Diary 
Roxanne Varzi
No one was guarding the gates to the grounds of the Imamzadeh Ali Akbar Cheezari in Tehran, where the son of the Imam Zayn al-Abedin is interred, the first time I visited, in 2000. The mausoleum now stands in a cemetery where hundreds of martyrs of the war with Iraq are buried.
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Roxanne Varzi is the author of Warring Souls: Media, Martyrdom and Youth in Post-Revolution Iran. She teaches anthropology and film and media studies at the University of California, Irvine.
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