Spared

When I, a 17 year old Iranian school girl got pulled out of class and forced into a massive wave of thousands of angry protesters, who were later massacred by the Shah's military for the event later known as "Black Friday", somehow I survived and managed to getaway, only to be captured later and subjected to rape, torture and narrowly escaping execution. A true story of the deadly demonstration that took place on 9/8/1978 in Iran, Tehran later known as "Black Friday". Martial law had been declared and the soldiers in military tanks, trucks, and helicopter gunships trapped me and the thousands of people in Zhaleh Square and opened fire upon us, killing approximately 8000 people. Although miraculously my only injury was a bullet scraping my earlobe, I survived the bloody ordeal. The event was so traumatic, I lost consciousness and do not remember how I survived with all the bullets that riddled through the crowd killing every single person in the demonstration. When I regained consciousness, I was in a pile of dead bodies stacked on top of each other in a movie theatre near where the massacre happened. There were so many bodies that the military tried to hide some of them inside the theater to be buried in mass graves at a later time. I was able to free myself and elude the guards when I escaped the movie theater hoping to find my way home, only to be captured later on that night. It was a long, hard struggle to survive thru the torture, the impending rape and the intense interrogations. I was even strapped to a light pole before a dozen soldiers who were aiming their rifles at me as the countdown began for the execution. I remain to be the only survivor that I know of, and the only one "Spared" to tell my story.