Pedestrian

If you read Mousavi’s 14th statement, there is a quote from Ayatollah Khomeini in there, “our leader is that 13 year old child …”

Do you know who he’s referring to?

That thirteen year old boy they are referring to is Hossein Fahmideh.

Hossein was born in the city of Qom, in 1967. In 1980 when Iraq invaded Khoramshahr, he enlisted as a volunteer (with basij forces) and was sent to the frontlines.

According to the official story, in October of that year, in a failing offensive against Iraq in which many of the Iranian soldiers had died, Hossein Fahmideh took a grenade, pulled the pin out, and jumped underneath an Iraqi tank, killing himself and disabling the tank. This stopped the Iraqi tank division’s advance.

Ayatollah Khomeini declared Fahmideh a national hero. Murals can be seen across Iran, he is on stamps, on paper money and in elementary textbooks.

A despicable use of child soldiers by one account. A hero of full proportion by another.

And I was not around then to judge the circumstance, but I think it went beyond the first narrative. There was an idealism and a level of devotion that people of all ages felt to the revolution, to Khomeini, to their country that we of later generations can never define or completely understand – and Hossein Fahmideh is simply one manifestation of that.

Below, his father is sitting on the left. The person on the right is Rizali Khajooy, otherwise known as dehghan-e Fadakar [the kind farmer]. He has a a story too. A story every Iranian kid learns in grade three.

I’ll have his story another day, and over another cup of coffee.