by Hooman Majd
Except a few months later, after the disputed election and during one demonstration against the Ahmadinejad government (at Friday prayers presided over by Ayatollah Rafsanjani), both of Larijani’s sons were arrested and taken to Kahrizak, the infamous detention facility that Ayatollah Khamenei subsequently closed because of abuses, including the torture of prisoners and the rape of detainees of both sexes, that had taken place there. Larijani’s sons were held for a little over twenty-four hours, and as such were among the luckier prisoners, but a friend who saw them on their release said to me that they did not look the same as when they stood outside Tehran University listening to Ayatollah Rafsanjani over loudspeakers. They had been standing outside the grounds because they couldn’t get into the venue, and were rounded up along with dozens of other men and women and carted off to prison. (One of those taken was Mohsen Ruholamini, son of former Revolutionary Guardsman Abdol-Hossein Ruholamini, a senior advisor to conservative candidate Mohsen Rezai. Mohsen Ruholamini was tortured to death at the facility, leading to shock and disgust in conservative quarters.) I wasn’t sure what to make of the story, even though I trusted my friend implicitly. Then, a few weeks later, an Iranian diplomat who was trying to convince me that the mass arrests in Iran were part of the democratic process, and indeed showed that Iran was a true democracy because it applied the law equally, said to me in frustration, “Did you know that even Larijani’s sons were arrested?” Indeed, I replied, I had heard, and thank you for confirming it on behalf of the government.
Larijani himself, perhaps, unlike the diplomat, a believer in the kind of democracy that can distinguish between sons of the revolution and regime-change agitators, told the same friend who had informed me of the arrests that he would take care of Ahmadinejad in his own good time. “Khar-o-madar’esh ro yekee meekonam” were apparently the words he used—“I will fuck his mother and his sister.” Nemeesheh? We’ll see. But before the election, or at least before it became apparent that Ahmadinejad was vulnerable, reformist foes of Ahmadinejad were less than optimistic about their chances of unseating him, and strategies for dealing with a post-Ahmadinejad win were already being discussed.
I WAS SITTING with former president Khatami in his office one day, before the official four-week campaign began, trying to understand how the reformists were going to mount a serious challenge with Mousavi as their standard-bearer.
“He doesn’t have much charisma,” I commented, “and we know Ahmadinejad does.”
“Mir Hossein Mousavi will have to win this himself,” said Khatami, in a sort of acknowledgement of Mousavi’s weakness. “I can only help so much, but he’ll have to be the one to convince voters. I will do everything I can, of course.”
“Well, he better get going,” I said, “because from everything I’ve seen around the country, there’s a lot of apathy about him and even the whole election process.”
“If a mowj [wave] of support doesn’t materialize, or if we can’t create that wave, then we’re in trouble, but we’ll see in the next few weeks,” said Khatami, not quite optimistic but still not completely dejected. (It was the first time I heard the word “mowj” in reference to the opposition’s strategy, a word that later morphed into “Green Wave” and then finally into “Green Movement.”) I wondered if Khatami was a little resentful that Mousavi, clearly the less popular and less charismatic politician, had deprived him of the chance of another presidency, but he assured me that he was happier not running, and I believed him.
“Isn’t Karroubi [Mehdi Karroubi, the liberal cleric who ran in the 2005 race as well] acting a little like a spoiler?” I wondered out loud. I knew that Khatami had good relations with Karroubi, and I had assumed he had tried to persuade him to throw his support behind Mousavi so that the reformists could present a unified challenge to Ahmadinejad. In Iranian elections, if no one candidate receives more than 50 percent of the vote, then a run-off is scheduled between the top-two candidates, and Karroubi, who had drawn more than five million votes in the last election and who had many liberal and young supporters, could very well prevent Mousavi from achieving a plurality, assuming the mowj even occurred. “Aren’t you going to convince him to drop out?”
“He’s a Lor,” said Khatami, laughing. “He does what he likes, and he genuinely thinks he can win. We just have to concentrate on our campaign.” Karroubi is indeed a Lor, from Lorestan province, and the Lor characteristics that are famous throughout Iran are sheer stubbornness and fearlessness. As confirmation of that, after the election, I heard that a Lor was arrested outside the British Embassy in Tehran; he had traveled there from Khorramabad, the big city in Lorestan, and was asking if the embassy was where he could request asylum. “Come with us and we’ll show you where you can request asylum,” said a group of security officials, who promptly removed him to Evin prison. A few days later, when he was finally allowed to make a phone call, he called his brother in Khorramabad. “Are you already calling from London?” asked the brother, oblivious to the improbability of what his brother had set out to do, particularly under the tense post-election atmosphere. Nemeesheh? Maybe not in this case, but the Lor didn’t believe it, and Karroubi, it seems, has never believed in nemeesheh either. But more about him later.
ANOTHER FEW WEEKS in Tehran, another afternoon tea with Khatami. At his offices in Jamaran this time, in the ersatz Greco-Roman villa once owned by Houshang Ansari, one of the wealthiest ministers in the Shah’s entourage (who also made the Forbes list in exile). The Islamic government had confiscated the villa after the revolution as part of a program to retrieve assets believed to have been obtained illicitly, through corruption, bribes, or “exploitation” of the people. (Part of a series of villas that make up the Khomeini compound, this villa was given to Khatami after his presidency to use as offices for his Dialogue among Civilisations organization.) Astonishingly vulgar architecturally, it serves as a reminder of the excesses of the nouveau riche in pre-revolutionary days (excesses that Beverly Hills residents have, to their dismay, now had firsthand experience with), but the visible decay also serves to illustrate the Islamic regime’s disdain for such displays of wealth and decadence. The furniture, left over from the Shah’s days, is still Louis Quinze reproduction, a favorite then among the upper class and seemingly still in vogue in government offices and private homes throughout Iran. The overall effect of entering the compound, though, walking over cracked concrete pathways, past a long-empty and paint-deprived swimming pool, and up to the peeling stucco by the massive front doors, is not quite the same as entering Grey Gardens, the famously decrepit mansion of New York socialites Edith Beale and her daughter, but sometimes I think it’s getting close.
It was a few days before the big kick-off event of the Mousavi campaign, and already campaign posters were appearing on the streets of Tehran, posters of Mousavi with Khatami, both in profile. Taking no chances with the charisma factor, the Mousavi campaign was using Khatami’s familiar face to ensure that everyone knew a vote for Mousavi was a vote for Khatami. In hindsight this was a risky tactic given that the one person the hard-liners despised more than anyone else in the hierarchy of revolutionaries was Khatami. Khatami was a little more optimistic at this tea, though, and felt that the mowj he had described to me might even take form at the event he was due to attend in a few days—a big rally at Azadi arena, with the main attractions being him and Zahra Rahnavard, Mousavi’s wife, who had taken the unprecedented step of joining her husband on the campaign trail. I promised that I would not only attend but also bring Ann Curry and an NBC news crew, who were in Tehran at the time filming a Dateline special on an Iran most Westerners knew little about. The Azadi sporting complex, on the outskirts of the huge metropolis, comprises a soccer stadium with a basketball or sports arena adjacent to it; the campaign had been denied permission for a rally in the stadium, comparable to NFL or European soccer stadiums in capacity, so it had settled for the arena, comparable to Madison Square Garden. No one knew how many people would attend, and advance publici
ty was minimal, given that state-controlled television and radio rarely gave the opposition airtime.
On the afternoon of the rally, I made my way to the arena, in one of two minibuses (to accommodate the NBC crew and their equipment) and with VIP parking passes in hand (courtesy of Khatami’s office). A long line of cars was gathered at the gate, waiting to be let into the parking lots.
“It’s full,” said a policeman standing guard, as we snaked our way forward. I jumped out to show our passes. “It’s full, you can’t go in.” Cars behind us started to honk, and frustrated drivers piled out of their cars.
“We have passes,” I insisted, “and we’re here with a news crew.” Ali Arouzi, the Tehran bureau chief for NBC News showed another policeman his permission slip from the Ministry of Culture and Islamic Guidance to film at the rally. The officer gave it a perfunctory glance and shrugged.
“You’ll have to wait,” said yet another policeman. I called the cell phone number of one of the Mousavi campaign managers and told him we were stuck outside, and he promised he would send someone to rescue us. Twenty minutes later, we were in, and the outdoor parking lot, a good walk from the arena was, not surprisingly, virtually empty. Iranian bureaucracy, I thought, never fails to impress (or disappoint). At the time I didn’t think the cops were being difficult because they had orders to be that way, in the hope of limiting the audience size; I thought they were being difficult just for the sake of being difficult, as cops throughout the world can be on occasion.
Streams of pedestrians were walking along the path to the stadium, however, which was predictable given that Iranians are naturally undeterred by rules and regulations, and I wondered where they had parked. Probably by the side of the highway, I thought, parked and double-parked, if past rallies and gatherings of any sort were any indication.
During the long drive to the arena, I had questioned the driver of my minibus as to his political preferences, and specifically if he intended to vote.
“Na, baba!” he had said to me with a grunt. “Why should I? It doesn’t make any difference anyway: they decide for us, and they run the country anyway.” He was in his fifties, I guessed, and I asked if he had any children who thought otherwise. “You know kids—of course they want me to vote, but it won’t make a difference.”
“Are you satisfied with Ahmadinejad, then?” I asked. He grunted again, and looked at me.
“It’s not a question of being satisfied with him,” he said. He smiled and then said, “Shomaha deletoon khosheh!”—“You people are wishful thinkers!” I left him standing outside the vehicle after we had parked, unloaded the equipment, and began our walk to the arena, and I wondered if a mowj might change his mind somehow. He didn’t want to join us at the rally, but if the mowj appeared, he would hear its roar, even in the parking area a good distance away.
When we arrived at the arena, I was surprised to find it completely full, with many people lingering outside, in the hallways, and by the doors. Khatami and Rahnavard hadn’t arrived yet, and Mousavi himself wasn’t scheduled to show; he had flown to Esfahan to participate in a rally there, a city that was going to be hard to break away from Ahmadinejad’s grip. The two NBC camera crews set off separately, wandering into the crowd in the arena and ignoring the media center set up in the middle of the floor, while I tried to make my way to the VIP enclosure where I would be able to see Khatami and his aides. I never made it. It was far too crowded to even get close to the doors, and cell phones were useless, as the deafening noise of the boisterous crowd drowned out everyone’s ringtone. I ended up wandering too, walking outside occasionally to get some fresh air and to talk to people who had come to show their support for the main challenger to President Ahmadinejad, almost all of them wearing some green, the color of the Mousavi campaign. I was more curious about the older folk who had made the trek to Azadi, as it was assumed that, like the Obama campaign in the United States, younger voters would be most enthusiastic for change, particularly change that in Iran’s case involved reform and a more liberal government and society. One older white-haired man standing outside by the main entrance had a green scarf wrapped around his neck, despite the ninety-degree weather. “You’re for Mousavi?” I asked, “or would you prefer Khatami?” Khatami had entered the arena a few minutes earlier to a rousing reception and loud chants of “Khatami! Khatami!” that could be clearly heard outdoors.
“Let me tell you who and what I’m going to vote against,” he replied. “I’m voting against Hezbollah and Hamas, and the Palestinians.” He was one of those Iranians, evident from a toothless grin framed by an unshaven chin, shabby clothes, and scuffed and well-worn shoes, who was unhappy with the emphasis the government had put in the last four years on bringing Iran’s oil revenues not to the common man’s dinner table, as Ahmadinejad had promised in his 2005 campaign, but to causes beyond its borders. It was a curious moment, I thought, and I scribbled his words in my notebook. The working class was suffering under a groaning economy, but few, at least among the poor, expressed dissatisfaction with the economy in these terms. The old man’s words didn’t, however, really resonate for me until much later, during the summer protests against election fraud, when other Iranians, in the thousands, virtually repeated the words “No to Palestine and Lebanon” as a new slogan. I wondered if he was among them, and if he was, if he ended up in prison like many other nameless Iranians. I recognized, however, that it would be a mistake, as some Western observers did during the post-election demonstrations, to equate the old man’s expression of frustration with his government’s fiscal priorities with a general lack of Iranian sympathy for the Palestinian cause, to believe that the government was philosophically out of step with its people on the issues of Palestine and Hezbollah. Iranians by and large still morally supported the underdogs in their battles and disputes with the Israelis, even liberal and young Iranians I spoke to who couldn’t abide the regime in almost any other way.
After the rally ended, a large crowd mingled outside, reluctant to call it a day. A sea of green, many were carrying posters and flyers, and trucks were handing out free bottles of water. Was this the mowj, the wave? It certainly appeared to be, or at least the beginnings of a wave. The arena had been filled, no, overfilled, beyond capacity, there was excitement in the air, and the youth, who make up the majority of Iran’s population, were energized, passionate, and involved. Iranian or Islamic democracy is visibly different from American democracy, but Khatami and Rahnavard were treated like rock stars that afternoon, and I couldn’t help but think of the similarities between this Mousavi rally and the Obama rallies in the United States a year before, something even the American news crew admitted had surprised them. Ahmadinejad bore more similarities to George Bush than either would admit, and his popularity at the end of four years was probably where Bush’s was at the end of his first term, but for the first time in months, it seemed the Iranian opposition might have, for reasons not yet clear even to themselves, a campaign strategy that mirrored Obama’s in 2008 more than John Kerry’s in 2004.
The independent Iranian press, already enthused (and even surprised) by the inclusion of a female in the campaign, heretofore unheard of in the strictly Islamic state, had begun to compare Zahra Rahnavard to Michelle Obama (something the Western media quickly picked up). When I saw her in her office a few days later, in response to being asked what she thought of sometimes being referred to as the Michelle Obama of Iran, she replied, “No, Michelle is the Zahra Rahnavard of America.” Persian pride, oghdeh (complexes), and gholov (exaggeration) all rolled into one sentence. Nemeesheh. It isn’t possible. Not just Rahnavard’s elevation of her importance on the world stage, but also the kind of wholesale attitudinal change in Iran that Obama’s election had brought to the United States—it isn’t possible, is it? The twenty-two thousand who had poured into Azadi on May 25 thought it was. And the tens of thousands who showed up in Esfahan that same day to hear Zahra’s husband speak thought it was. When I spoke on the phone later that night to
a senior official close to Mousavi, his words were, “Emrooz yakh’e Esfahan’o sheekoondeem”—“Today, we broke the ice in Esfahan.” Nemeesheh? Kardeem va shod. We did it, and it was possible. The Green Wave had taken shape, and the nemeeshehs were falling, one by one.
On the drive back from Azadi after the rally, I asked my skeptical driver what he thought of the crowds, which he had seen leave the arena, and if he had heard their cheers and shouts earlier.
“I didn’t think there would be this many people,” he said.
“And what do you think, do you think you might be persuaded to vote?” I asked him.
“Perhaps,” he said, after a long pause. “I’m still not convinced it will make any difference, but perhaps. We’ll see.”
We passed a giant poster of Ayatollah Rafsanjani, one of many sprouting up all over town. Next to his image were the words “If the majority don’t vote, the minority will rule.” Nemeesheh? My driver paid no attention, but the turnout for the election was an astonishing 85 percent. Kardeem va shod.