The lorry drove into Tabriz. She was not innocent of the crime of which she had been convicted. Yes, she had thrown the grenade. And yes, her regret was very keen that it had not killed more of the pigs. She knew why she had been brought to Tabriz, she knew it was the custom of the regime to exact retribution and punishment at the scene of the crime.

Sometimes the lorry was held up in traffic that not even the bellow of a siren could clear. Slow, jerking progress. She pictured in her mind the road they were taking. It was the same route that she had travelled with the two boys into the city, the heart of the city and the offices of the pasdaran. To her mind, the pasdaran were the symbol of slavery, repression, bigotry. The Islamic Revolutionary Guards were the embodiment of an evil that had consumed her nation…

The lorry stopped. The hands of the guards rested on her arms. She saw that they watched her, eager to see how she would be, in the last minutes. They lifted her from the wooden seat of the lorry, propelled her towards the open end of the lorry. Numbness in her mind, a quivering weakness at her knees. She heard the bellowing of a tannoy, and realised that it was the same voice, hushed and musical then, that had sentenced her to death late yesterday. She stood at the edge of the lorry's floor. There were people as far as she could see.

A roar greeted the sight of her. The sound of the voices came at her as waves across shingle, repeated and again. Impossible to make out what was shouted because her ears were still confused by the pressure drop of the aircraft. The faces told her. The faces were shouting their hatred, their pleasure at what was to happen to her. As far as she could see, faces of hate and faces of pleasure. She could not see the Mullah but she heard the excitement in the shrillness of his voice.