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Melia, 23, lit a cigarette on the dictator's portrait
"I was the girl they used to torture"
23-year-old Melia sets fire to a photo of Iran's supreme leader.
Then she lights a cigarette in the flames.
And becomes famous overnight.
The embers lick the edge of the portrait.
Melia holds up the picture in a parking lot north of Toronto. With her long black nails, she grips the photograph of Ayatollah Ali Khamenei in one hand and the lighter in the other. The cigarette hangs from the corner of her mouth. A friend stands next to her and films it.
It takes a few seconds for the paper to catch fire.
Then it bursts into flames.
She lights the cigarette in the flames, lets the portrait burn almost completely down and finally drops the last piece into the snowdrift. She points her middle finger at the remains.
On January 7, she records the video. A few hours later, she posts a screenshot of the clip – at the exact moment the cigarette bursts into flames.
Little did she know what she had started. Soon she would be given a new name on the internet:
When Aftonbladet reaches her two months later, she is at her job as a barista in Toronto.
A lot has happened since that flare-up.
Over 30,000 people are estimated to have died in protests that the Iranian regime brutally suppressed. Ayatollah Khamenei is dead and his son has taken power. The US and Israel are bombing targets in Tehran.
No one knows yet how it will all end.
She calls herself Melia. That is not her real name.
She uses the alias for a simple reason: her family is still in Iran. In the worst case, burning a portrait of the country's supreme leader can be punishable by death. And doing it without a hijab – and lighting a cigarette in the flames – is about as disrespectful as you can be in the eyes of the regime.
For her, filming the sequence was a no-brainer.
“I just wanted to tell my friends that I stand with them. That even though I'm two continents away, I'm still there – my heart and soul are still with them.”
She had actually only intended to post it to her friends. But it exploded almost immediately online.
“I posted the picture in the middle of the night. I didn't plan for it to go viral, it was completely out of my control,” she says.
Melia says she had seen a similar picture online before and wanted to make her own version directed at Khamenei.
Reactions came quickly. Some thought the picture was AI-generated. Others speculated that it might have been filmed inside Iran.
In response to the doubts, she posted the entire clip – 35 seconds long – and wrote briefly:
“What about the video?”
The video turned out to be filmed in Canada, by Melia, who is an Iranian refugee. At first, she was completely anonymous. On Twitter, she called herself only Morticia Addams, after the matriarch of “The Addams Family”.
Soon, more people began to copy the gesture. Critics of the regime in different countries lit cigarettes on pictures of the ayatollah – from Germany to Switzerland and the United States.
Newspapers published the picture. Activists shared it. Even her favorite author J.K. Rowling spread it on social media.
For Melia, it suddenly became clear that she had become a symbol against the regime.
– I thought: now it is obvious that I hate them. It is obvious that I am fighting against them.
But the regime was already familiar with her.
Melia describes herself as a radical feminist and has been active against the regime since she was 15.
– I saw that we did not have a normal life already as a teenager. I was arrested several times by the morality police because of my clothes, she says.
– I was beaten with a baton. But it was nothing compared to what happened later.
Mahsa Amini was arrested by the religious morality police in Iran because her headscarf did not cover her hair sufficiently. She died in custody in September 2022. Photo: Markus Schreiber / AP
She was first arrested at the age of 17 during the “Bloody November” protests in 2019, which broke out after the US withdrew from the nuclear deal with Iran and tightened sanctions on the country. Melia says she was injured by both batons and a taser during the demonstrations. Then she was taken away.
“For four nights, no one knew where I was. Finally, I had to call someone and tell them where I was, and they managed to get me out of there.”
Three years later, she took part in the protests after Mahsa Amini’s death in custody in 2022. During that period, she appeared in a YouTube program criticizing the mandatory hijab.
Shortly after, the phone started ringing. Calls from undisclosed numbers. With threats.
In 2024, after Iranian President Ebrahim Raisi died in a helicopter crash, she posted critical posts on Instagram. She says security forces raided her family's home in Isfahan.
- A few days later, people broke into my parents' house, arrested me, and took my laptop, phone, and all my digital stuff.
“Melia” in Iran. Photo: Private
According to Melia, she was subjected to severe humiliation and abuse during interrogations. She was then released on a large bail.
– Before they could convict me of anything, I left Iran. I had to, she says.
She managed to get to Turkey and later traveled to Canada on a student visa. Today, she has refugee status and lives in Toronto.
Here she openly shows off her tattoos. Wears colorful makeup. Piercings. Things that were not possible in Iran, or previously often led to problems with the country's morality police.
She has been in Canada for less than a year and lives in student housing. For security reasons, she does not want to say exactly when she fled.
She barely has time for hobbies. She works, studies, follows every news from Iran – and continues with her political activism on X.
When the picture of the burning Khamenei went viral, she was quickly met with attacks online from accounts that she suspects are connected to the regime.
At the same time, the spread gave her an unexpected sense of strength.
– It felt very good. Because they know the girl they used to torture during interrogations – and now the same girl has become the face of the movement.
Iran’s state media has directed threats against Iranians both in the country and those in exile. But Melia wants to continue protesting, regardless of the consequences. She is used to the threats.
– I’m actually not even afraid of death, to be honest.
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When Khamenei died, she posted a dance video and wrote:
“I told you we would dance on your grave, right?”
Later, she posted a picture of a wine glass and wrote:
“As President Trump said: ‘he died like a rat.’”
She says she supports the Trump administration’s line.
– When a government shoots people just because they shout slogans, the people need support – including military support.
What frustrates her most right now is that many in the West oppose the war without understanding the situation, she says. She is particularly critical of those who call themselves feminists but at the same time oppose military interventions by the US and Israel.
– Please: if you have never lived in Iran, support Iranians who speak on social media. Don’t try to explain your own ideas to Iranians who have lived their entire lives in Iran and then were forced to emigrate to another country.
She hopes the conflict ends with the fall of the Islamic Republic.
Otherwise, she sees a darker scenario ahead.
– Then Iran will become like North Korea in the Middle East. They don't even try to hide it anymore, when they openly threaten people in state media.
Melia during a protest in Canada against the Iranian regime. Photo: Private
The worry for her friends and family who remain in Iran torments her. She has not heard from them for several weeks. She is afraid of what the regime might do to them.
She does not want to speculate on whether she herself can ever return. She herself does not really ask for much from the future.
– I am just an ordinary person who wants freedom for her country.
– It is actually sad that most of us just want a normal life, like you have. We just want to be able to go around as we please.
https://www.aftonbladet.se/nyheter/a/xrmO2V/melia-23-tande-ciggen-pa-diktatorns-portratt
