Iranian elections: the triumph of expectation

TEHRAN, IRAN – The biggest mosque in Tehran was full. It was, according to a true believer I met, the biggest rally ever, anywhere in the world. Their leader, president and presidential candidate Mahmoud Ahmadinejad was to address them.

They screamed slogans, sang patriotic songs and waved national flags. Music blared from huge speakers. It was deafening. (One good thing about wearing a headscarf is that no-one can see you’ve put in earplugs.)

We were in a section around the stage. Two iron bars draped in white muslin kept back the crowd. Or rather, they didn’t.

As the president’s team whipped up the crowd, young men began to push towards the area at the front set aside for journalists and war veterans in wheelchairs.

I watched a small boy wriggle under the bars – he was caught by a marshall in a fluorescent yellow jerkin and unceremoniously chucked back into the seething tide. But soon there was a great groan from the crowd and the marshalls gave up. The people surged in. A small girl near me began to cry.

At this point, I had visions of being trampled underfoot, and withdrew to the stairs at the side. (It doesn’t do to think about fire regulations in these situations.) A young man with a large can on his back attached to a spray nozzle wandered around dousing us in scented water, like a field of sunflowers being sprinkled with insecticide.

Several of the more portly members of the crowd expired from the heat and the crush, and were carried out to be revived by men pouring bottles of mineral water over their heads. I feared I might soon join them.

The hours passed. The tension grew. They shouted insults about the opposition leader. Moussavi is a liar! They showed a picture of a woman at an opposition rally with no headscarf. The crowd roared its disapproval.

They went through the old slogans. Death to Israel! They intoned the names of their saints. Hossein! Ali!

It went on for three exhausting, ear-splitting, interminable, sweltering hours.

And in the end, Ahmadinejad never turned up. Apparently the crowd outside was so big he couldn’t get his car through, so his advisers told him to turn back.

On the way out I asked people if they were disappointed. Oh no, they said. The rally itself was exciting enough, and they’ll be out on Friday voting for their absent hero.

– I’ll be posting later today on the opposition in the Iranian elections.