Matt Winters

An old friend and I commented to one another last week about how fortunate Americans are, and how oblivious many of us are to that fact.

His international consulting career takes him to far-flung places — nations few ever visit. Not far from his hotel in one midsized African nation, a dying man lay on the sidewalk near a downtown bank, his limbs splayed around as if he had just fallen 10 stories. He hadn’t, but was in the last extremis of starvation and disease. None of the passersby paid him any mind. His was an all-too-common tragedy in a place where the ocean has been fished out, drought is swallowing farmland and nobody has a safety net.

Anyone who spends time in what used to be called the Third World — now optimistically called “developing nations” — knows that our imperfect country enjoys advantages that are nothing but a fantasy for billions who barely manage to feed their families and who cower in fear of oppression.

Our good luck has also been on my mind because of another friend, one from Iran. Along with thousands of other Iranians, my friend joined in protests last year after the death of Mahsa Amini, a 22-year-old killed while in the custody of Iran’s “morality police.” The Reuters news agency describes this as “a force tasked with detaining people who violate Iran’s conservative dress code in order to ‘promote virtue and prevent vice.’” It is Orwellian that these bullies who terrorize innocent women and men lay any claim to the concept of “morality.”

It may sometimes be tempting to chalk up negative news about Iran to our own prejudices and propaganda, but my friend’s firsthand experiences make it clear just how brutal and repressive the Iranian regime is. Peacefully protest there, and government-sponsored thugs can make it their mission to beat you up, summarily arrest and imprison you. As a voice for this movement, the danger she faced was palpable and immediate.

U.S. Sen. Maria Cantwell and her dedicated staff came to the rescue. Their interest in my friend’s case managed to cut through bureaucratic delays. Her path to a U.S. visa was cleared and she arrived here earlier this year. Maria, who served in the Washington Legislature with local hero Sid Snyder — I recall him introducing her to me in 2000 — is a strong supporter of women’s rights and immigration reform, among other interests. We’re so lucky to have her in the Senate, along with staffers, including press secretary Calley Hair.

“I sincerely want to thank the senator for her kindness. I want this from the bottom of my heart. As a politician, she heard the voice of her people to help a person. Such a thing is like a blessing. We don’t have this in Iran,” my friend told me last week.

Her extrication from Iran — my avoidance of using her name will be explained in a moment — came none too soon.

It’s likely she just barely eluded arrest. Government agents are questioning her friends and relations. A former business associate was interrogated — “The poor man is terrified.” Her courage and articulate arguments for democracy are powerful. They are weapons that Iran’s religious despots want to destroy. In this time when anyone can Google a person’s name and learn much about them, my friend could be blackmailed into silence or even be forced to return to Iran if the regime imperils her husband, parents and friends still in the country.

Writing of Iran, she tells of “a legend about a king whose food is young people. He eats all the young to survive. We are now facing a regime like that king. It becomes more bloodthirsty every day. It does not even let the people who have migrated be in peace. It is like an emergency circumstance. Every moment they can attack your home and privacy. Every morning I wake up with this anxiety about what happened in Iran and in my home. How many people have they killed in my country and have they harmed my husband?”

Try to imagine a woman enduring such agonies of worry. Her situation is not unlike that of a World War II resistance fighter whose husband may be arrested by the Gestapo at any moment. We should be appalled. Such a wicked regime is capable of anything.

The sad fact is that we can’t save everyone. The dying man on the sidewalk I described above was beyond help. But one of our greatest treasures as Americans is that we each have the power to sometimes make a real difference in our own lives and those of others.

Through her compassionate staff, Sen. Cantwell literally saved my friend. The next steps are saving her husband, and liberating her voice in the hope she may play a role in freeing her nation.