For Tehran protesters, hope turns to anger and sadness

Three Mousavi supporters - a manager, a cellist and the son of a war hero - look back on the demonstrations of the past two weeks in Iran.

Standing in the middle of Vali-e Asr Street, surrounded by a sea of green, Mehrdad felt sure Iran was about to change. He used his mobile phone to film the others: girls with green headscarves, chador-clad women with green wristbands, a middle-aged couple walking through the crowd hand in hand. All that green - the colour of Mis Hossein Mousavi's campaign - could only mean one thing, Mehrdad thought: the era of president Mahmoud Ahmadinejad was over.

Two weeks later everything was different.

"I deleted those clips from my phone," said Mehrdad, a 31-year-old manager at a Tehran import company who, like everyone else in this article, doesn't want to give his last name. "If they found those movies on my phone they could arrest me. In reality, they could arrest me just for wearing green."

Mehrdad is one of the millions of Iranians who were part of a movement that rallied around the demand to annul the result of the presidential election, and who are now branded terrorists and enemies of the state by Iran's leaders. Only small groups of protesters still venture out in the streets today, and they are invariably beaten up.

Those interviewed for this article, a manager, a cellist and a son of a war hero, say they are not defeated; but they are angry and worried about their future.

Heavy blow for urban Iranians

"We thought Iran, with Mousavi as president, would take a step towards democracy and freedom, " said Mehrdad. For weeks before the election, he talked to people on the streets, in supermarkets and at family gatherings about the then relatively unknown Mousavi, who was prime minister of Iran twenty years ago.

The result - a monster score for president Ahmadinejad - was a heavy blow for the urban Iranians. Mehrdad went back on the streets, this time with rocks in his hands to throw at the Baseej, the paramilitary security force. "You could read the disappointment from people's faces. Nobody believed the result."

When Mousavi called for a massive demonstration on June 15, Mehrdad was afraid of getting shot, but he went anyway. "There must have been two million people there - as far as the eye could see. I thought: this is it. They are going to have to annul the result. But things just got worse after that."

Aida, an elegant 22-year-old cello player and music student, still wears her green headscarf with pride - even though it is enough to get beaten up by the Baseej these days. "I wear it to show that we are still here, that the movement is not dead," she said.

Mousavi's election would have allowed for gradual reform of the political system, Aida felt. "Nobody wants a complete revolution," she said.

Opened fire on the crowds

Unlike Mehrdad, during the first street demonstrations, she already had a feeling that things were going to end badly. "It was obvious that they were never going to change the outcome of the election. I became afraid to go out in the streets." Her brother has been arrested.

Maysam (29), whose father is a famous martyr of the Iran-Iraq war, never thought he would see the day when he would protest against the leaders of the country his father fought and died for. "He died for the Islamic republic," he said, "but if he was alive today he would have been fighting these people."

On the day of the big demonstration, Maysam told his wife and mother to stay indoors. "I was afraid there might be shooting, but I went anyway," he said.

Despite the millions who showed up that day, and the hundreds of thousands in the following days, Iran's supreme leader ayatollah Ali Khamenei told the country that Friday that the protests had to end. The next day, at least ten people were killed - "extremists" and "foreigners", the authorities said. The demonstrators say the security forces opened fire on the crowds, and that the real death toll is much higher.

"I had stopped going to the demonstrations at that point," said Mehrdad. "It was obvious that there was going to be shooting."

Maysam stayed home too. "We were no match for the security forces," he said.

Confidence overshadowed by sadness

"You can feel the anger everywhere," said Aida. "Some people are ready to die for this."

"They have blocked the internet and text messaging; it's become impossible to organise anything," said Maysam.

Mehrdad was surprised by the government's response to the protests. "We gave this regime legitimacy by taking part in the elections. Nobody was shouting slogans against the supreme leader. But now people are saying the most extreme things. People have become very confident."

But this confidence is overshadowed by a huge sadness. "There is a lot of crying in Tehran these days," said Aida.

Every evening, the Mousavi supporters go on their roofs and balconies to shout "Allahu Akhbar" (God is great) in support of their candidate. But every evening more people wonder if it will do any good.

"Mousavi is our only hope," said Maysam. "But what can he do. Our future looks bleak. It pains me to think about it. Where will this end?"