The writer is a Tehrani who wishes to remain anonymous out of concern for his safety.
I was at home on the morning of February 14th, a gray, wintry day in Tehran, when I heard the unbelievable news: a young man had climbed up onto a crane, where Ghasr crosses Shariateri Avenue in east Tehran, and was holding a green ribbon in one hand and two big photos—apparently of “martyrs,” though that wasn’t clear—in the other.
By the time I got to the scene, at around 2:45 P.M., the man was gone. He had been up there on the crane for a few hours, but police and fire fighters managed to take him down. His picture was on Facebook, I heard. The place he had selected for his protest was not far from Imam Hussein Square, where, thirty-two years ago, Air Force technicians had an armed confrontation with other Air Force officers who had remained loyal to the Shah. The banks and shops around the square were doing their regular pre-Iranian New Year business; people in casual clothes, young women and girls with their parents, were filling up the sidewalks. Riot police were hanging around, near their vans, sipping fruit juice and eating snacks. They had been on standby since the morning because of calls for a protest march that day.
The night before, Hamid, a nationalist-secular friend of mine, had predicted a poor turnout. “Iranians are too arrogant to copy the uprisings in Egypt. At the bottom of their hearts, they regard themselves to be culturally superior to the Arabs.” The fact that the February 14th Facebook page had more than sixty thousand supporters hadn’t impressed Hamid. “The number on Facebook means nothing,” he said. “At the end of the day, out of all the people on Facebook who claim to be for a cause, we may only see fifty protesters in the streets who cannot brave the batons more than ten minutes or so, and will be dispersed as always.”
It was now about 3 P.M. All of a sudden, the shops emptied and the two pedestrian bridges on the west side of the square filled with people chanting “Death to the dictator,” and calling to the riot police, “Support us! People, join us!” Soon they were streaming on the sidewalks, moving west toward Azadi Square. As I walked among them, I thought about how even in a despotic country like ours, Facebook and Twitter were taken seriously. There were thousands of people now, and the pioneer demonstrators from the pedestrian bridges were elbowing their way forward and braving the batons and tear-gas canisters and shouting, “No Mubarak in Egypt, no rulers in Tehran, I sacrifice myself for Iran!”
Looking on, Ahmad, fifty, a paper recycler, expressed his astonishment. “I cannot believe it. I thought the sissy movement of the middle class had died out for eternity, but it seems it isn’t so.”
Reza, a fellow marcher, a man in his forties, told me that until recently he had thought the Supreme Leader would be politically astute, and call for a new election so as to get rid of President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad. “But now I think we have crossed the red line; the whole regime should go,” he said. “The Supreme Leader committed a historic blunder by putting all his weight behind Ahmadinejad. Seyyed Ali Khamenei must go after Ben Ali and Mubarak.” Reza added that the night before, people in the apartment buildings around his, in an affluent part of north Tehran, had begun shouting “Allahu akbar” (“God is great”) at 10 P.M. The chants had gone on for twenty minutes. They had done it as a prologue to the demonstration and to show their support for the Tunisians and Egyptians. “This shows that the Green Movement is still viable and that the claims of its death by the hardliners are wrong,” Reza said.
It was now 5 P.M., and in Engelab (Revolution) Square the riot police and basij, the regime’s militia, surrounded the marchers. The crowd moved onto the side streets, and outside Imam Khomeini hospital the clashes began. Stones and bricks were thrown at the police and basij, and back came tear gas—and what appeared to be live bullets, fired by unseen snipers. The slogans against the Supreme Leader had made the basij furious; coming from somewhere behind me, I could hear, “I am ready to sacrifice myself for my Beloved Leader!” I looked back and saw around a hundred men on motorcycles waving batons, bludgeons, and straps, beating marchers behind me. People were choking on tear gas. Young people who were smokers were lighting their cigarettes and puffing in the faces of women, on the theory that this would counteract the gas. A woman next to me said, “I have lit twenty cigarettes so far and puffed in faces. Coughing is killing me now.”
Some people fought in other ways. At the intersection with Valiasr Avenue, some vigilantes and plainclothes police agents were beaten up by sturdy, broad-shouldered pro-Green Movement youths. This, too, was unexpected. The slogans were now against the Supreme Leader: “Death to Khameinei!,” and “Seyyed Ali”—the Supreme Leader—“go after Ben Ali and Mubarak!”
We saw people being handcuffed and taken away. The demonstration broke up, and I made my way home. Around Imam Khomeini hospital, bricks, stones, and broken glass littered the asphalt. But the riot police had managed to keep Azadi Square clear so that there could be no sit-in like the one in Cairo’s Tahrir Square.
Later on, I talked to a twenty-four-year-old pharmacology student named Samad. “After my class finished at 2 P.M., two of my friends and I shared a taxi from our university,” he said. They got caught up in the clashes near Imam Khomeini hospital. “We threw stones and bricks and received tear gas and batons. The tear gas was too much, and I fainted. My friends dragged me into a dilapidated house near there, but the basij attacked the house with more tear gas and then they managed to break in. But by that time my friends had found some vinegar from somewhere and neutralized the effects of the tear gas. The basij came to catch me and I was almost handcuffed, but my friends got me free from their hands. We rushed out and ran and ran and ran and took a taxi and escaped from the scene. I am not regretting anything. I’m from a well-off family—both my parents are dentists and I will be a dentist next year—but I need individual freedoms, social freedoms, and I need political freedom, too. I cannot forget what happened to my friends last year when the Green Movement was crushed. I cannot and I do not want to lead a life of austerity.”
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Photograph: AP Photo.
