Our revolution in contrast to their revolution -- the revolution of her parents, the events of 1979. It is the sort of language, even in the context of a sanctioned election, that would seem to burst the bounds of the ambiguous "red lines" that circumscribe public discourse in Iran. Yet few of the demonstrators feel they are tempting a crackdown, and they've not yet earned the ire of the authorities who are notorious for keeping a close watch on public demonstrations.

For now, Mousavi's de facto leadership of the demonstrators grants them a certain dispensation. Much as Ahmadinejad would like to suggest otherwise, no one who makes such repeated and ready allusions to his participation in the establishment of the Islamic Republic and to his personal acquaintance with Ayotollah Khomeini, as  Mousavi does, could be seriously suspected of subterfuge. Indeed, the fact that the reformist candidate is someone so closely identified with the early years of the revolution and the 1980s war with Iraq has opened a window for young Iranians to see that period afresh.

The Islamic Revolution has long held manifold meanings in Iran, both sacred and profane. It's so much at the center of Iranians' current collective imagination that it's impossible for them not to see it from different angles. Fatemeh and the other young Iranians on the street are not rejecting the revolution of 1979. Instead, the students are making claim to the revolution -- in a social sense. Fatemeh's not referring to the way the Iranian revolutionaries toppled a government, but to the way they flooded the streets, created new channels of expression, and found themselves riding the crest of a social phenomenon of their own making. In the absence of homecoming rallies, young Iranians settle for campaign songs.

And the Iranian reformists, after all, don't offer hope of a brand new society. The main candidates and their advisors all trace their political lives and their political vocabularies from the revolutionary events of 1979. However much its immediate resonance may be diminishing among the young, the revolution is inescapably institutionalized.

It follows, then, that when the election votes are tallied, the street revelers will accept the results peacefully, if with varying degrees of joy -- and afterward they'll probably fade altogether from politics until the next presidential election comes around. With no political parties to keep them moored after the campaign offices are closed down, the students will be on their own, packing away their green wristbands, left to decide how involved they want to be in the hassles and doubletalk of day-to-day politics. Add to that the fact that reformist political networks lack the stability and security of their conservative counterparts. If the country's highest authorities didn't have that reassurance, the atmosphere in Tehran right now would likely be much more tense.

Meanwhile, the students are hoping for a Mousavi victory, though they predict hard times no matter who comes out on top. The dangers of another term for Ahmadinejad are obvious. But if Mousavi prevails, most Iranians anticipate that conservatives entrenched in the government bureaucracies will feel compelled to flex their muscles, as they did during the administration of Mohammed Khatami, Iran's previous reformist president.

For now, however, the students don't seem bothered, not by potential hurdles down the road, nor by their candidate's current charisma gap, nor even by the fact that they can't name any of his specific policy platforms. To the extent that their motivation is at all political, they are sustained by the prospect of booting out the incumbent. As one student put it, in strongly accented English, "Our goal is simple. Anybody but Ahmadinejad."