BEIRUT (AP) — As tear gas canisters landed among protesters filling the wide boulevard, the 37-year-old beautician and her friends ran for cover. They sheltered among trees, concealed in darkness pierced only by the glow of streetlights and small fires behind them in the western Iranian city of Karaj.

Then gunfire rang out, audible in the video she was taking on her phone.

“Don’t be afraid,” she screamed repeatedly, her voice breaking. The crowd joined at the top of their lungs: “Don’t be afraid. We are all together.”

“Are they using live bullets?” she cried out. “Shameless! Shameless!” Others joined in the chant, along with cries of “Death to the dictator!”

It was a moment of collective boldness on January 8, the night hundreds of thousands of Iranians across the country took to the streets against the cleric-led theocracy that has ruled for nearly 50 years. But after the bloodshed of that night, the beautician, like countless others, has retreated into terrified isolation. She moved in with her mother, afraid to be alone, and has huddled there, anxious and unable to sleep.

A blanket of fear has settled over Iran, she said, and a sense of grief and quiet rage has taken over.

“When you look at people in the street, it feels like you are seeing walking corpses, people with no hope left to continue living,” she said in a text message in late January.

Her videos and messages provide a raw account of the exuberance that protesters felt taking to the streets last month — and the shock that has paralyzed many after the bloodiest crackdown ever inflicted by the Islamic Republic. The beautician expressed despair that change can happen and a sense of abandonment by the world.

She saw little hope in Iran-US nuclear talks that were held on Friday, even as they trade warnings of war. She feared Iran’s leaders would outlast Trump’s pressure and “become entrenched and all those people who died will have died in vain,” she wrote.

Monitoring groups say at least 6,854 were killed, most on January 8 and 9, but they say the full number could be triple that. The clampdown since has also been unprecedented. A month-long internet blackout has hidden the full extent of what........

© The Times of Israel