I envy the director who called his own country's army something worse than any enemy ever called it, and then drove home. I envy that he signed his name to it. I envy that his face is on the poster. I envy that the state's revenge was a press release. I envy that the ministers who despise him can only threaten his funding. I envy that his worst punishment is being hated loudly by people with keyboards. I envy that Iranian propaganda spends millions and never reaches the accusation he made himself, unpaid, on camera. I envy that he will be invited to debate his critics on television. I envy that his critics want to argue with him at all. I envy that his mother watched the ceremony from her living room. I envy that his mother has a living room. I envy him because forty minutes past the last checkpoint, outside his country and outside his law, the review arrives at night, on motorcycles. I envy him because out there, men take you out in your underwear so the street remembers it. I envy him because an hour from his editing room, but under a different flag, a film like that ends on a rooftop, with the director going over the edge. I envy him because in that place, the director own people will drag the body through the market, so the next director understands the notes. I envy him because 50 kilometers from the theater that screened his film, and past the border of everything he is accused of, they shoot the knees first, so the neighborhood hears the whole verdict. I envy him because there, the sentence includes your brothers. I envy him because there, the sentence includes the house your father built. I envy him because there, a rumor that you spoke to a foreign journalist is the entire trial. I envy him because there, nobody cuts your budget, they cut you. I envy that the distance between his applause and that rooftop is shorter than his commute, and that no one confuses the two jurisdictions. I envy that he says all of it from inside the country he is accusing.