Word: behesht
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...trees are few, the swirling dust pervasive and the summer heat almost unbearable. This is Behesht-e Zahra, the country's largest and most notorious cemetery. Some 12 miles (20 km) south of the bustling capital, this is a sprawling city-within-a-city that most Iranians try to avoid visiting. The only sound here is the constant wailing from crowds of mourning women in head-to-toe chadors...
Since the violent crackdown that followed the election, the dead have been coming here in greater numbers. In late August, a reformist news site published claims that 28 protesters and detained dissidents, their bodies still frozen in ice blocks, were buried in unmarked graves at Behesht in mid-July. On Aug. 30, Tehran officials agreed to investigate the claims, following on the heels of a parliamentary investigation into the same allegations. That same day, Mousavi visited the cemetery for a memorial to Saeida Agahpour, one of the 28 people said to have been buried here. (See pictures of Tehran...
...Over the weekend, many hard liners, ostensibly supporters of President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, were aghast at reports that 25-year-old Mohsen Ruholamini, son of a senior aide to conservative presidential candidate Mohsen Rezai, was allegedly beaten to death at Kahrizak prison in South Tehran, a few kilometers away from Behesht...
...many young people in the opposition, no measure of reconciliation will erase the fact that dozens of protesters, many in their 20s, have ended up at Behesht. On a visit to the cemetery, a young man walking past Agha-Soltan's grave muttered a quick blessing. Another sympathetic visitor stopped to assure him, "She's a martyr. She has already been blessed...
...Revolutionary Guards could not cover enough ground to control the growing crowds - one of the largest outpourings in recent weeks, albeit spread about the city. The protests even continued into the city's subway system as many participants hurried back into the city from the aborted prayer service at Behesht-e Zahra cemetery. "Tehran was our town today," exclaimed a 26-year-old woman. "We had more courage and the police less courage...