Emad Tayefeh remembers the moment in early August when the bus
approached Iran’s border with Turkey. “My heart was beating so fast,” he
said. “I wasn’t allowed to leave the country, and I’d bribed the border
police to get an exit permit. I had to cross the border without wasting
time.”
His only luggage was a backpack in which he was carrying a hard disk with videos of dissidents he had recently recorded. Among them was the mother of Saeed Zeinali talking about her son, who was just 22 when he disappeared during the student unrest of 1999.
For a long time Tayefeh, 30, along with older Iranian filmmaker Mohammad Nourizad had planned a documentary about dissidents in Iran, but it had been far from easy. Recording the videos had led to him being imprisoned and beaten several times.
The bus stopped. “I was the first who rushed to the border,” recalled Tayefeh, now in Istanbul. “I took my backpack, showed my exit permit to the police and crossed. I still get goosebumps talking about it.”
Tayefeh was raised in Tehran, in a family that was supportive of the 1979 Iranian revolution. They lived in Sadeghieh, a neighborhood in west Tehran, surrounded by like-minded neighbours, including Iranian director Ebrahim Hatamikia; Hossein Shariatmdari, the managing director of the leading conservative newspaper Kayhan, and Mohammad Nourizad, a friend of Tayefeh’s father. “Back then, the regime would give free housing and land to close allies and supporters,” said Tayefeh. “So we had land there, too.”
His only luggage was a backpack in which he was carrying a hard disk with videos of dissidents he had recently recorded. Among them was the mother of Saeed Zeinali talking about her son, who was just 22 when he disappeared during the student unrest of 1999.
For a long time Tayefeh, 30, along with older Iranian filmmaker Mohammad Nourizad had planned a documentary about dissidents in Iran, but it had been far from easy. Recording the videos had led to him being imprisoned and beaten several times.
The bus stopped. “I was the first who rushed to the border,” recalled Tayefeh, now in Istanbul. “I took my backpack, showed my exit permit to the police and crossed. I still get goosebumps talking about it.”
Tayefeh was raised in Tehran, in a family that was supportive of the 1979 Iranian revolution. They lived in Sadeghieh, a neighborhood in west Tehran, surrounded by like-minded neighbours, including Iranian director Ebrahim Hatamikia; Hossein Shariatmdari, the managing director of the leading conservative newspaper Kayhan, and Mohammad Nourizad, a friend of Tayefeh’s father. “Back then, the regime would give free housing and land to close allies and supporters,” said Tayefeh. “So we had land there, too.”
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