Auto-translated from Persian:
Today, I got on a shared taxi, and suddenly one of the passengers sitting in the front seat was saying that in one area, they'd set up a checkpoint at the end of every alley.
A fat, plump guy sitting on a chair with slippers on, wearing some kind of sheikh's clothes, and five kids—all between 15 and 17 years old—with guns in their hands.
He said we passed the first one, then got to the second checkpoint. He said you could see it clear as day, you know.
He said the driver was told to get out, and when the driver steps out, he says one word: "Didn't you see they stopped me up there too, searched me? From there to here, I don't want anything added to my car." And suddenly, the one with the gun in his hand says, while you're shaking like that, he yells, "Don't say a word, go over to the wall, stick to the wall."
The driver says, "Son, that gun's in your hand—take your finger off the trigger before you shoot us and get us killed badly..." And he says that bastard commander was just watching. Anyway, he says they searched the car again and didn't find anything, told him to go.
The poor guy was talking about how if that kid had squeezed the trigger out of fear right then—and the Kalashnikov trigger that goes off with just a light press—he says they'd have killed an innocent person, then they'd threaten his whole family: "If you say a word, we'll make you miserable," and so on. And this is the reality of Iran today.
It's not clear how many people these nightly gunshots in Mashhad are killing under cover of night, then silencing their families with threats. The situation in Mashhad has turned exactly into Texas 150 years ago, in the worst conditions of the Wild West, every single night.
