Neda Zeyghami is part of Australia’s Iranian diaspora. In this piece, she reflects on the impossible choices facing the Iranian women footballers,

Do not think they did not understand the value of the fast visa they were granted.

Do not think they simply said to themselves that the oppressive regime they came from was better, that they preferred to leave Australia and go back to peacefully play football in their beautiful homeland.

Just imagine this for a moment:

Someone plays you the sound of your mother crying from across the ocean.

A mother who spent all her strength raising you in a system where a woman becoming a footballer — and being taken seriously — is incredibly difficult.

A mother who carried the burden of that struggle so that you could one day become a national team player.

And then you arrive in Australia, and suddenly everything you remember from childhood — home, family, love, safety — collapses into one recording: the sound of your mother being threatened, interrogated, crying.

What would you do then?

Would you stay and say, “It’s fine”?

Or would every cell in your body fill with guilt and fear?

Would you be willing to give up not only your Australian visa, but even the very legs that made you a footballer, if that was the price to protect your family?

If that was the price to stop your mother’s cries?

I don’t know what you would do.

But I know what I would do.

I would go back.

Even knowing how heavy the consequences might be.

I cannot judge them. Because if I were in their place, I might do the same.

These days I cannot even hear my mother’s voice, and the silence alone is shattering me.
Imagine hearing your mother cry.

Imagine knowing that the person who carried you through a system where women are barely allowed to dream of becoming footballers is now being threatened because of you.

If that were me, I would not just give up a visa.

I would swim across the ocean back to Iran if that was the only way to stop my mother’s suffering.

It is easy to sit far away and judge.

I once read that freedom must be deserved.

I strongly disagree with that idea.

Freedom is not something people must prove they deserve.

Freedom requires the conditions that make free decisions possible.

When the safety of your family is held hostage, the choice you make is no longer truly free.

To the Iranian women footballers:

I know what it feels like to glimpse a wider horizon, even for a fleeting moment. And I know how painful it can be when that horizon closes again, and you must turn back.

My heart is with you.

I do not believe you failed to understand the value of freedom.