we’d love to know where you are watching from and we would love to pray for you and your city.

Thank you and may God bless you as you listen to this powerful testimony.

Five times a day, every day, the adhan would echo through our neighborhood from the speakers of our mosque.

My father’s voice was the one calling the faithful to prayer.

Even now, years later, and thousands of miles away, I can still hear it in my mind.

It was a beautiful voice, rich and deep, carrying across the rooftops and narrow streets of our city.

As a little girl, I felt pride when I heard it.

That was my father.

That was my baba.

Our home was attached to the mosque.

We lived in rooms that shared a wall with the place where hundreds came to pray every Friday.

[snorts] I grew up with the smell of old carpets and rose water, with the sound of men’s voices reciting the Quran, with the sight of shoes lined up at the entrance, dusty from the streets outside.

This was my whole world.

My father was not just any imam.

He was respected, even feared.

People came to him with their problems, their questions, their disputes.

He would sit in his study surrounded by books, his fingers stained with ink, his prayer beads always in his hand.

I remember watching him from the doorway, too afraid to interrupt, waiting for him to notice me.

Sometimes he would smile and call me to sit with him.

Other times he would wave me away without looking up.

I learned quickly to read his moods, to know when to approach and when to disappear.

He was a man who lived and breathed Islam.

Everything in our home revolved around faith, around rules, around what was halal and what was haram.

My mother covered completely in black whenever she left the house.

My older sisters did the same once they reached the age of nine.

I knew that would be my future, too.

There was never any question about it.

My mother was gentle and quiet.

She moved through our home like a shadow.

Always serving, always cooking, always cleaning.

I rarely saw her sit down.

I remember her hands most of all, always busy, always working.

She would braid my hair in the mornings before school, her fingers quick and efficient.

She would kiss the top of my head when she was done.

a small gesture of affection in a home where open displays of love were rare.

I loved my mother deeply, but I also saw her sadness.

It lived in her eyes, in the way her shoulders curved forward, in the silences that stretched between her words.

She had married my father when she was 15.

She never told me this directly, but I heard it from my aunts.

She had no choice in the matter.

Her father had arranged it and she had obeyed.

This was the way things were done.

This was what good Muslim girls did.

Our family had privilege in our community.

People respected us or at least they respected my father.

But with that respect came pressure, especially for us children.

We were always being watched, always held up as examples.

My brothers had to be the most pious, most studious boys in the mosque.

My sisters had to be the most modest, most obedient girls.

And I, the youngest daughter, had to be perfect.

I learned to read the Quran before I could fully understand Farsy.

My father insisted on it.

I would sit with him in the evenings, struggling over the Arabic words, his hand ready to strike the table when I made a mistake.

He never hit me, but the sound of his hand slamming down was enough.

I learned to be afraid of disappointing him.

When I turned nine, everything changed.

This was the age when I had to start covering my hair.

When I had to begin praying five times a day, when I was no longer allowed to play freely with boys in the neighborhood.

I remember the day my mother wrapped the hijab around my head for the first time.

She adjusted it carefully, tucking away every strand of hair.

She looked at me with tears in her eyes, and I did not understand why she was crying.

Now I think I do.

She was watching me enter the cage she had lived in her whole life.

The women’s section of our mosque was separated from the men by a tall wooden partition.

We could hear the prayers, hear my father’s voice leading the men, but we could not see them.

We prayed in our own space, away from the eyes of men, away from the main hall.

I used to peek through the cracks in the wood, watching the men bow and prostrate in neat rows.

I wondered why we had to be separated.

I wondered why their prayers seemed more important than ours.

But I never asked these questions aloud.

School was my escape.

Even though it was a strict Islamic school where we learned more about the Quran than anything else, but I loved learning.

I was good at mathematics and science.

I would lose myself in problems and equations, in the logic of numbers that always added up correctly, unlike the confusing rules that governed my life at home.

My teachers noticed.

They said I was bright, that I had potential.

This pleased my father, but it also made him nervous.

A girl who was too educated might become difficult to marry off.

By the time I was a teenager, the questions I had been swallowing my whole life began to push harder against my throat.

I looked around at the women in my life and saw their limited futures.

My oldest sister had been married at 17 to a man she barely knew.

She seemed to disappear into his household, her light dimming with each passing year.

My second sister was engaged to a cousin.

She cried herself to sleep every night for a month after the arrangement was made.

But by morning, she would put on a smile and say it was Allah’s will.

I began to notice other things, too.

A neighbor woman came to our door one evening, her face bruised, her lip bleeding.

She begged my father to intervene with her husband.

I watched from behind my mother as my father listened to her story.

Her husband had beaten her because dinner was not ready when he came home.

My father told her to be more obedient, to try harder to please her husband.

He quoted verses about wives submitting to their husbands.

He sent her back home.

I never forgot the look on her face as she walked away.

Another time, I overheard my father and his colleagues discussing a case.

A young woman in our city had been caught with a boyfriend.

They were not married, and they had been seen together in public.

The religious council was deciding her punishment.

I listened in horror as these men, these supposedly holy men, discussed lashing her in public.

No one mentioned punishing the young man.

It was her fault.

They said she had tempted him.

She had brought shame on her family.

These moments collected inside me like stones, weighing me down.

But I was terrified of my own thoughts.

To question Islam was to question everything.

It was to risk not just punishment in this life, but eternal damnation in the next.

I prayed harder, trying to push away my doubts.

I memorized more Quran, hoping that submission would bring peace, but the questions would not leave me alone.

My father was not cruel in the way some men were.

He did not beat us.

He provided well for our family, but there was a harshness to him, a rigidity that allowed no room for doubt or discussion.

His word was law in our home, and his word was always backed by religion.

If I asked why I could not do something, the answer was always the same.

Because it is not permitted in Islam.

Because it is haram.

Because Allah has commanded it.

There was no space for my own thoughts, my own feelings, my own desires.

I watched my mother serve my father and my brothers first at every meal, eating only after they were satisfied.

I watched her ask permission to visit her own mother.

I watched her shrink herself to fit into the small space she was allowed to occupy.

And I knew with a certainty that made me physically sick that this was my future, too.

I would be married off to a man of my father’s choosing.

I would spend my life serving him, bearing his children, obeying his commands.

My education, my dreams, my own self would be buried under the weight of duty and religious obligation.

But then something unexpected happened.

something that would change the course of my entire life.

I was 17 years old in my last year of secondary school when my mathematics teacher called me aside one day.

She told me about a scholarship program for international students.

Several universities in Europe and America were offering full scholarships to talented students from Iran.

She thought I should apply.

She said I was smart enough that I should not waste my potential.

I laughed at her.

The idea was absurd.

My father would never allow it.

Girls from our family did not go abroad to study.

Girls from our family got married and had children.

That was our purpose, our path.

But my teacher was persistent.

She gave me the application forms.

She told me to at least try to at least ask my father.

I carried those papers in my school bag for 2 weeks, terrified to show them to anyone.

But finally, I gathered my courage and brought them to my father.

I expected him to dismiss me immediately to be angry that I had even considered such a thing.

But to my shock, he did not.

He took the papers from my hand and studied them carefully.

His expression was unreadable.

For three days, he said nothing about it.

Then one evening after prayers, he called me into his study.

He told me that he had been thinking and praying about this opportunity.

He said that it could bring honor to our family to have a daughter educated at a Western university would show that Muslim women could excel in modern fields while maintaining their faith and modesty.

I would be an example, an ambassador for Islam in a foreign land.

But there were conditions, many conditions.

I would have to promise to wear proper hijab at all times.

I would have to pray five times a day without fail.

I would have to avoid mixing freely with men.

I would have to call home regularly and send videos to prove I was upholding my Islamic duties.

I would have to remember that I was representing not just our family but our religion, our community, our way of life.

Any failure would bring unbearable shame.

I agreed to everything.

I would have agreed to anything.

This was my chance, perhaps my only chance to experience something beyond the narrow walls of the life I had known.

I worked on my application with fierce determination.

I studied harder than I had ever studied.

And several months later, when the acceptance letter came, when I learned that I had won a full scholarship to study engineering at a university in America, I felt something I had rarely felt before, hope.

The months before my departure were a blur of preparation and lectures.

My father drilled into me constantly the rules I had to follow, the reputation I had to maintain.

He made me memorize additional prayers.

He gave me books of Islamic law to take with me.

He reminded me again and again that the West was full of corruption, of temptation, of people who would try to lead me astray from the straight path.

I had to be vigilant.

I had to be strong.

My mother cried often during those months.

She would hold me tightly when my father was not around, as if she was already grieving my absence.

She packed my bags with care, including her own prayer rug, her own copy of the Quran.

She whispered blessings over me in the darkness of our shared room.

Part of me wondered if she was crying, not just because I was leaving, but because she knew I was escaping something she never could.

My sisters were married by then, living in their husband’s homes, already heavy with their first pregnancies.

They looked at me with what I can only describe as envy mixed with fear.

I was doing something they could never do, going somewhere they could never go.

But they also worried for me.

The world outside was dangerous.

They said I might lose my faith, lose my way.

I assured them I would not.

I believed it myself.

Then the day I left for America.

My father drove me to the airport.

The whole family came.

My mother, my brothers, my sisters with their new husbands.

At the departure gate, my father placed both hands on my shoulders and looked into my eyes.

He reminded me one final time of my duty, my obligation, the trust he was placing in me.

He told me that the honor of our family rested on my shoulders.

He said that if I shamed them, there would be no forgiveness, no return.

I promised him everything he wanted to hear.

I kissed his hand in respect, the way I had been taught.

I embraced my mother, feeling her tears wet against my face.

And then I walked through those gates, my heart pounding with a mixture of excitement and terror.

I did not look back.

I could not.

If I had looked back, I might have seen the future in their faces.

I might have known that this departure was the beginning of the end of everything I had ever known.

The flight was long, endless.

I sat pressed against the window, my hijab tight around my face, my hands clutching the armrests.

I had never been on a plane before.

Every bit of turbulence made me think we would crash, that Allah was punishing me for my pride in leaving.

But we landed safely.

And when I stepped out into the American airport, into the chaos and noise and overwhelming foreignness of it all, I felt like I had stepped onto another planet.

Everything was different.

The way people dressed, the way they moved, the way they spoke.

Women walked around in clothes that would have gotten them arrested back home.

Men and women touched each other freely, holding hands, embracing.

No one seemed to care about modesty, about separation, about the rules that had governed every moment of my life.

I pulled my hijab tighter and kept my eyes down, terrified and fascinated at the same time.

The university arranged for someone to pick me up and take me to my dormatory.

I was assigned a roommate, an American girl with blonde hair and a bright smile.

She tried to be friendly, tried to help me settle in, but I barely spoke to her.

I was afraid of seeing something wrong, of being too friendly with someone who did not share my faith.

That first night, alone in my narrow bed in a room that smelled unfamiliar in a country where I knew no one, I cried.

I called home and heard my mother’s voice and cried harder.

My father asked if I had prayed.

I told him yes.

He told me to be strong to remember who I was.

I tried.

I really tried.

I found the other Muslim students on campus.

Mostly international students from Pakistan, Saudi Arabia, Egypt.

We formed our own small community separate from the wider university life.

We prayed together in a small room that had been designated for Muslim students.

We ate halal food together.

We reminded each other to stay faithful, to not be influenced by the corruption around us.

This felt safe.

This felt familiar.

But I was lonely, deeply, achingly lonely.

The other Muslim students were kind, but they kept to themselves, always watching each other, making sure no one strayed too far from acceptable behavior.

There was no real freedom even in our small group.

We were all still living under the same rules, the same fears, just in a different location.

And I was still carrying the weight of my father’s expectations, his warnings, his authority, even from thousands of miles away.

I video called home every week.

My father would question me.

Was I praying? Was I wearing proper hijab? Was I avoiding boys? Was I maintaining my studies? Had anyone tried to corrupt me? I learned to show him exactly what he wanted to see.

I would position the camera so he could see my hijab, my Quran open on my desk, my modest clothing.

I would recite my prayers for him.

I would assure him that I was being good, being faithful, being the daughter he expected me to be.

But something was happening inside me.

Slowly, quietly, like ice beginning to crack under the weight of warming water, I was seeing a different world.

I was meeting people who were kind and generous without being Muslim.

I had professors who were brilliant and ethical without following any religion at all.

I saw women who were respected, who led, who spoke their minds without fear.

I saw relationships based on love and choice, not arrangement and obligation.

And late at night, when my roommate was asleep and the campus was quiet, the questions I had buried for so many years began to surface again, stronger now, more insistent.

I would lie awake staring at the ceiling, my mind spinning with doubts I could not silence.

Is this really the only truth? Is this really what God wants? Why does faith have to feel like a prison? Why am I so afraid all the time? I had no answers, only questions.

Questions that grew louder with each passing day, each new experience, each moment of seeing life live differently than everything I had been taught.

I did not know it then, but I was standing at the edge of a cliff and I was about to jump.

Winter came to the American campus, bringing with it a cold I had never experienced before.

Where I came from, winters were mild, rainy, but not freezing.

Here, the cold bit through my clothes, and turned my breath into white clouds.

I would wrap my hijab tighter, layer sweaters under my coat, and hurry between buildings with my head down against the wind.

The international student office gave me a heavier coat, gloves, and a scarf.

I was grateful, but also overwhelmed by how much I did not know about surviving in this place.

My engineering courses were difficult, much harder than I had expected.

I spent long hours in the library trying to keep up with classwork, trying to understand lectures given in English that was too fast for me to fully follow.

My professors were patient, but I could see the other students moving ahead while I struggled with both the language and the concepts.

I was determined not to fail.

Failure would mean going home, and going home would mean marriage, the end of education, the end of everything I had hoped to become.

The library became my refuge.

It was warm, quiet, and open late into the night.

I would find a corner table on the third floor where few people came, spread out my textbooks and notebooks, and work until my eyes burned with exhaustion.

It was during one of these late nights in the middle of my second semester that my life changed forever.

I had been studying for hours and my mind was tired.

I needed a break from differential equations and physics problems.

I stood up to stretch, to walk around, to rest my brain for a few minutes.

The third floor of the library had rows and rows of books, most of which I had never explored.

I wandered between the shelves, running my fingers along the spines, reading title without really seeing them.

Then I found myself in a section I had not noticed before.

Religious studies.

There were books about Buddhism, Hinduism, Judaism, and many about Islam.

I stopped to look at the Islamic books, curious to see what Americans wrote about my religion.

Some of the titles made me uncomfortable.

Critical analyses of Islamic history and theology.

I moved away quickly, not wanting to read anything that might challenge what I had been taught.

But as I turned to leave that section, something caught my eye.

On a lower shelf, tucked between two thick Islamic texts, was a small book with a worn cover.

It was a New Testament, the Bible of Christians.

I stared at it for a long moment, my heart suddenly beating faster.

I knew I should not touch it.

I had been taught my whole life that the Bible was corrupted, changed, not the true word of God.

Christians were people of the book, yes, but they had strayed from the truth.

They had corrupted the message.

They believed in three gods.

They worshiped a man.

They had lost their way.

But my hand reached out anyway.

I looked around to make sure no one was watching.

The floor was empty, silent, except for the hum of the heating system.

I pulled the book from the shelf.

It was small, pocket-sized, with thin pages like the Quran.

The cover was dark blue and worn at the edges, as if many hands had held it before mine.

I opened it randomly, and my eyes fell on words highlighted in faded yellow.

My English was not perfect, but I could read well enough.

The word spoke about loving your enemies, about praying for those who hurt you, about blessing those who curse you.

I read the passage twice, then three times.

These words were attributed to Jesus, or as I knew him, Isa, but they were different from what I expected.

They were gentle, radical, strange.

I should have put the book back.

I should have walked away.

But instead, I looked around once more.

And then I slipped the small New Testament into my backpack.

My hands were shaking.

I felt like I was stealing, though the book was old and seemed forgotten.

I felt like I was committing a terrible sin.

But I could not put it back.

Something in those few lines had hooked to my heart, and I needed to read more.

That night in my dorm room, I waited until my roommate was asleep.

Then I took the book out and hid under my blanket with my phone’s flashlight.

I felt ridiculous, like a child sneaking candy, but I was terrified of being seen.

What if another Muslim student came by? What if someone reported me to my father? But my fear could not stop my curiosity.

I started reading from the beginning from the Gospel of Matthew.

The words were simple but powerful.

I read about Jesus being born, about wise men following a star, about a king trying to kill him.

I read about Jesus growing up, being baptized, going into the desert.

And then I reached the sermon on the mount.

I had to stop reading multiple times because tears were filling my eyes and I could not see the words clearly.

Blessed are the poor in spirit.

Blessed are those who mourn.

Blessed are the meek.

Blessed are those who hunger and thirst for righteousness.

The biatitudes went against everything I understood about strength and power.

They lifted up the weak, the suffering, the gentle.

They promised that the last would be first, that the humble would be exalted.

I had never read anything like this.

And then came the words about loving your enemies, about turning the other cheek, about going the extra mile, about giving to those who ask, about not judging others, about treating people the way you want to be treated.

I sat there in the darkness under my blanket, tears running down my face, my heart feeling like it was breaking and mending at the same time.

This Jesus was not the prophet I had learned about in Islam.

This was someone different.

Someone whose words reached into the deepest parts of me and touched places I did not know existed.

Someone who spoke with an authority that was not harsh or dominating, but gentle and compelling.

Someone who seemed to see me, understand me, offer me something I did not even know I was looking for.

I read until my phone battery was nearly dead, until my eyes could barely stay open.

Then I hid the book at the bottom of my backpack and tried to sleep.

But sleep would not come.

My mind was racing.

What was I doing? Why was I reading this book? Why did these words affect me so deeply? I prayed to Allah, asking for guidance, asking for forgiveness if I was doing something wrong.

But even as I prayed, I knew I would read more.

I had to.

Over the following weeks, I read the New Testament in secret every chance I got.

In the bathroom stalls between classes, in my bed late at night, in corners of the library where no one would see me, I devoured the words like someone starving.

I read about Jesus healing the sick, touching the untouchables, eating with sinners.

I read about how he treated women, actually talked to them, taught them, respected them as equal human beings worthy of God’s attention.

The story of the woman at the well moved me deeply.

Jesus spoke to her, a Samaritan woman with a complicated past and offered her living water.

He did not condemn her.

He saw her worth.

I read about the woman caught in adultery.

The men who brought her to Jesus wanted to stone her, wanted to kill her for her sin.

Jesus simply said, “Let the one without sin throw the first stone.

” They all walked away.

He told her to go and sin no more, but he did not condemn her.

Where was the harshness? Where was the punishment? Where was the public shaming I had seen in my own community? The more I read, the more confused I became.

This Jesus loved people, genuinely loved them.

He touched lepers who were considered unclean.

He blessed children.

He wept when his friend died.

He forgave people who did not deserve forgiveness.

He spoke about God as a loving father, not as a distant judge waiting to punish every mistake.

This was so different from everything I knew.

But the confusion came with fear.

Deep overwhelming fear.

I was reading a corrupted book.

I was allowing Christian ideas into my mind.

I was committing apostasy even by being curious about these things.

The punishment for apostasy in Islam was death.

I knew this.

My father had taught me this.

If anyone found out what I was doing, I would be in terrible danger.

Not just from the law back home, but from religious students, even here on campus.

I tried to stop.

I would go days without opening the book, praying extra prayers, reading the Quran more intensely, trying to push away the thoughts and questions, but I kept coming back.

The words of Jesus kept calling to me.

I could not escape them.

They had planted something inside me that was growing despite my best efforts to kill it.

It was during this time that Sarah entered my life.

She was in one of my engineering classes, a quiet girl with kind eyes and an easy smile.

She had tried to talk to me a few times before, but I had kept my distance, giving short answers, not encouraging friendship.

Muslims were not supposed to be too close with non-Muslims, especially Christians.

We were supposed to be friendly but separate.

But Sarah was persistent in the gentlest way.

She would sit near me in class.

She would ask if I understood the homework.

She would offer to study together.

At first, I always refused.

But eventually, after she had helped explain a particularly difficult concept to me after class one day, I said yes to studying together.

It seemed harmless.

It was just schoolwork.

We met in the library at one of the group study tables.

Sarah was patient and kind, helping me understand things I had struggled with, never making me feel stupid for asking basic questions.

After a few study sessions, she started asking me about my life, where I came from, what it was like growing up in Iran.

I gave careful answers, revealing little, keeping my guard up, but she listened in a way that made me want to talk more.

She seemed genuinely interested, not in a nosy way, but in a way that made me feel seen.

One day after we had finished studying, she asked me if I would want to come to a campus fellowship meeting with her, a Christian fellowship.

My immediate response was, “No, absolutely not.

I could not go to a Christian gathering.

What would people think? What if someone saw me? What if word got back to my family?” But Sarah did not push.

She simply said that if I ever changed my mind, I would be welcome.

She said it was just students gathering to talk, sing, and support each other.

She said I did not have to believe anything.

I could just come and see.

Then she changed the subject and we talked about other things.

I thought about her invitation constantly.

Part of me was horrified that I was even considering it.

But another part of me, the part that had been reading the New Testament in secret, the part that was full of questions and doubts, that part was desperately curious.

What did Christians actually believe? What were their gatherings like? I had been told my whole life that Christians were lost, misguided, maybe even dangerous.

But Sarah did not seem lost.

She seemed to have something I did not have.

Peace, maybe, joy, something I could not name, but desperately wanted.

It took me 3 weeks to gather the courage.

Sarah had mentioned the fellowship meeting times and location, but she had not brought it up again.

One Thursday evening, instead of going to my dorm after my last class, I found myself walking toward the campus center where the Christian Fellowship met.

My heart was pounding so hard I thought it might explode.

I must have walked past the door five times before I finally opened it.

The room was not what I expected.

It was just a regular classroom with chairs arranged in a circle.

There were maybe 20 students there talking and laughing.

Sarah saw me immediately and her face lit up with the most genuine smile.

She came over and hugged me which made me uncomfortable, but I did not pull away.

She introduced me to a few other students who all welcomed me warmly.

No one asked why I was wearing hijab.

No one asked about my religion.

They just welcomed me like I belong there.

We sat down and someone started playing guitar.

They sang songs, simple songs about God’s love, about Jesus, about grace and mercy.

I did not sing.

I just sat there watching, listening, feeling completely out of place, but also strangely drawn to what was happening.

There was something in the atmosphere, something I could not explain.

It felt light, free, joyful, so different from the heavy rule focused religious gatherings I was used to.

After the singing, some students shared what was happening in their lives.

One girl talked about struggling with anxiety and asked for prayer.

Another talked about his family problems.

A guy shared how God had helped him overcome an addiction.

They were so honest, so vulnerable with each other.

They talked about their weaknesses and failures without shame.

They talked about God like he was someone close to them, someone who cared about their daily struggles.

This was completely foreign to me.

Then there was a short teaching.

A student leader talked about a passage from the Bible, something about God’s unfailing love.

He talked about how nothing we do can make God love us more or less.

How God’s love is not based on our performance or our ability to follow rules perfectly.

How Jesus came because we could not save ourselves.

How grace means undeserved favor.

I sat there feeling like he was speaking directly to me like these words were meant for my ears.

My whole life had been about trying to be good enough, trying to follow enough rules, trying to avoid punishment.

Prayer was obligation.

Fasting was duty.

Everything was about earning God’s favor, about hoping your good deeds outweighed your bad ones on judgment day.

But this message was different.

It said, “God loved me already, not because of what I did or did not do, but simply because he made me.

Because Jesus died for me.

Because grace was a gift.

” I left that meeting in a days.

I walked back to my dorm, barely seeing where I was going, my mind spinning with everything I had heard.

It was too much, too different, too good to be true, maybe.

But I could not stop thinking about it.

About grace, about God as a loving father instead of a stern judge, about Jesus dying on a cross because of love, not because of obligation.

I started going to more meetings.

I told no one.

I was living a double life now.

During the day, I was the modest Muslim girl studying engineering.

I video called my family and showed them my hijab and my prayers.

I avoided anything that would make them suspicious.

But in secret, I was reading the Bible.

I was going to Christian fellowship.

I was asking questions that terrified me.

Sarah and some of the other Christian students began meeting with me separately to answer my questions.

I had so many questions about the Trinity.

How could God be three but also one? About Jesus being God? How was that possible? About salvation by grace instead of works.

About why Christians believe the Bible was true when I had been taught it was corrupted.

They never pressured me.

They just shared what they believed and why.

And they always did it with gentleness and respect.

They gave me books to read.

I hid them at the bottom of my closet.

They invited me to church.

I was too afraid at first, but eventually I went, sitting in the very back row, ready to run if needed.

The church was nothing like the mosque.

Men and women sat together.

People raised their hands while singing.

They clapped.

They smiled.

And when the pastor preached, he talked about a God who pursued people, who loved them relentlessly, who sent his son to die so they could be forgiven and free.

I wrestled with all of this for months.

My mind and my heart were at war.

Everything I had been taught my whole life said this was wrong, dangerous, false.

But everything I was experiencing, everything I was reading, everything I was feeling said, “This might be true.

” The most true thing I had ever encountered.

Late one night, several months after I had first found that New Testament in the library, I reached a breaking point.

I was alone in my dorm room.

My roommate had gone home for the weekend.

I had been reading the book of John, reading about Jesus, saying he was the way, the truth, and the life.

I closed the book and fell to my knees beside my bed.

I did not know how to pray anymore.

The ritual prayers I had said five times a day my whole life felt empty now.

So, I just spoke out loud into the darkness.

I said that I did not know what was true anymore.

I said that I was confused and scared and tired.

I said that if Jesus was real, if he really was who he claimed to be, I needed him to show me.

I needed proof.

I needed peace.

I needed something to make sense of the chaos in my heart and mind.

And then I said words I never thought I would say.

I said that if Jesus was really the son of God, if he really died for me and rose again, if he really loved me the way the Bible said he did, then I wanted to know him.

I wanted to follow him, even if it cost me everything.

I did not hear a voice.

I did not see a vision.

But something happened in that moment.

A piece flooded into me that I cannot adequately describe.

It was like a weight I had been carrying my entire life was suddenly lifted.

It was like I had been drowning and someone had pulled me to the surface and I could finally breathe.

It was like coming home to a place I had never been but had always longed for.

I cried for a long time.

I cried with relief and joy and also with grief because I knew even in that moment that this decision would cost me more than I could imagine.

I knew that following Jesus would mean losing my family.

I knew it would mean being declared an apostate.

I knew it would mean danger and rejection and pain.

But in that moment, none of that mattered because for the first time in my life, I felt truly free.

Several weeks later, after many conversations with Sarah and the pastor of the church, I was baptized.

It was done quietly in a small service with just a few people present.

I had asked them not to make it public because I was afraid of who might find out.

As I went under the water and came up again, I felt like I was being born again.

The old Sakin, the Imam’s daughter who lived in fear and obligation.

She died in that water and someone new emerged, someone free, someone loved, someone who belonged to Jesus.

I knew I could not hide this forever.

I knew that eventually my family would find out.

But for a while, I lived in this secret joy, learning what it meant to follow Jesus, discovering a relationship with God that was based on love rather than fear.

I was reading the Bible openly now, at least when I was alone.

I was praying in a new way, talking to God like he was my father who actually wanted to hear from me.

I was learning hymns and worship songs.

I was part of a community that felt like family.

But the double life was exhausting.

Every video call home felt like a performance.

Every time my father asked if I was praying, I would say yes.

But I meant a different kind of prayer now.

Every time my mother asked when I was coming home, my heart would sink because I knew I could never go back.

Not really.

Not as the person I was becoming.

I started having nightmares.

Dreams where my father discovered my Bible and burned it.

Dreams where my family held a funeral for me.

Dreams where I was back in Iran, trapped, unable to escape.

I would wake up in cold sweats, my heart racing, wondering how long I could keep this secret and what would happen when the truth finally came out.

That time was coming sooner than I knew.

The foundation of my old life was cracking and soon it would shatter completely.

But I did not know that yet.

For a brief season, I lived between two worlds, belonging fully to neither, carrying a secret that was both my greatest joy and my heaviest burden.

By my third year at university, I had become someone I barely recognized.

On the outside, I still looked like the beautiful Muslim daughter my family expected me to be.

I wore my hijab in public.

I avoided eating pork.

I kept my room clean of any obvious Christian materials when I knew someone might visit.

I maintained the performance.

But inside, everything had changed.

I was a Christian now, though I could not say it out loud to most people.

I belonged to Jesus, though my family had no idea.

The exhaustion of living this double life was taking its toll.

I was constantly anxious, always looking over my shoulder, always worried about making a mistake that would expose my secret.

The Muslim student community on campus had started asking questions.

Why did they not see me at Friday prayers anymore? Why was I always making excuses not to join them for Islamic events? One girl asked me directly if I was still practicing, if America had changed me.

I gave vague answers about being busy with studies, about praying in my room.

I could see the suspicion in her eyes.

My faith was growing despite the fear.

The small church I attended had become my real family.

There was an older couple, Tom and Linda, who sort of adopted me.

They would invite me to their home for dinner on Sundays.

Linda would cook meals that reminded me of home, trying to make me feel less alone.

They never pushed me, never demanded anything from me.

They just loved me.

It was a pure, uncomplicated love that expected nothing in return.

I had never experienced anything like it.

Tom and Linda knew my situation.

They knew I was hiding my faith from my family.

They knew the danger I would be in if my secret was discovered.

They prayed for me constantly.

They told me they would be there for me no matter what happened.

Having them in my life gave me strength during the hardest moments when I felt like I could not carry the weight of my secret anymore.

I was also meeting regularly with a small group of other believers including Sarah and three other students.

We would study the Bible together, pray together, share our struggles.

They were the only people in the world who knew the full truth about me.

With them, I could take off the mask.

I could be honest about my fears and doubts.

I could ask questions without judgment.

I could just be myself.

It was during one of these small group meetings that I first learned about other Muslims who had converted to Christianity.

Sarah had found a documentary about believers from Iran and other Middle Eastern countries who had left Islam to follow Jesus.

We watched it together and I cried through the entire thing.

These were people like me.

People who had asked the same questions, wrestled with the same doubts, made the same terrifying decision.

People who had lost everything but found it worth it.

One man in the documentary said something that I wrote down and kept in my Bible.

He said that Jesus does not promise an easy life, but he promises a meaningful one.

He said that suffering for Christ was still better than comfort without him.

Those words became like a anchor for me in the storm that was coming.

The calls home were getting harder.

My mother had a way of sensing when something was wrong.

Mothers always do.

She would ask me questions that seemed innocent but felt like traps.

Was I happy? Was I lonely? Had I met anyone special? The last question always made my stomach turn because I knew what she meant.

She meant had I met a nice Muslim boy.

My family was starting to think about arranging my marriage.

I was getting to that age where I needed to be settled.

My father had already mentioned a few potential matches.

Sons of his colleagues, respectable men from good families.

He would describe them during our calls.

their education, their piety, their prospects.

He was proud that his educated daughter would bring honor to whichever family she joined.

He did not ask what I wanted.

That was not how this worked.

The thought of returning to Iran and being forced into marriage made me physically ill.

I could not do it.

I would not do it.

But how could I refuse without revealing why? How could I tell my father that I could not marry a Muslim man because I was not Muslim anymore? The impossibility of my situation pressed down on me like a physical weight.

I started looking into options for staying in America after graduation.

Student visas were temporary.

I would need either a work visa or some other legal way to remain.

The idea of seeking asylum crossed my mind, but the process was complicated and uncertain, and it felt so final.

Seeking asylum would mean officially breaking from my family, admitting that I could never go home.

I was not ready for that yet, even though I knew it was inevitable.

Meanwhile, my faith continued to deepen.

I was reading the Bible every day now, hungrier for it than I had ever been for the Quran.

The words felt alive to me, personal, like God was speaking directly into my situation.

Passages about persecution and suffering took on new meaning.

Verses about God being a father to the fatherless comforted me when I felt most alone.

The Psalms became my prayer book, giving me words when I had none of my own.

I was also learning to hear God’s voice in new ways.

Not audibly, but in my spirit.

Little prompings, gentle guidance, a sense of peace about certain decisions.

This was so different from the rigid rule following I had grown up with.

Christianity was about relationship, not just religion.

It was about knowing God personally, not just knowing about him.

This still amazed me.

But along with the growing faith came growing conviction about truth.

I could not pretend anymore that Islam and Christianity were just different paths to the same God.

They taught fundamentally different things about who God is, who Jesus is, how salvation works.

I had to choose and I had chosen Jesus.

But that choice had consequences I was only beginning to understand.

The first real crack in my secret life came through social media.

I had been very careful about my online presence, keeping my Facebook profile private, not posting anything that would reveal my new faith.

But one of my Christian friends posted a photo from a church event and I was in the background just barely visible but there another Muslim student from campus saw the photo and sent me a message.

She asked me directly, “Were you at a church?” My heart stopped when I read her message.

I tried to explain it away.

I said a friend had invited me to see what it was like just out of curiosity.

I said I was studying comparative religion for a class.

The lies came easily because I was so afraid.

She seemed to accept my explanation, but I could tell she did not fully believe me.

She said she was just concerned about me, that she would pray for me to stay on the straight path.

I deleted all my social media after that.

It was too dangerous.

But I knew the damage might already be done.

The Muslim student community was small and tightly connected.

If she told others about her suspicions, word could travel.

Word could reach someone who knew my family.

I started having anxiety attacks.

My chest tightening until I could not breathe.

Panic flooding through me at random moments.

Tom and Linda encouraged me to seek counseling through the university.

I started seeing a therapist who helped me process the enormous stress I was under.

She told me that living a double life was psychologically damaging, that eventually I would have to choose authenticity or I would break under the pressure.

I knew she was right, but I was not ready.

Not yet.

Graduation was approaching.

I had to make decisions about my future.

My father expected me to return home after finishing my degree.

He had plans for me, a marriage arranged, a life mapped out, but I knew I could not go back.

I knew that returning to Iran as a Christian convert would be dangerous, possibly deadly.

Apostasy from Islam was not just a family matter.

It was a legal matter.

People had been imprisoned, executed for less.

I applied for job in America hoping to get sponsored for a work visa.

I also quietly began gathering documents for an asylum application, though the thought of actually filing it terrified me.

Seeking asylum would mean publicly declaring that I feared persecution in my home country because of my religious conversion.

It would mean officially breaking from my family.

It would mean no going back.

My father started pressuring me to come home for a visit during the summer before my final year.

He said my grandmother was getting old and wanted to see me.

He said the family missed me.

He said I had been gone too long and needed to reconnect with my roots.

Every conversation ended with him asking when I would book my ticket home.

I made excuses.

I said I needed to stay for summer classes, for internship opportunities, for research projects, anything to avoid going back.

My mother started crying on the phone, saying she might not see me again before she died.

The guilt was crushing.

These were my parents.

They had raised me, provided for me, sent me to university, and I was lying to them, hiding from them, planning a life that would devastate them.

There were moments when I almost told them the truth.

When the burden of the secret felt too heavy to carry anymore, but I knew what would happen if I did.

My father would order me to return immediately.

He would try to force me to recant.

If I refused, I would be disowned at best, in real danger at worst.

And still I hesitated, hoping for some miracle solution where I could keep both my faith and my family.

That summer, while I was working a part-time job and taking one class, I met another Iranian Christian.

His name was Reza, and he had converted to Christianity 5 years earlier while still living in Iran.

He had escaped to Turkey and eventually made it to America as a refugee.

He was part of an underground community of Persian Christians who met secretly to worship in Farsy and support each other.

Raza invited me to one of their gatherings.

Walking into that room and hearing worship songs in my own language.

Seeing people like me who had made the same impossible choice, I broke down completely.

I was not alone.

There were others who understood exactly what I was going through.

They shared their stories with me.

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