Shah of Shahs

by Ryzard Kapuscinski

  As Mahmud was walking along Reza Khan Boulevard one day early in September, he noticed a commotion in the street. He could see, in the distance, at the main entrance to the university, military trucks, helmets, guns, and soldiers in green fatigues. They were grabbing students and hauling them off to the trucks. Mahmud heard screams and saw young men running away down the street. Suddenly there was a wail of sirens, and the trucks full of students began moving up the street. The students stood squeezed onto the platforms, their hands bound with ropes, soldiers surrounding them. Apparently the roundup was over, and Mahmud decided to go tell his brother the army had raided the university. A young high school teacher named Ferejdun Ganji, whom Mahmud remembered meeting at the cultural evening before the police assault, was there. According to Mahmud's brother, when Ganji had gone to school the day after the night assault, the principal, who had already received a telephone call from Savak, fired him, shouting that he was a hooligan and a bully and that he, the principal, was ashamed to let innocent students see him. Ganji had now been unemployed for a long time, roaming around in search of work.

  The brother decided they'd go to dinner at the bazaar. In the crowded stuffy back alleys, Mahmud noticed a lot of young people staggering around in an opium daze. Some of them were sitting on the sidewalk, staring ahead with glassy, unseeing eyes. Others were harassing passers-by, calling them names and making fists at them. "How can the police tolerate this?" he asked his brother. "Quite easily," the latter answered. "From time to time a crowd like this comes in handy. Today they'll be given clubs and a few pennies and sent to beat up the students. Later the press will write about the healthy, patriotic youth who answered the call of the party and taught a lesson to the good-for-nothing dregs of society nesting within the university's walls."

  They entered a restaurant and took a table in the middle of the room. They were still waiting for service when Mahmud noticed two brawny men lounging at the next table. Savak!—the idea shot through his mind. "What do you say?" he asked his brother and Ganji. "Let's move closer to the door." They changed tables, and the waiter appeared at once. But while his brother was ordering, Mahmud's eye fell on two handsome, coquettishly dressed men holding hands. Savak agents pretending to be homosexuals! he thought with terror. "I'd rather sit by the window," he suggested to his brother. "I want to see what's going on in the bazaar." They moved to the new table. Barely had they begun to eat, however, when three men came in and, without a word, as if they had planned it in advance, took a table at the same window from which Mahmud was observing the bazaar. "We're being watched," he whispered, and at the same instant he noticed that the waiters, who had been following their table hopping, were looking at them suspiciously. He realized that, to the waiters, they themselves must have looked like Savak agents moving around the room in search of prey. He lost his appetite and the food swelled in his mouth. Pushing his plate aside, he motioned with his head to leave.

  They reached his brother's home and decided to drive to the mountains to get away from the wearying city and breathe some fresh air. They drove north through the nouveau-riche district of Shemiran, where the air still smelled of cement. They passed imposing mansions, ostentatious villas, luxurious restaurants and dress shops, spacious gardens, exclusive country clubs with swimming pools and tennis courts. Here every square foot of desert—the desert stretched away in all directions—cost hundreds if not thousands of dollars and even so was in great demand. This was the charmed circle of the court elite, another world, another planet.

  ***

  In the next weeks, there were new demonstrations, new protest letters, and secret lectures and discussions. In November a committee for the defense of human rights and an underground students' union were established. At times Mahmud visited the nearby mosques and saw the crowds of people there, but the prevailing attitude of fervent piety remained alien to him, and he did not know how to make contact with that world. You have to ask yourself, he thought, where all these people are going. Most of them could not even read and write. They found themselves in an incomprehensible, hostile world that was cheating and exploiting them and held them in contempt. They wanted to find some sort of shelter for themselves, some relief and protection. But one thing they knew: In this unfriendly reality, only Allah remained the same as back in their villages, as always, as everywhere.

  He was reading a lot now and translating London and Kipling. When he remembered his English years, he thought about the differences between Europe and Asia and repeated Kipling's formula to himself: "East is east, and West is west, and never..." Never, no, they will never meet, and they will never understand each other. Asia will reject every European transplant as a foreign body. The Europeans will be shocked and outraged, but they will be unable to change Asia. In Europe epochs succeed each other, the new drives out the old, the earth periodically cleanses itself of its past so that people of our century have trouble understanding our ancestors. Here it is different, here the past is as alive as the present, the unpredictable cruel Stone Age coexists with the calculating, cool age of electronics—the two eras live in the same man, who is as much the descendant of Genghis Khan as he is the student of Edison ... if, that is, he ever comes into contact with Edison's world.

  One night at the beginning of January Mahmud heard a banging on his door. He jumped out of bed.

  ("It was my brother. I could see he was extremely agitated. Out in the corridor, he said only one word—'Massacre!' He didn't want to sit down, kept walking around the room, spoke chaotically. He said the police had opened fire on civilians in the streets of Qom. He mentioned five hundred dead. A lot of women and children had perished. It had all come about because of what seemed like a trivial matter. An article criticizing Khomeini had appeared in the newspaper Etelat. It had been written by someone from the palace or the government. When the paper reached Qom, Khomeini's city, people started gathering in the streets to talk about it. The police opened fire. A panic broke out in the square—people wanted to get away but there was nowhere to run because the police were blocking all the streets and kept on firing. I remember that all Teheran was agitated the following day. You could feel that dark and terrible times were approaching.")

  THE DEAD FLAME

  The revolution put an end to the Shah's rule. It destroyed the palace and buried the monarchy. It all began with an apparently small mistake on the part of the imperial authority. With that one false step, the monarchy signed its own death warrant.

  The causes of a revolution are usually sought in objective conditions—general poverty, oppression, scandalous abuses. But this view, while correct, is one-sided. After all, such conditions exist in a hundred countries, but revolutions erupt rarely. What is needed is the consciousness of poverty and the consciousness of oppression, and the conviction that poverty and oppression are not the natural order of this world. It is curious that in this case, experience in and of itself, no matter how painful, does not suffice. The indispensable catalyst is the word, the explanatory idea. More than petards or stilettoes, therefore, words—uncontrolled words, circulating freely, underground, rebelliously, not gotten up in dress uniforms, uncertified—frighten tyrants. But sometimes it is the official, uniformed, certified words that bring about the revolution.

  ***

  Revolution must be distinguished from revolt, coup d'état, palace takeover. A coup or a palace takeover may be planned, but a revolution—never. Its outbreak, the hour of that outbreak, takes everyone, even those who have been striving for it, unawares. They stand amazed at the spontaneity that appears suddenly and destroys everything in its path. It demolishes so ruthlessly that in the end it may annihilate the ideals that called it into being.

  It is a mistaken assumption that nations wronged by history (and they are in the majority) live with the constant thought of revolution, that they see it as the simplest solution. Every revolution is a drama, and humanity instinctively avoids dramatic situations. Even if we find ourselves in such a situation we look feveri
shly for a way out, we seek calm and, most often, the commonplace. That is why revolutions never last long. They are a last resort, and if people turn to revolution it is only because long experience has taught them there is no other solution. All other attempts, all other means have failed.

  Every revolution is preceded by a state of general exhaustion and takes place against a background of unleashed aggressiveness. Authority cannot put up with a nation that gets on its nerves; the nation cannot tolerate an authority it has come to hate. Authority has squandered all its credibility and has empty hands, the nation has lost the final scrap of patience and makes a fist. A climate of tension and increasing oppressiveness prevails. We start to fall into a psychosis of terror. The discharge is coming. We feel it.

  ***

  As for the technique of the struggle, history knows two types of revolution. The first is revolution by assault, the second revolution by siege. All the future fortune, the success, of a revolution by assault is decided by the reach of the first blow. Strike and seize as much ground as possible! This is important because such a revolution, while the most violent, is also the most superficial. The adversary has been defeated, but in retreating he has preserved a part of his forces. He will counter-attack and force the victor to withdraw. Thus, the more far-reaching the first blow, the greater the area that can be saved ill spite of later concessions. In a revolution by assault, the first phase is the most radical. The subsequent phases are a slow but incessant withdrawal to the point at which the two sides, the rebelling and the rebelled-against, reach the final compromise. A revolution by siege is different; here the first strike is usually weak and we can hardly surmise that it forebodes a cataclysm. But events soon gather speed and become dramatic. More and more people take part. The walls behind which authority has been sheltering crack and then burst. The success of a revolution by siege depends on the determination of the rebels, on their will power and endurance. One more day! One more push! In the end, the gates yield, the crowd breaks in and celebrates its triumph.

  It is authority that provokes revolution. Certainly, it does not do so consciously. Yet its style of life and way of ruling finally become a provocation. This occurs when a feeling of impunity takes root among the elite: We are allowed anything, we can do anything. This is a delusion, but it rests on a certain rational foundation. For a while it does indeed look as if they can do whatever they want. Scandal after scandal and illegality after illegality go unpunished. The people remain silent, patient, wary. They are afraid and do not yet feel their own strength. At the same time, they keep a detailed account of the wrongs, which at one particular moment are to be added up. The choice of that moment is the greatest riddle known to history. Why did it happen on that day, and not on another? Why did this event, and not some other, bring it about? After all, the government was indulging in even worse excesses only yesterday, and there was no reaction at all. "What have I done?" asks the ruler, at a loss. "What has possessed them all of a sudden?" This is what he has done: He has abused the patience of the people. But where is the limit of that patience? How can it be defined? If the answer can be determined at all, it will be different in each case. The only certain thing is that rulers who know that such a limit exists and know how to respect it can count on holding power for a long time. But there are few such rulers.

  How did the Shah violate this limit and pass sentence on himself? Through a newspaper article. Authority ought to know that a careless word can bring down the greatest empire. It seems to know this, seems to be vigilant, and yet at a certain moment the instinct for self-preservation fails and, self-assured and overweening, it commits the mistake of arrogance and perishes. On January 8, 1978, an article attacking Khomeini appeared in the government newspaper Etelat. At the time, Khomeini was fighting the Shah from abroad, where he lived as an émigré. Persecuted by the despot, expelled from the country, Khomeini was the idol and conscience of the people. To destroy the myth of Khomeini was to destroy something holy, to shatter the hopes of the wronged and the humiliated. Such exactly was the intention of the article.

  What should one write to ruin an adversary? The best thing is to prove he is not one of us—the stranger, alien, foreigner. To this end we create the category of the true family. We here, you and I, the authorities and the nation, are a true family. We live in unity, among our own kind. We have the same roof over our heads, we sit at the same table, we know how to get along with each other, how to help each other out. Unfortunately, we are not alone. All around us are hordes of strangers, aliens, foreigners who want to destroy our peace and quiet and take over our home. What is a stranger? Above all, a stranger is someone worse than us—and dangerous at the same time. If only he were merely worse, and left well enough alone! Not a chance! He is going to muddy the waters, make trouble, destroy. He is going to set us at odds with each other, make fools of us, break us. The stranger lies in wait for you. He is the cause of your misfortunes. And where does his power come from? From the fact that there are strange (foreign, alien) forces behind him. These forces may be identified or not, but one thing is certain: They are powerful. Or rather, they are powerful if we treat them lightly. If, on the other hand, we remain vigilant and keep fighting, then we will be stronger. Now look at Khomeini. There's a stranger for you. His grandfather came from India, so let's ask ourselves: Whose interest is this foreigner's grandson serving? That was the first part of the article. The second part had to do with health. What a great thing it is that we're healthy! For our true family is also a healthy family. Of sound body and mind. To whom do we owe this health? To our authorities, who have assured us a good, happy life and are therefore the best authorities under the sun. And who could oppose such authorities? Only someone devoid of common sense. Since ours are the best authorities, it would take a madman to fight against them. A sound community must identify such fools and send them away, into isolation. Thus, it's a good thing the Shah expelled him from the country. Otherwise, Khomeini would have had to be locked up in a lunatic asylum.

  When this newspaper article reached Qom, it made the people indignant. They congregated in the streets and the squares. Those who could read read aloud to the others. The commotion drew people into larger and larger groups, shouting and debating—interminable debating is a passion with the Iranians, anywhere, at any time of day or night. The groups most agitated by this incessant talk were like magnets; they kept attracting new listeners, until in the end a massive crowd had assembled in the main square. And that is exactly the thing that the police most dislike. Who gave permission for this great mass? Nobody. No permission has been given. And who gave them permission to shout? To wave their hands around? The police know in advance that these were rhetorical questions and that it was time to get down to business.

  ***

  Now the most important moment, the moment that will determine the fate of the country, the Shah, and the revolution, is the moment when one policeman walks from his post toward one man on the edge of the crowd, raises his voice, and orders the man to go home. The policeman and the man on the edge of the crowd are ordinary, anonymous people, but their meeting has historic significance. They are both adults, they have both lived through certain events, they have both had their individual experiences. The policeman's experience: If I shout at someone and raise my truncheon, he will first go numb with terror and then take to his heels. The experience of the man at the edge of the crowd: At the sight of an approaching policeman I am seized by fear and start running. On the basis of these experiences we can elaborate a scenario: The policeman shouts, the man runs, others take flight, the square empties. But this time everything turns out differently. The policeman shouts, but the man doesn't run. He just stands there, looking at the policeman. It's a cautious look, still tinged with fear, but at the same time tough and insolent. So that's the way it is! The man on the edge of the crowd is looking insolently at uniformed authority. He doesn't budge. He glances around and sees the same look on other faces. Like his, their faces are wa
tchful, still a bit fearful, but already firm and unrelenting. Nobody runs though the policeman has gone on shouting; at last he stops. There is a moment of silence. We don't know whether the policeman and the man on the edge of the crowd already realize what has happened. The man has stopped being afraid—and this is precisely the beginning of the revolution. Here it starts. Until now, whenever these two men approached each other, a third figure instantly intervened between them. That third figure was fear. Fear was the policeman's ally and the man in the crowd's foe. Fear interposed its rules and decided everything. Now the two men find themselves alone, facing each other, and fear has disappeared into thin air. Until now their relationship was charged with emotion, a mixture of aggression, scorn, rage, terror. But now that fear has retreated, this perverse, hateful union has suddenly broken up; something has been extinguished. The two men have now grown mutually indifferent, useless to each other; they can go their own ways. Accordingly, the policeman turns around and begins to walk heavily back toward his post, while the man on the edge of the crowd stands there looking at his vanishing enemy.