Shah of Shahs

by Ryzard Kapuscinski

  Photograph 11

  A Lufthansa airliner at Mehrabad airport in Teheran. It looks like an ad, but in this case no advertising is needed because all the seats are sold. This plane flies out of Teheran every day and lands at Munich at noon. Waiting limousines carry the passengers to elegant restaurants for lunch. After lunch they all fly back to Teheran in the same airplane and eat their suppers at home. Hardly an expensive entertainment, the jaunt costs only two thousand dollars a head. For people in the Shah's favor, such a sum is nothing. In fact, it is the palace plebeians who only go to Munich for lunch. Those in somewhat higher positions don't always feel like enduring the travails of such long journeys. For them an Air France plane brings lunch, complete with cooks and waiters, from Maxim's of Paris. Even such fancies have nothing extraordinary about them. They cost hardly a penny when compared to a fairy-tale fortune like the one that Mohammed Reza and his people are amassing. In the eyes of the average Iranian the Great Civilization, the Shah's Revolution, was above all a Great Pillage at which the elite busied itself. Everyone in authority stole. Whoever held office and did not steal created a desert around himself; he made everybody suspicious. Other people regarded him as a spy sent to report on who was stealing how much, because their enemies needed such information. Whenever possible they got rid of someone like that in short order—he spoiled the game. All values thus came to have a reversed meaning. Whoever tried to be honest looked like a paid stoolie. If someone had clean hands, he had to keep them deeply hidden because there was something shameful and ambivalent about purity. The higher up, the fuller the pockets. Anyone who wanted to build a factory, open a business, or grow cotton had to give a piece of the action as a present to the Shah's family or one of the dignitaries. And they gave willingly, because you could get a business going only with the backing of the court. With money and influence you would overcome every obstacle. You could buy influence and use it afterward to multiply your fortune further. It is hard to imagine the river of money that flowed into the till of the Shah, his family, and the whole court elite. Bribes to the Shah's family generally ran to a hundred million dollars and more. Prime ministers and generals took bribes of from thirty to fifty million dollars. Lower down, the bribe was smaller, but it was always there! As prices rose, the bribes got bigger and ordinary people complained that more and more of their earnings went to feed the moloch of corruption. In earlier times Iran had known a custom of auctioning off positions. The Shah would announce a floor price for the office of governor and whoever bid highest became governor. Later, in office, the governor would plunder his subjects to recover (with interest) the money that had gone to the monarch. Now this custom was revived in a new form: The ruler would buy people by sending them to negotiate contracts, usually military ones.

  The Shah's big money enabled him to breathe life into a new class, previously unknown to historians and sociologists: the petro-bourgeoisie. An unusual social phenomenon, the petro-bourgeoisie produces nothing, and unbridled consumption makes up its whole occupation. Promotion to this class depends on neither social conflict (as in feudalism) nor on competition (as in industry and trade), but only on conflict and competition for the Shah's grace and favor. This promotion can occur in the course of a single day, or even in a few minutes: The Shah's word or signature suffices. Whoever most pleases the ruler, whoever can best and most ardently flatter him, whoever can convince him of his loyalty and submission, receives promotion to the petro-bourgeoisie. This class of freeloaders quickly makes a significant part of the oil revenues its own and becomes proprietor of the country. At their elegant villas its members entertain visitors to Iran and shape their guests' opinions of the country (though the hosts themselves often have scant familiarity with their own culture). They have international manners and speak European languages—what better reasons for the Europeans to depend on them? But how misleading these encounters can be, how far these villas are from the local realities that will soon find a voice to shock the world! This class we are speaking about, guided by the instinct of self-preservation, has premonitions that its own career will be as short-lived as it is glittering. Thus, it sits on its suitcases from the start, exporting money and buying property in Europe and America. But since it has such big money, it can earmark a part of its fortunes for a comfortable life at home. Superluxurious neighborhoods, with enough conveniences and ostentation to stupefy any sightseer, begin to spring up in Teheran. Many of the houses cost more than a million dollars. These neighborhoods take root only a few streets away from districts where whole families huddle in narrow, crowded hovels without electricity or running water. This privileged consumption, this great hogging, should go on quietly and discreedy—take it, hide it, and leave nothing showing. Have a feast, but draw the curtains first. Build for yourself, but deep in the forest so as not to provoke others. So it should be—but not here. Here, custom ordains that you dazzle, knock the wind out of people, put everything on display, light all the lights, stun them, bring them to their knees, devastate them, pulverize them! Why have it at all, if it's to be on the sly, some alleged thing that somebody has seen or heard about? No! To have it like that is not to have it at all! To really have it is to blow your horn, shout it, let others come and gawk at it until their eyes pop out. And so, in plain sight of a silent and increasingly hostile people, the new class mounts an exhibition of the Iranian dolce vita, knowing no measure in its dissoluteness, rapacity, and cynicism. This provokes a fire in which the class itself, along with its creator and protector, will perish.

  Photograph 12

  This is a reproduction of a caricature that some opposition artist drew during the revolution. It shows a Teheran street. Big American cars, gas-guzzling road-hogs, are slinking along the avenue. On the sidewalks stand people with disappointed faces. Each of them is holding a part of a car: a door handle, fanbelt, or gearshift. The caption under the cartoon reads: "A Peykan for Everyone" (the Peykan is an Iranian economy car). When the Shah got into the big money he claimed that every Iranian would be able to buy his own car. The caricature shows how this pledge was fulfilled. Above the street, an angry Shah is sitting on a cloud with this inscription running above his head: "Mohammed Reza is furious with a nation that will not admit it feels an improvement." This is an interesting drawing, which tells how the Iranians interpreted the Great Civilization—as a Great Injustice. It created even bigger gulfs in a society that had never known equality. The Shahs, of course, had always had more than others, but it was hard to think of them as magnates. They had to sell concessions to keep the court in respectable shape. Shah Nasr-ed-Din ran up such debts in Paris brothels that, in order to bail himself out and get back home, he sold the French the rights to carry out archaeological expeditions and keep whatever artifacts they found. But that was in the past. Now, in the mid-seventies, Iran has become a behemoth of riches. And what does the Shah do? Half the money goes to the army, some to the elite, the rest for development. But what does that word mean? "Development" is no indifferent, abstract concept. It always applies to someone, in the name of something. Development can make a society richer and life better, freer, more just—but it can also do exactly the opposite. So it is in autocratic societies (where the elite identifies its interests with those of the state that guarantees its control); in such societies, development, aiming at strengthening the state and its apparatus of repression, reinforces dictatorship, subjugation, barrenness, vagueness, and the emptiness of existence. The development packaged and sold in Iran as the Great Civilization worked in just that way. Can anyone blame the Iranians for rising up at the cost of great sacrifices and destroying that model of development?

  From the Notes 6

  A Shiite is, first of all, a rabid oppositionist. At first the Shiites were a small group of the friends and backers of Ali, the son-in-law of Mohammed and husband of the Prophet's beloved daughter Fatima. When Mohammed died without a male heir and without clearly designating his successor, the Muslims began struggling over the Prophet's inherit
ance, over who would be caliph, or leader of the believers in Allah and thus the most important person in the Islamic world. Ali's party (Shi'a means "party") supports its leader for this position, maintaining that Ali is the sole representative of the Prophet's family, the father of Mohammed's two grandsons Hassan and Hussein. The Sunni Muslim majority, however, ignores the voices of the Shiites for twenty-four years and chooses Abu Bakr, Umar, and Utman as the next three caliphs. Ali finally becomes caliph, but his caliphate ends after five years, when an assassin splits his skull with a poisoned saber. Of Ali's two sons, Hassan will be poisoned and Hussein will fall in battle. The death of Ali's family deprives the Shiites of the chance to win power, which passes to the Sunni Omayyad, Abassid, and Ottoman dynasties. The caliphate, which Mohammed had conceived as a simple and modest institution, becomes a hereditary monarchy. In this situation the plebeian, pious, poverty-stricken Shiites, appalled by the nouveau-riche style of the victorious caliphs, go over to the opposition.

  All this happens in the middle of the seventh century, but it has remained a living and passionately dwelt-on history to this day. When a devout Shiite talks about his faith he will constantly return to those remote histories and relate tearfully the massacre at Karbala in which Hussein had his head cut off. A skeptical, ironic European will think, God, what can any of that mean today? But if he expresses such thoughts aloud, he provokes the anger and hatred of the Shiite.

  The Shiites have indeed had a tragic fate, and the sense of tragedy, of the historical wrongs and misfortunes that accompany them, is encoded deep within their consciousness. The world contains communities for whom nothing has gone right for centuries—everything has slipped through their hands, and every ray of hope has faded as soon as it began to shine—these people seem to bear some sort of fatal brand. So it is with the Shiites. For this reason, perhaps, they have an air of dead seriousness, of fervent unsettling adherence to their arguments and principles, and also (this is only an impression, of course) of sadness.

  As soon as the Shiites (who constitute barely a tenth of all Muslims, the rest being Sunnis) go into opposition, the persecution begins. To this day they live the memory of the centuries of pogroms against them, and so they close themselves off in ghettoes, use signals only they understand, and devise conspiratorial forms of behavior. But the blows keep falling on their heads.

  Gradually they start to look for safer places where they will have a better chance of survival. In those times of difficult and slow communication, in which distance and space constitute an efficient isolator, a separating wall, the Shiites try to move as far as possible from the center of power (which lies first in Damascus and later in Baghdad). They scatter throughout the world, across mountains and deserts, and descend step by step underground. So the Shiite diaspora, which has lasted till today, comes into being. The epic of the Shiites is full of acts of incredible abjuration, courage, and spiritual strength. A part of the wandering community heads east. Crossing the Tigris and the Euphrates, it passes through the mountains of Zagros and reaches the Iranian desert plateau.

  At this time, Iran, exhausted and laid waste by centuries of war with Byzantium, has been conquered by Arabs who are spreading the new faith, Islam. This process is going on slowly, amid continual fighting. Until now the Iranians have had an official religion, Zoroastrianism, related to the ruling Sassanid dynasty. Now comes the attempt to impose upon them another official religion, associated with a new and, what's more, a foreign regime—Sunni Islam. It seems like jumping from the frying pan into the fire.

  But exactly at this moment the poor, exhausted, wretched Shiites, still bearing the visible traces of the Gehenna they have lived through, appear. The Iranians discover that these Shiites are Muslims and, additionally (as they claim), the only legitimate Muslims, the only preservers of a pure faith for which they are ready to give their lives. Well, fine, say the Iranians—but what about your Arab brothers who have conquered us? Brothers? cry the outraged Shiites. Those Arabs are Sunnis, usurpers and our persecutors. They murdered Ali and seized power. No, we don't acknowledge them. We are in opposition! Having made this proclamation, the Shiites ask if they might rest after their long journey and request a jug of cold water.

  This pronouncement by the barefoot newcomers sets the Iranians thinking along important lines. You can be a Muslim without being an establishment Muslim. What's more, you can be an opposition Muslim! And that makes you an even better Muslim! They feel empathy for these poor, wronged Shiites. At this moment the Iranians themselves are poor and feel wronged. They have been ruined by war, and an invader controls their country. So they quickly find a common language with these exiles who are looking for shelter and counting on their hospitality. The Iranians begin to listen to the Shiite preachers and finally accept their faith.

  In this adroit maneuver one can see all the intelligence and independence of the Iranians. They have a particular talent for preserving their independence under conditions of subjugation. For hundreds of years the Iranians have been the victims of conquest, aggression, and partition. They have been ruled for centuries on end by foreigners or local regimes dependent on foreign powers, and yet they have preserved their culture and language, their impressive personality and so much spiritual fortitude that in propitious circumstances they can arise reborn from the ashes. During the twenty-five centuries of their recorded history the Iranians have always, sooner or later, managed to outwit anyone with the impudence to try ruling them. Sometimes they have to resort to the weapons of uprising and revolution to obtain their goal, and then they pay the tragic levy of blood. Sometimes they use the tactic of passive resistance, which they apply in a particularly consistent and radical way. When they get fed up with an authority that has become unbearable, the whole country freezes, the whole nation does a disappearing act. Authority gives orders but no one is listening, it frowns but no one is looking, it raises its voice but that voice is as one crying in the wilderness. Then authority falls apart like a house of cards. The most common Iranian technique, however, is absorption, active assimilation, in a way that turns the foreign sword into the Iranians' own weapon.

  And so it is after the Arab conquest. You want Islam, they tell the conquerors, so Islam you'll get—but in our own national form and in an independent, rebellious version. It will be faith, but an Iranian faith that expresses our spirit, our culture, and our independence. This philosophy underlies the Iranian decision to accept Islam. They accept it in the Shiite variant, which at that time is the faith of the wronged and the conquered, an instrument of contestation and resistance, the ideology of the unhumbled who are ready to suffer but will not renounce their principles because they want to preserve their distinctness and dignity. Shiism will become not only the national religion of the Iranians but also their refuge and shelter, a form of national survival and, at the right moments, of struggle and liberation.

  Iran transforms itself into the most restless province of the Muslim empire. Someone is always plotting here, there is always some uprising, masked messengers apt pear and disappear, secret leaflets and brochures circulate. The representatives of the occupying authorities, the Arab governors, spread terror and end up with results opposite to what they'd intended. In answer to the official terror the Iranian Shiites begin to fight back, but not in a frontal assault, for which they are too weak. An element of the Shiite community from now on will be—if one can use such a term—the terrorist fringe. Down to the present day, small, conspiratorial terrorist organizations that know neither fear nor pity operate in Iran. Half of the killings blamed on the ayatollahs are performed on the sentences of these groups. Generally, history regards the Shiites as the founders of the theory and practice of individual terror as a means of combat.

  Fervor, orthodoxy, and an obsessive, fanatic concern for doctrinal purity characterize the Shiites as they characterize every group that is persecuted, condemned to the ghetto, and made to fight for its survival. A persecuted man cannot survive without an unshakeable faith
in the correctness of his choice. He must protect the values that led him to that choice. Thus, all the schisms—and Shiism has lived through dozens of them—had one thing in common: They were all, as we would put it, ultra-leftist. A fanatical branch was always springing up to accuse the remainder of its co-religionists of atrophied zeal, of treating lightly the dictates of faith, of expediency and taking the easy way out. Once the split took place the most fervid of the schismatics would take up arms to finish off the enemies of Islam, redeeming in blood (because they themselves often perished) the treachery and laziness of their backsliding brothers.

  The Iranian Shiites have been living underground, in the catacombs, for eight hundred years. Their life recalls the suffering and trials of the first Christians. Sometimes it seems that they will be extirpated completely, that a final annihilation awaits them. For years they have been taking refuge in the mountains, holing up in caves, dying of hunger. Their songs that survive from these years, full of rue and despair, prophesy the end of the world.