Children of Jihad: A Young American's Travels Among the Youth of the Middle East Read Online Free PDF Page A

magnitude of the horror, the death toll, the impact, and the humiliation Iran experienced during this period. While I can never truly understand what it was like to have lived through that war, just Behesht-e Zahra alone made me appreciate that it was no mere footnote in history, as the Western world tends to view it.
    Shapour saw I was moved by Behesht-e Zahra, by its emotionally stirring shadow boxes and the haunting rows of tombs. He was careful to show me the tombs of the unknown soldiers, which consisted of small, unmarked cement squares. Shapour wanted me to see the death toll and the anonymity of those who died in the war. Intertwined with the rows of unmarked tombs were carefully planted shrubbery and poles adorned with flags for the Islamic Republic. Shapour placed his own Islamic Republic flag on one of those poles. I found the cemetery moving; this war I had only read about in books became a visual reality. I saw the pain of those who had lost; I saw the magnitude of the casualties in the sheer number of tombs; I saw the importance of this to Iranian society by bearing witness to the mourning rituals of Iranians who had come to pay their respects. But Shapour may have pushed his luck when he took me to a nearby museum where I could see posters declaring, “USA Is the Biggest Terrorist.”
    Both the Khomeini shrine and Behesht-e Zahra affected me, and the fact that the government wanted me to see these sites did not reduce the impact. They were not, however, the “beautiful sights” Shapour had promised. That was still to come.
    Shapour told me that our next stop would show off Iran’s beauty. He failed to mention that it would take almost two hours to get there and that most of that time would be spent in traffic. When we finally arrived, I found myself in an environment that I would hardly call beautiful. We were in the mountains, but all I could really see was the huge cloud of black smoke that seemed to form a fluffy tent over the city of Tehran.
    On some days, the pollution is so bad that people start coughing up black smoke.
    We left the “viewing” area and headed to what Shapour claimed was a really good restaurant somewhat nearby. His motive, of course, was to keep me out of downtown Tehran and distract from the prospects of interviewing officials. We soon arrived at an isolated small pizza café. Without realizing it, however, Shapour had made a crucial mistake that gave me a glimmer of hope for my time in Iran: He had brought me to Iran’s youth.
    It was at this mountaintop café that I got my first view of an Iranian experience unfiltered by my government escorts. And I have the charged hormones of a few pairs of Iranian teenagers to thank.
    As I first saw at that café, Iran has a lot more than religious shrines, martyrs’ cemeteries, and the regime. It also has a bunch of kids, who constitute nearly 70 percent of society, having the same kind of fun that we enjoy in America. All that other stuff—the regime and its trappings—just makes it a little bit harder for them.
    The youth bulge in Iran is not random. The massive human-wave attacks that took place during that war wiped out a substantial portion of an entire generation. The memories of the Iran-Iraq War are deeply embedded in the minds of Iranian youth, not just because they grew up with this violence, but because it is the very reason for the size of their demographic.
    In Iran, boys and girls are not permitted to show affection in public, and there is a morals police that strictly enforces the rule. When the Islamic Republic was established in 1979, the intent was to exploit nationalist sentiments and remold society in accordance with the Shi’ite interpretation of Islamic law. Drinking, public relationships, and dancing were all viewed as blasphemy. But, as I learned during my time at that dismal café, even the most repressive measures are no match for teenagers on a mission to get some.
    I ate my lunch and I watched couple after