The eyes of a revolution and the stories behind them
Our Stories
We have asked for people to share with us their stories, the way that they would like for them to be told.
Hamid Reza Khajepoor
Hamid Reza Khajepoor
24 years old, a football player.
Hamid Reza like many of the youth in Iran he had goals and aspirations for his life. He wanted to be a professional football player and was chasing that dream as best he could. But the more that he went after it, the more that he realised that successes in the game weren’t always based on merit. Like many youth in Iran, Hamid Reza’s dreams were curtailed by mismanagement, corruption and nepotism.
This is where Hamid Reza likes to start telling his story. At the dead ends that he had come across in his life, in his fight for his goals, despite his young age.
“As a 24 year old in this country, I had a right to life”
Hamid Reza says having to give up on his dream of playing football set him back a few years in his life plan. He had lost faith in his country.
In November 2019, Hamid Reza and his friends had joined peaceful protests to demand their rights. He was 21 years old that the time. He expressed disappointment that the people’s demands were not listened to.
In 2022, his friends weren’t just fighting for their own rights, but they were also defending the rights of women.
“We had to take a stand for the women of our country.”
From November 15 to November 17 in Iran, there were nationwide protests and strikes to commemorate the 3rd anniversary of the November 2019 protests which had resulted in the deaths of at least 1,500 people.
The streets were filled with people, mostly honking from their cars.
Police in the streets usually would send ahead motorbikes to scare and threaten people, forcing them to disband their peaceful protest and flee, who remained or became trapped was arrested. But with now it had been two months since the beginning of the protests and it seemed that the police were becoming more violent.
“I had heard that they were shooting people in the eyes.”
Hamid Reza and his friends were walking in the street, there weren’t many people on foot, the streets were busy with people in cars honking, but there weren’t many people out on foot. Hamid Reza and his friends had become isolated.
As Hamid Reza and his friends realise that they have become isolated, they begin to flee. With them, a woman is running, but Hamid Reza notices that the woman is started to fall behind. He goes back to push her forward, and as he turns to see how far the police are, he sees an officer raise his weapon.
“As I was turning to protect my face, he fired.”
Hamid Reza was shot twice from a distance of about two meters with a pellet gun. One pellet goes right through his eye. Two pellets are implanted in his eye and his torso has so many that they’re difficult to count. In the immediate panic after being hit, Hamid Reza remembers screaming that he’s been blinded. He was holding his eyes shot in the shock. With the help of his friends, he managed to get to safety and they climbed into a car.
“I don’t think he aimed at me to blind me, I think he wanted to kill me.”
It took the young men about five hours to find a hospital where it would be safe for them to seek treatment. They had gone into the only eye hospital in their city. When they finally managed to get to a hospital where they were confident that they wouldn’t be arrested, the hospital was so overwhelmed with other injured people that Hamid Reza was waiting for hours to be admitted.
Hamid Reza recalls seeing an 80 year old man in the hospital who had simply been walking on the sidewalk when he had been shot. The old man lost one of his eyes.
“That was the only moment that I felt fear, right before they took me in for surgery, I heard them say that the 80 year old man would lose his eye. I thought, what if I end up losing my eye? That was the only moment that I felt fear, but it didn’t last for more than many 20 minutes.”
Hamid Reza was operated on that night and he left the hospital the next day for fear that it might to be safe to stay. He hasn’t sought follow up treatment for his eye which has no usable vision remaining. The rest of the pellets in his body, some were removed by a friend at Hamid Reza’s home. Eventually, they decided there were too many to try and remove them all.
We asked Hamid Reza if he’s made peace with what’s happened to him.
“I made peace with it that same night.”
Hamid Reza tells us that prior to going out, he and his friends had talked about what could happen as a consequence of them going out. They had made peace with the fact that they could die, or be arrested, but even though he had heard reports of people being intentionally blinded, this wasn’t something that had crossed his mind.
“After it happened, I remember being in the car and laughing about it with my friends.”
Hamid Reza had come to terms with the potential consequences of his actions, and rather than being filled with regret as to what had happened, he was filled with pride. He tells us that if he had lost his eye for any other reason, he would be very upset, but he had lost it fighting for something that he really believed in and that’s not something to regret, but something to be proud of.
“It’s a symbol that I fought for freedom.”
In all of it, Hamid Reza’s final thoughts that he shared with us were about hope.
“Hope can be a terrible thing. If someone is thirsty, it’s possible to that the thirst won’t kill them, but the promise of water that never comes, that hope that’s not realised, that would kill someone.”
– Hamid Reza Khajepoor
Eyes for Freedom | Cheshm Baraye Azadi | چشم برای آزادی 