One of them, from a very professional angle, takes a photograph and films her. The girl attracts the attention of mysterious people who during political demonstrations in Iran monitor the scene from discreet corners and identify people. It is as if they possess the power to traverse time, the power to pass through the golden walls of harems or perhaps the firewalls of Web sites and Internet filters.īut the girl does not know that in precisely seven minutes and seven seconds, at the height of the clash between the students, the police, and the members of the Party of God, in the chaos of attacks and escapes, she will be knocked into with great force, she will fall back, her head will hit against a cement edge, and her sad Oriental eyes will forever close. But contrary to this cliched simile, there is a mysterious look in this girl's eyes. An old simile for a pair of Oriental eyes that stole Lord Byron's heart, and Arthur Rimbaud's, too. If the ghosts of the thousands of poets who died a thousand years ago, seven hundred years ago, or four hundred years ago, and the spirit of those yet to be born - who, unlike the living, in the democracy of death amicably and tolerantly wander the streets of Tehran - see her large black eyes, they will liken them, as is customary of their poetry, to the sad eyes of a gazelle.

She possesses a beauty common to all girls in love stories, a beauty that many girls around the world, and in Iran, who read these stories want to possess.

Since one hundred and one years ago-when the first revolution for democracy triumphed in Iran-fists similar to these have risen toward the sky of a country with the greatest number of holy men, with the most prayers, tears, and religious lamentations and today, I believe, the greatest pleas to God for speeding up the day of resurrection rise from Iran.Ī short distance away, on the sidewalk, with her back to the steel fence lodged in the three- foot- tall stone wall surrounding Tehran University, stands a girl who, unlike most girls in the world but like most girls in Iran, is wearing a black headscarf and a long black coat as a coverall. It is perhaps because of these fists that from the sacred sky of Iran no miracle ever descends.

Censoring an iranian love story