City of Lies: Love, Sex, Death, and the Search for Truth in Tehran

Jomhouri Street, Tehran, April 2013

Amir had spent most of his life avoiding subversion and staying away from anything vaguely political. But moving to Tehran for university changed that. He was drawn to the buzz of the underground student movement. It was barely organized, and mostly consisted of a handful of dissidents giving impassioned speeches in their bedrooms to a rapt audience of less than five.
In the run-up to the presidential elections in 2009, he had joined his university
friends at their old haunt, Café Prague, west of Vali Asr. The café was close to the campus and a popular meeting place for students, activists, artists, intellectuals and hipsters. Here couples would date, friends would gossip, poets would read their work and everyone else discussed politics over endless teas, coffees and cheese sandwiches. Conversations were often heated. To vote or not to vote, that was always the question. The Boycotters would fail to convince the Voters that their votes gave the regime legitimacy. The Voters said change was possible; it was in their hands. They would discuss the lost years of reform under the old President, Mohammad Khatami, who had served from 1997 to 2005 and was a hero to so many. Amir and his friends would noisily argue that they had all been blinded by Khatami’s petty reforms: headscarves slipped back and a few more films were made, but they all seemed to forget this man was a coward. They reminded anyone who cared to listen that Khatami had condemned the anti-government protesters in 1999, denouncing the protesters and accusing them of being led by ‘evil elements’; and he was decidedly quiet whenever students and dissidents were rounded up and arrested. Not forgetting that Khatami was ungracious and bitter to boot: when the human rights lawyer Shirin Ebadi won the Nobel Peace Prize he sniped that it was not a very important award. As for the reforms, Amir would say, everyone in Iran knows where the real power lies, and that is in the hands of one man alone, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, the Supreme Leader. Talk would then turn to Mir Hossein Mousavi, the man whom Khatami made way for, the new great prospect of the reformists. Amir hated him and was unexpectedly mute on the subject. He’s our only hope! his friends would cry, and his face would go blank with a look that he had honed over years – dead eyes that gave nothing away.
Amir and his friends finally got the chance to go public with their politics when mass protests erupted after the contested result. The mood in the streets was euphoric. Standing in an ocean of hope and joy, Amir was overwhelmed with a happiness that he had not known since before his parents’ death. He started filming everything on his mobile phone, as so many others did. Footage from the first few days showed Tehranis of all hues, of all classes and ages standing side by side. You could see thousands chanting, demanding a re- election; none of them believed Ahmadinejad had won again. They flashed peace signs and smiled for the cameras; families were there too and some had brought their children to join the crowds. At times it looked more like a celebration than a protest. You could see the excitement; kids were laughing and running and holding each other, ordinary human expressions of exuberance that
are not often glimpsed on the streets of Tehran. People charged down Vali Asr; a river of bodies beneath the trees. Amir was ecstatic at being part of the collective consciousness. But as the days wore on, the looks on people’s faces started to change. Fear crept in. So did the riot police and the Basij militia. Amir began wearing a bandanna tied in front of his face and dark glasses to conceal his identity; the mass protests gave way to mass arrests. These ordinary young Iranians scared the regime.
Amir had gathered with his friends where Vali Asr Street meets Beheshti Street. The crowd was huge. A young woman had brought her wheelchair-bound mother; there were labourers, rich kids, students, housewives. And they were all shouting, ‘REFERENDUM! REFERENDUM!’
Amir held up his little camera and captured girls blowing kisses. Then the shouts turned to their saviour, the man they wanted in power, Mir Hossein Mousavi. ‘MOUSAVI – MOUSAVI!’ The crowd was roaring.
No one knew where the shots came from, and at first no one was even sure they were shots. Suddenly everyone was running and screaming. More shots. Amir started to run. He almost stumbled; at his feet was a young man, blood trickling out of his ear and oozing out of his head. His friends were trying to pick him up and drag him away.
That was the moment when Amir felt the need to honour his parents’ courage with his own. Writing a blog and attending activist meetings was the first step.
The group consisted of journalists, bloggers, human rights lawyers, film directors and members of the women’s rights movement. Tonight they had arranged to meet at Amir’s house, as he had the lowest profile. Some of them were convinced their houses were bugged. They all whispered in their cars, and only if there was music blasting. Not long ago, they used to meet in cafés where the owners often joined in. But the café owners had been ordered to install cameras, the contents of which would be available to the police – or any other authority – if they so requested. Café Prague, their old haunt, had refused to install them and instead shut down.
The 2013 presidential elections were only a couple of months away and there had been the expected crackdown. In the last few months, more than a dozen journalists had been imprisoned in Evin, accused of having ‘foreign contacts’ who were friends and colleagues who had left for London, to work at BBC Persian.
As his friends began to arrive, Amir opened a plastic petrol can filled with