Póster #Khodanoor Lajei - Dispossessed, but not forgotten

His name was Khodanoor and his story is an epic dichotomy of life versus oppression. Khodanoor’s story puts the “life” in “woman, life, freedom”. If you are Iranian, you know in a glance that he was a second class citizen in Iran. Everything about him screams that — his uncommon name and traditional Balochi outfit immediately tells you that he was part of one of the most underprivileged ethnic/religious minorities in Iran. Being Baloch, he has lived a life of discrimination. The likes of him would never appear on the national TV, just based on where he is from in Iran, you know that Khodanoor is likely undocumented (in his own country) and has probably struggled with not having clean water to quench his thirst more than once. We have two pictures from Khodanoor’s life. One is a 25 second video of him dancing — a barefoot dance, oh so full of life and brightness! The most human embodiment of passion! A dance so radiating with cheer that sews your gaze to the screen and infects your heart with raw joy. See for yourself. The other picture we have of Khodanoor, is one taken of him in one of the last days of his life, after he is arrested in the 2022 protests in Iran. He is tied to a flag pole, barefoot again. And if you look closely, you will see a glass of water in front of him, but just far enough to be out of his reach. This is the story — he had an altercation with a basiji (volunteer member of a fundamentalist paramilitary militia in Iran), whose family used their ties with the Iranian regime to get him arrested and “taught a lesson” by the police and paid a considerable bribe to get this photo as evidence of his humiliation and spread it online. Khodanoor was reportedly beaten up by IRGC forces and tied to that pole overnight for two nights. That glass of water in front him in the corner is an attempt to torture him — he was thirsty and had asked for water. A few days after this photo, Khodanoor was shot and taken to a hospital where the so-called doctors followed orders to ignore his injuries. He died from a kidney injury on his birthday, October 1st. The story of Khodanoor has inspired many resistance artists — drawings, installations, street performers re-enacting the photo. This is one of my favorites -- on the left, you see an installation by an unknown artist on a street in Iran. It was of course removed by the government soon after, because dictators of terrified of art among other things; resistance artists replaced it with the installation on the right. You will find an endless stream if you search for his name on Twitter: خدانور. But so far, my favorite is this one, because it depicts Khodanoor as I will remember him — the epic dichotomy of life versus oppression. His flagpole photo is everything we are fighting against, his joyful dance is a reflection of the freedom we are yearning for, and his story puts the “life” in “woman, life, freedom”.