The Ayatollah Begs to Differ

by Hooman Majd

  The Imam Jomeh, Sadoughi, arrived as I started to wander, surrounded by his other guards and trailed by a large group of mullahs. He disappeared into a room next to the lectern and the mullahs arranged themselves on the floor in front, while I stood against the wall with my camera in my hands. When Sadoughi emerged a few moments later, in lieu of the cane he usually walks with, he had an automatic rifle, holding on to the tip of the barrel and bringing the butt down on the stone floor with every step. He positioned himself behind the microphone and held on to the rifle, leaning on it ever so slightly now and then, and began his sermon.

  Friday prayer sermons in Iran, the world’s only state other than the Vatican that is run by clerics, tend to be more political than religious in nature, and this Friday, falling as it did at the beginning of the Ten-Day Dawn, was doubly so. Sadoughi recounted the story of leaving Paris and arriving in Tehran with Khomeini on his chartered Air France 747, himself sitting in the seat behind Khomeini, and the crowd listened intently. It was a story I had already heard; Sadoughi had told it to me himself with great excitement over tea one day, and I suspect he had also told it in previous years to the very men before us. Khomeini’s character, his fearlessness, and the glory of his revolution were the thrust of the speech, as well as his selfless dedication to his people. Women and children, Sadoughi said, were originally barred from the flight, as it was considered too dangerous. The women at Neauphle-le-Château, the suburban Parisian village where Khomeini was based, however, objected strenuously, and Khomeini relented, warning them, however, that the plane could be shot down in Iranian airspace by the Shah’s government even though the Shah had already fled into exile. (Neauphle-le-Château was deemed important enough to the revolution to be memorialized by a street name in Tehran, in the neighborhood where I stay and linking two major shopping avenues, but it took me many walks along it to finally decipher the meaning of the street signs, which inexplicably mangled, Persian-style, the village’s name to “Nofel Loshato.” We may honor a foreign and impure town, the authorities seemed to be saying, specifically to the French, but we’ll spell it our way.) When Khomeini and his entourage finally circled Tehran’s Mehrabad Airport, Sadoughi said, they were initially denied permission to land as they approached, and when the plane banked sharply, everyone thought they might be under attack. Khomeini, however, was calm and expressionless, a testament, the Imam Jomeh implied, to his faith in God’s will. Sadoughi also talked about the need for unity in the face of new threats—threats he didn’t need to spell out but were clearly a reference to the United States—his rifle with its loaded magazine (I was told) emphasizing the point that he, and other clerics, stood ready to defend the Islamic Republic from any enemy.

  He made no mention of Ahmadinejad or the current government, and he didn’t need to: as the representative of the Supreme Leader, he was speaking for the velayat-e-faqih, not any elected government that by its nature would be temporary. It wasn’t a fiery speech, nor was it angry or hostile, and in fact at times when he talked about Khomeini and the revolution, it was anything but, but then again Sadoughi is not a firebrand and is, after all, close to Khatami, his brother-in-law in whose cabinet he once served as a vice president.4 However, as we on the outside and those in Iran need reminding every now and then, the most charming (and Sadoughi is certainly a charming man), the most moderate, and even the most liberal reformist clerics are united in their firm belief that the revolution was pure, that Khomeini’s views on a political system were sound, and that any democracy in Iran will always be an Islamic one.

  When Sadoughi finished his sermon, he handed his rifle to a guard and stood, like everyone else, facing Mecca to lead the prayers. I stood facing him, from behind the lectern he had just vacated, and dutifully took pictures while his guards watched me, occasionally nodding their approval whenever I leaned forward to get a close-up. When the prayers were over, Mohammad stood up and signaled that I was to follow him. We left by a side entrance with his father and the guards, leaving the other mullahs behind, and were driven the short distance to Sadoughi’s office, a few doors down from his house. The office, on an impossibly narrow street designed for horses and donkeys and covered by sun-shielding archways over the tall mud walls on either side, had been Sadoughi’s father’s office and was in a building perhaps two hundred years old. We walked inside and into a square room, the walls covered entirely in intricate hand-carved mirror tiles depicting flowers, birds, geometric Islamic shapes, and calligraphic passages from the Koran. Stained-glass arched windows that touched the ceiling let light in, but allowed no view of the outside. An old attendant rushed to fetch some tea, and then set the huge Persian carpet with a plastic tablecloth and three place settings. “You’ll have lunch with us,” said Mohammad.

  “And you’ll have to excuse the meal,” said the Imam Jomeh, “but it’s gheimeh provided by the neighbors.” During Ashura week, it is customary for families with means to provide free food in their neighborhood, not just for the poor, but for anyone who wishes to indulge, and in this case a meal had been brought over by them for their spiritual guide. Gheimeh, a stew of lamb and split peas, along with rice, is a dish traditionally prepared during Moharram, and the three of us sat on the floor, cross-legged, eating the watery stew in silence. Sadoughi had had an exhausting Ashura week, and in the morning he had fulfilled his duties as the representative of the Supreme Leader of the Islamic Revolution by giving a speech on the glory of that revolution. Now was a time to eat Allah’s gift of food in his martyred father’s office, facing a framed photograph of Ayatollah Khomeini prominently displayed on a ledge, and reflect on the suffering of Ahl’ul’bayt, the “People of the House,” or the Prophet Mohammad’s family, for whom the nation mourned. Hossein and his family, grandson and descendants of the Prophet, died by the sword to save Islam, Shias believe. Shiism survived against the odds—Shia Iran is testament to that—and throughout Shia history the shedding of blood, or martyrdom, has been central to the faith and has contributed to its allure.

  In Baghdad, the infamous Swords of Qadisiyyah monument (also known as the “Hands of Victory”) is formed by two massive swords held by hands resting on the helmets of dead Iranian soldiers, most of them pockmarked by bullet holes. Conceived by Saddam Hussein before his war with Iran ended and intended to serve as a symbol of Iraq’s victory over the Persians, which never came, it was, and still is, a reminder for Persians that despite their heavy bloodletting in that conflict, their willingness to sacrifice means that the sword will not always be victorious. Apart from the empty symbolism that most Iraqis recognized at the time despite the propaganda of the Baathist regime, few can help but see that Saddam and his swords are long gone, Iraq is barely a nation, and Shia Iran is more powerful than it has been in centuries. Or, as one Tehran daily, in an attempt to sum up Shia, and by extension Iranian, philosophy for its English-speaking readers, proclaimed, in a bold headline splashed across its front page on the first day of Moharram 2007: “VICTORY OF BLOOD OVER THE SWORD.”

  PAIRIDAEZA: THE PERSIAN GARDEN

  On March 21, the first day of spring of 1935 and Noruz, the Persian New Year, “Persia” suddenly became “Iran.” And Francophones discovered that “Perse” no longer existed. Of course Iran had always been “Iran” to Iranians, or Persians if you prefer, but in the non-Persian-speaking world the country was known by variations on the Greek name “Persis.” In 1935, Reza Shah Pahlavi, the semiliterate army officer who had ousted the last Shah of the Qajar dynasty and whose own dynasty would not outlive his son, was in a warm embrace with the Third Reich. A great admirer of Germany, which he thought had far more benign intentions than Russia or Britain in the Middle East, he was also a fierce nationalist and strict fascist for whom Hitler’s National Socialism held great appeal. Reza Shah had been busy since his self-coronation hiring German engineers and architects to build Iran’s railroad system as well as the government buildings in downtown Tehran, and they still stand today: soaring, pristine fascist architecture—mo
numents to the resurgent Iranian nationalism of the 1930s.

  It is said that Reza Shah’s ambassador to Berlin in the mid-1930s, probably with advice and nudges from German ministers, put forth to the Foreign Ministry and his king that Persia should be known to the outside world as “Iran,” a word meaning “land of the Aryans” and used by inhabitants of the land since at least Sassanid times (226 C.E.). In an article in the January 26, 1936, issue of the New York Times, Oliver McKee stated, “At the suggestion of the Persian Legation in Berlin, the Teheran government…substituted Iran for Persia as the official name of the country. Its decision was influenced by the Nazi revival of interest in the so-called Aryan races, cradled in ancient Persia. As the Ministry of Foreign Affairs set forth in its memorandum on the subject, ‘Perse,’ the French designation of Persia, connoted the weakness and tottering independence of the country in the nineteenth century, when it was a pawn on the chessboard of European imperialistic rivalry. ‘Iran,’ by contrast, conjured up memories of the vigor and splendor of its historic past.” That explanation would come as a surprise to many Iranians today, particularly in the diaspora, for they have the exact opposite view: that “Persia” connotes a glorious past they would like to be identified with, while “Iran,” disconnected from that exotic and romantic place in the minds of Westerners, says nothing to the world but Islamic fundamentalism. At the time, however, in the mid-1930s, hardly any Iranians, except for the handful of intellectuals who had some sort of contact with the outside world, really noticed or cared much. Iran was Iran to them, and few, except perhaps for carpet traders in the bazaars, had ever even come across the word “Persian.”

  This disconnect for many Westerners between Iran and Persia (still prevalent today in many instances) provided cover for not a few Iranian exiles in the early days of the revolution, days that saw Iran hold fifty-two American diplomats hostage, to the obvious disapproval of nearly the entire world. Iran and Iranians now projected an image not only of Islamic fundamentalism and religious extremism but also of violence against Western interests. Iranians in the West, perhaps unduly fearful of a hostile reaction, often said they were “Persian” or from “Persia” to disassociate themselves from the angry flag-burning mobs seen on nightly television broadcasts throughout the world. In America some Iranians—excuse me, Persians—went further and changed their first names (unofficially in most cases) to something more English, although for some curious reason, probably a slight sense of guilt at not exhibiting obligatory Iranian pride, they felt compelled to come up with names that were as close as possible to the original, even if that meant only using the first letter of the Iranian name. Mohammads became Moes or Michaels, Hosseins became Henrys or Harrys, and numerous Fereydouns and Faramarzes simply became Freds. Iranian women in the West, who by virtue of their penchant for heavy makeup and a lack of any Islamic-inspired attire in their wardrobe, seemed less inspired to change their names, which at any rate were less identifiably Iranian (or Muslim) than their male counterparts’. I suppose I thought myself fortunate in not having a name that was too obviously Iranian, but I was far too conceited and contrary, I confess, to call myself Persian instead of Iranian, let alone think about changing my name. (One of my American friends did, however, take to calling me Hank, though as more of a joke than anything else.) I do remember admiring the name of an Iranian commentator on the first Iranian television program in the States in the early 1980s: Davoud Ramzi. He could, I thought, legitimately call himself David (Davoud is Persian for David), and a mere change of spelling would render his name American or English. Yes, I thought, what a stroke of fortune to be named David Ramsay, and have it be your real name too!

  Perhaps as a defense for having referred to themselves as Persian for so long, some Iranians in the diaspora now argue for “Persia” to return as the English name for their country. It is a debate held almost exclusively outside Iran (for most of those who continue to live in the Islamic Republic generally couldn’t care less), but in the age of the Internet the issue reverberates among at least the intellectual classes inside the country as well. Iranian Web sites and blogs are filled with reasons why “Persia” makes perfect sense and why “Persian” should be the language (not “Farsi,” the Persian word for it). Oddly, they have never suggested that the Shahs of Persia be referred to as kings, which, after all, is exactly what “Shah” means. Some argue that “Germany” is “Deutschland” in German, “Japan” is “Nippon” in Japanese, and many European countries have different names from those used in English. Of course what’s missing from the argument is that the countries that have different names in different languages tend to be the industrialized, powerful nations of the world that do not suffer from a national inferiority complex, one often brought about by the behavior of more powerful nations toward them. Egypt, or Misr, as it is correctly known in the Arab world, is perhaps the glaring exception, but in that case a link to the famous Egypt of the Pharaohs and pyramids is more obviously advantageous, as ancient Egyptian history is almost as well-known in the West as Roman or Greek, partly for biblical reasons and partly because of Elizabeth Taylor. The same cannot be said for Persian history, much to the dismay of Iranians both inside and outside the country, and a critical component of the superiority/inferiority complexes the nation suffers.

  All Iranians who study at Iranian schools learn about their great empire and are immensely proud of not only its cultural accomplishments but also its awe-inspiring power at various times throughout history, although in the early days after the revolution teachers were discouraged from delving too far into Iran’s pre-Islamic past and were given curricula that emphasized Islamic teachings and history. Nonetheless, even then most students’ knowledge of their country’s past, supplemented as it was in the home, formed their opinion that Iran was the equal, if not the better, of Rome and Athens. On the other hand, hardly anyone in the West studies Persian history at school, and even study of ancient history at college tends not to include Persian history, other than in its relation to the Greek wars. For this reason, what has been written about the ancient Persians and their empires is mostly known through the Greeks, who, as fierce rivals, were not likely to write glowing reviews. Alexander the Great, whom most people do know, is sort of an ancient hero in the West and a true villain in Iran, a barbarian who, when he conquered Persia, was such a brute and ignoramus that he burned magnificent libraries along with the greatest city in the world, Persepolis, to the ground. But in a good example of the Persian superiority complex, even this villain is shown to have ultimately had the wisdom to recognize the superiority of the Persians by settling down (until his death) in Persia and marrying a blue-blooded Persian. What could be a better endorsement of the greatest civilization known to man?

  Regardless of how Iranians feel about the question of their country’s name, and I am willing to concede that “Persian Embassy,” “Persian government,” and “Persian people” do sound a little better in English, most particularly if “Iran” is, as is sometimes the case with Americans, pronounced “Eye-ran.” Perhaps it’s the “purr-” in “Persian,” as soft a sound as anyone can make in the English language, or perhaps it’s that most things Persian are beautiful and valuable, such as cats and carpets, to say nothing of the poetry and most things Iranian are, well, we needn’t go into that. But one has to wonder if Iran had never demanded that the rest of the world call it by its proper name, and the Persian Islamic Revolution had still left a bitter taste in Westerners’ mouths, whether Persians abroad might not be insisting that they are, in fact, Iranian. Despite the country’s perceived name change (rather than name correction), some things will forever remain Persian in Anglo-American minds: Persian cats (like Siamese, rather than Thai, cats, or Pekingese, rather than Beijing-ese, dogs), carpets, and of course, the least known in the West, Persian gardens.

  I use “Persian” and “Iranian” interchangeably, mainly because “Persian” often better distinguishes for readers the Indo-European Iranians from their neig
hboring Semitic Arabs. It is notable that Arabs, when and if they wish to disparage Iranians, more often than not will also refer to them as Persians: the “other,” and, because they’re Shia, the infidel. Some Sunni Arabs in Iraq have taken it one step further, calling all Shias, including Iraqi Shias, “Safavids,” the name of the Persian dynasty that made Shiism the state religion of Iran, and a clear move in sectarian times to associate non-Sunni Arabs with the non-Arab Persians. Shia Islam, however, because of its beloved saint Imam Hossein, the grandson of the Prophet Mohammad and an Arab, conveniently bridges the Arab-Iranian schism through Hossein’s wife, a Persian princess he wisely (as far as Persians are concerned) wed and who bore him the half-Iranian great-grandchildren of the last Prophet of Allah.1

  The often contradictory Iranian attitudes toward Arabs can be difficult to explain. What can one make of Iranians who shed genuine tears for an Arab who died fourteen hundred years ago, who pray in Arabic three times a day, and yet who will in an instant derisively dismiss the Arab people, certainly those from the peninsula, as malakh-khor, “locust eaters”? As one deputy foreign minister once said to me, lips curled in a grimace of disgust and right before he excused himself to pray (in Arabic),2 “Iranians long ago became Muslims, but they didn’t become Arabs.” His scorn was meant, of course, for desert Arabs who brought Islam to the world, and not necessarily Syrian, Egyptian, or Lebanese Arabs, whom the Iranians place a few degrees higher on the social scale than their desert brethren. The disconnect between Arab and Muslim for Iranians is not unlike the disconnect between certain anti-Semitic Christians and Jews—a disconnect that conveniently ignores not only that Christ was a Jew but also that Christianity, at least at its inception, was a Jewish sect. (The peculiar Iranian disconnect can work both ways, though, for many Arabs today, or at least Arab governments, would rather Israel remain the dominant power in their region than witness, Allah forbid!, a Persian ascent to the position.)