I kill you

So this is the symbol of Zoroastrianism. I have little to no clue what that is, so let's check out the wikipedia page and see what the deal is...

Um, it seems like a religion centered around a god named Mazda who is good. Something about an end of time when all the dead and living are brought together and actions are judged. Well, something like that. 

Anyways, one of the students that I've grown close to over the past few years is an 11th grader from Iran. I tutored her the first year of working at my school, and she's always hunted me down ever since to say hi and just keep in contact. She's a great kid with a great sense of humor.

I recently recruited her to help tutor one of my 5th graders who speaks Farsi, and we were in my office on Thursday just talking about some of the problems that have arisen and how to deal with that 5th grader.

As we talked, I noticed that she was wearing a necklace with a large pendant that looked like the symbol at the top of this post. I said, "Hey, so does that have something to do with Zoroastrianism?" I'd heard of that religion before (probably from her), and the pendant was so big that I couldn't help noticing it.

She said that it did, but she had a different name for the religion, which I figured was the Persian name for it. Then she said, "Sir, are you religious?"

"No, not really," I said. "I mean, I used to be Christian for a long time, but I gave it up a while back cause I didn't really like it."

"What do you mean 'you gave it up'?" she asked.

"Well, I just stopped believing in it, I guess," I said.

"And you weren't scared that someone was gonna kill you?" she asked.

My brain did a double-take, but I knew where she was coming from so I didn't laugh or anything. "No," I said, "I just left it. No one wanted to kill me because I left."

"You know, that's an interesting question," I continued. "I mean, if you'd asked any other person from my country, they probably would've been like 'What are you talking about?'. We aren't really worried that someone will kill us if we leave our religion, you know?"

"Yeah, I know what you mean," she said, looking at the ground.

The conversation turned to if people in Iran considered themselves Muslim or Zoroastrian, and then she left for lunch.