Day I met the Supreme Leader whose death inspired parties across Iran

That is how I described Khamenei’s compound to my parents when I returned home from a mandatory school trip to meet him. They had not wanted me to go. But in the Iran of the 1990s, refusing such things was rarely an option.

I was 11 years old, one of about 50 students selected from my school to visit the compound known as the Beyt: In Shi’a religious terminology it refers to the household of the Imams and their inner circle. In the Islamic Republic it means the secretive compound where the supreme leader lived and ruled.

The announcement came in October 1996. Our headmaster told us that several “top students” would be chosen to visit “His Excellency”. He said our behaviour over the next few days would determine who went.

A few days later I was summoned to the headmaster’s office. Sitting beside him was the school’s “Islamic Development” teacher, the man responsible for ideological instruction.

“I have good news for you, my son,” the headmaster said with a smile. “You will see Hazrate Agha [his holy excellency].”

The other man rolled his prayer beads between his fingers. “The holiness of that day will stay with you for the rest of your life,” he said. “It will guarantee your success.”

I was proud to have been chosen. But I also felt uneasy.

At home, my parents reacted immediately.

“We will call the school and say you are sick,” my father said. “You should not go. But don’t tell anyone we said this.”

My parents had grown up under the government of the Shah. The rise of Ruhollah Khomeini had overturned their lives. In our home the regime was not sacred but resented.

I begged to go, afraid refusing would damage my “attitude marks” which determined whether I remained a “top pupil”.

That quiet anxiety of consequences is something every Iranian understands. Children learn it at school and adults carry it for life.

Growing up in the Islamic Republic, Khamenei’s presence was constant and unavoidable. His giant portraits loomed over city streets. His slogans were painted on public buildings. His speeches dominated national radio and television. His ideological worldview shaped the language, education and politics surrounding every Iranian child, although in private gatherings he was the man everyone criticised.

After much hesitation, my parents agreed.

The day before the trip, a cleric came to our classroom. We were told how to behave, what slogans to chant and when, and instructed to wear white shirts; watches and backpacks were forbidden. It was rehearsal for a political ritual.

On the morning of the visit, the 50 of us were given headbands printed with revolutionary slogans, squeezed into two buses and driven toward downtown Tehran. About a kilometre before the compound the buses stopped. We were told to remove our shoes. On a cold autumn morning, we walked barefoot along streets closed to the public. I still remember the freezing pavement under my feet.

Checkpoint after checkpoint followed before we reached the outer wall of the compound: tall, blank and impenetrable.

Students from other schools had arrived as well, forming long queues before the final gate. Guards with stern faces watched us closely.

After nearly an hour of waiting we were allowed inside.

A recording of the Qur’an played softly from loudspeakers. Guards spoke to one another in low voices. Everything was designed to create a sense of reverence.

We walked through silent corridors until we reached the main hall, familiar to every Iranian from state television but in reality surprisingly unimpressive. The walls were covered with anti-American slogans. At the front stood a stage with a single empty chair and a blue curtain behind it.

We sat on marked lines on the floor.

Then the smell hit me. Thick rose water, the scent used in holy shrines, mixed with the sour odour of hundreds of socks from visitors who had removed their shoes before us.

Official banner on outskirts of Tehran mourns Khameini on Monday (Atta Kenare /AFP via Getty Images)AFP via Getty Images

A regime loyalist with an untrimmed beard rehearsed chants with us. He told us what to shout when the leader attacked America, how to react when he threatened the West, and how to respond when he praised the Islamic Republic.

Half an hour later, I came face to face with the man whose portrait hung in every classroom in Iran.

I cannot remember his exact words. But I remember one word clearly, repeated again and again.

“Doshman [enemy].”

Khamenei’s was defined by his obsession with real or imagined enemies, shaping the system he built and the policies he pursued.

In the end, the doshman he spoke about for so many years reached him.

On the day Khamenei was killed, videos began to emerge from inside Iran. People were celebrating his death. Weeks earlier, thousands of protesters had been shot by security forces while chanting slogans against Khamenei and the Islamic Republic. The memory of those killings was still fresh.

“I wish he had been captured alive,” said Arash, speaking to me from Tehran through a Starlink connection. “Imagine seeing him in court like Saddam Hussein.”

A 31-year-old doctor in Tehran told me people were gathering in apartments at night, watching missile strikes against regime targets.

“I know war is not supposed to make anyone happy,” she said. “But we are happy. For the first time in a long time we feel safer.”

Since his death the regime has tried to preserve the decades-old aura of sanctity that surrounded Khamenei. State television now calls him the martyr “Imam”, a title historically reserved for Ruhollah Khomeini and rarely used for his successor.

But the way his life ended has exposed the fragility of that mythology. For decades the regime presented him as a leader above politics and beyond the reach of his enemies. The title Ayatollah itself literally means “reflection of God on earth” in Arabic, suggesting a divine authority that could not be challenged.

But the celebrations that followed his death expose the regime’s failings. Most of the people he ruled did not mourn his death.

Nor did they celebrate the succession of his son. Despite Mojtaba Khamenei’s efforts to cultivate a mysterious, almost invisible public image, many Iranians view him as a central to the country’s suffering. When news of his appointment broke, videos on social media showed residents in several cities chanting slogans against him. Let’s see if his reign will prove any more robust than the residence of his father that was destroyed last week.