BEIRUT — As tear gas canisters landed among protesters filling the wide boulevard, the 37-year-old beautician and her friends ran for cover. They sheltered among trees, concealed in darkness pierced only by the glow of streetlights and small fires behind them in the western Iranian city of Karaj.
Then gunfire rang out, audible in the video she was taking on her phone.
“Don’t be afraid,” she screamed repeatedly, her voice breaking. The crowd joined at the top of their lungs: “Don’t be afraid. We are all together.”
“Are they using live bullets?” she cried out. “Shameless! Shameless!” Others joined in the chant, along with cries of “Death to the dictator!”
It was a moment of collective boldness on Jan. 8, the night hundreds of thousands of Iranians across the country took to the streets against the cleric-led theocracy that has ruled for nearly 50 years. But after the bloodshed of that night, the beautician, like countless others, has retreated into terrified isolation. She moved in with her mother, afraid to be alone, and has huddled there, anxious and unable to sleep.
A blanket of fear has settled over Iran, she said, and a sense of grief and quiet rage has taken over.
“When you look at people in the street, it feels like you are seeing walking corpses, people with no hope left to continue living,” she said in a text message in late January.
Her videos and messages provide a raw account of the exuberance that protesters felt taking to the streets last month - and the shock that has paralyzed many after the bloodiest crackdown ever inflicted by the Islamic Republic. The beautician expressed despair that change can happen and a sense of abandonment by the world.
She saw little hope in Iran-U.S. nuclear talks that were held Friday even as they trade warnings of war. She feared Iran’s leaders will outlast Trump’s pressure and “become entrenched and all those people who died will have died in vain,” she wrote.
Monitoring groups say at least 6,854 were killed, most on Jan. 8 and 9, but they say the full number could be triple that. The clampdown since has also been unprecedented. A monthlong internet blackout has hidden the full extent of what happened, even as more than 50,000 people have been reported detained.
The Associated Press received more than a dozen videos as well as text messages the beautician sent to a relative of hers in Los Angeles during sporadic openings in the internet shutdown. The beautician gave permission for the material to be shared.
The AP is withholding the names of the beautician and her relative for their security. The AP verified the location and authenticity of her videos, which corresponded with known features of the area around Samandehi Park in Karaj. The AP could not verify all details in her account, but it broadly conforms with accounts from other protesters documented by the AP and rights groups.
Taking to the streets
The beautician struggled in Iran’s economy, crippled by decades of corruption and mismanagement and international sanctions. With jobs hard to find, she chose to work for herself as a nail technician, believing she could make a better living, said the relative, who has long been close to her and was in frequent contact even before the protests.
She gave up on having a family or children, the relative said. Everything was too expensive, and it was too repressive in Iran to bring up kids.
She had little faith in Iranian politicians claiming to be moderates and reformers, the relative said. But she joined protests. The power of a popular movement fueled her sense that change in Iran was possible.
She participated in the 2022 protests ignited by the death of Mahsa Amini, who died after being arrested for not wearing her headscarf to the liking of authorities. But she was disillusioned by the violence that followed. Over 500 were believed killed and over 22,000 detained.
Her desire changed “from saving her country to saving herself,” the relative said. Her family looked for opportunities for her to leave Iran, but they never materialized.
When protests triggered by the plunging value of Iran’s currency began in late December, she didn’t take part at first.
But when she found she could hardly even afford cooking oil, it was the last straw. She told her relative that she made the equivalent of only $40 in December, down from an already paltry $300-$400 average for the past year.
On Jan. 8, she made plans with her friends to join the protests.
Iranians poured into the streets on Jan. 8
That night, Iranians poured into the streets of at least 192 cities across Iran’s 31 provinces, according to the U.S.-based Human Rights Activists News Agency. These were quite possibly the biggest anti-government rallies since the 1979 Islamic Revolution. The diversity of the crowds across social and economic classes was greater than past marches.
The beautician’s videos show protesters filling a main boulevard in Karaj. Their confidence bolstered by their numbers, they walk unhurriedly among the trees. Women, men and children chant, “ Death to Khamenei, ” referring to Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei.
Some chanted in support of the exiled crown prince Reza Pahlavi, the son of Iran’s last shah, who had called for the public to turn out. Some set up bonfires and formed protest circles around them.
It is not clear from her videos how the violence began.
One video shows protesters lined up outside a police station, cheering, while a fire burned inside.
From inside the station, police fired tear gas and shotgun pellets, the beautician said in a message. Live ammunition quickly followed.
The beautician wrote to her relative that she saw nearly 20 people shot in her immediate circle. The parents of a family friend were shot and killed as they tried to help a wounded person. Another friend’s father was killed, and authorities later made his daughter pay the equivalent of $4,500 to release his body.
In one video, a group huddled over a wounded protester, her leg covered in blood. They frantically looked for a way to stop the bleeding.
“Do you have a scarf? A headscarf, anything?” one person shouted. Another said: “We can’t go to the hospital,” apparently out of fear of being detained. Another interjected, in a panic: “Tie it tight and fasten it.”
The government has put the death toll from the wave of nationwide protests at more than 3,000, and Khamenei has denounced them as “a coup.”
‘We are all in mourning’
The next night, rights groups say shooting continued in Karaj, with snipers on rooftops and more dead. The beautician stepped out of the house but quickly returned, filming nothing, her relative said.
She has hardly left since.
“We have seen so many horrific scenes of people being killed before our eyes that we are now afraid to leave our homes,” she wrote in a message.
She fears security agents will come to her building, she wrote. She and her neighbors agreed not to let in anyone who rings the bells.
She takes tranquilizers “but I don’t truly sleep,” she wrote. “Everyone I talk to says they cannot sleep at night, stressed that at any moment they might come and attack our homes.”
One night in late January, she went out briefly to withdraw money from the bank sent by her relative. But the bank had no cash.
Over all the years of repression, “we always kept going, strong,” she wrote.
Not this time.
“We are all in mourning, filled with anger that we no longer even dare to shout out, for fear of our lives. Because they have no mercy.”
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