Report from Tehran

A Personal Journey through Chaos and Madness, During the Ten Days after Iran’s Election

Faced with death, what choice of words, what words at all, could possibly convey the cold shiver down your spine to someone far away from you, whom you only hope to be a witness to your sufferings. The irony of this: The testimonials of those poor Jews in the Nazi era and the efforts of my compatriots to register the terror of dictators upon them via websites and photos and emails.

No. No fancy prose could do it. I just want to share these days of mine with you, austere and straight. I am a 28-year-old male, single, writer and translator living in Tehran. This is a hastily remembered extraction of the happenings to “me,” not all Iranians, during these sad sad days.

We were happy, for the first time in more than 3 years in particular, and 30 years in general, we were all happy; not only me and my fellow workers in the art and literature fields, but also everybody from intellectuals to the most ordinary people were excited to have finally found someone who is both within the Islamic Republic system (whose candidacy cannot be vetoed because of his background with Khomeini) and who is not from “themselves”, as our next president.

Green Wave we called it, wrists and heads and arms and windshields and car-radio antennas all wore green (Green became the sign of Mousavi because of some religious reason, and the symbol of freedom according to our limited choices.)

We were happy to do things that were never possible if not for this strange election. Loud music, illegally dancing in public and night-life until 4 in the morning… Slogans Pro Mousavi and implicitly against Ahmadinejad (whom we all knew was only the loudspeaker for The Great Dictator: Khamenei, the Supreme Leader)… the nights before the Election Day, were dreams even at the time we lived them, and now seem so unreachable… .

Friday, June 12. For four hours I stood in the staring sun to vote for Mousavi. The ballot attendant told me that I was the 1200th person to vote, and after talking for hours with other people in the line (what else could you do?) I was confident that all of the votes are guaranteed for Mousavi. “This is the first election that I don’t have to choose between bad and worse,” was my thought at the moment of sliding the paper into the ballot box… It was to choose between not so bad and the worst… . We were all happy…!

Along with a friend (B) we spent that night in another friend’s apartment (A) to follow the counting process via internet and TV. Text messaging system was shut off for the day, and we hoped that by morning, we could be the first messengers of good news to everybody in the contact lists of our cell phones, by sending a victorious SMS. How simple we were…!

It’s Friday night. As long as I remember each and every election in this country has been extended till 10, 11, or midnight, but this one ended at 9. Some worrisome news find their way to our ears: In some of the big cities like Tabriz, the voting papers have finished at around noon and not been replaced till an hour to the deadline. The fear of a fraud has long-lasting roots in our hearts, but based on the 2005 election, we believe that the cheating can’t be more than 5 million. In A’s home, someone calls and says Fars News Agency has declared the winning of Ahmadinejad. We take it as a swan song kind of joke. In order, Fars, Irna, Isna, and Mehr are the most rightist and powerful news agencies in Iran. At exactly 10 minutes past midnight, we check Irna. This is the bitter headline:

“With a definitive majority of the votes, Mahmoud Ahmadinejad won the tenth presidential election of Islamic Republic of Iran.”

Impossible!! No human being can count over 30 million paper votes in around 3 hours. Another bitter practical joke, we suppose! But then comes the results of the counting, both from TV and News agency sites: Mousavi 1.5 m – Ahmadinejad 3.5 m, Mousavi 3 m – Ahmadinejad 7 m, and before 3 am, the approximately 3 to 7 ratio is established.

We are on the verge of heart attack. Covertly, the three of us weep alone. It’s unbearable. Just the imagination of another four years with this stooge of Khamenei as our president is unbearable.

Going to B’s house at 4 in the morning. Her mother is awake, worried to death. Her father comes back from Mousavi’s headquarters and says they have attacked there, because they were gathering the evidence of an immeasurable fraud… . He tries to console us, but our senses are too unstable to let us digest anything consoling.

Saturday evening. Text messaging is still down. I’m at A’s. Too depressed to say anything, still in shock, I say goodbye to him and make for my home... And thus begins everything…

But before describing the horror of the first day of a week of riots, you should know a little about the streets of Tehran. The longest street in Iran is Vali-e-Asr (The epithet of 12th Imam in Shiite, whom they believe is still alive after 1300 years and will come to save the world from evil on the apocalypse day), a north-south street which Vanak square is in the middle of it. Parallel to Vali-e-Asr from Vanak upward, is Africa Street (Previously named Jordan).

Now, It’s 5 in the afternoon, I am in Vali-e-Asr, around a mile north of Vanak square.

Tehran in fire and blood is what I see. People, from the youngest to the oldest imaginable, are in the street, forming groups of 20 to 200, scattered and going up and down and chanting. No order at all, no leader at all. 100% spontaneous. At every crossroads people are pulling the big trash carts to the middle of the street and set them on fire. We are chanting “Down with the Dictator”, and “Mousavi, Mousavi, take back my vote!” Most of the people in the street are of course just watching, but then comes a row of anti-riot policemen on motorcycles. From far away they shoot in the air and when approaching, hit everything on their way by batons. We escape to the alleys leading to Jordan Street, but suddenly we see another group of the police riding from Jordan toward us. We are surrounded. When the two groups of police get together, they beat each and every one of us. Next to me is a middle-aged couple, coming back from shopping with plastic bags of fruit in their hands. A baton lands on the woman’s neck and she falls down. The situation is helpless, but suddenly stones come at the police from the people gathering in the Vali-e-Asr and they abandon us to go after our rescuers—another crowd of ordinary people.

I have no other choice but to join the people. The safest place is where a large number are gathered together.

As I continue to go down Vali-e-Asr, the dispersed groups get together and form bigger gatherings and their chanting becomes louder. It’s a stop-cry-out-and-go-on route, punctuated with fire, fear, stone-throwing and running away. At one point, I reach a crowd of near 500 people in the two opposite sides of the street, doing a collective duet in support of each other, some kind of a verbal ping-pong. Whenever the riot police attack one group, they hurry to the other side and then police cannot come closer because of the high number of the protestors. Much of the wreckage of the traffic posts and the center divider railing were to hinder the riot police, or facilitate our transition.

Little by little, the clashes are getting harder. The baton-wielding police don’t dare approach the dense crowds of a 100 or more, and instead look forward to trapping the smaller groups.

We are chanting on the right side of the street now and the bikers are in the pavement of the left side. One of them tries to hit a pizza delivery guy on his motorbike, but fails and their motorcycle turns over. All of us at once rush to beat them but a few of us stop the others, shouting that “we are not like them!’ Soon the other police forces come and hit us hard!

In the middle of this dramatic scene, my cell phone rings. H, a new friend, says that his car is nearby and it’s better for me to join him and escape from this predicament. I make a big mistake to listen to him and start to walk a block to reach him. Do not forget that being alone in the site of these clashes is the most dangerous thing to do. I’m trying to pretend that I don’t see the street battles that happen every step of the way: 4 to 6 guards against 1 or 2 protestors. A bank’s window pours down in the background of one of these unequal fights.

Finally, I can see H. He is 150 feet from me. As I speed up, something hits me behind the knee. Strike of a baton. Idiotically I can’t control my first feeling and scream: “Why do you hit me, you filthy one?” He exclaims frankly: “You’re swearing at me?” and begins to madly smash his baton all over my body. At first, I want to fight, but seeing that he is obviously stronger and more trained and armed with an electric baton, I turn to run. Here is the comedy of it: I didn’t know that there are around 6 other guys right behind me and watching the scene. Now I am face to face with one of them whom I suppose must be their commander. He slaps me in the right ear. I lose my stability and my glasses fall down. A nonstop whistle starts to echo in my head, preventing me from recognizing what the apparent commander is shouting. Then a rain of batons falls on me everywhere; legs and thighs and waist and arms and neck. To block the face-bound strikes, I raise my hands and a painfully hard one hits my forearm. The pain is terrible and I fall down. The commander finally gives his approval of not hitting me any more and shouts to me: ‘Get lost!’ I reach for my glasses (fortunately not broken) and staggering and stumbling go toward the way H has gone.

We are still happy. At least we demonstrated that we are not as foolish as they presumed, to believe their shameless lies.

A bit later cell phones go down. Jordan Street is full of horning cars, a simple but noisy way of showing dissatisfaction. Near Vanak square, we see that they have tear gassed the area, but people set every flammable thing on fire to not lose their focus. A bloody man runs toward us, a baton and a motorcycle plate in his hands. “And here is your police! I’ve taken these as booty!” He cries out. We, along with every one near us, roar “hurray” and raise him on our hands… !

Reaching home is another difficult task. Every alley is full of riot police. At the entrance to the alley where my father’s apartment is, a woman calls out: “Don’t go there, son! They’ll arrest you!” But it’s not an option for me now. Behind the front door of our building, I could see the silhouette of some people in the hallway. Coming closer, I notice the intercom pad and the glasses in the door are damaged and broken. I tell my name and they let me in. Apparently, the neighbors had previously let some escaping protesters (including my family) into the building and the police had shown their displeasure by smashing our door.

(Because of the bad economic situation of the country in the years of Ahmadinejad, I couldn’t afford to live by myself anymore, and had to come back to my parents’ apartment.)

We were still happy. We thought that having proved our potential, they would come to their senses and annul the election results. I swallowed two Advil pills, and praying for a better day, welcomed Sunday morning.

The pain in my hand wakes me several times during the night. Every cell in my body leads me to the internet, but to what? Facebook and Twitter and Mousavi’s websites are blocked (Later, BBC, CNN and a lot of Iranian sites and weblogs would be filtered too, but Mousavi’s sites –Ghalam News and Kalemeh- would come out of the black out). Internet speed is boringly low (my usual 256 kbps ADSL which is a rather high speed in Iran, opens my mail in about 60 to 180 seconds!). One of my friends calls me and warns that my cell number may be controlled by the government (there are a few reasons for it, although they don’t need any reason for what they do), but I don’t care. The cell phones will continue to be cut off every evening, so why bother?

My mom makes me promise not to go to the protestors’ gatherings, and as I don’t know where to go, assure her and then go out to B’s house. B is a PhD student outside Iran and has just come back for the election. She gives me the latest news: riots in front of Tehran University has led to bloody clashes, but no casualties so far.

Ahmadinejad has managed a maneuver of power in the Vali-e-Asr square. Around 50 to 100 thousand of plain clothes Basijis, police and revolutionary guards, and the real fans of the government are brought to the site by buses and minibuses, mostly from the small towns around Tehran. Channel 6 is live broadcasting Ahmadinejad’s speech. (Iranian TV has only 7 state-run channels, plus an English-speaking and a part-time Arabic-speaking channel, all in the service of the regime, as the president of all TV and radio channels is appointed by the supreme leader himself.) Ahmadinejad is excited by the crowd, and begins to contemn and downgrade his opponents and the crowd’s roar of laughter sink into our pride like a serpent’s fangs. He ridicules some of Zahra Rahnavard’s reasons for the fraud in vote-counting, wears a green shawl and says that he himself is the child of the prophet (Mohammad), and then makes his biggest mistake:

“Those who cause disorder and turmoil in the country are just a bunch of twigs and brush woods… We are not afraid of these 200 troublemakers!”

As I sense the rush of pain in my injured hand, I notice that I have made a fist unknowingly… I can’t be in one place anymore. I wish there were millions of me, to run, to cry, and to have the power to be bigger than myself.

Mobiles are working. On the way home, H calls and says he is in my neighborhood. Basijis on the motorcycles have come there and beat everybody. H and his friends have hidden in one house, trying to find a way to escape. After 15 minutes he informs me that they have run away. Thank god.

Home. Everybody is on the rooftop, watching the violence of the Basijis. Today there’s no sign of any kind of police. There is only Basij: White-clothes over their khaki pants, two on a motorcycle, in the groups of 10 to 20, going up and down every alley (this is an area full of side streets) several times, and beating every moving soul to death. A couple of teenagers are walking along our alley. I tell my brother they shouldn’t be out, but he says I’m overestimating the cruelty of Basijis, that they are humans too. Suddenly more than ten Basijis appear on their bikes, and start to beat the hell out of the teenagers. They fall on the ground, on their knees, hands stretching to protect their faces, begging and crying, but the Basijis continue to beat them, more than ten to two, and one of them even has a real gun in his hands. Then one of the Basijis looks up and sees the people on the rooftops. He shouts: “get in or we’ll come to you!” The head of our building orders us to go back to our apartments; he is apparently frightened by their threat, and the elders agree with him. We argue with them, but the attack of the Basijis to the building on our left (breaking their windows and wrecking their entrance door) makes us go inside. After a while, we hear the screams of a woman. We rush to our small balcony in the opposite side of the alley, and what we see and hear, will never fade from our memories: Just because the inhabitants of the building to our right were watching the scene, Basijis had broken their entrance door, went in, smashed every car, and then broke into the apartments and beat the residents. They shouted: “You animals! You animals!” and the screams and bawling of the women and children were echoing in the building… We were crying… we were just crying, and cursing the perpetrators of these crimes.

Everybody is talking about today’s rally, from Revolution Square to Freedom Tower. Will it be dangerous? My friend, A, and I go together. B’s parents come too, but they cheat her and make her stay at home. Although she is cleverer than us and comes separately, which is a risky thing.

Near Revolution Square, we chant “Mousavi, if you remain silent, you are a traitor!”; “Don’t be scared, we are all together!”; and most of all, “Death to the dictator”. But after a while some of us remind the others that this is an illegal gathering and if we don’t want to give them any excuse to shoot at us, it’ll be better to be quiet. So we all stay silent, raise the v-for-victory sign, show our green wrist- and head-bands to the numerous mobile cameras, and walk slowly toward the Freedom tower (square). And then, when I see crowds of people pouring in from all directions, it feels as if a much missed, long departed friend has called to me. One million is our estimation, but the next day the mayor (another one of Ahmadinejad’s critics) will announce that 2400000 people were in that street. It’s a strange feeling to be among a crowd of over a million quiet people that have the same anger, the same lump in the throat, and the same willingness to make their country a different place. And it’s strange, because I think that apart from the love for soccer, nothing puts the 70 million-piece puzzle of Iranian population together, not even religion- whose significance in the Iranians’ lives has been overrated.

Everything is going smoothly in the rally. Our ant-like steps take us further one inch per minute, and then we see S, a photographer and a friend of A’s. He tells us that he’s got 3000 of one of Mousavi’s posters in his car nearby, as a friend of his has painted in green. Were we willing to help him bring and distribute them? A ridiculous question! Half an hour later, 3000 people are holding the greened picture of Mousavi in their hands. We are proud of ourselves. Every time that a police helicopter flies over our heads, we stand and raise our fingers in a v-for-victory salute. And then the car of Mousavi arrives. We chain our hands together to let it drive through us safely to the Freedom square, where he is to make a speech through a megaphone.

Mobiles are shut down again. Riot police are standing far from the silent crowd and just watching. We are walking for three hours in the energy-sucking sun now, and have got tired. We separate from the crowd and come back home.

Late at night my friends phone our home: There has been gunfire and bloodshed near Freedom square, and also Basij has attacked the Dormitory of Tehran University and demolished their rooms. They have killed at least five students, girls and boys, and injured a lot more. I am shocked. We are shocked. If there is a god, why is he silent now?

Went to sleep at 6 am and woke up at 11 am. B has gone out of the country, with tear in her eyes and an inevitable weight on her shoulders. Her father made her go away, and I think it was a wise decision. We need the maximum assistance from the elite Iranians living outside the country.

H calls. He has been near Dorm at 5 in the morning and rescued two injured girls. He tells me that he had brought the girls to a hospital, and when the police officers came for the injured ones to arrest them, an honorable doctor had come forward and told that they were his own patients. The girls told H that the Basijis had a strange gun that after firing made a bunch of holes in the body of the victims and virtually implode their limbs.

Every email and phone call leads to one issue only: another rally of silence in Vali-e-Asr Square and coming up to the TV station site, in north of the Vanak Square, appointed at 5!

But the regime finds out our plan and makes a dirty trick. Since noon, all the TV channels announce steadily that there will be a celebration of Ahmadinejad’s victory in the Vali-e-Asr square at 4! They even describe the routes of their gathering. What should we do? Nobody knows and the office of Mousavi remains silent too, because of the threats pointed toward them. What could we do?

We disperse in the city: a group in Freedom Square, another in Vanak, and others in different parts of Tehran. (There were some news about the riots in Shiraz and Isfahan and Tabriz and Ahwaz too, but the lack of reliable sources made us dubious about most of what we heard).

Not knowing where the majority gathers is the most hazardous poison in the street protests. Finally, our evening leads to the rooftops and shouting Allaah_o_Akbar (God is the Greatest). But…

This is another example of inconsistency among us Iranians: Not everybody in these rallies is a fan of Mousavi or the slow process of reform from within the system of Islamic Republic. Personally, I prefer to have any kind of governing system apart from the Islamic appendage. Now, Mousavi has become the symbol of opposition and Allah-o-Akbar the symbolic chant of the protestors, and for the sake of keeping the harmony, most of us are in these together, but not approvingly. I may return to this issue later. For now, it is the night before Wednesday, a night pregnant with anxiety, expectation, and strangely the rare luxury of hope.

Hafte Tir square is the beginning point of today’s rally, a big square in the middle of Tehran, borrowing it’s name (7th of Tir 1360, equal to 28th of June 1981) from the day a bomb went off at the headquarters of the Islamic Republic Party and killed more than 70 of the powerful designers of the new regime. A rather lengthy bridge and a beautiful boulevard connects this square to Vali-e-Asr and Revolution squares, which seems to be the main path of us; the so-called protestors.

Our rendezvous is under the bridge, near the most famous bookshop in Tehran: the small Cheshmeh (Water Spring) bookshop. Little by little everyone comes there, including S, a well-known actor, whom the people approach to talk to and this makes him change his path finally. We talk and decide not to go over the bridge, which is now full of people and virtually no vehicle could cross over it.

Quiet and peaceful, we walk along. On the way, H proposes to do something about these days. I ask what, and he reiterates for the thousandth time that his concern is literature, and maybe we can write, translate, edit, or gather some pieces together which help us feel better and maybe register these days. I think he is right. We owe this to these people; we owe this to the people all over the world who follow the news of Iran; and most of all we owe this to ourselves. This terrible regime has taken our youth, our vigor and our hopefulness. Élan Vital has been sucked out of my generation, and we are in debt to ourselves. We should do something.

It’s still more than an hour to the nightfall, but some of the self-styled leaders (!) say that we’d better disperse to reach our homes before darkness. The Basijis may lie in ambush for small groups of us in the blackness of the night, and it’s not wise to confront them. Before saying goodbye to each other, we are informed of the next day’s site: Meydaan e Toupkhaaneh, which means the Artillery Square (its new name is Imam Khomeini Square), in a rather southern part of the city.

Before reaching home (on foot of course, as all the streets see more walkers than the riders), I see some Basijis at a crossroads, swearing at us, trying to provoke us to make a scene, but everyone is smart enough not to be goaded on by their pathetic efforts.

Most of us have worn black, the oldest sign of mourning in Iran. I’m wearing a green wrist-band on one hand and a black one on the other. Some are distributing posters and placards like “Where is my vote?”. Arriving at Toupkhaaneh is one thing and the path from there to anywhere completely another one. Too much disorder today. They say that people coming from the subway are suffocating and we should move on to let them come outside and have a little air. The main group (including us) go toward Ferdowsi Square (You know Ferdowsi, the greatest epic writer in Persian literature.)

Another conversation with H about the effect these days have had upon our personal lives. I think our lives are punctuated by the events of the aftermath of the election. We remember everything by the main event of the particular days: this debate; that rally; the Revolution to Freedom day; and so on. H says that his life has never had such an organized routine: Waking up; surfing the net; calling friends about what happened last day and when and where to be that day; going to the rally; coming back home before nightfall; a light meal; going on the rooftops to cry out “Allah-o-Akbar”; Again internet; and then swallowing a sleeping tablet to not have to remember the pictures of the killed and injured ones… . He is right, again! (By the way, the terrible economic situation of Iran has made many people jobless, including H whose small business went bankrupt last year.)

Ferdowsi Square. It’s around 6 pm. We are in the east side of the square, circling it to the north, and joining the people going west. H sees a couple of friends and goes for a minute to talk to them. I’m holding a very long black ribbon with at least 20 other guys. Then H waves and shouts that we’d better get off the line and have a talk with his friends for a while and then join the people. I don’t want to, but accept anyway. And then it happens: As we are chitchatting, a big truck from the east street comes and crashes the crowd, jumping and running over the people, breaking their limbs and forcing its way open, right in the place that we could be, if it wasn’t for H’s sudden whim to be around his friends. The over quiet crowd turns to a roaring thunder and we all run following the truck, which is now speeding northward. There are two ambulances parked in the northern exit of the square and immediately their doors open and a squad of riot police comes out of them, standing against the people. It seems that people are too angry to be scared from the police right now, but before any clashes happen, another incident turns our focus on it: Mousavi and his wife in a roofless car appear from the Toupkhaaneh street, and everybody chants “Mousavi, Mousavi, We support you!” When his car passes by, the furious shouts turn into applauding slogans. We see an old man though, his bald head bleeding: one of the victims of the Sadist truck driver. No one murdered apparently, but some seriously injured.

Four hours later, we are still in H’s car, because of the unbelievably heavy traffic. We don’t talk much, but both of us know that we were a step away of making our families hurt, and also we both worry about tomorrow. The supreme leader is going to make a highly important speech after tomorrow’s group prayer and it will certainly determine the course of this movement.

“If the political elite want to put the law under foot ... they are the ones responsible for the bloodshed, the violence and rioting.”

“Street demonstrations are a target for terrorist plots. Who would be responsible if something happened?”

"Rioting after the election is not a good way. It questions the election. If they continue [the consequences] will be their responsibility.”

No! I cannot summarize the depression, frustration, anger, and distress of myself and too many other compatriots on Friday night. Yes, we knew that Ahmadinejad was only an idiot puppet in the hands of Khamenei, the Supreme Dictator, and no, we didn’t guess that for the first time in these 30 years of the regime, this apparently religious figure would dare use such harsh tone, in front of all the people in the world who watched him live. All this election process was something within the system; nobody even slightly implied the role of Khamenei or the legitimacy of the regime, but he resorted to saber rattling and threatened both Mousavi and the people. If you’ve had the experience of living in Islamic Republic of Iran and understand enough Farsi, you would know that when the Supreme Leader hints on some issue, the consequences of it will be catastrophic: The Revolutionary Guard, Basij, Police, Army and all the governmental administrations including TV, will use his words as an undeniable excuse to do what they want, by any means possible.

Later I will understand that I’ve not been alone in this: nobody slept that night.

The date was appointed a few days ago, the first rally to be known not the night before. Revolution Square at 4 pm, to Freedom Square at 7 pm. Khatami (Ex-President and a renowned reformist) and Mousavi are going to make speeches. Six of us are to be at a crossroads near Revolution Square at 3:30. We want to give Khamenei a decisive response and everyone of us thinks that this will be the largest rally ever; something to remain in the history- which it did, but not quite as we planned.

This is the day of Neda, this is the day of the martyrs, this is the day of murder and torture and baton and blood and broken bones and martial law.

Cell phones are down like everyday, right at 4 o’clock. Before then, one of my friends who works in a shop near Rev. square calls me and says that at 1 pm police ordered him to close the shop. He begs me not to come, because he has smelled the blood in the air. My friend isn’t political, he didn’t vote, and he always tries to be a decent citizen for the safety of his family. Finally I assure him that if anything was going to go wrong, I’d come to his apartment, a block from Rev. square.

I have never, ever, even in the police movies and series, seen so many armed men in my life. The Revolutionary Guard, usual police, riot police, traffic police (!), Basij, Ansaar Hezb-o-llah, Sepaah Qods (the ultra strong animals from the military branch of Lebanese Hezb-o-llah whom Iran’s regime has supported in a long time for days like these), helicopters, military vehicles, and so many guns are not the background, but the body of the picture I’m trying to depict for you. At the four corners of every main and minor crossroads, there are at least 20 of all these armed men, and at the entrance, middle, and end of each alley, 2 Basijis.

I make my way to our rendezvous, but they don’t let anyone stand still. I have to go to a small grocery nearby - which they have allowed to be open for god knows what reason and maybe because it is a half-hour walk from there to the Rev. square - and buy a large pack of orange juice to pretend that I’ve come shopping and now am going back home. The idea is not just mine, and many others do the same thing. Police don’t let the groups of more than a couple walk in the streets, and after a while, they don’t let anyone go south, toward the main site of the supposed gathering.

Toward the Revolution square. I cannot wait for my friends. They will understand. With a thousand tricks I open my way to the Rev. Street, but then I’m confronted with almost 50 oversized policemen in black uniforms (Elite Squad) who push everyone and don’t let them go to the street. I don’t know what to do, but apparently they do… . I have to run back to my friends before inhaling their tear gas, before being hit by their batons. There, from the rooftop, in the next six hours, I would be the witness of people being beaten to death, gunfire (I saw only in the air shots), tear gas clouds, the black smoke of the buses and buildings on fire, the many many many security forces, and the extravagant atmosphere of fear and anger and the saved tears of a nation, which were going to be released after watching the murder of young innocent people such as Neda… .

At 10 pm, I drive through the streets toward my home. They have blocked many streets and a usual 15 minute drive takes 45 minutes. If a foreigner unexposed to the old and new media had watched what I saw in those streets, they would have thought that there had been an earthquake in Tehran: paved streets had become dirt roads, the remnants of fires and stones and trenches make them unrecognizable; a few banks, burnt to the ground; so many broken windows and doors; too many signs of a natural catastrophe; but it was not natural! It was man against man, Iranian against Iranian! This street once was called AmirAbad (the land of the lords), today’s name is Kargar (Worker Ave.), but from now on, it will always be the street that Neda was killed in, Neda Avenue.

The tears of me, the tears of you, all the tears of these days, are not an iota of the real outburst of the lump in our throats and the grudge in our hearts. Tell me, what thing exactly is worth the life of a human being? What thing is worth the trauma of what we saw, the unbearable weight of being the witness, the ruined sense of mental safety, and above all crushing the hope for a better life?

Nobody in Iran believes the official statistics. Rumor has it that more than a hundred are killed, near five hundred injured, and over two thousand have been arrested and most probably tortured. We fear that our phone calls and emails are being controlled, and are ready to hear a new bad news every hour.

The bereaved city is under martial law, although not officially (!) announced. All the squares and main streets are guarded by armed Basijis. Some of them stop the suspicious cars and search them for green ribbons or Mousavi posters and statements to arrest or warn the drivers. Nobody can sleep normally or pretend that nothing has happened.

The voice of a nation has been cut off from their throats. We have never cried this much, we have never feared this much… . Another rally and I’m sure there will be more and more in the coming days, but only with the bravest and maybe most desperate youth of my country, those who are ready to pay any price for their voice to be heard. I’m not optimistic about the final outcome, but I agree with President Obama that, “Those who stand up for justice are always on the right side of history.”

Oh, how I envy Americans, not only because their rights of freedom are respected, rights for which their fathers had fought in the past, but also for having a president, right now, who sustains the hope for the survival of humanity.

Now another week has passed and the number of detainees is escalating terrifyingly. Our neighbor, a very famous actress in theatre and film, has been arrested for lighting a candle on Neda’s grave. The atmosphere of Iran is one of a dismal and most depressing kind. The social reaction to this oppression has been a passive one. Nobody trusts anybody; people are stressful and aggressive and ready to fight in the streets (with each other) for the smallest things; we’ve learned cruelty and are ready to show that we are capable of it too; the thesis behind most of our deeds in the near future will be: “damn them all, I just wanna fill my pockets”; and finally I’m sure that another wave of immigration will rise among those who can afford it.

I’m not a political analyst, but living in a third world totalitarian country has made us all political. I’ve heard it and believe that a regime which has reached the power via revolution, won’t give in to another revolution. They have too many interests, too many foreign supporters, and too much experience in oppressing the nation under their government to give in easily. I don’t know what the resolution for us will be, but I know something: 1979 revolution was the sequel to over 30 years of groundwork-laying. So many political parties and groups, with different but strong ideologies, with a lot of branches and organizations, and a lot of political and religious and social leaders were involved in its evolution. Many branches of Constitutionalist, Marxist, and Islamist movements with diverse goals and leaders - but all sharing the single cause of overthrowing the Shah’s regime - made the 1979 revolution possible, though in the end Khomeini and his many followers expropriated both the revolution and the ultimate authority. This is exactly what we miss in our 2009 demonstrations: a clear ideology or goal, and tough, intellectual and pragmatist leaders. I think the first problem is somehow resolvable, thanks to the times and its gifts. As many noted during this month, Iran’s movement owes so much to the new media and technology, and it may be possible to replace ideology with technology. Satellite channels, cell phones and the convenience of taking photos and making videos by anyone anywhere, internet and its immense options (emails, communicative websites like facebook and twitter, websites of TV channels, the possibility of making contact with the persons and institutions that can help us in different ways) in the short term, and using all these tools in the long term for the young and teenage generations of my country to at least acquaint them with an alternative lifestyle, and teaching them that no human being has the right to impose his own lifestyle on others, could be the advantages of technology … .

But what about the leaders? What will the US do? What will the UN do? What will the EU do? What are the next moves of Khamenei and Ahmadinejad and their totalitarian administration? What will happen to those detained and to those like me who are awaiting arrest? What will happen to the men and women of my ill-starred country? Nobody knows. But I know what we need right now; that’s what lies at the bottom of Pandora’s ethereal box: HOPE.

This report is adorned by poems; the title of this report and every other poetic piece in italic are excerpts from poems by Ahmad Shamlou (1925 - 2000), the renowned Iranian poet who was a Nobel Prize nominee in 1984. A rebellious poet who was repressed both before and after Iran’s 1979 revolution, Shamlou is still the dominant voice of the long-suffering people of my land. More than any other time, it’s now that his poems haunt me day and night, incessantly echoing what I’ve felt intensely. Despite much assistance from my good friend, M, in editing this piece and translating the poems, I know that these epigraphs are obviously much short of the original texts – as happens in every translation of a poem – but anyway, I think it’s a pity not to end this imperfect description of these ten days with a poem that says most truthfully most of what must be said. The amazing point is that Shamlou wrote this poem 30 years ago, around five months after the so-called “Islamic” revolution:

In This Dead-End

They smell your mouth

[1] Neda Salehi AghaSoltan’s brutal murder has been watched by many people all over the world. Since then, not only has she been a symbol of our movement, but also another unifying element among us and between us and the rest of the world. Of course the main reason of not putting my real name here is the fear they have planted in our souls. But this is a small tribute to Neda too, because it’s been days now, that all our names have been changed to Neda: I am Neda!