But for the first time, she finished the sentence herself: “…bayad be donya neshon bede ke raftan az in khane, raftan az in zendan, khianat be eshgh nist. Khianat be nafrat ast.”

But what came out was a whisper. “Baba, I am still your daughter.”

At 3 a.m., she opened her laptop. She wrote a single email to her university advisor in Milan, who had once offered her a scholarship for a PhD. The subject line: “I accept.”