Word: behesht
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Dates: during 2000-2009
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...many offices in the Iranian capital began shutting down or running with a bare-bones staff. Workers began leaving to assemble at protest sites, traveling by way of the clogged subway, by cab or on foot. "I'm not scared," said a banker as he headed for the sprawling Behesht-e Zahra cemetery, where many opposition "martyrs," including the iconic Neda Agha-Soltan, have been buried. He says the planned memorial service was especially poignant for him because he saw a protester shot at Azadi Square on June 20, the same day Agha-Soltan was killed a few kilometers away...
...original plans for the memorial ceremony had been abruptly changed by opposition organizers on Wednesday night, switching from the massive Imam Khomeini Mossala (mosque) grounds to the Behesht-e Zahra cemetery some 20 kilometers south of the city center, close to the international airport and Ayatullah Khomeini's tomb complex. Agha-Soltan's mother, who was originally slated to attend the ceremony, did not go. "For reasons I can't say, I cannot attend the ceremony of my own daughter," she told ABC News. (See "The Turbulent Aftermath of Iran's Elections...
Even without Agha-Soltan's mother, the cemetery gathering was an emotional one. Many remarked on the large number of new denizens of Behesht-e Zahra. One 27-year-old student who had buried his father just last month said he saw dozens of graves in the cemetary's newest sector - presumably, he said, of young protesters killed in the violence following the disputed June 12 presidential election. "There were green ribbons hanging by many of the graves," he said, in reference to the color used by the opposition movement. "Some were just days...
Anti-Americanism is a potent political trope here because it is rooted in grievances. Just down the road from the Khomeini shrine is the Behesht-e Zahra martyrs' cemetery--one of many such scattered plots that contain the remains of more than 200,000 Iranian soldiers who died in the 1980-88 Iran-Iraq war. The widows and mothers who come here on Thursdays--the beginning of the weekend in Iran--to wash graves and pass out sweets and fruit to strangers remember that the rockets, jets and chemical weapons used to kill their sons and husbands were provided...
This gathering of the living and the dead and the vows of vengeance have become a weekly ritual for Iranian families since the conflict with neighboring Iraq began to reap its harvest of victims, estimated at between 100,000 and 200,000. The graves at Behesht-e Zahra are tightly packed, sometimes no more than 6 in. apart, and they are advancing rapidly in tree-lined squares toward the perimeter of the 1.5-sq.-mi. cemetery. Aluminum-and-glass display cases contain photographs of the dead, many of them teenagers, along with family heirlooms. Most also bear a picture...