The Temple Mount Code Read Online Free PDF Page B

his tormentor. The crowd collapsed on itself as the two men carried their friend farther back into the protection of friends.
    Fear swelled Liora’s throat. She was eighteen years old and was enrolled at Islamic Azad University. This was her first protest. Her mother had discovered her intentions and fought with her about it, but Liora had gone anyway.
    When she’d first arrived, she’d been afraid, especially because she hadn’t been able to find the other girls she’d agreed to join. She wondered if they had been forbidden to come, or if they had gotten too afraid to show up.
    The protest had turned out much larger than she’d expected.
    As she chanted and shouted, she wondered if this was how Neda Agha-Soltan felt the day she was shot for protesting the Iranian election two years ago. Liora didn’t know how anyone could willingly face death. She didn’t plan on dying, but then she didn’t think Neda Agha-Soltan had either.
    The young woman had been only twenty-six, with her whole life ahead of her.
    But it was a life here, under the rule of a misogynist despot. Liora could barely stand the thought. Things had to change.
    But even with the ascension of the new Ayatollah, things continued to be the same.
    ‘We weren’t allowed to pay our respects on June 20.’ Another man railed at the assembled Basij. ‘You cannot keep us from visiting her grave.’
    Posters of Neda Agha-Soltan showed her as she had been in her best health, and as she’d lain dying on Kargar Avenue. In the one, Liora thought the woman looked like an angel. In the other, Neda looked broken and torn, blood running from her mouth and nose, her eyes unfocused.
    Liora had first seen the videos of Neda’s death at sixteen. She’d been young and impressionable, still smarting from a broken romance.
    But Neda had given Liora someone to focus on, someone to hope to be. Neda Agha-Soltan had given her life trying to get the voice of women and reformists who stood against the Ayatollah’s rule heard. Her memory deserved to be honored by those that loved her.
    Taking a deep breath, Liora joined in the shouting again. ‘Let us in! Let us pay our respects! We will not be silenced!’
    Reza joined her, but he remained quieter than she though she knew his voice could be much louder.
    A jeep cruised slowly through the crowd, protected by a circle of Basij carrying assault rifles. Protestors yelled imprecations and curses, but they all backed away from the armed men.
    For the first time, Liora noticed the news cameramen gathered around the cemetery. Basij shoved through the crowd in an attempt to get to the cameras, but the crowd slowed the paramilitary people down just enough to allow the cameramen to get away through the crowd that opened before them.
    A Basij officer’s voice echoed over loudspeakers. ‘You will leave this area at once. You have no right to assemble. This gathering is illegal and will not be permitted.’
    An older man, flecks of gray showing in his beard, stood and raised a bullhorn. ‘We’re permitting it!’
    The crowd roared its approval of the bold declaration.
    ‘You could not silence Neda Agha-Soltan even after you murdered her!’
    Another roar of approval followed, the crowd’s unified voice growing even stronger.
    ‘The Ayatollah called for three days of mourning after you butchers silenced Neda, but you tortured her fiancé. Caspian Makan had to escape and flee to Canada to avoid the same fate! You’re all killers, and the Ayatollah is the biggest killer of all!’
    ‘Stand down!’ The officer’s voice blasted over the crowd, but the protestors just grew louder and angrier.
    ‘Let Iran decide its own fate! Let our voices be heard!’
    The commanding officer turned to his men and waved decisively. The Basij pulled on gas masks as the crowd of protestors tried to back away, but there was nowhere to go. Their backs were against the line of Basij barring entrance to the cemetery.
    The Basij threw tear-gas grenades into