Martyrs Cemetery (Tehran, Iran)

When you visit Iran there’s one thing you can’t fail to spot – it is a country with a fixation on death and martyrdom; a country where no matter where you go, you are never very far from reminders of the Iran-Iraq war – or as the Iranians call it, ‘the Imposed War’. The war ran for just short of eight years – from September 1980 to August 1988 and is recognised as the longest ‘conventional’ war of the 20th Century. Nearly twenty years after it ended, the memories are still very fresh in Iran. I’ll admit I was a little taken aback after an overnight flight to Tehran that the ‘highlights’ of day one were to be a tad fixated on death and destruction – a trip ...  Read the complete review