I can't believe it! We haven't had internet for three long days now! I'm going crazy. We can't even text each other. Phones, laptops, electronic devices seem so useless at this point... Damn it!...
Let me at least share the rest of my story here... the night of the protest…
Every time a tear-gas canister hissed and landed close, my eyes burned with ferocious fire, a high-pitched ringing filled my head, and through the stinging blur I forced myself toward the small blaze flickering light in front of me.
I thrust my face straight into the thick smoke rising from the fire…There I saw an old man, thin as a reed, pushing forward a flaming heap with his wooden walking stick.
The protesters—empty-handed against the gas—had no choice but to drag trash out of overturned bins and set it alight. So, these wild, wandering fires sprang up all along the street. And he was standing there casually.
(P.S. I later learned they killed that frail old man with a bullet.)
That night, shoulder to shoulder with my friends—whether women or men, it no longer mattered; I felt a fierce closeness to every one of them—we shouted slogan after slogan, our voices rising into the night:
“Long live the Shah!”
“This is the final battle! The Pahlavi will return!”
“Tank, gun, firecracker—Molla must disappear!”
Whenever another canister exploded, my gaze shot skyward, chasing the yellow trail of gas as it arced through the dark, trying to guess where it would fall next. Then a friend screamed: “Don’t look up! Protect your eyes!”
She was right. How many eyes had been lost forever in the previous movement? How many young lives had given their sight for freedom? As far as I knew, the worst eye injuries in protests came from shotgun pellets. And this demonstration hadn’t yet reached that level of shotgun blasts and pellet storms… but I could feel how close we were.
The excitement had reached fever pitch. Dozens of canisters rained down, yet the crowd refused to scatter.
An unbelievable stubbornness held us in place. Then suddenly—gunshots cracked through the air, and a wave of panic surged. The pellet rounds had finally begun. Only one thought hammered inside my skull:
Protect your eyes.
Protect your eyes.
Protect your eyes.
As the shooting started, the crowd broke and ran. Screams pierced the night. While we fled, the cries and the gunshots tangled together into one roaring chaos. Running, I felt a sharp burn behind my knees and across my knuckles.
The pellets hadn’t pierced my flesh, but the shrapnel had kissed me. I glimpsed a girl limping, her friend dragging her along. I had lost my own friends—they must have dashed into the opposite alley.
No choice but to keep moving with the flow. My lungs burned, the night was pitch black, black-clad figures melted into the darkness ahead and never looked back. On the way home I pulled off my mask and limped forward. When I crossed the road, I felt no fear of cars. Some reckless courage had taken the place of ordinary, sensible dreads like getting hit by traffic.
And honestly—after you return from the real highway of death, a simple city-car collision doesn’t feel serious anymore. When I finally reached home the internet was flickering in and out. My brother scolded and worried, asking why on earth I had put myself in such danger.
I didn’t dare tell the family I had gone to demonstrate. At the same time, I knew my sister, together with her husband and kids in their own city, had joined the protests there—she had even messaged me beforehand and sent a WhatsApp photo of the outfit she planned to wear. I tried calling her over and over. No answer; her phone seemed switched off. Worry gnawed at me. I knew the marches in her city were far fiercer, and there was always the chance they would spiral into irreversible violence.
My heart couldn’t bear it. I sent several messages—and then I learned the words that stopped my breath: “My sister had been shot”
To be continued …
(As I'm publishing this, internet is up and running after 3 weeks of total darkness, but it is still very unstable and hard to reach. I can't upload many images and answer comments, but I appreciate them and read them all and like them. Honestly it's so frustrating to wait to upload a single image for half and hour or more. But I'm thankful that we at least didn't lose it yet. And I'm still here,)
