In many ways, the actions of each side are incomprehensible to the other. People who were rich didn't fight and ran away. But those who came back got little respect - it's why they hate us. The martyrs' graves are marked with faded photographs of Iranian men so young that they could be snapshots taken from a high-school yearbook. The founder of Iran's revolution is still widely revered and often depicted, as in the nearby martyrs' cemetery.
Men there pray for fighters lost in war with Iraq.
Mourning in the vast expanse of the cemetery, Abdulrahimi offers a visitor pieces of chocolate toffee from an orange plastic dish, keeping her black chador tightly clasped around her face with her other hand. Iranians adhere to the minority Shia sect of Islam, for which mourning and sacrifice are nearly forms of art. Offering food is a tradition too, so mourners wander among the gravestones with buckets of hot soup and candy. Even women sobbing for sons lost a decade ago give out cake to passersby. An open pomegranate sits on the elaborately carved marble grave of Abdulrahimi's teenage son, Akbar, its bright-red fruit ready for eating.