They waited patiently to cast their ballots. Cheerfully and calmly, with self-confidence.
By the time the polling stations closed about 10.30 p.m. last night, there was little doubt that President Mohamed Khatami's reformers would hold a majority in the Islamic Republic's sixth parliament. The only question was how many of the 290 seats they would win - 60, 70, 80 per cent? The first results should be known tomorrow, and there will doubtless be a run-off. The future may still be uncertain, but at last it is smiling.
The long queues outside the Ershad Mosque, with its lovely turquoise tiled dome, seemed proof that Iran has come of age politically, an affirmation that a people repressed by the Pahlavi monarchy and then by their own revolutionary leaders could bend the politicians to their will, seize control of their own fate without another revolution, without resorting to violence.
We caught up with Mr Hojatolislam Sayyid Abdulwahed Moussavi Lari, President Khatami's Interior Minister, on his inspection tour of polling stations in the mosque. Mr Lari greeted voters warmly, with a beneficent smile not unlike Mr Khatami's.
How would history judge this day? "They will say it was positive, because people participated because they wanted freedom, and to determine their own destiny," he answered.
Mr Lari's aides shared his cheerful, pleasant manner, but there were other representatives of authority in the crowd of more sinister appearance, young men connected with the Etelaat or intelligence ministry, who still go out in "force groups" to disrupt reformers' political rallies.
Yesterday the tide turned against the "force groups". Among the hundreds of waiting men and women, I found not one person who intended to vote for the conservatives.
"We're not asking for discotheques," a 50-year-old housewife who had voted for Mr Khatami's Participation Front told me. "I don't mind the HIJAB, and we're not asking to dance. We just don't want our children to be stopped on the streets and asked for their papers. Until now we've always been afraid they'd be beaten up or arrested for something they said at university."
A bearded young man hovered over the housewife's shoulder, his scowl contrasting with the festive mood of the voters. But they refused to be intimidated by the man from the intelligence ministry. As he followed me into the mosque, a woman pointed at him and shouted: "We don't agree with these people. We are voting against them."
