Neda Agha-Soltan had been dead little more than a day before her face was seemingly everywhere—deployed as a universal symbol of resistance to the Iranian regime. In a battle for moral authority, the very public murder of a young woman—shot through the heart no less—was another weight the tainted guardians of the revolution would have to carry, another load to be added to the suspiciously laden vote, the heavy-handed goons, the sinking loss of consent from the governed. When I first saw her face, in the video that has now traveled the world, her name was unknown. I focused instead on the arch and tumble of her eyebrows. Unlike her other features, they were free of blood, making it easier to stare. Meticulously plucked and shaped, the brows offered the only information I could glean about her—that she cared about the face she presented to the world.
Our hero-making machinery is often faulty; greed, hypocrisy, even steroids gum the works. Then out of the blue, a sea of ordinary people appears in a country that many had written off as beyond redemption, inspiring us with their physical bravery, moral resolve, and the beautiful faces of defiance they wear as they march into police truncheons, sniper fire, and the fearsome maw of the state. Helen of Troy had a face that launched a thousand ships. In death, Neda’s face, too, has acquired force, though the extent, and consequences, of its political power are not yet clear. In Tehran, the oligarchs nervously eye an uneasy sea of green, watching the swells for signs of an emergent fleet.
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