News

It was the sign of victory!

I am waiting for a taxi in Vali Asr Square, my back toward the cinema on the southwest corner, looking toward Haft-e Tir Square. For me, these streets are alive in a way I find hard to describe. An old Paykan stops and I get in. I am flashing back...

Barely a year ago, history was being made in this square. Ahmadinejad fans stood on its east side and Mousavi supporters gathered on the west. They were discussing, debating, talking. Sometimes you would see a pair of excited individuals waving their arms in the air and bursting into the middle of each others' sentences to prove their points. One evening, a stranger passed me here. He stopped and turned around to smile and say, "Well, we can be democratic!" Yes we could, we were. The maturity, the hope, the will for change astonished every observer.

It silenced those who had always found an excuse for tyranny and absolutism because Iranians were supposedly not "ready" for freedom. History held its breath for a moment and so did the nation.