The protests in Iran continue. As early as 2022, after the violent death of Jina Mahsa Amini, hundreds of thousands of people took to the streets. An Iranian author has now written a depressingly topical book about it.
Jan 20, 2026, 5:13 p.mJan 20, 2026, 5:13 p.m
Annika Bangerter / ch media
When Nila slipped out of the house in the afternoon, she wore a face mask, a light jacket and black pants. Her feet were in sneakers. An outfit that doesn’t stand out and isn’t restrictive. If the regime’s henchmen appeared, Nila could quickly run away.
Anger over the death of 22-year-old Jina Mahsa Amini led to protests across the country.Image: AP
Nila joined hundreds of thousands of other people in a wave of protests that rolled through the streets of Tehran, Isfahan and many other Iranian cities. People chanted “Zan, Zendegi, Āzādi” – woman, life, freedom. They risked everything for their rights and self-determination. They knew nothing and no one would stop the militias from arresting, raping or killing them. Nevertheless, they always returned to the streets.
That was at the end of 2022. In the past few days, tens of thousands of people have taken to the streets against the mullahs’ regime. Once again this is being implemented with all severity: demonstrators have disappeared into prisons, body bags are filling entire squares. Against this background, the book “In the Streets of Tehran,” which will be published at the end of January, is depressingly topical.
It was written by an Iranian author under the pseudonym Nila for her protection. Without providing any further information about herself, she provides insights into an everyday life that is characterized by control, restrictions and brutality. Nothing in it is private, everything is political. Enforced by the mullahs who subjugate their people and blackmail them into serving their ideology.
Blood stains on the sneakers
Nila describes powerfully and with many historical references how women’s bodies in Iran have long been exploited and controlled by those in power – and how the resistance to this culminated in the protests in 2022. Nila sees herself as an activist, but also as a witness. In her descriptions, she takes her readers out into the streets and thereby turns them into co-informers.
Protests in the Iranian capital Tehran, in 2022.Image: keystone
Most of the time, Nila let herself be driven through the streets during the protests: “Our heads are so full that we can only walk.” She joined groups that formed spontaneously and were brutally dismantled by regime forces, ran away, hid, and became part of a new crowd.
The author vividly describes how the loud shouts of the police officers heralded disaster. It’s like standing on the edge of an abyss and about to fall into an abyssal pit, says Nila. Once, shortly after such calls, she heard screams. She ran with other protesters in their direction. She heard shots and saw the police bus drive away while the remaining police forcefully dispersed the crowd. Nila learned that they had taken away a group of schoolgirls. The police beat the young people with batons. They shot a girl on the street.
Nila then saw traces of blood on the ground. She notes that they would have appeared black in the approaching twilight. She spotted a maroon stain on her sneakers. Shocked, she noted: “Even our history books, which are overflowing with atrocities, cannot prepare me for the sight of this freshly shed blood.”
The Iranian police in the streets of Iran. Image: keystone
However, looking away was out of the question for her. She was out and about in daylight because, as a witness to her time, she wanted to see everything clearly. Also the blood. «Life can be passive. Witnessing something is not passive,” she writes.
Much of what she describes is horrific. For example, how regime forces dragged the bodies of young girls onto roofs and threw them down to simulate suicide. Or how the security forces began to deliberately shoot at the demonstrators’ eyes. This is in order to locate them directly in the hospitals.
The courage of the young generation
Many very young protesters were affected by such brutal methods. The largest wave of protests in the Islamic Republic to date came from university students. Nila explains this, among other things, by saying that their parents did everything they could to free their children’s generation as much as possible “from the burden of constant docility and domestic totalitarianism.”
The cover of “On the streets of Tehran”.Image: Verlag Pfaueninsel
Exactly how old the author is remains unclear. She is probably around 40 years old. She describes her parents’ generation as traumatized survivors of the Islamic Revolution and the First Gulf War: Everyone who did not fully support the new regime mourned murdered friends or relatives.
She raised her children – and therefore also Nila – on the basis of fear and cover-up. Nobody was allowed to find out that there was alcohol at home or that women and men danced together at parties. A discreet and clever underground life was the resistance of her parents’ generation. “But like tree trunks, our parents formed concentric rings, layer upon layer of fear for survival.”
The generation of protesters grew up differently. Their parents did not demand absolute obedience and silence from them, writes Nila.
Pictures of body bags containing the bodies of those who died during the protests have been circulating on social media for several days.Image: keystone
After the violent death of Jina Masha Amini, this young generation in particular was no longer willing to accept the regime’s terror. 22-year-old Amini died as a result of ill-treatment by the moral police. She was arrested because she was said to have not worn the headscarf properly.
Teenage girls and young women protested against this. They burned their hijabs or walked, danced and sang in public with their hair flowing. The nationwide protests quickly became directed not just against the compulsory headscarf, but against the political system as a whole.
Teenage girls messing with mullahs
Many people from Nila’s generation joined the demonstrations. The courage of the younger generation sometimes surprised Nila. For example, when she saw a girl joyfully knocking the turban away from a mullah and running away to the applause of passers-by. “For the first time since we came under the rule of the mullahs, people dare to insult them directly,” writes Nila.
This shows how precarious the situation has become for the regime. “And for the frightened mullah who is at the head of the regime, there is only one reaction: revenge.” This turned out to be extremely cruel. Thousands of people were arrested, beaten and tortured. Many were summarily sentenced to death and executed. Hundreds were killed on the streets, including at least 68 children.
It is unclear how many deaths the protests have caused so far.Image: keystone
The regime sometimes required their families to pay for the bullets that resulted in the killing. Otherwise the regime refused to hand over the body to the relatives. Nila learned about an affected family from her cleaner. Their daughter had been shot six times. Nila did the math and concluded that it would take the family more than two years to raise the money because of the neighborhood in which they lived. Nila helped with many others to collect the amount. «That’s how life is these days. The whole neighborhood comes together to pay for the bullets stuck in a corpse. Sometimes it’s the entire city.”
At night Nila tossed and turned and wondered whether they would become accomplices of the regime because it could use the money to finance more bullets. She expresses her powerlessness in a question: “But who of the bereaved can live with the regime disposing of the body of a loved one in the desert?”
Nila: “On the streets of Tehran”, Verlag Pfaueninsel, 2026, 144 pages. (aargauerzeitung.ch)