Everything looked clumsy and improvised in the days after the vote: the top-down way the outrageous results were announced; Khamenei's appeal to Ahmadinejad to be the president of all Iranians, followed immediately by a radically polarizing speech from his disciple dismissing all those who didn't vote for him as hooligans worthless as "dust" . . .
Slowly they marched, students and shopkeepers, old and young, with arms raised to signal a "V" for victory sign. "Sokoot " -- "Silence" -- they said if even a murmuring arose. "Raise your hands," they whispered to the police. "Where is the 63 percent?" asked one banner. A young woman, Negar, told me, "We were hoping that after thirty years we might have a little choice."
From beside me, an insistent male voice: "We are dust, but we will blind him."
from Roger Cohen's "Iran: The Tragedy & the Future," here (NYRB, 8/13/09)
