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Source: https://www.thetimes.com/world/middle-east/article/iran-war-six-months-stories-survival-sqvqm6h5f
Voices from Inside Iran
(The Times-UK) Fatemeh Jamalpour - Interviews from five Iranian provinces and in six cities present a picture of the aftermath of a war that began six months ago. After the start of the war, Shahan, a cherubic five-year-old, stood with his grandparents among all the Iranians dressed in red. Red for blood, martyrdom and revenge. It's difficult for his mother, Hadis, 30, to consider how her son became part of the regime's defiant response. Her husband, Vahid, had been left paralyzed after being shot during the January protests. They both bitterly opposed the era of the ayatollahs. Their parents, however, supported the Islamic Republic. When the war began, Shahan's grandparents took him to regime-organized rallies at night, where he repeated chants of "Death to America" and "Death to Israel." Hadis said, "My father put it into his head that America and Israel were our enemies, that they had no real power, and that Iran and the Revolutionary Guards were so strong they would destroy them." Hadis said that when she told Shahan "the war could start again, he answered with complete certainty: 'No. The war is over. It won't start again.'" She asked him how he knew. "Because we can't hear the fighter jets anymore. Israel has been destroyed." Sepideh Gholian, 30, an activist who has been jailed repeatedly by the regime, said that she was beaten and arrested in December after attending a memorial service for Khosrow Alikordi, a human rights lawyer who had represented her, and whose death was considered suspicious. "They tortured us almost to death," she said. "I spent 70 days in solitary confinement." During the crackdown that followed the January protests, Gholian was held in Vakilabad prison in Mashhad. "I watched groups of female protesters being brought into the ward. They had been shot, some had been raped and many were in terrible condition."