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Finally he pulled back his baton and I could see that he was recoiling his arm to aim at my knee again, when a bearded man accompanied by a younger bearded man dressed in plain clothes, joined us. The older of the two grabbed the baton mid-air and said, “Agha (mister), what are you doing? Where in the Koran does it say that clubbing our youth is appropriate?” Placing his other hand on my shoulder to nudge me out of the way of the baton, he continued to advise the two Basiji on the Koran’s peaceful values.It turns out that the two bearded strangers were father and son: the father had lived in Bordeaux since the ’79 Revolution, and just moved back to Tehran two years ago. His son, 25, was just visiting for the summer. The two were staunch opponents of the election results and the rise in militarization, and were fed up with the current omnipresence of Basiji militia. Want to know their shtick? Dressing up in dark, conservative colors to pose like the itehlati (secret service), Basiji, or undercover police, and standing outside the crowd of protestors waiting to intervene in police or Basiji brutality on civilians.I rolled down my selves, and waited near the hives of Basiji that chased down fleeing protestors, who would run into side alleys under the protection of the hurled rocks and broken granite, in hopes of resembling one of them. Occasionally one or two protestors would be violently stopped, beaten at their knees or limbs by clubs, and dragged back to a meeting spot where riot police would beat them again and then arrest them. The father and son would go into the Basiji crowd at these meeting spots, spout a few Islamic salutations (“Salamalakoum haji!”) and while the father introduced himself as a physician, his son would tend to the beaten like a male nurse checking vital signs. He would then whisper in their ears to pretend like they’ve lost consciousness. His father would pull aside the fainted demonstrator, wait for another raid, and while the Basiji were occupied with chasing down other protestors, they would tell them to flee.
They told me this had worked on a bunch of occasions so far, failing only once with an Afghan worker. He got apprehended after throwing a rock at riot police and running back into his construction site. The illegal refugee, who the son said looked like he probably paid for his ticket by swallowing a bundle of heroin tied to his tooth, had a plastered smile on his face that suggested he was too high to know that he shouldn’t have been throwing rocks at police. The duo set up the situation for him to flee, but with the tie-wrap holding his wrists together, or possibly just because of all the smack, he lost balance after 20 yards and was arrested again and beaten, even worse, getting passed around the police motor squad to be hit with clubs and 2×4s.
