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By Root 399 0

my parents appreciated dissent much more than any other parents I knew. Whereas many of my friends were asked by their parents to do whatever they could to avoid incensing the authorities, my father valued my attempts to live outside the government-enforced norms. As some of our relatives used to say, only half-jokingly: trouble was in my family’s blood, and each member of the Bahari family would get into trouble sooner or later.

· · ·

It was not only the fashionable middle class, like the kids I met in the Sorkheh Bazaar, who supported Mousavi. In dozens of interviews I conducted at different local campaign offices in south Tehran and its poorer suburbs that day, I found that many lower-income people also supported Mousavi for the same reasons the middle class did. Rampant corruption in Ahmadinejad’s government and Iran’s status as an international pariah—that many nations distrusted and feared Iran—were the two main complaints Mousavi supporters had against Ahmadinejad. Both issues touched upon the basic concept of a citizen’s right to determine his or her destiny. Three days before electing their next president, many Iranians thought that it was finally time they had a right as a nation to decide their own future.

Davood explained to me that many supporters of Mousavi were disillusioned former revolutionaries. Over a lunch of dizi, a traditional Iranian dish made with lamb, potatoes, and chickpeas, Davood told me that his father had been a staunch revolutionary and had fought for five years in the war with Iraq. His devotion to his country had left him with an artificial eye and leg. But while he was still a loyal citizen, Davood’s father had no respect for the current Islamic regime. He despised the officials in the Ahmadinejad government and saw them for what they were: corrupt, power-hungry hypocrites.

“Because my father is a decent man, he lives on a pension of two million rials [about $200] per month,” Davood said. “But my father’s cousin is as dirty as a dog. He’s a billionaire.” His father’s cousin, a real estate developer in Tabriz, had worked closely with the government of the shah before the revolution. “Ever since then, he’s made his money by bribing successive Islamic government officials,” Davood noted, a look of disgust clouding his face.

Despite Davood’s disdain for traffic laws, it took us almost six hours to cross the city, and it was nearly four P.M. when we finally reached Robat Karim, one of the poorest suburbs of Tehran. I spotted Mazdak taking photos of a group of young Mousavi supporters distributing leaflets. Like many good photojournalists, Mazdak is usually calm to the point of invisibility. But that day, the fifty-year-old professional bubbled with the excitement of a teenager. He eagerly embraced Davood and me and introduced us to some local Mousavi campaigners. Mazdak couldn’t stop talking about his experience of the green line demonstration the night before, where he and his wife had stood alongside their twenty-two-year-old son and eighteen-year-old daughter.

“It was like going to a political picnic! I’ve never seen anything like it, Maziar,” he said, grabbing both of my arms. “Everyone was marching peacefully. There were some clashes with Ahmadinejad supporters here and there but nothing serious.” Like a delirious drunk looking for someone, anyone, to talk to, Mazdak couldn’t stop telling me about what was happening around him. “Something has changed in this country, Maziar. People have become political and won’t take this government’s shit anymore. Ahmadinejad’s people know their days are numbered, and they have accepted the idea of defeat,” he burbled excitedly.

Ahmadinejad was essentially using an already existing system to get reelected, a system that had made millions of Iranians dependent on the government. I spent an hour or so with Mazdak, walking among the gathering crowds. Most of the Mousavi supporters on the streets were young, educated people repulsed by how Ahmadinejad was manipulating their neighbors and families. Most of the Robat Karim residents were migrants from