I am writing this in honor of someone I have never seen, Neda, who through the last moments of her life recorded Iran’s voice and cry. And as blood gushed out of her heart and eyes only the screams of her cries could be heard.
I have always said that Neda was born twice. Once as an offspring of a courageous mother whose hair turned gray in disbelief, and the other time when a small mobile phone brought her to the world. So long as Neda’s images and posters are the guests of the walls of the cities of the world and television screens, we shall continue to see how small this world is and that there is no real distance between the little street in the heart of the capital of the Islamic republic and the skyscrapers of New York or the magical town of Lecce in southern Italy.
Neda was not a hero, and she was not trained to battle a theocracy. She was one among thousands who had gone to a streets last June 20th to watch in bewilderment the hell that the Revolutionary Guards of the leader of the Islamic republic had created in Tehran. Religious mythology has it that when arrogance took over Nimrod, he called himself god to compete with the gods and created a heaven on earth, calling it Eden. The heaven did not last and was destroyed by a lightning. In contrast, it is strange that in their competition with the gods, ayatollah Khamenei and his surrogates have built a hell on earth and did in the streets of Tehran, in Kahrizak and tens of universities across Iran what even the harshest divine retribution does not describe.
Neda was a drop in a sea of anger of Iranians caused by the remarks of the head of their government and the actions of his administration. She became a victim of the suppression and terror, but the camera that recorded her death and informed the world of her being, also turned her into an eternal hero.
Many were killed in the aftermath of Iran’s 2009 presidential elections. Some of their names have been stamped into history, but the names of others never reached an ear and their faces were never seen. And while the sacrifice that all of them made is alike and they shall all live tulip-like in the consciousness garden of Iran’s history, another person had to narrate the story. And this falls on the most deserving person, just as Ferdowsi deserves praise for the story of a hero in Sistan which has remained eternal. And just as Zeinab’s thirsty lips narrated the story of Hossein and made it the example for martyrs of the Middle East while the cut off heads scattered around on Ashura.
Shariati was right when he said that those who left us had done a Hosseini deed, while those stayed must do a Zeinabi deed so that their spilled blood remains recorded in history so that people do remain isolated.
Perhaps if video clips were made of the last moments in the lives of Mohsen Ruholamini, Amir Javadifar and others who were martyred at Kahrizak, our world would have been touched and shaken more. This demonstrates the importance of the story teller, whose face and name are hidden from us today. If he was not there, our world and story of June 20th would have had a missing element.
Neda was reborn on June 20th, this time bigger and more legendary. She was born in a sudden gush, and left a drop of tear on the face of millions around the world
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