IRAN: Elahe Koulaee's 16-year-old son misses his mother. And she admits that he's barely seen her in the past two weeks, writes Caitriona Palmer Tehran
"It's hard. He misses me." said Mrs Koulaee. "He has mixed feelings. On the one hand he needs me, but on the other he can understand the critical situation of our country."
For this working mother of four and dozens of other MPs in the Majles, or Iranian parliament, these are difficult days, and very few of them are being spent at home.
Mrs Koulaee and about 80 deputies began a sit-in and dawn-to-dusk fast in the parliament buildings on January 11th. They are protesting the removal of over 3,000 reformist candidates from the electoral register for next month's parliamentary elections.
The all-powerful Guardian Council, an unelected body of conservatives, say the candidates are being disqualified for their lack of Islamic credentials and for questioning the autonomy of the supreme leader, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei.
The candidates in turn say they are being targeted for their democratic principles.
Mrs Koulaee and her colleagues believe that the decision by the Guardian Council left them with little option but to protest.
"There was no choice," said Mrs Koulaee, who is also a professor at Tehran University. "Time is very critical for us. We are defending the right to free and fair elections."
At the sit-in this week in the lush green marble foyer of the parliament building, the mood was surprisingly jolly.
Speakers from a podium struggled to be heard over the din of laughter and chatter.
Beneath a gaudy yellow banner that read "MPs sit in for a free election", protesting deputies sat cross-legged in socks on silk Persian carpets. A mound of black leather shoes lay piled in a corner.
Some deputies, clearly bored with the proceedings, flipped through daily newspapers. Others fingered prayer beads in quiet contemplation. Under the bright light of a crystal chandelier, a small group of female MPs sat huddled, engrossed in conversation. On the sidelines, spectators and journalists jostled for a better view.
Silence descends when a blind female poet, Mahim Zoraghi, takes to the podium and in a hushed tone reads a poem about the legacy of the Islamic revolution 25 years on.
Reza Yousefian, an MP and member of the national security and foreign policy committee, said that up to 60 deputies are sleeping in the parliament building every night.
Observing the sit-in, journalist Isa Saharkhiz of the reformist Aftab newspaper, said the mood remained defiant. "The MPs are happy, aggressive and full of energy and they will continue with their protest."
Despite the enthusiasm among the MPs, the sit-in has failed to capture the imagination of the Iranian public who remain disillusioned by the slow pace of reform.
"People want rapid changes," said Ms Koulaee. "They don't accept slow changes. Because the majority of our population is young, they are impatient."
The conservative media are scathing in their comments. "If displays such as sit-ins, political prayers, resignations.are aimed at inciting people's feelings and starting a wave on which they can ride," wrote Jomhuri-ye Eslami in an editorial, "they should not have the slightest doubt that such a wave will not flow, because their presence or lack of presence in the election race is not important at all to the people."
The reformists fear that the low turn out in last year's council elections, when they suffered debilitating defeats, means that alienated voters will stay away from the polling booth next month.