Iran International
Iran’s January massacre of protesters has left scars far beyond the streets. In cemeteries and hometowns, families are transforming centuries-old mourning rites into defiant celebrations of lives cut short.
In a striking break from convention, thousands of families gathering for 40th-day rituals in homes and cemeteries across the country in recent days replaced the traditionally solemn, religiously infused ceremonies with clapping, cheering, and dancing — open displays of defiance.
The iconoclastic ceremonies have angered state supporters. Alireza Dabir, a conservative politician and former wrestling champion, lashed out at grieving families. “Their children got killed and they’re dancing over the corpses. I can't help but take a dig at these useless people. May God give these useless people some brains,” he told reporters.
But for many mourners, the dancing is neither celebration nor denial. It is a refusal to grieve on prescribed terms. The music and dance have become a language of protest — one that transforms funerals into acts of collective memory and, perhaps, the foundation of a new tradition.
Raha Bohloulipour was 23, a student of Italian language at Tehran University. On social media, she wrote about justice and equality and appeared in videos laughing lightheartedly with friends. Before leaving home for what would be the last time, she posted a simple message on Instagram: “Woman, Life, Freedom forever.” She was shot on a street in Tehran.
At her 40th-day memorial in Firouzabad, her hometown in southern Iran, hundreds gathered as her parents danced solemnly to traditional Qashqai folk music, waving green kerchiefs — her favorite color. Some parents in other places danced as long as they could, then broke into tears and collapsed into the arms of relatives, wailing.
Mourners in Mobarakeh in central Iran danced to a pro-monarchy anthem in an act of defiance at the 40th-day memorial for protester Rostam Mobarakabadi, who was shot dead by security forces on January 9 in Esfahan.
The song references Kaveh the Blacksmith, a mythological figure who leads an uprising against the tyrant Zahhak.
Weddings at memorials
When a young unmarried person dies in Iran, families often erect a hejleh: a mourning display decorated with flowers, candles, mirrors, lights and framed photographs. The structure resembles a wedding canopy, symbolizing a life cut short before marriage.
This time, however, the symbolism has expanded beyond décor. Confetti was thrown into the air as women cheered and danced beside the grave of a young man, shouting, “There’s a wedding here.”
At another cemetery, a bride-to-be dressed in white danced and cried, waving her bouquet over a grave. Outside a shrine where only religious songs would once have been permitted, mourners danced with red kerchiefs to a pop song, blurring the line between wedding and wake.
Roots in ancient traditions
The fusion of music, mourning, and defiance is not entirely new in some tribal regions.
The Malekshahi and Shuhan tribes recently held a traditional Chamara ritual on the 40th day of Saeed Tarvand, a 33-year-old oil engineer and father of a three-year-old who was killed in Abadan.
A very large crowd dressed in mourning attire gathered in his village in Ilam province. A riderless horse with an empty, inverted saddle, adorned in black and red and flanked by rifles and cartridge belts, was paraded through the crowd. Drums beat, wind instruments known as sornai played solemnly, and men carrying sticks performed a symbolic war dance — an ancient choreography of sorrow and resistance.
Political defiance and divergence from state ideology
The memorials are highly charged political spaces. Mourners chant “Death to Khamenei", “Death to the Dictator”, and "Long Live the King”, referring to Prince Reza Pahlavi. Crowds also vow to continue the path of the fallen until “Iran is free” or until “the mullahs are in shrouds.”
Instead of clerical speeches and Quranic recitations, many families have chosen to read heroic verses from the Shahnameh, Iran’s national epic, invoking pre-Islamic symbols of resistance, or to sing revolutionary songs inspired by it.
At the 40th-day ceremony for 30-year-old truck driver Rostam Mobarakabadi, his mother held his photograph high above her head, stamping her feet resolutely and leading the crowd in a revolutionary song invoking “Kaveh the blacksmith,” a legendary symbol of uprising against tyranny.
In Firouzabad, Raha’s grandfather drew on a different literary reference. In his speech, he called her “The Little Black Fish,” the protagonist of a beloved children’s story about a curious fish who leaves her narrow stream to explore the world despite warnings and fear — a tale widely read as an allegory of individual freedom and courage.
The language, too, reflects a shift. Rather than calling the dead “martyrs” — shahid — many families now describe them as “javid-nam,” meaning their names will be eternal. The distinction between these matters greatly in a country where martyrdom is closely tied to state ideology. Authorities have reportedly banned the use of “javid-nam” on some gravestones, reinforcing the political weight of the term.
Mohammad-Javad Akbarin, a dissident Islamic scholar living in exile in France, said the 40th-day gatherings show that society is “dissociating itself from the state and the ideology that it promotes”.
“Instead of religious lamentations, it sings songs; instead of religion, it speaks of the homeland; and it describes its beloved not as shahid, but as one whose name will be eternal,” he told Iran International.
