tehran
—
On Thursday night, Tehran’s largest cemetery comes to life as people gather to pay their respects to their deceased loved ones.
Weeks after thousands were killed in a bloody crackdown on protests against the government, the ritual has taken on new significance as families of the dead grieve.
“I’ve never seen a cemetery so crowded in my life,” one woman told CNN.
The dusty soil of Behesht-e-Zahra Cemetery now holds the remains of protesters killed in the January protests, the latest conflict to hit Iran’s streets, alongside the bodies of martyrs from Iran’s past wars.
In a small plot surrounded by graves of Iranian soldiers killed by Israeli bombs last year, several new graves mark the remains of security officials killed during demonstrations.
Relatives hum around the grave, many of them women wearing ankle-length black chadors favored by Iran’s conservatives.
A few minutes’ drive away, at the edge of the cemetery, a small crowd stands gathered on a wide field lined with gravestones. The rectangular grave is covered with flowers and petals and awaits a monochrome stone slab. Some include photos of young men and smiling young women looking at a carpet of nearby tombstones.
More cars pass by, spitting out mourners.
As we walk through it, families offer us trays of sweets and tea.
Around one young man’s grave, his mother and grandmother sobbed quietly, and his friends crouched next to a small mat made of flower stalks. One relative, his eyes welling with tears, said he spent four hours searching for bodies at the Kalizak mortuary, where the bodies of many protesters were stored.
She asked us not to film the gathering, fearing that state violence would overwhelm her family, even in death.
A few meters away, we observed a similar crowd around the final resting place of another young man.
“There’s so much I want to tell you,” his friend said to us, but he was quickly silenced by the concerned whisper of his father interjecting between us.
CNN was allowed into the country with government permission to get a limited view of what was happening on the ground.
Outside Tehran’s Grand Bazaar, locals are more forthcoming.
Iranians have two options: “Either go out into the streets and be killed with weapons, or stay home and die of hunger,” one young woman, who identified herself only as Sagar, told CNN.
“Mr. Trump made some promises to us,” she said of the US president’s early January post pledging support to protesters against the Iranian government. “All the young people took to the streets because of his words,” she added.
Hadith, a shopkeeper visiting the bazaar to buy supplies, says nothing the government does now will restore trust after January’s violent crackdown. CNN is using only her first name for security reasons.
“There’s a sense of hopelessness among people,” she says. “We have taken this course several times and believe it will be the end all.”
The bazaar became a hub for protests sparked by the country’s dire economic situation and hyperinflation.
Hadith said merchants had recently stopped accepting business checks, and the Iranian currency’s price against the dollar was fluctuating rapidly due to rising geopolitical tensions.
She said that she could not buy anything at her store, which sells accessories, because the prices that day had increased by 20-30% compared to the previous day.
“The dollar and gold prices are rising day by day, and inflation is extremely high,” said Sagar, who lives in Tehran. “The price of one product today is 100,000 tomans ($0.77), but tomorrow it may rise to 200,000 tomans.”
