I spent a lot of time thinking about whether to go public over the past few weeks. I spent rather less time thinking about how to go public. I did not really appreciate that it would mean 10 days later I’d be blogging to half a million people, or have put half our family photos all around the world. The fact that Nazanin’s story has reached so many people, and that so many people care about what happens to Nazanin and Gabriella is such a powerful, uplifting thing. It is what will bring them both home. But I also realised this week it suddenly carries for me a new kind of responsibility, in trying to talk to an audience here and there, and navigate the dangers of a soapbox. Dangers I only realise through my mistakes. Yesterday I spoke with Nazanin’s father. Last week I did an interview with the Iranian satellite TV channel Manoto. Its Iranian version of ‘Come Dine with Me’ is one of my in-laws’ favourites, and it is often on in their home and many others I have visited. In that interview I got asked what I thought of Nazanin’s treatment, to which I said ‘I think it brings shame on Iran.’ And in truth I meant it. The Iran I know is of an extended family life of visits and meals, if with the occasional squabbles and rivalries, but on the whole kind, warm and moral, and particularly cherishing children. That is the Iran that Nazanin is so proud of and kept going back to. I had wanted to say something that would catch the attention of people in their living rooms, and look at Nazanin’s treatment in terms of their own moral compass. The interview went viral, so I was pleased. What I hadn’t considered is how that outburst would feel in my own in-laws’ living room, and what it would do to my own family, silently enduring in all this, and horrified by the provocative harm their son-in-law could do. Their context is of pressures I still poorly understand, if on the phone I can feel. It is Nazanin’s parents and siblings who are looking after Gabriella, and waiting by the phone for a good or bad news from the authorities, and it is they who have to live within their red lines. They carry a burden in a much more immediate sense than me. They remain unsure of my wisdom in speaking out, and what it could bring. And they have aged visibly these past few weeks. There is a way in which I have a voice that they cannot have, but also needs to be respectful of what they are not saying. What Nazanin’s father said last night was not to reproach me, nor add his own soapbox. But I promised to relay for him a sincere thank you to the authorities for allowing a family visit. He also wanted to tell me that Nazanin had been allowed to call her parents yesterday, and he asked her father to be her voice to me. He wished to say it precisely: that I should know I am with her in her dreams every night, that it is while she is so far away she realises just how much she misses me, and that she looks forward to her coming home. Me too. My enduring gratitude to you all.