Fireworks on the Same Streets After the Iran Massacre

On the eve of 22 Bahman, fireworks filled Langarud while the memory of the Iran massacre endured.

“I am calling from Langarud.”

Her voice was unnervingly calm, as if every tremor had been coaxed into silence.

On the eve of 22 Bahman, just before nine, she steered her car into the city’s central square. Above her, fireworks cleaved the night in blooms of red and gold. Gunfire rattled against the concrete. A chorus of “Allahu Akbar” rippled through the crowd, steady as a pulse. The scene felt surreal, like watching a wedding celebration through the haze of shattered time.

And then she returned to January 8 and 9.

Less than forty days earlier, security forces had transformed Iran’s streets into open graves in the bloodiest protest massacre of its modern era. More than 36,500 lives were extinguished. Mothers whose lullabies fell silent. Fathers whose embrace never returned. Daughters whose laughter was stilled. Sons whose futures were taken. In overwhelmed hospitals, doctors stitched shattered bodies while armed men forced their way through emergency wards. Families pressed their faces to phones that would not connect. They searched morgues for familiar faces laid out in rows.

In Langarud, she and her neighbors spent that night listening for any sign of breath.

“Shoaleh used to bring me pomegranates from her garden,” she said, her voice soft as falling seeds. Shoaleh Sotoudeh, thirty nine, now gone from her children forever. “Abbas coached my nephew’s football team. He knew each boy’s birthday.” They were neighbors. Friends. Familiar footsteps on the same streets she now drove beneath fireworks.

Tonight, those streets were filled with celebration. The sight was daunting.

The Islamic Republic marks 22 Bahman as its revolutionary anniversary. On pavements still heavy with sorrow, the state calls for jubilation. Behind closed doors, names are spoken at dinner tables. In quiet living rooms, memory moves through the smoke and sparks.

Her composure carried its own gravity, a steady presence beneath the roar. One question remained suspended in the night:

What does it mean to celebrate on ground that has not yet dried?

January 8 and 9 stand among the most brutal protest crackdowns of our time. They will not slip into footnotes. They will endure.

One day, in classrooms lit by hope rather than fear, children will sit at wooden desks and trace those dates with their fingers. They will learn the names of men and women who stood unarmed in their own squares and were met with bullets. They will see that freedom was never handed to them. It was carried, like a torch passed through generations.

Those children will never taste prison’s bitterness. They will never wake to the rattle of gunfire in their plazas. They will know these truths through stories, photographs, and the voices of those who survived.

And they will understand that the earth beneath their feet was consecrated long before they were born.

Courtesy: Iran International | Kambiz Hosseini | Barnameh (The Program)