Yesterday evening I was watching videos that have leaked out of Iran. I watched a video taken inside some kind of university - students being beaten and shot, gunfire, screams and breaking glass swirling around the microphone. I was totally shaken by the images: left with a physical feeling of fear and nausea. I can’t believe how brave these people are, that they are prepared to protest even in the face of brutality and death.
Afterwards I needed to get some food before theatre rehearsals. I bought felafal from my friend Najar, who I sometimes play football with. I needed to talk about what I’d just seen, so I told him about it. He’d never mentioned this before, but he told me that he is a Kurd from Syria, and said that in 2004 his people were indiscriminately brutalised by the Syrian government in a similar way. Amazingly, he smiled. He said that people are crazy. He praised the use of internet and camera-phones: this violence has happened in the Middle East for years, he said, but before no-one found out about it.
I told him I was amazed that people would still protest, even against police wielding guns and clubs. He said that in England we cannot imagine this sort of protest, because we are comfortable and we have everything. But people in the Middle East are desperate, he says, and sometimes they are so desperate that they are not scared any more.
I felt a bit better after talking with him.
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