A café in Copenhagen: Persian, protests, and who is heard in the public space

Last week, I worked from a café in Copenhagen, my laptop open in front of me and the sound of the milk frother in the background. Two women and a baby sat down at the table next to me, passing her from mother to grandmother in the natural and precise choreography of those who belong to one another.

She was all life and light, smiling at the world, and she reminded me so much of Adam that my eyes kept drifting from the screen to her.

“Azizam,” (sweetheart) I said when I suddenly noticed that their conversation was in Persian. I abandoned the formalities in favor of curiosity: “How are you?” I asked, referring to everything happening in the wave of protests in Iran.

The grandmother fled to Denmark a few decades ago, her daughter was born here, and the baby on her lap is already a second generation outside the homeland.

“We have family there and we worry,” said the daughter, who was about my age.

“I grew up here. Danish school, Danish friends, Danish husband. I speak Danish better than Persian, but I don’t feel Danish. I’m going crazy over them. For weeks, while the regime was killing and slaughtering people, the Danes were silent. It didn’t fit their pro-Palestinian narrative, and even in the news, they hardly talked about it. If it were about Gaza or Israel, it would have been front-page news.

My Danish friends don’t understand anything. When I try to explain what this regime really is, they call me Islamophobic. The Danes take democracy for granted. They’ve lost the ability to imagine a world without freedom.”

Silence That Feels Familiar

What she said sounded painfully familiar to me. I knew that silence well from leftist circles, where Israeli suffering simply doesn’t fit into the moral framework of the conversation. In the weeks following October 7th, I found myself searching among colleagues, students who studied with me, professors who taught me, and people I admired for even a hint of condemnation. I scrolled through profiles looking for something to hold onto. Nothing. All eyes were on Gaza, and everything else became blind spots.

During those weeks, I couldn’t detach from my phone. I obsessively shared testimonies and videos from Israel in every group and space I was in, as if just seeing one more video or testimony would finally make someone notice. But the more I shared, the more I was pushed away. Not because they had nothing to say. On the contrary. They talked a lot about pain, about empathy, about justice, just not about ours.

Profiles of Iranians in exile have looked the same for weeks: another share, another attempt to reach someone, another attempt to provoke a response, as if just continuing to post would finally bring forth someone who would simply ask: so how are you?

“We Love Bibi”

The grandmother nodded, bouncing the baby and playing with her.

“We love Bibi, just so you know,” she said, then asked: “How long have you been here? Do you live here?”

“This is my sixth year,” I replied.

She scrunched her face, and I felt like I was disappointing her.

“Go back to Israel. It’s best there. There’s nothing like Israel. It’s the best place in the world.”

Only when they got up did I realize how loud we had been. We hadn’t lowered our voices even once, and it almost seemed as if, without saying it explicitly, we had asked the entire café to bear witness to what was said between our tables.

Public Space and One Voice

The public space in Copenhagen has become a place where only one stance can be heard without consequences, and one slogan is considered legitimate: “Palestine from the river to the sea.” The Palestinian colonial narrative, which claims that Israel has no right to exist, hovers over the city like a constant hum: in posters, in jewelry, in flags from windows, in keffiyehs and watermelons, in newspaper headlines, in restaurants and cultural spaces.

Of course, not all Danes think this way, but in public space, only one voice is primarily heard, because only one stance can appear there without paying a social price and sometimes even a physical one. Star of David chains are tucked under shirts, and all those who hold a different opinion live in the closet.

Within this climate, the testimony of Iranians living in Denmark after fleeing the regime of oppression hardly finds a place in public discourse. On the other hand, the social belonging of Israelis and Jews in the young leftist circles of Copenhagen is, at best, conditional. We are not silenced like the Iranians; we are marked. The ticket to social legitimacy is one common ground only: hatred of Israel. You must be the “good Jew,” the one who embraces the language of colonialism and genocide. But the moment you refuse to do so, your presence is perceived as a disruption to the Danish consensus, to that public tranquility of Hygge that exists as long as no one challenges it.

When Israelis and Iranians Meet

When Israelis and Iranians openly meet in that space, the spell breaks. The gaslighting of the war of consciousness loses some of its grip, the balance of power shifts, and suddenly it’s possible to speak out loud, even dare to love Netanyahu.

The significance of this encounter is a mutual opening of space: the Iranians allow Israelis and Jews to expand the range of opinions they are permitted to hold (even to the point of openly supporting Netanyahu) and to reassert our freedom of thought, while the Israelis allow their testimony and the reality of their lives to finally enter the conversation.

Yesterday Again

Yesterday, by the way, I ran into them again at the café. This time we embraced in a big hug of joy. In memory of you-know-who.