In order to view the YouTube video, I had to sign a form that said I was over the age of 18. That's how disturbing the graphics were, the disclaimer said.
I didn't think I could be any more disturbed than I was when I first saw the clip of the dead Iranian woman on the late-night news. The clip was quick. And blurry. I couldn't really make out what happened.
Why I wanted to go to YouTube and see her die again, I don't know. Maybe when I first saw it on the late-night breaking news, I couldn't quite wrap my mind around it. What happened in Iran again? What did the young woman do? How and why did she die? Who was she? It all happened too fast.
All I knew was that her name was Neda. And she had, in the moment I saw them, the most beautiful eyes. Eyes that, for one brief moment, rolled to the right as she lay dying on the pavement, as if they had witnessed what mattered most in life.
And what mattered most wasn't about anything anyone can touch or hold on to. At least not in your hands. But it is something you can touch, hold, and feel in your heart.
And that something that matters, that last thing Neda glimpsed, that something is called freedom.
That's why Neda was out that day. To affect, in some small way, her chance for freedom. She wasn't marching or shouting or even shouting out Allah's name. She was just walking with her father on the side of the crowd as if they were going to a fair.
And then the bullet struck her.
A perfect shot. Right to Neda's heart. Her heart that longed for that one thing that mattered. One shot felled her to the ground where for one brief moment, she looked up without seeing. And then her eyes rolled back, white like baby's breath. The blood from her heart burst up through her mouth like lava spewing from a volcano. And she died.
Right there, in front of me, in front of the world, she took her last breath. Lifeless, she lay sprawled on the Tehran pavement in her jeans. Jeans just like any young woman in America would wear. Her last walk, her fall to the ground, her eyes looking upward, the end of her life - all caught for the world to see on someone's cell phone camera.
The phone caught her father screaming. Wailing waves of grief that parted the crowd like Moses parting the Red Sea. The camera caught the frantic effort to stop the bleeding and save her young life. It was too late to save her even before she hit the ground.
Neda Agha-Soltan, twenty-six years old, one member in a crowd of thousands on the other side of the world, asking the government to please review their ballots. One member in a crowd of thousands who never thought that by asking for more freedom, she would give up her life.
This weekend in our country, most of our young people will celebrate something they have never had to fight for on the very streets where they live. They'll cruise down those streets on their way to see fireworks and never once worry about their lives being in danger because of their own government.
Because they live in America. The land of the free. Where speaking out and speaking up are a given in their ordinary lives. So ordinary, in fact, that when they hear the word "freedom," their young hearts barely skip a beat.
Maybe, though, if they hear the name Neda this weekend, they'll close their own eyes for one brief moment and give thanks.
nnn
Lorraine Lordi lives in Londonderry. To order her collections of Derry News columns or sign up for one of her writing workshops, go to www.plumriverpress.com.
