Then They Came for Me_ A Family's Story of Love, Captivity, and Survival - Maziar Bahari [41]
Later that night, one of my sources in the Ministry of Intelligence told me that in the end, seven people were killed during the demonstration in front of the Basij base.
“Do you think it’s safe for me to write about the attack on the Basij?” I asked him.
“Everyone knows that you filmed the attack,” he said. “The Basijis were filming you filming it.”
Nervous that the Basij had its eye on me, I decided that the best course of action would be to mention publicly that I had filmed the Basij attack. Up to that date, my footage was the most incriminating documentation of Basij violence against Iranian citizens. I knew that the authorities would not be happy with my footage and that they would question me about how I’d managed to record it. I didn’t want it to look surreptitious and wanted to be able to answer that I’d simply filmed what had happened in front of me, the way I had always done in the past.
Later that night, I wrote an article for the Newsweek website expressing my fears and hopes for the future. “Mousavi’s supporters are planning to stage another peaceful protest tomorrow,” I wrote. “Tonight, it is difficult to predict what that will bring, or what the end result of the cycle of demonstrations will be.”
· · ·
Amir was released the next day and called me soon after. When I went to see him, he told me that he’d been among a group of pro-Mousavi politicians who had been rounded up and taken to Evin Prison for two days. “We were warned that if we don’t calm the situation, we will be responsible for whatever might happen to us,” said Amir. According to him, Mousavi was quite upset about the attack but he was not going to let the terrorists hijack the green movement—which was how the support for Mousavi was becoming known. Mousavi had decided to tell his supporters to take to the streets one more time and avoid any confrontation with the police and the Guards that could provoke further violence.
When I told Amir what I had witnessed the day before, he made a confession that surprised me.
“Maziar jaan,” he said with melancholy in his voice, “I never told you this, but I always had my doubts about Mousavi’s abilities as a leader. But today … he is a changed man. I was with him an hour ago, and I could see that he has finally realized what an important role he can play in the history of this country. He has finally become what people wanted him to be: a strong leader with a clear vision about what he wants to achieve.”
After the demonstrations had begun, Amir said, Khamenei’s secretary, Vahid, had contacted Mousavi to organize a meeting between the two men.
“Let’s re-count the votes; then we’ll talk,” Mousavi had responded. He’d told Vahid to tell his master not to call him again, unless he had something new to say.
· · ·
The peaceful demonstrations continued for three days without further intervention by terrorist groups. During those days I was very proud of my people. Iranians were going to achieve something rare in a Muslim country. Hitherto, mass movements in Muslim countries had been either in support of fundamentalist groups or in favor of Western models of democracy. But the people of Iran were choosing a third way. The goal of the green movement was to establish an indigenous Iranian democracy, one that at its helm could have religious men, such as Mousavi, but would still respect human rights, freedom of expression, and women’s rights.
Millions of people took to the streets over those three days. As the crowds grew in confidence and size, the regime became more and more paranoid. When I tried to call a friend four days after the election to find out more about Mousavi’s plans, cell phone and Internet communications had been cut. The government had shut down wireless communications between two and nine P.M., from an hour before until an hour after the demonstrations, to stop people from telling