by Hooman Majd
As I left the building that day, I couldn’t help but think of my father’s friend Mr. N., a former diplomat in the Shah’s regime who had taken me to a very different lunch at the Diplomatic Club a week before. Mr. N. is, like everyone associated with the Shah’s regime, most definitely not part of the ruling class, and never will be, but unlike so many members of the ancien régime, he continues to live in Iran and even take lunch at the Diplomatic Club, an outpost of a Foreign Ministry that one would suspect prefers to have nothing to do with him. Mr. N. has few contemporaries in Tehran to lunch with, unlike the men at the Center for Strategic Research, let alone the opportunity to regularly complain with friends about their loss of privilege. Mr. N. was recalled to Tehran from a foreign posting after the revolution of 1979, and he continued to show up for work every day at the Foreign Ministry, in a suit and tie, until he was finally forced into early retirement less than a year later.
He recalled for me his worst days at work, which had nothing to do with being harassed by revolutionaries who had taken over the ministry. No, it was during the U.S. hostage crisis, when Bruce Laingen, the U.S. chargé d’affaires (who had been visiting the Foreign Ministry when students overran the embassy), was being held captive, for his own safety, the Iranians argued, at the ministry building. Mr. N. had to cross a courtyard and quadrant every day to get to his office, and Laingen would often be at a window looking straight out in his direction, but Mr. N. would hold a cup of coffee and a newspaper and walk on, pretending to be juggling the two as he passed Laingen, just so that he could avoid waving at him and acknowledging a fellow diplomat. “The poor man,” he said to me. “I felt absolutely awful every single morning. He didn’t even have the comfort of receiving a dignified wave!” Mr. N. still wears a suit and tie every single day, sometimes a hat too, making him highly conspicuous in a society where ties are frowned upon as symbols of Western decadence. The suits are probably the same suits he had at the time of the revolution, for they are all cut in the late-1970s style, but perhaps Mr. N.’s fashion sense, for someone who has rarely gone abroad since his permanent return to Iran almost thirty years ago, is simply frozen in 1979.
Mr. N., who drives around Tehran in an old Peugeot but probably shouldn’t be driving at all, and certainly not in a city like Tehran, picked me up one Friday morning and with much difficulty—including stopping in the middle of a busy freeway, getting out of the car, and asking directions of surprised and honking drivers—drove me to the far northern reaches of the city, where the Foreign Ministry’s Diplomatic Club is located. Built at the urging of the former ambassador Sadeq Kharrazi, the ardent bespoke-suit-wearing reformist who tried to infuse the ministry with some of the elegance of its past, the club is shunned by the most conservative allies of Ahmadinejad but attracts diplomats, their families, and the odd mullah to its beautiful grounds and sumptuous buffet lunches.
We sat alone at a table in the expansive dining room, overlooking the vast city of Tehran through floor-to-ceiling windows, Mr. N. the only one in the room wearing a tie, and we comfortably talked politics without lowering our voices to a whisper. Other tables were filled with stubble-faced men in ill-fitting jackets, women in scarves and hijab, and unruly children who banged into the glass windows as they played noisily while their parents dined. If Mr. N. was aware of the stares we received, he didn’t show it, and the maître d’ was uncommonly courteous to him, but as others in the dining room table-hopped to say hello to one another, we were conspicuously left alone. But Mr. N., the least privileged but by far the most elegant man in the room, was unperturbed, and as he finished his meal, he fell silent. He stared out the windows at his beloved city, and I wondered what this dignified man, someone who had refused the opportunity to leave his country and start a new life elsewhere like many of his contemporaries, someone who continued to live his life exactly as he thought he should without fear of the black turbans, someone who might have at one time been recruited to a strong democratic movement, was thinking. I didn’t ask, but then again, I didn’t need to.
“Yeki-bood; yeki-nabood.” Other than God, there was no One. Islam was never supposed to have a clergy; in fact there is no “church” in mainstream Islam, and part of the appeal of the Koran for believers is that it is the word of God Himself, and therefore not subject to interpretation by man. Except, for Shias, by the Ayatollahs. Shia Islam, the overwhelming majority sect in Iran, a less-overwhelming majority in Iraq and Bahrain, and a large segment of the fractured religious makeup of Lebanon, has both a church and a clergy. Ayatollahs, those “signs of God,” are in some ways the Shia equivalent of Catholic cardinals. There is no pope-like figure in Shia Islam, however, although the most senior Ayatollahs, the Grand Ayatollahs, hold positions of respect and authority not dissimilar to the authority of a living pope, the Patriarch of the Orthodox Church, or, say, the Archbishop of Canterbury. They are men and not considered divinely appointed (and certainly not divine—not even the Prophet was divine, according to Islam), but they are men who instruct others to behave according to how they believe God wishes. Ayatollah Khomeini, the founder of the Islamic Republic and the one man responsible for making his title a household word, wasn’t Iran’s first political cleric; he was merely its most successful.
Much has been written about the Shia split from mainstream Sunni Islam over thirteen hundred years ago, and the narrative often centers on the seminal event of the Battle of Karbala and Hossein’s martyrdom—what is dramatically commemorated at Ashura every year. It may be the simple story of what Shias believe to be Hossein’s just cause against the unjust Yazid, but it is really a sort of David and Goliath tale where Goliath wins, and it is what forms the Shia worldview—a worldview particularly suited to Persian sensibilities, formed as they have been by centuries of perceived injustices to their nation and to themselves. The modern Shia world had in Ayatollah Khomeini its first David who defeated a Goliath (the Shah), and a David who stood up to another, far more powerful Goliath: the United States. In 2006, shi’at Ali (“followers of Ali,” as “Shia” means) had Seyyed Hassan Nasrallah of Lebanese Hezbollah as their victorious David against the Goliath of Israel, a Goliath that still stands, and must do, as a constant threat to the ever-believing David. For Shias are always Davids, always the underdogs fighting for a just cause in an unjust world, except it matters not that they actually slay their enemy, but merely that they hold their ground and chalk it up as a victory of justice over tyranny. To them, there is no Goliath today greater than the United States. The Ayatollahs and all their little Davids are determined to stand up to it whenever necessary, whenever the cause is just, and to never lose, even if, or maybe because, they can’t win outright.
Iranians, whether religious or not, and with or without the Ayatollahs, have always had a Shia sensibility. Akbar Ganji, the onetime Islamic revolutionary, did not lose his Shia sensibility when he turned against the regime he helped bring to power, and Shirin Ebadi, who fights injustice with the law but, like Ganji, refuses help from any Goliath, maintains a Shia sensibility whether she even believes in God or not. Golsorkhi, the Marxist poet executed by the Shah’s firing squad, had a Shia sensibility, and his death, he knew, would at least keep his ideas alive. Iranian opposition groups in exile, some of whose members have not walked the streets of Tehran for almost thirty years, believe that they are the Davids that justly fight the Goliath that (to them) is the Islamic regime, and they have a Shia sensibility too. Iran may evolve or even change politically, and its constitution may become as fastened with amendments as ours is one day, but the character and sensibilities of the people will not change. The Ayatollahs may from time to time silence dissent at home, they may rule autocratically, and with their infuriating manners they may annoy and even repulse many in the West. But they rule for now with the confidence that they do not face a population that seeks to overthrow them. As long, that is, as they don’t lose their Persian sensibilities.
Notes
Iran is widely covered in the Western media,
and almost all the major newspapers, news organizations, and wire services have offices or correspondents based in Tehran. There is no paucity of information on current events in Iran, and for every news item referred to in the book that I have not directly witnessed, the sources are either my contacts inside Iran or, in the case of widely reported news, the various media outlets, including Iranian state-owned and private media. A few specific references are given in the notes below.
PREFACE
1. From a quatrain by the twelfth-century poet Sanai. Translated by Coleman Barks. In Persian Poets, selected and edited by Peter Washington (New York: Knopf, 2000).
PERSIAN CATS
1. Mujahedin-e-Khalq, the largest political and military group in opposition to the Islamic regime, was initially formed in opposition to the Shah, who referred to its philosophy as “Marxist-Islamic.” The group allied itself with the Islamic Revolution of 1979 but broke with the regime soon after, taking refuge in Saddam Hussein’s Iraq. It has claimed responsibility for some of the most spectacular terror operations against the Islamic Republic, and is on the U.S. and European lists of terrorist organizations. In the 1970s, the group was responsible for the assassination of U.S. military personnel in Iran.
2. Iran’s Jewish community, numbering twenty-five to thirty thousand individuals according to estimates quoted by news organizations, is the largest in the Middle East outside of Israel. Under Iran’s constitution, Jews, along with the other recognized minority religions of Christianity and Zoroastrianism, have a representative in parliament, the Majles. Although many Iranian Jews left during and after the revolution of 1979, Jewish families are still active in trades they’ve been traditionally engaged in for centuries, namely, antiques, jewelry, carpets, and import-export.
3. Saddam Hussein invaded Iran in 1980, igniting the Iran-Iraq war that lasted eight years and resulted in nearly a million deaths. The Iranian Basij, volunteers sometimes as young as ten years old, were famously known to have thrown themselves under Iraqi tanks with live grenades strapped to their waists, and to have cleared minefields by running onto them. Many Basij wore plastic keys around their necks as they went into battle, keys to the gates of paradise.
4. Velayat-e-faqih, or “rule of the jurisprudent,” was the basis of Ayatollah Khomeini’s political philosophy, one he formed and wrote about while in exile in Najaf, Iraq. His argument was that a Shia Islamic nation should be guided by a supreme religious authority, and, in Iran’s case, him. A collection of Khomeini’s writings is available in English: Islam and Revolution 1: Writings and Declarations of Imam Khomeini, translated by Hamid Algar (Berkeley, Calif.: Mizan Press, 1981).
5. Agence France-Presse, Tehran, April 23, 2007.
6. It has been rumored that Ahmadinejad was at one time a member of the Revolutionary Guards’ foreign expeditionary force, the Qods Force, and as such may have served in Lebanon in the 1980s, when Iran helped set up Hezbollah. Neither he nor the government has addressed the question, nor, curiously, have they been asked, even by Western reporters.
THE AYATOLLAH HAS A COLD
1. There are many books on the CIA-sponsored coup of 1953, and one particularly well-researched one is Stephen Kinzer, All the Shah’s Men (Hoboken, N.J.: Wiley, 2000).
2. www.pajamasmedia.com/xpress/michaelledeen/.
3. Hired cars in Iran range from dilapidated old Paykans, 1960s-technology Iranian-made cars (no longer manufactured), to more comfortable Peugeots, to plush new Samands, also Iranian made, but with somewhat more recent technology. For long trips, one must always specify a “comfortable” and “reliable” car.
IF IT’S TUESDAY, THIS MUST BE QOM
1. All satellite dishes are illegal in Iran, although many households, religious and supportive of the government or not, have them. In a country where entertainment outside the home is extremely limited, and where inside the home most people find state-owned television lacking in entertainment value, dishes that pull in signals from Europe and the Gulf are viewed not as a luxury but as a necessity.
2. Qom’s famous shrine and pilgrimage site, the tomb of Fatima (sister of Reza, the eighth Shia Imam, himself buried in Mashhad, in northeast Iran).
PRIDE AND HUMILITY
1. Reza Shah Pahlavi, the last Shah’s father and the founder of the short-lived Pahlavi dynasty, was a great admirer of Germany and all things German, including the fascism of the Third Reich. A modernizer intent on bringing Iran into the twentieth century, he looked to Germany for technology, architecture, and infrastructure, and his coziness with Hitler’s regime (although Iran officially remained neutral in the early stages of World War II) led to his removal and exile by the Allies and his son’s ascendancy to the throne.
2. Political nonfiction books are very popular in Iran and not subjected to censorship as often as one might think, or as often as many novels are. Although I didn’t see a copy in the windows of the Foreign Ministry bookstore, I did see Hillary Clinton’s autobiography (translated into Farsi) prominently displayed, its cover art intact, in almost every other bookstore in Tehran.
3. Photos of the Holocaust conference were published by the wire services, including AP and Reuters. Mohammadi is shown in a Reuters photo smiling as Ahmadinejad warmly greets Rabbi Yisroel Dovid Weiss of the Brooklyn-based ultraorthodox and anti-Zionist group Neturei Karta.
4. The series was called Zero Degree Turn and can be viewed on www.youtube.com.
5. See Tom Holland, Persian Fire (New York: Doubleday, 2006).
6. See Mojdeh Bayat and Mohammad Ali Jamnia, Tales from the Land of the Sufis (Boston: Shambhala, 2001).
7. Inter Press Service News Agency, Sept. 5, 2007, and Guardian, Sept. 30, 2007.
8. Twelver Islam is the predominant branch of Shia Islam and Iran’s state religion. Twelvers believe in twelve Imams, descendants of the Prophet Mohammad, whom they consider the legitimate rulers of Muslims.
9. Offside, written and directed by Jafar Panahi (best known for The White Balloon), released in the United States by Sony Pictures, 2006.
10. Agence France-Presse, April 22, 2007.
11. In my regular telephone conversations with individuals in Tehran, even those opposed to the hard-liners told me that in most neighborhoods the effect of the crackdown was not visible in the way that men and women dressed. The chances of being stopped or arrested, in a city of some fourteen million people, were still slim.
VICTORY OF BLOOD OVER THE SWORD
1. The Grand Ayatollahs of Shia Islam all operate their own Web sites, and their opinions on important matters (such as self-flagellation and self-injury) are available online. A Shia Web site has thoughtfully addressed the issue with answers by Ayatollahs Khamenei and Sistani (of Iraq) at www.ezsoftech.com/mazloom/zanjeer.asp.
2. My grandfather was a renowned scholar of the Sohravardi (more commonly “Suhrawardi” in the Latin alphabet) “School of Illumination.” Shihab al-Din al-Suhrawardi, one of Iran’s greatest philosophers, lived in the twelfth century, and Hikmat al-ishraq is his best-known work. (A translated version, The Philosophy of Illumination, by John Walbridge and Hossein Ziai, was published by Brigham Young University Press in 1999.) A physical School of Illumination, where my grandfather taught, still stands in Tehran, and educates clergy and laymen alike on the philosophy, but none of my grandfather’s own books have been translated into English.
3. Ardakan, my father’s hometown, is the site of an important uranium mine, and on a list of suspect nuclear sites in the ongoing Iranian nuclear dispute with the West.
4. Under its constitution, Iran can have numerous vice presidents, appointed by the president. Some have great influence because of their mandate (such as the vice president and head of the Atomic Energy Organization), while others have far less (such as the vice president and head of the National Sports Organization).
PAIRIDAEZA: THE PERSIAN GARDEN
1. The Persian princess was Shahrbanu, daughter of Yazdegerd III, the last Sassanid (and last Zoroastrian) king of Persia before Muslim
rule. Yazdegerd was assassinated in Merv, an ancient city near Mary in present-day Turkmenistan (and once part of the Persian Empire). See Encyclopaedia Brittanica, 11th ed.
2. The Muslim prayer, or namaz, is always recited in its original Arabic. Although few Iranians, even the pious, speak or know the language, they learn the prayer by rote at an early age.
3. There have been occasional raids on homes that host underground raves of sorts (which make the local news), although it is impossible to know whether they have been identified by government informers or by neighbors’ complaints.
4. Shepesh’oo is a common derogatory term for mullahs, reflecting upper-class disdain for the less-sophisticated classes. “Flea-ridden” implies a lower class who do not (or cannot) bathe properly. (Iranian homes generally lacked bathing facilities until the second half of the twentieth century, and the local bathhouse was visited with a frequency dependent upon one’s status and purse.)