by Hooman Majd
FEAR OF A BLACK TURBAN
I could have sworn that the dogs went first. Those Islamic-ly unclean creatures, strays, wild, and pets, howling in the dark mountains and valleys of Shemshak, a ski resort an hour or so north of Tehran. It was the ninth day of the Ten-Day Dawn in February 2007—almost a fortnight of celebrations commemorating the Islamic Revolution of 1979—and in anticipation of the national holiday on the tenth day, the day the revolution succeeded, many Tehran residents, or those who could afford a cabin in the mountains, had fled the city much as many New Yorkers do the week of the Labor Day or Memorial Day holidays. I had driven with a friend up the narrow, winding, and often treacherous roads to the resort for a party, and we were to drive back the same night so that I could attend the rallies and marches in the city the next day.
Shemshak, and some of the other ski resorts in the Alborz Mountains, would seem to a visitor out of place in the Islamic Republic, and not just because of the deep, powdery snow on the slopes or the chic men and women in Chanel sunglasses and the latest ski fashions on lifts at ten and twelve thousand feet above sea level, but also in the resemblance of the villages and the valleys they occupy to European resorts in Switzerland, France, and Austria. The chalet where the party was being held was on the edge of a steep cliff, and the views from the curtainless panoramic windows were breathtaking, but the windows also afforded a clear view into the house, where I was standing by the bar, liquor bottles arrayed on shelves behind me for the world to see, chatting with a French couple who had also driven up from Tehran. An oil executive and his wife, they had chosen to remain in Iran after his retirement, and he had become a consultant, a particularly lucrative occupation in Iran, even if it remains unclear what one actually consults on, as long as one knows the right people. They spoke no Farsi, and neither did the hostess, also European but married to an Iranian and a longtime resident of Tehran, and they found it strange that I would wonder if they were interested in learning.
As dusk turned to night, other guests arrived, some still in ski gear, and the party went into full swing. It was right before dinner was served, which included illicit appetizers such as pork salami and Parisian ham, and which the French couple took great delight in devouring, that I heard the dogs howling and I stepped to the windows. Then I heard the cries reverberating from the hills and amplified in the valleys: “Allah-hu-Akbar! Allah-hu-Akbar!” They were punctuated by the barking of the dogs, which politely waited until the cries died down before vigorously providing a chorus. And then, “Allah-hu-Akbar!” again. And again. No other guest, nor the host and hostess, seemed at all curious or disturbed by the sounds coming from the mountains. They had undoubtedly heard them in years past and on the same February evening—cries of “Allah-hu-Akbar!”—in remembrance of Ayatollah Khomeini’s request on the eve of the revolution that all Iranians take to their roofs and proclaim, “God is Great!” Which they did by the millions, sealing the fate of the monarchy and its unsure military apparatus, which the very next day withdrew to barracks and publicly proclaimed that it would abide by the wishes of the people. Khomeini’s request to the people had been a brilliant tactical move: he knew that the army, made up mostly of conscripts from the religious working class, would not only be deeply moved by the cry but also find it impossible to counter with any violent reaction. It had already been proven so: in the weeks leading up to that night, many soldiers had been unable to bring themselves to fire on crowds of demonstrators, crowds shouting the one slogan they could all agree upon—“God is Great!” I have often wondered why protesters in modern-day Iran who are set upon by the police and sometimes government-allied vigilantes do not employ the same tactic, for they have even more reason now to believe that the truncheon-wielding authorities might balk at harming those who proclaim the greatness of Allah, but perhaps the expression, even if they believe in it, leaves too bitter a taste of the regime to utter.
The sounds in the hills and valleys of the ski resort on this evening, twenty-eight years after the revolution, may have become white noise to these Iranians and foreign residents of Tehran, but it seemed remarkable that they didn’t see the irony of their discussing, as is common at middle-and upper-class parties, what they believed to be the singular unpopularity of the Islamic regime while supporters of that regime, in their very own upscale backyard, were proclaiming their allegiance to the revolution and to the Islamic state, piercing the silent mountain night with their defiant cries that even the loud stereo emitting Western pop couldn’t drown out. One could be forgiven for wondering why wealthy Westernized and indeed even Western-passport-holding Iranians, some of whom have sizable assets overseas, choose to continue to live in the Islamic Republic and raise their children under a less-than-liberal government. The answer, as one friend put it a few years ago, is that anyone who stayed during the worst of times early in the revolution—when not only could a glass of beer bring you thirty lashes or a trace of lipstick a trip in a paddy wagon, but Saddam’s missiles also rained down nightly on Tehran—hardly has a reason to leave now.
The next morning I was up early and only slightly hung over from the high-altitude drinking the night before, ready to head for the culmination of the Ten-Day Dawn, or Dah-e-Fajr, with an enormous rally at Azadi Square in Tehran. February 11, the actual anniversary of the Islamic Revolution, followed in 2007 hot on the heels of Shia Islam’s holiest days of mourning, Tasua and Ashura, and preceded the very solemn Arbaein, the fortieth-day commemoration of Imam Hossein’s death on the plains of Mesopotamia all those years ago. (Forty days of mourning for any death is prescribed by Islam.) Iran had been, for all intents and purposes, in a somewhat surreal state of deep mourning and ecstatic celebration for almost a month (as it is every year), all the while nervously peering into the Gulf, watching a massive U.S. naval buildup clearly intended by the Bush administration to make Iranians at the very least, well, nervous.
Tehran had been rife with speculation in the days immediately preceding February 11 on just how nervous the Iranian leaders actually were, and there were conflicting reports on whether President Ahmadinejad’s promised nuclear announcement or even publicly promoted “nuclear symphony,” to be played by an orchestra on a stage in the massive square, would actually take place. Ali Akbar Velayati, a former foreign minister and current foreign policy adviser to the Supreme Leader but not in the president’s cabinet, had made an unusually high-profile trip to Moscow, prompting questions about the level of confidence the Supreme Leader had in Ahmadinejad and his foreign minister, Mottaki, who would normally have been entrusted with diplomatic overtures to West and East. Ali Larijani, head of the Supreme National Security Council and Iran’s chief nuclear negotiator, had first announced, then canceled, then finally confirmed that he would attend a global security conference in Munich on the weekend, providing much fodder for political gossip in the capital, gossip that included everything from the Supreme Leader’s estrangement from the president to the continued rumors about the state of his health. Was a last-minute flurry of diplomatic activity outside of Ahmadinejad’s purview intended to signal the West that Iran was ready to back down on the issue of uranium enrichment? Or had the president been indeed effectively sidelined, as some had come to believe, in the foreign policy and nuclear arenas?
His dismissal in late January of Javad Zarif, Iran’s UN ambassador, had been a signal to some that he still held some sway, for that highly sensitive post is always filled at the exclusive pleasure of the Supreme Leader, but the fact that the Leader had subsequently personally chosen the moderate Mohammad Khazaee—someone far closer to Khatami than to the president—to replace him raised new questions. The Supreme Leader himself of course had already addressed the rumors of his illness and even impending death in an appearance on state television, but former Hojjatoleslam and now Ayatollah Rafsanjani,1 on a visit to Qom, had recently reassured senior clerics and the nation that there were qualified individuals to assume the mantle of Supreme Leader—to some a gaffe that confirmed Ayatollah
Khamenei’s illness and to others a clumsy attempt to emphasize the continuity of the Islamic Republic in the face of external and internal threats, but at the very least an assertion of Rafsanjani’s own power. It had been reported in the early days of the Ten-Day Dawn that President Ahmadinejad was also due to visit Qom and the various marja-e-taghlid (“sources of emulation,” or Grand Ayatollahs) imminently, just as Ali Larijani had done in a much-photographed and symbolic visit with Grand Ayatollah Fazel Lankarani, but as the days passed and he remained in Tehran, it became obvious to most Iranians that his attempt to ingratiate himself with the center of clerical power had been rebuffed. February 2007 marked some lonely days indeed for the proud and defiant president of Iran, but it couldn’t matter to the Ten-Day Dawn. For Iran’s national day, once the birthday of the Shah (and thus more a celebration of a man’s vanity and conceit than of a nation), was now, like the Fourth of July for Americans, a day of nationalistic pride and a celebration of an independent nation. It could certainly not be about Ahmadinejad, or any other president for that matter, regardless of his popularity or accomplishments, and although the president would take center stage and make a speech, February 11 is for Iran, not for a person.
On Friday, February 9, a text message joke made the rounds of Iran’s upwardly mobile cell phones, a now-standard practice in distributing licentious and antigovernment material. The Saudis, it read, had announced that the 22nd of Bahman (February 11), Iran’s national holiday, would fall on Saturday, February 10. Both a dig at Iran’s ruling clergy class, who regularly and obstinately announce major Islamic holidays a day or two later than the Saudis (who are, after all, the guardians of Islam’s holiest sites and theoretically the defenders of the faith), and a dig at Iran’s contrarian foreign policy, it was wildly popular and the source of much hilarity among those Iranians who would most certainly not be attending the festivities and rallies on that Sunday, the national holiday. But Iran’s ruling class cares little for the wealthy and secular elite, those whom foreign reporters come into contact with most, and those who are quickest to tell anyone who cares to listen that the Islamic Republic’s days are numbered. Like proverbial ostriches with heads buried in the sand, and like my fellow guests at the party the night before, they spent the holiday skiing in resorts like Shemshak, on shopping trips to Dubai, or at home with friends watching illegal satellite broadcasts, rather than observing millions of their fellow citizens taking to the streets to proclaim their devotion and loyalty to their country and velayat-e-faqih, the very political concept that some of them insist is gasping its last breath.
And millions they were, at the mother of all rallies in a nation that has grown accustomed to the distraction of all too many government-sanctioned public gatherings. From early in the morning one could see men, women, and children marching along the streets of Tehran, miles from their destination, waving Iranian flags, and some holding banners, thoughtfully provided by the government, proclaiming their right to enjoy nuclear energy (in English, for the benefit of the foreign press and television cameras).
Ali Khatami, the former president’s brother, picked me up from my house in downtown Tehran early, and driving through alleys and streets not yet closed, past cars double-and triple-parked, we made our way to an area filled with buses about four or five kilometers from Azadi Square—Tehran’s Arc de Triomphe or Trafalgar Square—where the huge rally was to be held at midday. Ali himself triple-parked, careful to leave an exit route, and we walked the few blocks to Azadi Street, the main thoroughfare that had been lined with loudspeakers and was already filled with marchers who moved slowly toward the monument where President Ahmadinejad was to speak. The crowd on the sidewalk seemed to thicken rapidly, and walking soon slowed to a crawl. It was at a complete standstill by the time we reached the spot where former president Khatami stood outside a white SUV, surrounded by machine-gun-toting Revolutionary Guards, to say a few words to the crowd and the cameras. (By tradition, the Islamic Republic’s senior clerics and dignitaries do not join the president on the podium or even enter the main square, but make short appearances on the sidelines of the mass rally to show their support for the revolution without upstaging the administration in power. The Supreme Leader himself never makes an appearance at the rally, which is, after all, in some ways a celebration of his and his clerics’ authority.) And both Rafsanjani, who was elsewhere along the route, and Khatami could well have upstaged the beleaguered Ahmadinejad in 2007, whose very few posters were far outnumbered by those of the Ayatollahs Khomeini and Khamenei, who, more than any sitting president, represent the continuity of the Islamic Republic. As the crowd pressed in toward the beaming Khatami, he got into his car before his brother and I could say hello, and the crowd then rushed the vehicle, forcing it, with men standing on its roof, to maneuver with great difficulty onto a side street, crushing a few bodies, including mine, along the way. It disappeared to cries of “Khatami, Kahatami, we love you!” sung with both emotion and conviction, and if anyone had imagined that this was the national day for hard-liners and conservative supporters of the government only, the scene surrounding Khatami, a person some hard-liners had accused of wanting to dismantle the Islamic state, proved otherwise.
We caught our breath and continued along the sidewalk at a snail’s pace, hearing the by-now-standard chants of “Nuclear energy is our obvious right,” “Death to America,” “Death to Israel,” and “Death to the hypocrites” (MEK) every few minutes, and we were surrounded by many halfheartedly waving preprinted signs, in English, with a bright red check mark by “yes” for nuclear energy. The chants were shouted with some vigor and emotion but without anger, and lacked the conviction required of a literal interpretation. “Death to,” in a society where an exclamation of surprise is “Khak-bar-saram”—“May I be covered with dirt” (struck dead)—is rarely truly meant. We were still stuck on the sidewalk when the president started his speech, which was being broadcast along the route, and we were still a kilometer or so away from the square. The crowd could no longer move forward, even at a shuffle. Caught in a sea of people, I could do nothing but stand and listen to the president make his speech, moderate by his standards and evidence of sorts that the rumors that he’d been instructed to tone down the rhetoric were true. On the nuclear issue, he reiterated the long-standing Iranian position that the government desired negotiations and talks, but that uranium enrichment would not be suspended as a precondition. But he chose, rather than his belligerent and confrontational tone of the past, a more rational argument that questioned the logic of the U.S. position, which demanded Iran first do as it said before it would entertain any negotiations on the issue. “If we suspend enrichment,” Ahmadinejad asked softly and to great applause, “then what is there to talk about?”
The crowd where I was standing, far less interested in his speech than in the spectacle of celebration, suddenly started moving backward, then forward, as if we were a human battering ram trying to break down the gates to the city. Women started screaming for the men to stop shoving, some of them trying to protect crying children they held tightly from being trampled, but the crush went on. Forward at a pace that would have meant falling headfirst were it not for the sea of bodies, and then backward, sideways, and forward again, with no crowd control or any police presence to ensure a modicum of safety, we were being slowly crushed, but when the crowd decided to make an escape along a side street, I became truly worried. I could barely see Ali, a former president’s chief of staff who himself was bobbing up and down, struggling to break free, and I wondered if he now regretted his modesty in keeping a low profile while in office, a profile that meant he was unrecognizable, despite his resemblance to his brother, to the people in the crowd who were shoving him with as much verve as they were shoving everyone else.
The street the crowd had decided upon for escape was as packed with people as Azadi Street was, and that crowd was trying just as hard to get to where we were as we were trying to escape. The slightest panic, I thought, would h
ave resulted in tragedy, but somehow the crowd on my side overwhelmed the side-street crowd, and like a great wave we crashed into them, scattering whoever was in our way. At this point there was no hope of making it onto the square, so I let myself be pushed and shoved down the street, and then, after I found a somewhat-battered Ali, we slowly made our way back to where he had parked, passing people who were heading to the square and still shouting revolutionary slogans. I was sorry that I had been unable to enter the main square, but less sorry than I would have been had I missed hearing the “nuclear symphony,” which unhappily never materialized.