His Life

Khodanur Lojei was born on October 2, 1995, in the Shirabad neighborhood of Zahedan, in Iran's Sistan and Baluchestan Province. He was Baluch and Sunni Muslim. In the Islamic Republic, that makes you a double minority, doubly disposable.

He had no birth certificate, no formal education. The state had no file on him. He worked as a plasterer.

But on Instagram, he was alive. He posted videos of himself dancing traditional Baluch dances, loose-limbed and full of joy, and people loved him for it. In a region ground down by poverty and discrimination, he chose to dance.

Bloody Friday, September 30, 2022

On September 30, 2022, after Friday prayers in Zahedan, thousands gathered to protest. They were there for two reasons: the killing of Mahsa Amini in morality police custody, and the alleged rape of a 15-year-old Baloch girl by Colonel Ebrahim Kouchakzai, the police chief of Chabahar. Security forces opened fire with live ammunition into the crowd, and into the prayer site where people were still on their knees.

At least 107 people were killed that day. 17 of them were children. Over 350 were wounded.

Khodanur was shot in the back, kidney, and leg. He was taken to Tamin Ejtemayee Hospital, an IRGC-supervised facility. Doctors refused to operate. They told him he would "heal soon."

He spent his last hours begging a nurse for help, saying he felt lightheaded, that something was wrong. His family stood beside him, powerless. They later said: "They neglected him to death and we could do nothing."

He died on October 2, 2022, his 27th birthday, from untreated gunshot wounds. Surgery could have saved him.

One of his sisters died of a heart attack after learning of his death.

What Came After

On the 40th day after his death, people around the world recreated his pose. Led by Mediseh Bathaie, protesters handcuffed themselves to the lampposts of Chris Burden's Urban Light installation at the Los Angeles County Museum of Art. Students tied themselves to poles at the University of Kurdistan in Sanandaj. In Tehran, a young girl in traditional Baloch clothing danced at the foot of the Azadi Tower.

In Chicago, artists with "Chicago For Iran" carved his likeness in ice. In Nazareth, the Israeli artist Benzi Brofman painted him into a mural. The poet Mahdi Ganjavi wrote for him in Words Without Borders. Scholars studied his dance as an act of resistance. His name, meaning "the light of God," became something people whispered like a prayer.

The photo that was meant to break him became proof that they could not.

No one has been held accountable for his death. No one has been held accountable for Bloody Friday. Iran's judiciary continues to shield the commanders responsible.