Last week I quietly marked the fifth anniversary of my freedom from prison in Iran. November 25 was on the surface a day like any other, unremarkable to most family and friends, but to me this date is more significant than my own birthday.

It has been five years since I was pulled, blindfolded and handcuffed, from a solitary confinement cell in Evin prison, thrown into the back of a car and, after an abortive attempt to film a propaganda video in front of the prison gates, deposited outside the Australian ambassador’s residence in downtown Tehran.

Illustration by Dionne Gain

It has been five years of learning to breathe deeply again, five years of shaky normalcy, five years of clawing back a life I wasn’t sure I’d have a second chance at living. Five years of reckoning with who had stood up for me and who had been silent. Five years of awe, discombobulation and finally, renewal.

Many of the heightened emotions of the early days post-captivity have faded into the background, overcome by new routines and the slow-moving balm of time. One sensation, however, stubbornly refuses to fade: Anger. At those who stole 2½ years of my life (and far more from countless other victims). At those who continue to turn a blind eye to Iran’s hostage diplomacy. At those who to this day provide material and rhetorical support to my captors, including from here in Australia.

Last week, the Australian government gave me a most welcome anniversary present. Five years to the day that I landed back in Australia, the attorney-general, foreign minister and home affairs minister announced that the government had officially listed Iran’s Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC), the group that took me hostage, as a state sponsor of terrorism.

This much-anticipated listing........

© The Sydney Morning Herald