seemed more natural , more compelling than being on the streets , calling for freedom , breathing the intoxicating , the dangerously euphoric Tehran air . I was 12 in 1978 , yet I was as undaunted as any adult . Nothing , least of all my pleading parents , could keep me away from the rooftops at 9 p.m. Amid the night 's dark , where the crowds were as indiscernible as ghosts , the shouts of `` Allah-o-akbar '' rose from every rooftop like smoke rising from an invisible bonfire . We were all victims of the flames and the very arsonists at once . We were burning in the fire of our own making . Thirty years hence that fire still burns in Iran , because moments before her death , Neda Agha Soltan cried : `` I 'm on fire ! '' I am entranced by her because she and I are the only two possibilities of the dictatorial narrative : Death or escape . She died . I escaped . I live . And because I live I can not escape her death -- the memory of her large eyes languidly drifting to one side
Editor 's note : Roya Hakakian is the author of `` Journey from the Land of No : A Girlhood Caught in Revolutionary Iran . '' Her web site is http://www.royahakakian.com/live/ . Roya Hakakian says she lived through an earlier moment when Iranians thought freedom was at hand . -LRB- CNN -RRB- -- Since last Saturday , the images of Neda Agha Soltan , the young woman who died on the streets of Tehran , keep playing before my eyes . When I do n't look at the clip on my computer , it runs on its own in my mind 's eye . What has me so riveted is not entirely empathy , the intuitive human response the images are bound to stir in everyone . There is also something less noble at work in me , an obsession with seeing my own face upon hers . Each time I see her die , I die along with her . I , too , was born and raised in Iran . My coming-of-age years coincided with the Iranian revolution of 1979 . I , too , was on the streets , watching and rooting for the demonstrators . Nothing