Iran: “We Are Armed with Allahu Akbar”

These days, central Tehran’s busy Tajrish Square market packs up early. Those who come looking for seasonal wild garlic or rhubarb leave before the evening call to prayer, surrendering Tajrish to the tangled night-time traffic of flag-waving pro-regime convoys.

Tajrish is a place that did not lose its spirit even during bombings of the last war, preserving the atmosphere of the spring festival of Nowruz with its vendors selling the traditional sabzeh sprouted grass and sweet samanu pudding. But it is now occupied by booths, scaffolding and banners devoted to the state narrative of war and resistance.

Gone are the youths and hiking groups descending from the Darband mountains towards the square; gone too are the women and young girls in colourful summer clothes without hijab. At night, the square belongs to revolutionary men and women keeping the flag of the Islamic Republic aloft.

It is after 9 pm. Only a handful of customers sit at the tables of Shemiran’s famous kebab restaurant, and the doorman makes no effort to invite passersby inside. Presumably, he has learned that these pedestrians are headed elsewhere.

A few dozen metres uphill, a pickup truck has dozens of loudspeakers stacked in its bed. Every speaker is blaring.

The driver wears a white turban and a long robe and his pickup is packed with companions. Two teenagers sit in the back seat, while several boys, perhaps ten or 12 years old, are squeezed among the speakers, waving yellow Hezbollah banners and Iranian flags.

For many years, the regime has harassed women for riding scooters. But right in front of the pickup are two electric scooters, both ridden by women. One is wearing a headscarf and a Labbaik Ya Khamenei (At your service, O Khamenei) headband, while the other - wearing a black-and-red helmet decorated with two small devil horns - has tied ribbons in the colors of the Iranian flag to the handlebars.

The convoy consists of at least ten vehicles. Through the sunroof of a white Lucano SUV, two women in black chadors emerge waving flags. Yellow Hezbollah and Iranian banners hang alternately from passenger-side windows and the rear seats. The SUV blasts a newly arranged version of an old 1980s revolutionary anthem from the Iraq invasion of Iran.

“We are armed with Allahu Akbar [God is great],” the song goes. “We charge against the ranks of the enemy, we are all followers of the Leader’s path, we charge against the ranks of the enemy.”

Traffic seems to have merged the street and pavement walk into one mass, spilling into side alleys. Pedestrians weave through the vehicles.

A motorcycle courier pulls up, whistles, and allows several chador-clad girls carrying flags to pass between the cars. Reaching the white Lucano, he strikes up a conversation with the driver.

“If they're serving dinner, can we come too?” the courier asked.

“Come on over," the driver replied. “The Israelis claim that they [the regime] also pay five million a night… ha ha! Come.”

On the pavement, half a dozen teenage skateboarders – both boys and girls - stand outside a café holding iced lattes. Laughing and joking, they gesture toward the crowded street and the convoy, waiting for one girl to finish her drink before heading in the opposite direction.

Near Tajrish Square, the crowd becomes more uniform. Women wear chadors and small children have headbands tied around their foreheads.

As the convoy reaches a group of black-clad women carrying flags on the pavement, the drivers honk their horns and the women wave their banners in response.

From booths erected all around the square, street vendors sell everything from glow-in-the-dark religious images to scarves, colourful LED balloons and enamel jewelry bearing the map of Iran.

Groups stand holding placards, with long handwritten messages in identical red-and-blue script.

“We should not recognise unveiled women,” reads one.

“Do not separate America's account from Israel's in order to whitewash America; Israel is America's watchdog and protector of its interests in the region,” reads another.

"We are approaching the final stage of the historic battle between Truth and Falsehood,” reads a further placard.

Large billboards positioned among the plane trees show the faces of children killed in the bombing of the Minab School on the first day of the war. The faces of the young girls in white school headscarves and little boys in uniforms have stared down from Tehran’s billboards ever since.

At the northern end of the square, in front of the kebab houses and restaurants, a large stage has been erected. Above it, within an ornate decorative frame, is written, The People’s Headquarters of Shemiran.

A presenter and a religious singer stand together onstage, singing along with loudspeakers to the song Iran as performed by Mahmoud Karimi, a highly renowned performer who was very close to the assassinated Supreme Leader.

Behind the crowd, two young men dressed in black offer flags to newcomers whose hands are empty.

“The flag is a votive offering—please take one,” they urge.

Among the booths, samovars dispense free tea. In one corner, several young men scoop popcorn from a huge cauldron into disposable cups and hand them to people waiting in line. Others carry potato sandwiches. Empty tea cups are piled beside the booths and along the edge of the pavement.

In front of the closed Melli Shoe store, two women sit on folding chairs. A cardboard sign before them, again written in blue and red marker, reads, “Our martyred leader has not yet been buried, yet some are already trying to bury his ideas! Death to the dishonourable coup plotter.”

“The other night you missed it,” the older woman says to the other. “The Basij kids [the state affiliated militia] were distributing falafel sandwiches as a Nazri [religious pledge] offering. Tomorrow we're bringing apples.”

In one corner of the square, a large painted canvas rests on an easel mounted atop a metal platform. News cameras bustle around. An artist stands before his oil painting, depicting the flag-waving crowd. People record him on their phones as he gives interviews.

Further on stands a mobile library bus. Around it are kindergarten-sized tables and chairs where instructors entertain mostly hijab-wearing girls. The Public Library has its own booth, where boys and girls colour drawings of flags and messages about the slain leader.

A new group arrives: six young men and women wearing cargo pants and Palestinian keffiyehs around their necks. One has a Spanish flag draped over his shoulders. They head toward a group displaying a Hezbollah logo and two Spanish flags mounted on poles, presumably because Madrid opposed the war.

Two women in chadors waving Hezbollah flags laugh and call out to a young man, “What is this, the World Cup? Why are you waving a Spanish flag?”

A commemorative booth celebrating Ferdowsi, one of the giants of Persian literature, has also been added in recent days, and it is busy. In the past, the regime never promoted him or his Shahnameh epic because of his pre-Islamic references, but now it has been merged into the nationalist narrative.

A couple stand before the booth with two children beside them and another in a stroller, handles decorated with small paper flags. They complain about a recent Shahnameh performance organised by another cultural centre and featuring women performers.

“They've turned it into a carnival,” the man said. “One day an Iranian and a Lebanese female singer, another day performances and women dancing in the name of the Shahnameh. To please whom? That's not a proper programme.”

The attendant replies, “Well, they're certainly not trying to please you or me, hajji.”

By now it is well past midnight, yet people still linger. The sidewalks, streets, and patches of grass are strewn with small paper flags, disposable cups, bowls that once held soup and pieces of baguette bread.

Municipal workers in orange uniforms arrive in pickup trucks. Most are young.

Among the flags and black-clad women depicted in his oil painting, the artist has included one of these sanitation workers in orange. But instead of a broom, he is holding a flag.

The author is a writer based in Tehran.

This is an edited version of an article that originally appeared in Aasoo.