The Fire Burns
It was not a coincidence that the day of the fire was 19th August, the anniversary of the 1953 Mossadegh coup. A garden party was held every year to celebrate Mohammed Reza’s triumphant return from Rome – but the garden party of 1978 was the beginning of the end, the last time the wealthy Iranian elite would don dinner jackets and cosy Parisian fashion, and listen to ornate classical music in the Queen Mother’s Palace at Saadabad.
The instinct of Farah and the Shah had always been to turn up in public, walk freely through the crowds, and provide comfort. Now Farah was dissuaded by Prime Minister Amouzegar from even visiting the victim’s families: “I suddenly felt that he had lost confidence, confidence in the king and myself as symbols of strength and harmony in the country.”97
Change was needed. With a new Prime Minister and a government of “National Reconciliation” announced on 27th August, the cabarets and casinos on the coast were closed, many mid-level clergymen were allowed to return from rural exile, and various measures around the press, universities and plural political parties were improved.98 These reconciliation measures to different factions were described by the US Embassy as akin to “feeding the crocodiles”.99
Then came the end of Ramadan on 4th September, with a festival known as the Feast of Fast-Breaking (or Eid al-Fitr) and a mass march, the likes of which Tehran had never seen. Organised by the religious leadership in a dusty outcrop to the northwest of the city, a large communal prayer morphed into demonstration, with tens of thousands joining the march as it snaked its way to the central railway station, and onto the popular crowded slums in the south. For the first time, women wore the black “prayer chador”, and marched in their thousands, carrying flowers and shoving the stems in the rifle barrels of the soldiers who guarded the path.
The world watched on in shock – why did women dress like this in protest? Did they really loathe the influence of Western fashion and magazines so much? The answer is complex, and the subject of much examination to this day. In the simplest terms, much of the Shah’s reforms for women were stopped at the front door of the family home; when the chador had been banned, strict conservative fathers even refused their daughters’ requests to leave the house and socialise. His hopes for women were certainly noble, but in retrospect, too much too soon. So, in a situation where the West expected women to support the Shah’s push for equality, Khomeini’s rhetoric for tradition and cultural authenticity offered a gateway to a familiar part of Iran – and Iranian women supported him in droves.
Three days later on the 7th September, an even larger demonstration filled the iconic Shahyad Monument area (now referred to as the “Freedom Memorial” by the demonstration speakers). The numbers reached 100,000, or ten times the number of the Isfahan demonstrations in August.100 The Shah took a helicopter ride over the crowds and felt bewildered – in the presence of every visitor in the following days, he regularly asked, ‘What have I done to them?’101 The Shah’s twin sister Ashraf also took a helicopter over the crowd that same day, in her case, because the roads to her home were blocked. As the helicopter flew over the haze of the crowd, Ashraf saw one corner:
“[It] was completely dark. I realised this black mass was a mass of Iranian women, in the mournful black chador their grandmothers had worn. My God, I thought, is this how it ends?”102
Within a week, Ashraf would leave the country at her twin brother’s direction, living out another three and a half decades between Manhattan and Monaco. She would never return to Iran again.
Khomeini was mindful of not losing momentum, and encouraged a widening of protests beyond Ramadan, or the “Days of God”. A poorly chosen traffic intersection known as Zhaled Square was designated for a Friday demonstration. Prime Minister Sharif-Emami was keen to quell the unrest and convened the Security Council at 7:30pm that Thursday evening with the opening words, “His Majesty is very uneasy”.103 A decision was taken to impose martial law for a twenty-four-hour period, banning public meetings of more than four people over Tehran and eleven other cities.104 The announcement began making its way through the Iranian bureaucracy and security state at 10:30pm, and was announced on morning radio at 6:00am when the crowd had already begun to gather in Zhaled Square. “Black Friday” had gone from eminently avoidable to virtually inevitable.
There are many differing accounts of the day’s events. Photographs released two years after show a row of Iranian soldiers standing at three feet intervals across the roadway, kneeling and poised to fire. There were no signs of weapons in the crowd.105 Others involved in the demonstrations heard gunfire, watched several people drop, and then crowds slowly bundle together to continue their chanting and marching, only for shots to ring out again several minutes later. This pattern continued through to the afternoon. The next day the local newspaper Kayhan reported hospital records of fifty-eight dead and 205 injured.106
Once again, the reputation of the Pahlavi monarchy meant exaggeration had few defenders. The Rex Cinema fire, together with the army’s repeated inability to control large crowds around the nation, together with the bloodshed of Black Friday, all led to a belief that the Shah thought he could kill his way through any opposition. Rumours swirled of a death toll in the hundreds, then the thousands, and with Israeli snipers in assistance and even helicopters firing wildly into the crowds. But what made the truth any better? An armed government continued to fire on unarmed citizens – there was little to redeem the Shah in the eyes of many ordinary citizens.
A telling exchange took place on 16th September, just a few days after Black Friday, when British Ambassador Parsons returned from his summer leave and met Mohammed Reza, only to find a man “shrunken… [h]e seemed exhausted and drained of spirit”.107 Parsons continued:
“The Shah then asked plaintively why it was that the masses had turned against him after all that he had done for them. I replied that, in my view, there were many causes. The massive influx into the cities had produced a rootless and discontented proletariat. Many of them were engaged in construction work. They spent their days building houses for the rich and returned at night to shanties or even to holes in the ground lined with plastic. Crass materialism at all levels had led to insecurity when the good life had not arrived. It was no wonder in such circumstances that the people had turned to their traditional leaders, the mullahs who had always opposed the Shah… Iran had become a land of unfulfilled promises.”108
The Shah did not disagree with this analysis, but his mood proved difficult to lift.
That evening, at around 7:30pm, a 7.8 Richter earthquake demolished the ancient oasis town of Tabas in eastern Iran, killing 11,000 people, and another 9,000 in nearby villages. The shocking loss of life and near obliteration of Tabas from the map would’ve been a natural moment for unity and sorrow. Against the advice of the Prime Minister, Farah flew to Tabas, only to find the Isfahan bazaar had organised relief. She was met with discontent, and “even the anger of these suffering people”.109 The newspapers featured a picture of the Shah by a car wheel at Tabas Airport, but he didn’t venture into the town.110 In their own ways, the Shah and his wife knew the days of them being the balm to any national pain were gone forever.
The rest of September 1978 passed without major incident; a combination of martial law curfews, an end to strikes and the reopening of the bazaars and schools led to a semblance of normality. As the weather cooled, the calculus for power was simple – the Shah needed to hold on until elections were held in June 1979, while Khomeini and his followers were determined to do everything possible to prevent this. A scenario still existed where the Pahlavis would stay on – as they had in 1953 – with reduced authority for a time, but a sense of familiarity for the people. In Mohammed Reza’s mind, this meant passing power to his son Reza, but only in circumstances where Reza’s prospects for success were highest. In the distance laid the pivotal juncture: the mourning month of Moharram, an intensely significant period in the Islam
ic calendar, due to begin on the evening of 1st December. It was a waiting game – the Shah, Khomeini, ordinary Iranians and many watching around the world simply held their breath.
*
It was a Tuesday in October. Hayrola, the local security staffer, came through the Bell Clinic while Joan was on shift, wading through her few medical files by the clerk’s desk. With several paper folders resting against her chest, my mother felt the grip of his fingers dig into her forearm. She turned up to see Hayrola’s face, bright blue and terror-stricken. Knowing Joan spoke better Farsi than all the other Clinic staff, he loudly whispered: ‘Bia inja!’ (Come with me!) My mother dropped the folders and slowly walked with Hayrola through the back doors, his fingers always uncomfortably deep in her arm.
Through the doors of the reception, he led her towards the walled garden area, sealed off from the noisy streets; a kind of confined oasis in the centre of the Clinic where staff regularly took their lunch or a cigarette break. Hayrola made deep, slow eye contact with my mother, and then pointed to the ground. Sitting in the centre of the garden space was a large coffee jar, with five sticks of dynamite jammed in the lid. A six-inch fuse ran off the lid through the crowded explosive sticks – it had been lit, and burned all the way to the bottom, unexploded.
My mother and Hayrola took a slow step back, still linked at the arms.
‘When did you see this?’
‘Two minutes past.’
Joan looked across the garden bushes, wondered how many might’ve been thrown in, and looked up and over the Clinic walls. There was no need for words – they ran.
My mother raced through reception to the phone and dialled 0 for security.
‘We’ve an emergency: one unburned dynamite canister in the atrium, maybe more…’
Dean held his breath for just a second, and then didn’t waste a moment thereafter. ‘Joan, don’t worry, you’re going to be safe. We’re going to get the Army in and get you all out.’
My mother exhaled. ‘Thank you, Dean. I’ll begin the patient evacuation.’
But Dean wasn’t finished. ‘Joan, wait – I need you to do something, I’m sorry.’
‘Of course, Dean, what?’
Dean paused.
‘I need you to get up on the rooftop and see if there’s any militia outside the Clinic compound. The Army will need to know this, and probably won’t deploy if I don’t have an answer.’
My mother looked down at her clothes – a bright red cardigan over a white nursing uniform. She would be open to gunfire from half a mile away.
‘What about just going to the glass?’
‘No, that’s not the visibility we’ll need. I’m sorry, Joan, someone needs to do this.’
Via two flights of stairs, and through a plant room, Joan opened a door onto the roof of the Clinic. Climbing out with a walkie talkie, the bright light of the midday sun hit her. She squinted through the glare and looked across the Isfahan skyline. Nothing seemed different. She listened for fake bombs on cassette tapes (by now a common trick across Iran), and gradually crept to the edge of the roof on the garden wall side. The blind spots and shadowed corners of the perimeter were empty.
She raced back to the stairwell, confident the Army wouldn’t be greeted by a full militia ambush. Joan returned to reception, told Dean what she’d seen, and then yelled through the wings.
‘The Army is coming!’
A room-by-room evacuation was taking place. Nurses were taught not to push beds, because smoke inhalation and congestion made it impractical. Those capable of walking walked. In every large room, several patients were put in wheelchairs, and raced over to a sealed-off waiting room that sat away from the glass at the front of the building. The logic of the staff was simple: if an explosion took place, most of the usual Clinic rooms would’ve been covered in glass and debris.
Within ten minutes, the Iranian Army arrived, and positioned themselves around the building. The Clinic was fully evacuated, with patients being led through infantry and raised guns to the ambulances on the exposed roadside. Car by car, they were then farmed out to designated safe houses near the Clinic.
Joan was in the final ambulance ferry, having swept the Clinic for every room. On arrival at one of the safehouses, she started shaking, and didn’t stop for twenty minutes. It went on and on, in an uncontrolled manner; her arms, legs and entire body in a mini-episode. She didn’t go to work the next day; all staff on shift through the bomb scare were given a few days off.
The Clinic was on edge thereafter. The laughter with her nursing colleagues was replaced with a low determination to get through each day. Iranian soldiers were provided, but stood in inconvenient points by the doorways, and regularly dropped their guns and bayonets, with the nurses shouting at them. Meekly, they would say ‘Sorry, sorry’ in Farsi as they collected their knives from the floor. It felt like protection without the reassurance.
*
Meanwhile in Najaf, an astute Ba’ath Party politician named General Saddam Hussein (soon to be the undisputed leader of Iraq from July 1979) had grown tired of the complications that came with a major cleric. Plans had been afoot for the Shia clergy in Kuwait to welcome Khomeini for a visit, but an aide continued to press a radical alternative – Paris. The aide’s logic seemed sound; air travel to and from many places was easy, telecommunications with his network of exiled supporters were reliable, and – crucially – Khomeini needed no visa to enter. At the time, many intelligent and well-informed Iranians took the view that the move to a Christian capital in the heart of Europe – after being such a short flight from the action of Iran in the event of revolution – was a mistake.111
The idea proved to be a masterstroke. From mid-October 1978, Khomeini spent many mornings under a backyard apple tree in the suburbs of Paris, saying a prayer or sermon with a small group of followers, then holding court with foreign journalists and an interpreter, and producing hundreds of print, TV and radio interviews. Finally, the world saw the face of the next stage. Either deliberately or thanks to the savvy script of the interpreter, questions over the future of Iran were dealt with in the way they thought the world wanted to hear; women would be free to choose their activities, future and clothing. The US was free to buy Iranian oil at the market price, only now he would spend money on feeding his people.112 Once in power, none of this was true.
*
Khomeini’s departure for Paris triggered another wave of strikes in mid-October, with schools, ministries, railways and refineries all affected. Their demands were simple: higher pay, shorter hours of work, and improved fringe benefits. The conciliatory nature of Prime Minister Sharif-Emami’s government right back to August had given the population a sniff that defiance might be rewarded.
The Tehran bazaar had also closed in protest on 29th September and 1st October. Then the Abidan refinery ground to a halt on 14th October, and with the technical staff walking off site two days later, the strike spread to the loading terminal at Kharg Island, and eventually the production fields and gas-gathering plants.113 The nation’s last economic jewel held the government to ransom, and with crude-oil tankers cluttering the mouth of the shallow shipment points around Kharg Island, the Iranian economy listed. After a brief return to work, the oil industry resorted to strike again on 30th October; production of crude oil fell from six million barrels per day to just one and a half million barrels – this was not even enough to supply the Iranian public through the coming winter.114 Iranian credit relied on a steady stream of oil; panic spread as fast as any money could leave the country. Bazaar merchants reported increases in remittances abroad, along with sales of gold jewellery and bullion.
The free elections of June 1979, which had seemed so close, now felt a world away – in a 31st October meeting with the British and American Ambassadors, Mohammed Reza turned to both grimly and said, ‘We are melting away daily like snow in water.’
*
<
br /> Getting to shift work in the curfew hours now became next to impossible. Joan would be picked up at Les’s company apartment by an ambulance, with all foreign nurses driven to work under cover of darkness. About eight to nine road blocks needed to be navigated. Sometimes she was picked up on her own, and sometimes with a Bell Clinic colleague called Lucy.
On a typical evening in the first days of November, Joan and Lucy sat up the front, and through each checkpoint, the driver simply said, ‘Going to the American Clinic.’ Each time they were waved through. At the fifth checkpoint on this night, something changed. A surly officer saw the ambulance drive up, looked into the passenger’s side, and started hollering in Farsi. Five jeeps moved into position, surrounding them at the checkpoint, and the officer walked up slowly, turning to Joan and Lucy, saying, ‘You’re both foreign spies.’
It all happened so fast. A gun was pointed at the driver, and he was instructed to follow the convoy ordered by the officer. Terrified, he nodded and followed the order.
It was dark, well after nightfall, and the streets as good as empty. The night had a biting frost. The convoy sped through the boulevards, but Joan stayed alert, trying to remember each of the turns they took from the checkpoint she knew. Neither the driver nor the ladies heard where the army officer intended to take them – but they were now lost in a haze of bureaucracy, where orders sometimes would be followed even when they made no sense. They needed to find a way out. After ten minutes, they entered a station through tall bronze gates and over a poorly laid concrete speed hump. My mother knew it was the jail entrance of a police station from the writing.
Lucy was terrified and began hyperventilating. They were taken with firm arms by soldiers through the misted glass doors into the station, with my mother repeating the same phrase in Farsi: ‘One phone call, one phone call…’ The scene inside the station was all the rumours coming to fruition. Bright neon lights that flickered or had burst, with dark, dirty pockets in every corridor. Hollers and chaos, and cracks of suppression against the cells. A group of prisoners behind gated walls, with the last beetles and bugs from the sweltering summer running along the edges of the floor. Every inmate looked vacant and hopeless. For those already inside, this station was merely a holding pen, a gateway to more serious transfers, and full-security prisons and cell blocks where someone could be forgotten forever. The vision of the world beyond the bars filled both of them with dread, but while they were held in the foyer, they felt a few minutes to reverse the irreversible.
Mother Father Revolution Page 9