Shah of Shahs

by Ryzard Kapuscinski

  ("For these people the concrete has become an asylum, a hideout, salvation. Cedar—well, yes, that's something concrete; so is asphalt. You can speak out about the concrete, express yourself as freely as you like. The great thing about the concrete is that it has its own clearly demarcated armed frontiers with warning bells along them. When a mind immersed in the concrete begins to approach that border, the bells warn that just beyond lies the field of treacherous general ideas, undesirable reflections, and syntheses. At the sound of this signal the cautious mind recoils and dives back into the concrete. We can see the whole process in the face of our interlocutor. He might be going along, talking in the most lively of ways, quoting numbers, percentages, names, and dates. We can see how firmly he's anchored in the concrete, like a rider in the saddle. Then we ask: 'That's all well and good, but why are people, in some way, shall we say, imperfectly satisfied?' At this point we can see how his face changes. The alarm bells have gone off: Attention! You are about to cross the border of the concrete! He grows silent and looks desperately for a way out—which is, of course, to retreat back into the concrete. Glad to have escaped the trap, panting with relief, he again starts talking with animation, haranguing and crushing us with the concrete in any form whatsoever: an object, an existence, a creature, or a phenomenon. It is a characteristic of disparate concretes that they cannot join together spontaneously to create general images. For example, two negative concretes can exist side by side, but they will not form a joint image until human thought welds them together. But the alarm bells prevent that synthesizing thought from ever occurring, so the negative concretes go on coexisting without forming any disturbing pattern. To succeed in making each person close himself within the borders of his concrete existence is to create an atomized society made up of n-number of concrete individuals unable to unite into a harmoniously acting comity.")

  Mahmud, however, decided to tear himself away from mundane problems and sail into the realm of imagination and emotion. He traced another friend who, he learned, had become a respected poet. Hassan Rezvani received him in a luxurious modern villa. They sat at the edge of the swimming pool (the summer heat had set in) sipping gin and tonic from frosty glasses. Hassan complained of tiredness: He had just returned the day before from a trip to Montreal, Chicago, Paris, Geneva, and Athens. He had traveled around giving lectures on the Great Civilization, the Revolution of the Shah and the Nation. It had been hard work, he confessed, because noisy subversives had prevented him from speaking and had insulted him. Hassan showed Mahmud a new volume of his poems, dedicated to the Shah. The first poem bore the title "Where He Casts His Glance, Flowers Bloom." If, so the poem said, the Shah merely looked anywhere at all, a carnation or a tulip would blossom forth.

  And where longer his glance reposes,

  There blossom roses.

  Another poem was titled "Where He Stands, a Spring Appears." In these verses the author assured his readers that wherever the monarch sets his foot, a spring of crystal-clear water will appear:

  Let the Shah stop somewhere and stand

  And a broad river flows across the land.

  These verses were read on the radio and in schools. The monarch himself referred to them in flattering terms and endowed Hassan with a Pahlavi Foundation fellowship.

  Walking down the street one day, Mahmud saw a man standing under a tree. Drawing nearer, with difficulty he recognized Mohsen Jalaver, with whom he had broken into print years before in a student magazine. Mahmud knew that Mohsen had been tortured and jailed for sheltering a mujahedeen friend in his apartment. Mahmud stopped and held out his hand in greeting. Mohsen looked at him blankly. Mahmud pronounced his own name as a reminder. Mohsen reacted only by saying, "I don't care." He just stood there, slumped over and staring at the ground. "Let's go somewhere," Mahmud said. "I'd like to talk with you." Still motionless, his head drooping, Mohsen replied, "I don't care." Mahmud felt a chill. "Look," he tried again, "why don't we make a date to talk soon?" Mohsen didn't reply, but only slumped lower. Finally, in a strangled whisper, he said, "Take the rats away."

  Sometime later, Mahmud rented a small apartment in the center of town. He was still unpacking when three men came in, greeted him as a new resident of the district, and asked whether he belonged to Rastakhiz, the Shah's party. Mahmud said he did not belong, since he had only recently returned from spending some years in Europe. This raised their suspicions: Those who had a chance to leave seldom returned. They began asking why he had come back, and one of them wrote down Mahmud's answers in a notebook. With terror, Mahmud realized he was now going into the records for the third time. When the visitors handed him a membership application, Mahmud replied that he had been apolitical all his life and did not intend to join. They looked at him dumfounded—the new tenant, they must have thought, could not know what he was saying. So they gave him a leaflet in which a statement of the Shah's was printed in capital letters: THOSE WHO WILL NOT JOIN THE RASTAKHIZ PARTY ARE EITHER TRAITORS WHO BELONG IN PRISON OR PEOPLE WHO DO NOT BELIEVE IN THE SHAH, THE NATION, AND THE HOMELAND AND THUS OUGHT NOT TO EXPECT TO BE TREATED IN THE SAME WAY AS OTHERS. Nevertheless, Mahmud had the backbone to ask to think it over for a day, saying that he wanted to discuss it with his brother.

  "You have no choice," his brother said. "We all belong! The whole nation has to belong as if it were a single man." Mahmud went home, and when the activists returned the next day he declared his allegiance to the party. Thus he became a warrior of the Great Civilization.

  Soon he received an invitation to the nearby Rastakhiz local headquarters. A meeting of party members in the creative arts was in progress, attended by all those who wanted to contribute their work to the thirty-seventh anniversary of the Shah's coronation. The whole life of the empire flowed from anniversary to anniversary in an unctuous, ornate, dignified rhythm with the solemn and resplendent celebration of each date connected to the Shah and his outstanding achievements: the White Revolution and the Great Civilization. Vast staffs of people kept watch, calendars in hand, to make sure the monarch's birthday, his last wedding, his coronation, and the births of the heir to the throne and the other happily begotten offspring would not be forgotten. New feasts swelled the list of traditional holidays. As soon as one celebration ended, the preparations for the next one began, fever and excitement charged the air, all work came to a halt, and everyone made ready for the next day that would pass amid sumptuous banqueting, showers of distinctions, and a sublime liturgy.

  As Mahmud was leaving the meeting, the writer and translator Golam Qasemi came up to him. They had not seen each other for years; while Mahmud was staying in London, Golam had remained at home writing stories that glorified the Great Civilization. He lived a splendid life, with free access to the palace and his books published in leather bindings. Golam had something to tell Mahmud. He dragged him to an Armenian café, spread a weekly on the table, and said proudly, "Look what I've managed to get published!" It was his translation of a poem by Paul Eluard. Mahmud glanced at it and said, "Well, what's so remarkable about this? What are you so proud of?" "What?" Golam burst out. "Don't you understand anything? Read it carefully:

  Now is the time of sorrow, of darkest night

  When even the blind must not be sent outside."

  As he read, he underlined every word with his fingernail. "All the effort, all the trouble it took me," he said excitedly, "to get this printed, to convince Savak that it could appear! In this country where everything is supposed to inspire optimism, blossoming, smiles—suddenly 'the time of sorrow'! Can you imagine?" Golam was wearing the face of the victor, elated at his own courage.

  It was only at this moment, looking at Golam's cunning face, that Mahmud believed for the first time in the approaching revolution. It seemed to him that he suddenly understood everything. Golam can sense the coming catastrophe. He is beginning to maneuver shrewdly, to shift his battle lines, to try to purge himself of blame, to pay tribute to the rumbling force that already resounds in his frightened
and besieged heart. Golam has just sneaked a thumbtack onto the scarlet cushion the Shah sits on. This is hardly a bomb. It won't kill the Shah, but it makes Golam feel better—he has joined the opposition, however hermetically. Now he will show off the thumbtack, talk it up, seek the praise and recognition of his friends, and revel in the feeling of having shown his independence.

  But Mahmud's old doubts come back in the evening. He and his brother were walking along streets that grew more and more empty, past faces deprived of any vitality. Exhausted pedestrians were trudging home or standing silently at bus stops. Some men were sitting against a wall, dozing, their faces on their knees. Mahmud pointed at them and asked, "Who is going to carry out this revolution of yours? They are all sleeping." His brother replied, "These very people will do it. One day they will sprout wings." But Mahmud could not imagine it.

  ("And yet early in the summer I myself began to feel something changing, something reviving in people, something in the air. The atmosphere was indefinable, a little like the first glimmer of consciousness after a tormenting dream. In the first place, the Americans forced the Shah to release some intellectuals from prison. The Shah cheated—he released some and locked up others. But the important thing was that he'd given in, and the first crack, the first little gap, appeared in the rigid system. Into that gap stepped people who wanted to resurrect the Iranian Writers' Organization, which the Shah had dissolved in '69. All organizations, even the most innocent, had been banned. Only Rastakhiz and the mosque remained. Tertium non datur. The government continued to say no to a writers' union. Accordingly, secret meetings began in private homes, most often in old country houses outside Teheran where it was easier to maintain secrecy. They called these meetings 'cultural evenings.' First there would be a poetry reading, and then the discussion of the current situation would begin. It was at one of these meetings that I first saw people who had been in prison. They were writers, scientists, and students. I looked closely at their faces, trying to see what scars great fear and suffering made. I thought they were behaving abnormally. They acted hesitantly, as if the light and the presence of others made them dizzy. They kept a watchful distance from their surroundings, as if the approach of any other person could lead to a beating. One of them looked awful—he had burn scars on his face and hands, and he walked with a cane. He was a student in the law school, and fedayeen brochures had been found in a search of his home. I remember his telling how he was led by the Savak agents into a big room, one of whose walls was white-hot iron. There were rails on the floor, a metal chair on the rails; the Savak men strapped him into the chair. Then they pushed a button and the chair began moving toward the wall in a slow, jerky movement, an inch a minute. He calculated it would take two hours to reach the wall, but after an hour he could no longer stand the heat and began shouting that he would admit everything, even though there was nothing to admit—he'd found the brochures lying in the street. We all listened silently as the student cried. I'll always remember what he then said: 'God,' he said, 'why have you chastised me with such a terrible deformity as thinking? Why have you taught me to think, instead of teaching me the humility of cattle!' In the end he fainted, and we carried him into the next room. Other survivors of the dungeon, in contrast, usually remained silent.")

  But Savak quickly tracked down the location of these meetings. One night, when they had left the house and were walking along the path by the road, Mahmud heard a sudden rustling in the bushes off to the side. After a moment of confusion he heard shouts. Then he felt a monstrous blow to the back of his head, and the darkness grew violently deeper. He staggered, fell face-first on the stone pathway, and lost consciousness. He came to in his brother's arms. In the darkness, his eyes swollen and covered with blood, he could barely make out his brother's gray, bruised face. He heard moans, someone cried out for help, and after a moment he recognized the voice of the student, who must have gone into shock. As if it came from deep in the earth, the voice kept repeating, "Why did you teach me to think? Why did you chastise me with this horrible deformity?" Now Mahmud could see that the arm of one of those standing near him was dangling, broken, and he saw another man kneeling by him with blood oozing from his mouth. Trying to keep close together, the group moved slowly toward the highway in deadly fear the beating would start again.

  Next morning Mahmud stayed in bed with a swollen head and a stitched-up forehead. The housekeeper brought him a newspaper which had an account of the previous night's incident: "Last night in the vicinity of Kan, a group of recidivistic social outcasts organized a repugnant orgy at one of the local farmhouses. The patriotic inhabitants of the area complained several times about the impropriety and repulsiveness of their behavior. Nevertheless the riotous gang, instead of paying due attention to the local patriots, attacked them with stones and clubs. The people who were attacked had to defend themselves and restore order to the area." Mahmud groaned, feeling feverish, his head spinning.

  "The Shah's days are numbered," Mahmud's brother was saying firmly a few days later. "No one can butcher a defenseless nation for years." "Numbered?" Mahmud asked in astonishment, lifting his bandaged head. "Have you lost your mind? Have you seen his army?" Of course his brother had seen it, the question was rhetorical. Mahmud had been constantly exposed to the imperial divisions at the movies and on television: parades, maneuvers, fighters, rockets, the barrels of heavy artillery aiming straight at his heart. He'd look with disgust at the rows of elderly generals who drew themselves laboriously to attention before the monarch. I wonder, he'd think, how they'd behave if a real bomb went off nearby. They'd all have heart attacks. Every month more and more tanks and mortars crowded the TV screen. Mahmud thought they constituted a terrible force that could grind any opposition into dust and blood.

  The scorching summer months began. The desert that embraces Teheran from the south panted fire. Mahmud felt better now and decided to resume his habit of evening walks after a long hiatus. He strolled out. It was late. He was walking through dark little streets near some grim, gigantic construction site being rapidly completed—the new Rastakhiz headquarters. He thought he saw a figure moving in the darkness and heard someone coming out of the bushes. But there are no bushes here! He tried to calm down. Frightened, nevertheless, he turned into the next street. He was afraid, even though he knew the fear had no precise cause. He felt cold and decided to head home. He was walking downhill near the center of town. Suddenly he heard footsteps behind him. He was surprised, because he had been sure the street was empty, that there was no one around. He quickened his pace involuntarily, and whoever was behind him did the same. They walked in step for a while, rhythmically, like two honor guards. Mahmud decided to speed up even more. Now he was walking with short, sharp steps. The other one did the same, and came even closer. Mahmud, trying to think of a way out, slowed down. But fear conquered common sense, and he lengthened his stride again to escape. He was covered with goose pimples. He was terrified of provoking the other. He thought he was postponing the blow, but whoever was behind him drew closer and Mahmud could hear the other's breathing as their steps echoed together in the tunnel of the street. Finally Mahmud broke down and started to run. The other gave chase and Mahmud rushed onward, his jacket flapping like a black banner. Suddenly he realized others had joined the pursuit, dozens of footsteps were rumbling behind him with the clatter of an incipient avalanche. He kept running though he was out of breath. He was soaking wet, semiconscious, and felt he would collapse in a second. With the last of his strength he grabbed hold of a nearby gate, swung himself up onto the grating of a barred window, and hung there, suspended. He thought his heart would burst, and he felt an alien fist breaking through his ribs dealing painful, deathly blows ravaging his insides. Finally he brought himself under control and looked around. The only living soul in the street was a gray cat hurrying along the wall. Slowly, with his hand over his heart, he dragged himself home, broken, depressed, vanquished.

  ("It all began with that night attack when we
were leaving the meeting. From then on I felt the fear. It would hit me at the most unexpected moments. I was ashamed, but I couldn't deal with it. It began to disturb me profoundly. I thought with horror that by carrying that fear inside I'd involuntarily become part of a system founded on fear. A terrible, yet indissoluble, relation, a sort of pathological symbiosis, had established itself between me and the dictator. Through my fear I was supporting a system I hated. The Shah could depend on me—on my fear, that is, on the fact that my fear would not let him down. If I could have gotten rid of my fear, I could have undermined the foundations of the throne just a little, but I was as yet unable to do that.")

  Mahmud felt bad all summer. Apathetically he would receive news his brother brought him.

  Everyone was living on top of a volcano in those days, and anything could set off the eruption. A horse ran mad and attacked people in Kermanshah—a peasant had ridden the animal into town and tethered it to a tree along the main street. It shied and reared up at some passing cars, broke free, and injured several people. Finally a soldier shot it. People crowded around the dead animal. The police arrived and began to disperse the crowd. Someone shouted, "And where were the police when the horse was trampling the people?" Then a fight broke out. The police opened fire. But the crowd kept growing. The crowd was boiling mad, and people began putting up barricades. Then the army came in and the town commander ordered a curfew. Mahmud's brother asked him, "Do you think it would have taken much more for an uprising to erupt there?" But Mahmud, as usual, thought his brother was exaggerating.