Black-clad crowds and burning bridges

Tehran

The past week of rioting in Tehran has left many strong images in my mind, but chief among them is the raw passion of thousands of angry Iranians the morning after the disputed presidential elections. Standing in public squares, or on the balconies and roofs overhanging them, they shouted the name of Mir Hossein Mousavi in a bristling staccato. Another image is of a burning pedestrian bridge arcing over a wilderness of highway and rocky wasteland. Hundreds of Mousavi supporters and riot police clashed on the bridge at midnight after the election result. Soaring luxury apartment blocks flanked the scene. There was the sound of men screaming, the crump of stone on plastic shields and the rumbling exhaust of several hundred gridlocked cars whose transfixed inhabitants watched the scene above them with horrified fascination. Or what about the black-clad crowd, marching up Tehran’s main boulevard in funereal silence under a canopy of green summer foliage? As the police helicopters whirred overhead, a sudden cheer rose up from the crowd to greet them.