AP Photo/Jacques Brinon
Neda Agha-Soltan’s death at the hands of an Iranian Basiji militiaman during anti-government protests in Tehran last June was watched by millions on the Internet, and came to symbolize an oppressed nation’s struggle for liberty. Excruciating to watch, the beautiful young woman’s final moments, as she looks wide-eyed into a cellphone camera before blood pours from her mouth and she loses consciousness, starkly exposed the Iranian regime’s willingness to use force against its own citizens who were unwilling to accept a seemingly rigged presidential election. Soon her name and face were held aloft on banners in Tehran and around the world.
A college at the University of Oxford named a scholarship after her. An Iranian factory reportedly tried to mass-produce statuettes of her likeness and was shut down.
For Caspian Makan, however, Neda’s death was infinitely more painful and intimate. It broke his heart.
“We completed each other,” he says in an interview with Maclean’s in Toronto, where he now lives. “There was a strange force that brought us together and made us so close in such a short time.” Caspian was Neda’s fiancé. They had met on vacation in Turkey only two months before last year’s election and planned to marry. Neither voted. The candidates were insiders approved by Iran’s religious leadership, and Neda and Caspian dismissed the election as illegitimate. But a movement grew around reformist candidate Mir Hossein Mousavi, and exploded into mass demonstrations after the election, when victory for incumbent hardliner Mahmoud Ahmadinejad was announced before the polls had closed. Riot police surrounded the Interior Ministry, and Basij swarmed into the streets, beating women with clubs. Neda joined the protesters.
“I tried to stop her. I asked her not to go,” Caspian says. “The reason is simple. I loved her, and I knew that the regime rapes and tortures and kills. I didn’t want her to face that.” Caspian argued with Neda. He said the demonstrators were demanding their votes be counted, but she hadn’t cast a ballot. Neda said the protest movement was growing and would soon target the Islamic Republic itself. “She wanted freedom, the overthrow of the regime,” says Caspian. “She said that all of us are responsible, that every person can make a difference.”
Caspian joined the demonstrations too, but secretly, without Neda’s knowledge. He is a photographer and wanted to document what was taking place and send footage to foreign media. He knew admitting he was putting himself in danger would make it harder to ask Neda to stay home. And so the two lovers attended the same protests, but lost to each other in the crowds.
On June 19, Iran’s supreme leader, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, issued an ultimatum to the opposition: end the protests, or you will be responsible for the consequences. It was understood in Iran as Khamenei’s personal approval for the violence that followed.
Neda was one of at least 18 people murdered the next day. Most were shot. At least one was beaten to death. Another died in prison. Neda was on the outskirts of a demonstration in the company of her music teacher and family friend, Hamid Panahi, when a bullet struck her chest and knocked her backward onto the street. Panahi and Arash Hejazi, a doctor who happened to be nearby, kneeled over her. Hejazi tried to hold Neda’s blood in her body. It flowed through his hands.
“Neda, don’t be afraid. Neda, stay with me.” Panahi said.
“I’m burning. I’m burning,” she responded, and died.
The surrounding crowd seized a man on a motorbike. They stripped and beat him. He shouted, “I didn’t want to kill her.” An identity card taken from his wallet identified the man as Abbas Kargar Javid, a Basij member given a three-day licence by Iran’s Revolutionary Guards to operate in Tehran. Someone took a video and photos. The crowd let him go.
Caspian didn’t yet know Neda was dead. He spent all that night looking at photographs he had taken of the demonstrations. He had a sick feeling in his stomach that he couldn’t explain. Early the next day he got a call from Neda’s cellphone. It was her sister, Hoda. “Neda’s gone,” she said.
“For a while I was just screaming uncontrollably. I don’t know how I got to their house,” says Caspian. “It’s been a year since that day. And each moment is like the moment before. Until the day I die, this event will be fresh for me, as if it just happened.”
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