Travel Reference
In-Depth Information
Tarmac is all that remains of the Shah's big party in 1971.
I make a point to visit war cemeteries in my travels. They always seem to come with a
healthy dose of God—as if dying for God and country makes a soldier's death more mean-
ingful than just dying for country. That is certainly true at Iran's many martyrs' cemeteries.
Most estimates are that there were over a million casualties in the Iran-Iraq War.
While the United States lives with the scars of Vietnam, the same generation of Iranians
lives with the scars of its war with Iraq—in which they, with one-quarter our population,
suffered three times the deaths. Iran considers anyone who dies defending the country to
be a hero and a martyr. This bloody conflict left each Iranian city with a vast martyrs'
cemetery. Tombs seem to go on forever, and each one has a portrait of the martyr and flies
a green, white, and red Iranian flag. All the death dates are from 1980 to 1988.
