Creative Nonfiction
Where’s my Vote? by Alex Akbarian
Dear Diary, I am so mad. I have never been this mad in my life before. It is impossible to really write down this level of anger I feel, but I will try to do the best of my ability. Today, June 19, 2009, Mahmoud Ahmadinejad claimed victory. Me and the majority of Iran do not support him. The reason for this is because he will hurt this country. Our economy will become terrible, foreign relationships will fail, and so many more things. The possibilities are truly scary. Having some common sense, I know that if the majority of Iran does not support him, there should be no reason for his win. It is just a little bit “suspicious,” some might say. To me, it is clear that the election was overturned. I mean seriously, what year are we living in? Things like this cannot be happening in today’s society, and I am just truly disgusted. Because of this tragic event, me and thousands of others took to the streets today. If you were to look at the protests from the sky, you would see a whole lot of green. This is because we all were protesting in the same color: green. Green was the symbol of the campaign of the leader who should have won: Hossein Mousavi. On top of us all wearing green today, we all kept saying the same thing: “Where is my vote?” The reason why we were saying this is simple, where did my vote actually go? I know something fishy happened with it, so where is it? Wearing green and saying this was exciting. It was my favorite protest I have ever been to. I just felt so, so, powerful, but everything took a turn for the worse. “GET BACK, GET BACK” was all I heard. They were attacking us. They, as in the corrupt government police. People started screaming, but we were not giving up. Even though we were being attacked, we stayed chanting “Where’s my vote?” Things started getting more violent:
“WHERE IS MY VOTE?”
“GET BACK, GET BACK.”
I felt as if it was a continuous rhythm. At this point, some protestors even got into physical fights with the police. Due to this, I got out of that protest as quickly as I could. Although I left today’s protest, I didn’t give up. Tomorrow there will be another protest, and we will wear green again, and say, “Where’s my vote?” It might end in violence again tomorrow, and I might have to flee again, but it won’t be over. This might be how it goes for weeks until we get what we want. But I just know, me and all the fellow Iranian protesters will keep protesting. Protests have been done before, and many of them have not succeeded. But this time I feel as if something different is in the air, something will be done. I know that one day, me and all the other fellow Iranian protesters will succeed, as long as we don’t stop trying.
Alex is a student in high school who loves to read and write. Some things he likes to write are short pieces, such as the one written here! The piece written is a diary entry from a viewpoint of someone living in Iran in the year 2009, during the time of the green movement.
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