Then They Came for Me_ A Family's Story of Love, Captivity, and Survival - Maziar Bahari [38]
There, my mother had just finished preparing fish and torshi tareh, a light vegetarian stew with rice. She had a mysterious ability to know what food I was in the mood for. When I needed energy, she would prepare fesenjoon, a chicken or duck stew with walnuts and pomegranate sauce, or morgheh torsh, a chicken dish with unripe grapes and split peas. On a day like this, when I was in a hurry and had to have a light meal, she would prepare torshi tareh or mirza ghasemi, scrambled eggs with tomatoes and eggplant.
As we ate, she told me that at the local market that morning, she’d heard that many people had decided to take part in the Dust and Dirt demonstration. “People are planning to come to the streets to take back their votes. I wish I could join them. If I were even ten years younger, I would,” she said, as I savored every spoonful of my torshi tareh. “But I’m worried that, with my back pain, I won’t be able to escape if the Guards attack the protestors.” My mother was speaking from experience. She had taken part in many demonstrations in her youth and knew how suddenly and unexpectedly violence could break out.
“Do you think these ashghals will just sit on their hands and tolerate people protesting against them?” my mother asked as I made Turkish coffee for her and myself.
Years of seeing her country brutalized by one government after another had taught my mother to expect the worst. She was not expecting Khamenei and his regime to act rationally. “When it comes to the tyrannical leaders of this country, none of them has been able to see beyond the tip of his nose. They just want to rule and pillage the country for as long as they can without thinking about the consequences for the people or themselves.”
“Yes, you may be right, but what about legitimacy?” I asked. “Don’t you think Khamenei wants to stay in power as a legitimate leader?”
My mother—perhaps surprised by my naïveté—turned away and drew my attention to the news program on the television. Throughout the day, the state radio and television stations had been warning potential demonstrators that the Ministry of Interior had not issued a permit for any demonstrations. They emphasized that the security forces would punish the demonstrators as harshly as possible in accordance with the law.
“Legitimacy?!” my mother exclaimed with disdain. “Do you think they even care what people think?” She turned off the television, threw the remote to a corner of a couch, and joined me in clearing the table. “Just be careful when you go out.”
· · ·
I was very curious to see how many people were going to turn up at the Dust and Dirt demonstration, and how the government would respond. My guess was that, at best, a few thousand Mousavi supporters would take to the streets, the security forces would beat them up, and most people would go home. Mousavi would eventually accept defeat and return to his government job as the director of the Academy of Arts.
I couldn’t have been more wrong.
I arrived at the demonstration at about four-thirty. The scene reminded me of the demonstrations against the shah I’d witnessed in November 1978, when I was eleven. Today, there were at least two million people, most of them in their teens and twenties, preparing to march along the same route from Revolution Square to Freedom Square. I struck up a conversation with Ahmad, a fifty-four-year-old academic. “We walk along this route because it has taken us a long time to reach freedom since the revolution,” Ahmad said. He had taken part in the 1978 march as well. “I see many similarities between what happened then and now. In both cases, we had a clear mandate. Then we wanted to overthrow the shah. Today we want this little man”—Ahmadinejad—“who has stolen our votes to resign and accept the people’s votes.”
There were so many bystanders, it was almost impossible to move through the crowd. Knowing that they were being watched