Martyrs on the Highway September 2, 2016

[Martin Hash]

Martyrs 1.JPG

Iran took some getting used to: my wife, Gwynne, had to wear a hijab & abaya, no alcohol, social media was blocked, and there were large pictures of Martyrs along the highway & in every town. The pictures were color portraits of handsome young men killed n the Iran-Iraq war, which was 3 decades ago. Sometimes there were a dozen martyr's pictures on a single sign, but 1 or 2 martyrs per lamppost was the most common. They were just as prevalent in the villages as in the cities but not with quite so many Iranian flags, maybe only 1 of 2 verses the scores of flags along the bridges & modern concrete overpasses of the cities.

Martyrs 2.JPG

After the eerie feeling of constantly being surrounded by the peering faces of dead people wore off, I actually started looking directly at them, imagining what kind of person they were, how they died, and how their families were impacted. I found that I admired their courage and knew that martyrs on the highway were serving their intended purpose.