On 8 January I sent a video of the protests in Iran to a friend in England. Then the internet went dark. Reza Pahlavi – the son of the late shah, now living in the US – had called for people to come out into the streets at 8 p.m., in response to the catastrophic economic situation and the strikes that had begun in the bazaars a week earlier.
I live on the top floor of a block of flats in western Tehran. I turned off the lights and watched the city below. It was slowly changing shape. Shops were closing. People were running through the streets. My phone rang. It was a friend. ‘We’re going to Qeytarieh Square,’ he said. ‘Come with us.’
We headed north in a car. Along the way, shopkeepers were pulling down their shutters. When we arrived, I couldn’t believe the size of the crowd. People in wealthy neighbourhoods never usually protested. But economic pressure had erased class distinctions. Discontent had become universal.
The chants were loud: ‘Long live the Shah’; ‘Death to Khamenei.’ Wanting to know what was happening further ahead, I moved forward and got separated from my friends. Sandbags and dirt were piled in the middle of the street. Road signs had been torn down to block the entry of security forces. Someone poured petrol onto a pile of tyres and set it on fire. The flames rose high, lighting up the street.
Across from us stood riot police in full gear, twenty or thirty of them, along with armed plainclothes agents. I looked at the protesters around me. Most of them were very young, perhaps twenty years old: girls and boys dressed in dark clothes, their faces covered by masks. ‘Don’t go into side alleys,’ people warned. ‘You’ll get trapped.’
The police fired tear gas. The chants continued. ‘They’re shooting!’ someone shouted. We all ran. A young woman asked me to look at the back of her neck. She had been hit by pellets.
The sound of gunfire intensified. I could see flashes in the darkness and didn’t understand what they were. (Later, when the internet came back on and videos surfaced on social media, I realised the authorities had been firing directly into the crowd.)
Seeing the young woman who had already been shot was enough for me. I headed back towards my friend’s car. To avoid being identified none of us had our phones. There was no way to be in touch with one another. But my friends were waiting for me.
We drove back to western Tehran, toward Sadeghieh Square. The streets were filled with fire. We tried different routes to avoid the crowds. Near the square, there were so many people the streets were impassable. I got out of the car and ran towards home.
Suddenly I found myself in the middle of violent clash. Plainclothes agents were attacking people with batons. The sound of gunfire didn’t stop. Protesters were trying to flee, carrying the wounded.
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