From our special envoys Manon Quérouil-Bruneel (text) and Pascal Maitre / Myop (photos)
We enter Iran through its dead. From the airport, the road heads towards Zahra Paradise, Tehran's largest cemetery. Patriotic songs bathe the crushed alleys of the square dedicated to the martyrs. Wrapped up in black, a frail figure wanders through the maze of tombs. She stops to dust a stele, to whisper a prayer in front of another. Every Friday, the same ritual until exhaustion. Fatimeh Qolani is a pasionaria of the shahids, those heroes who fell in the defense of the Islamic Republic.
In this kingdom of the dead that she walks tirelessly, no vault holds any secrets for her.
Here, a commander killed in the bloody war against Iraq.
There, a young soldier broke in Syria alongside Bashar al-Assad's troops.
Fatimeh devotes her life to paying homage to them, zealous custodian of a story of blood and tears that she sheds
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