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A packed Great School fell completely silent as Anoosheh Ashoori described what it meant to lose almost every freedom and still choose how to respond.
For 1,677 days, he was detained in Iran. He spoke with extraordinary clarity about interrogation, isolation, threats against his family, overcrowded prison conditions and the psychological strain of life inside Evin Prison.
But this was not simply a story of suffering. It was a story of agency, purpose and resilience.
Anoosheh described how he exercised daily, studied, wrote more than 3,000 pages of memoir, created marquetry, and even built a small bower from dental floss and broomstick handles. “Ashoori’s Corner” became a place where fellow prisoners gathered and shared their stories.
Most movingly, while in prison he grew and pressed morning glory flowers, intending them as future gifts for those who had helped secure his release, and for those continuing to strive for justice. At the end of the evening, he presented one of those flowers to Wellington College.
It is now displayed in the School Library: a small, fragile object carrying an extraordinary weight of meaning, a reminder of endurance, hope and the choices we retain even when so much else is taken from us.
As we seek to equip pupils with the skills and dispositions they need to flourish, Anoosheh’s story offered a powerful example of what that can look like in practice: finding purpose, exercising agency, showing resilience and retaining our humanity even in circumstances we cannot control.
Anoosheh’s final message to pupils was characteristically simple: perseverance pays off.
An unforgettable Fireside Talk, and one that will stay with us for a very long time.
