Zendegi

‘But it is a very different thing to hand the mullah a machine-gun, an army, a prison, and tell him: if anyone questions your power, silence him. After more than thirty years, we have seen with our own eyes what the consequences are: the weight of all their weapons and privileges has dragged the mullahs down so they are no closer to God than anyone else.

‘I believe the time has come for us to take responsibility for our own lives before God. The advice of true scholars should always be welcome, but let them live like scholars, not rule like kings. We need to prise open this closed system that protects itself from all possibility of change-’

Ansari broke off. Martin couldn’t see what was happening, but the people who could were remaining silent and orderly, so it was unlikely that he’d been seized and dragged away.

After about a minute, Ansari spoke again. Behrouz translated: ‘I’ve been told that the President has just appeared on television and made an announcement. Mr Hassan Jabari has resigned from the Guardian Council, because – I quote – “it is for the good of the nation to rob the disruptive elements and their foreign supporters of their dishonest ammunition”.’ Behrouz winced apologetically; however pompous the original, he usually managed to produce less turgid English than that.

‘Furthermore, the President tells us that he has appointed a senior judge to review all of Mr Jabari’s decisions when he was Prosecutor, as a guarantee against any hint of impropriety.’

Martin contemplated this odd move. Bringing charges against Jabari would have been both embarrassing and unlikely to succeed; this would act as a sop to those conservatives who’d believed the accusations against him. Now an independent judge could reassure them that Jabari had not, after all, abused his earlier position to protect a secret cabal of sexual deviants.

‘Finally,’ Ansari continued, ‘the President has declared that this must be the end of the matter. No complaint against the institutions of government, however fanciful, remains. So the people must leave the streets and return to their ordinary business.’

An uneasy silence followed. Martin looked around at the faces of the demonstrators; no one was quite sure how to take the news. Deposing a member of the Guardian Council might have been seen as a great victory if it had flowed directly from a political dispute – say, a deadlock with a reformist Majlis. But Jabari had not been removed for frustrating the will of the people, and his replacement would be yet another conservative. The next election would see exactly the same kind of candidates disqualified as before. Nothing had changed.

Ansari broke the silence. ‘I must respectfully disagree with the honourable President. I say that many complaints remain – and they are not fanciful at all.’

It was a simple observation, but the response was electric; the shouting and applause went on for at least a minute. If the announcement of Jabari’s resignation had been timed to puncture the mood of the demonstration, that had been badly misjudged; instead, it had given everyone in the crowd a chance to affirm, with the vocal support of their fellow malcontents, that the momentum of the uprising was undiminished.

The organiser took the microphone and began giving detailed instructions for the march. After reminding everyone of the route, he added, ‘Most importantly, please obey the marshals wearing green sashes.’ Martin looked around and located a woman a few metres away, only now draping a broad strip of green fabric across one shoulder of her brown manteau.

They began to move north, towards Jomhuri-ye-Eslami Avenue. The marchers wouldn’t expect any help from the traffic police, but the protest had been publicised well enough to deter most drivers from the route, and in any case, sheer force of numbers gave the pedestrians right of way. The density of the crowd kept their pace to a shuffle, and the afternoon heat was beginning to bite, but the atmosphere was upbeat, and the constant rhythmic chant of ref-eren-doom – the English loan-word imported virtually unchanged into Farsi – was echoed playfully between different groups, breaking up the monotony and sparing people’s throats.