Shah of Shahs

by Ryzard Kapuscinski

  The anniversary of the Shah's departure and the fall of the monarchy was approaching. To mark the occasion, the television showed dozens of films about the revolution. In many ways they were all alike. The same pictures and situations recurred. Scenes of an enormous procession always made up Act One. It's difficult to convey the dimensions of such a procession. It is a human river, broad and boiling, flowing endlessly, rolling through the main street from dawn till dusk. A flood, a violent flood that in a moment will engulf and drown everything. A forest of upraised, rhythmically menacing fists, portentous forest. A clamoring throng chanting, Death to the Shah! Very few close-ups of faces. The cameramen are fascinated by the sight of this incipient avalanche; they are stricken by the dimensions of what they see, as if they found themselves at the foot of Everest. Over the last months of the revolution these surging millions marched through the streets of every city. They carried no weapons; their strength lay in their numbers and their ardent, unshakeable determination.

  Act Two is the most dramatic. The cameramen stand on the roofs of buildings, filming the unfolding scene from above, a bird's-eye view. First they show us what's happening in the street. Two tanks and two armored cars are parked there. Soldiers in helmets and bulletproof vests have already taken up firing positions on the sidewalks and road. They wait. Now the cameramen show the approaching demonstration. First it appears in the distant perspective of the street, but soon we'll see it close up. Yes, there's the head of the procession. Men are marching, and women and children, too. They're wearing white, symbolizing readiness to die. The cameramen show us their faces, still alive. Their eyes. The children, already tired but calm, want to see what's going to happen. The crowd, marching directly toward the tanks, never slowing down or stopping—a hypnotized crowd? spellbound? moonstruck?—marches as if it sees nothing, as if wandering across an uninhabited earth, a crowd that at this moment has already begun to enter heaven. Now the picture trembles because the hands of the cameraman are trembling. A thump, shooting, the whizz of bullets, screams coming from the television. Close-ups of soldiers changing clips. Close-up of a tank turret pivoting from left to right. Close-up of an officer, comic relief, his helmet has fallen over his eyes. Close-up of the pavement, and then the image flies violently up the wall of the house across the street, over the roof and the chimney into blank space with only the edge of a cloud visible, and then an empty frame and blackness. The inscription on the screen says this was the last footage shot by the cameraman, but others survived to retrieve and preserve the testimony.

  The last act is the postmortem. The dead are lying here and there, a wounded man is dragging himself toward a gate, ambulances speed past, people are running, a woman is crying, holding out her hands, a thickset, sweaty man is trying to lift someone's body. The crowd has retreated, dispersed, ebbed in chaos, down small side streets. A helicopter skims low over the roofs. The usual traffic has already begun a few blocks away, the everyday life of the city.

  I remember one such scene: Demonstrators are marching. As they pass a hospital, they fall silent. The marchers do not want to disturb the patients. Or another sight: Boys trail at the end of the procession, picking up litter and throwing it into trashcans. The road that the demonstrators have walked on must be clean. A fragment of a film: Children are returning home from school. They hear shooting and run toward the bullets, to where soldiers are firing on demonstrators. The children tear sheets from their notebooks and dip them in the fresh blood on the sidewalks and then, holding the bloody pages aloft, run through the streets displaying them to passers-by, as a warning—Watch out! There's shooting over there! The film from Isfahan was shown several times. A demonstration, a sea of heads, is crossing a vast square. Suddenly the army opens fire from all sides. The crowd rushes to escape amid cries, tumult, disorderly flight, and in the end the square empties. Just at the moment when the last survivors flee out of sight, revealing the naked surface of the enormous square, we notice that a legless invalid in a wheelchair has been left at the very center. He too wants to get away, but one wheel is stuck (the film does not show why). He instinctively hides his head between his arms as bullets are flying all around. Then he desperately works the wheels, but instead of moving, he turns around and around in one spot. It's such a shocking spectacle, the soldiers stop firing for a moment, as if awaiting special orders. Silence. We see a broad, empty vista, deep in the center of which, barely perceptible from this distance, looking like a maimed, dying insect, the crooked figure of a solitary human being is still struggling, as the net tightens and closes. They shoot again, with only one target left. Soon motionless for good, he remained (according to the film's narrator) at the center of the square for an hour or two, like a public monument.

  The cameramen overuse the long shot. As a result, they lose sight of details. And yet it is through details that everything can be shown. The universe in the raindrop. I miss close-ups of the people who march in the demonstrations. I miss the conversations. That man marching in the demonstration, how full of hopes he is! He is marching because he is counting on something. He is marching because he believes he can get something done. He is sure that he will be better off. He is marching, thinking: So, if we win, nobody's going to treat me like a dog anymore. He's thinking of shoes. He'll buy decent shoes for the whole family. He's thinking of a home. If we win, I'll start living like a human being. A new world: He, an ordinary man, is going to know a minister personally and get everything taken care of. But why a minister! We'll form a committee ourselves to run things! He has other ideas and plans, none too precise or distinct, but they're all good, they're all the kind that cheer you up, because they possess the best of attributes: They'll be carried out. He feels high, he feels the power mounting in him, for as he marches he is also participating, taking his destiny into his hands for the first time, taking part for the first time, exerting influence, deciding about something—he is.

  ***

  I once saw a spontaneous march come about. A man was walking down the street leading to the airport; he was singing. It was a song about Allah—Allah Akbar! He had a fine, carrying voice of splendid, moving tone. He was paying attention to nothing and nobody as he walked. I followed him because I wanted to hear him singing. In a moment a handful of children playing in the street joined him and began to sing. Then there was a group of men and, emerging bashfully from the sides, some women. When there were about a hundred marchers, the crowd began to multiply quickly, at a geometric rate, in fact. A crowd draws a crowd, as Canetti remarked. Here they like to be in a crowd, a crowd strengthens them and adds to their importance. They express themselves through the crowd, they seek the crowd, and in a crowd they obviously get rid of something they carry inside themselves when they are alone, something that makes them feel bad.

  On that same street (formerly called Shah Reza and now Engelob) an old Armenian sells spices and dried fruit. Because the inside of the shop is cramped and cluttered, he displays his goods on the sidewalk—bags, baskets, and jars of raisins, almonds, dates, nuts, olives, ginger, pomegranates, plums, pepper, millet, and dozens of other delicacies with names and uses unknown to me. Seen from a distance, against the background of crumbling gray plaster, they look like a rich and colorful palette, like a painting of tasteful and imaginative composition. Moreover, the shopkeeper changes the layout of the colors from day to day: Brown dates lie beside pastel pistachios and green olives—and the next day white almonds have taken the place of the fleshy dates and a pile of pepper pods is burning scarlet where there had been golden millet. Not only for the sake of the sensation do I visit this coloristic design. The daily fate of the exhibition is also a source of information about what's going to happen in politics, for Engelob is the boulevard of demonstrations. If there is no sidewalk display in the morning, then the Armenian is getting ready for a hot day—there will be a demonstration. He would rather hide his fruits and spices than leave them out to be trampled by the crowd. This also means that I have to get down to work and
establish who is going to demonstrate, and for what. If, on the other hand, I can see the Armenian's variegated glowing palette from far down Engelob Street, then I know it's going to be an ordinary, peaceful, uneventful day and I can go with easy conscience to Leon's for a glass of whisky.

  Further down Engelob Street is a baker's that sells fresh, hot bread. Iranian bread is shaped like a big, flat cake. The oven in which these cakes are baked is a hole dug into the ground, ten feet deep, with walls of inlaid clay. A fire burns at the bottom. If a woman betrays her husband, she is thrown into such a well of fire. Razak Naderi, a boy of twelve, works at this bakery. Somebody ought to make a film about Razak. At the age of nine he came to Teheran looking for work, leaving his mother, two younger sisters, and three younger brothers behind in his village near Zanjan, six hundred miles from the capital. From that time on he has had to support his family. He gets up at four and kneels by the oven door. The fire is roaring, and frightful heat pours out of the oven. With a long rod, Razak sticks the loaves on the clay walls and sees they are taken out when they are done. He works this way until nine in the evening. What he makes, he sends to his mother. His possessions consist of a suitcase and the blanket in which he wraps himself at night. Razak continually changes jobs and is often unemployed. He knows that he can blame only himself. After three or four months he simply begins to long for his mother. He struggles against the feeling for a while, but he ends up getting on the bus and returning to his village. He would like to stay with his mother as long as possible, but he knows he cannot—he is the sole support of the family, and he has to work. He goes back to Teheran and finds that someone else has taken his job. So Razak goes to Gomruk Square, the gathering place of the unemployed. This is the cheap labor market, and whoever comes here sells himself for the lowest wages. Yet Razak has to wait a week or two before someone hires him. He stands on the square all day, freezing, soaked, hungry. Finally a man turns up and notices him. Razak is happy; he is working again. But the joy wears off quickly, the sharp longing soon returns, so he returns again to see his mother and returns again to Gomruk Square. Right next to Razak there is the great world of the Shah, the revolution, Khomeini and the hostages. Everybody is talking about it. Yet Razak's world is even bigger. It is so big that Razak roams around it and can't find a way out.

  Engelob Street in autumn and winter, 1978—endless protest demonstrations pass here. The same thing is happening in all the big cities. The revolt is sweeping the country. Strikes begin. Everybody goes on strike; industry and transport stop dead. Despite the tens of thousands of victims, the pressure keeps growing. Yet the Shah stays on the throne, and the palace is not giving in.

  In every revolution, a movement grapples with a structure. The movement attacks the structure, trying to destroy it, while the structure defends itself and tries to extinguish the movement. The two forces, equally powerful, have different properties. The properties of a movement are spontaneity, impulsiveness, dynamic expansiveness—and a short life. The properties of a structure are inertia, resilience, and an amazing, almost instinctive ability to survive. A structure is rather easy to create, and incomparably more difficult to destroy. It can long outlast all the reasons that justified its establishment. Many weak or even fictitious states have been called into being. But states, after all, are structures, and none of them will be crossed off the map. There exists a sort of world of structures, all holding one another up. Threaten one and the others, its kindred, rush to its assistance. The elasticity that helps it to survive is another trait of a structure. Backed into a corner, under pressure, it can suck in its belly, contract, and wait for the moment when it can start expanding again. Interestingly, such renewed expansion always takes place exactly where there had been a contraction. Structures tend toward a return to the status quo, which they regard as the best of states, the ideal. This trait belies the inertia of the structure. The structure is capable of reacting only according to the first program fed into it. Enter a new program—nothing happens, it doesn't react. It will wait for the previous program. A structure can also act like a roly-poly toy: Just when it seems to have been knocked over, it pops back up. A movement unaware of this property of the structure will wrestle with it for a long time, then grow weak, and in the end suffer defeat.

  The theater of the Shah: The Shah was a director who wanted to create a theater on the highest, international level. He liked the audience, he wanted to please. Yet he never knew the true nature of art, never had the imagination and wisdom a director needs, and thought that money and a title were enough. He created an enormous stage on which action could unfold in many places simultaneously. On that stage he decided to mount a play titled The Great Civilization. He imported scenery from abroad for vast sums. There were all sorts of devices, machines, equipment—whole mountains of concrete, cable, and plastic. Many of the props were actual armaments: tanks, planes, rockets. Elated, proud, the Shah strutted across the stage, listening to the paeans and speeches of approval that flowed from a multitude of loudspeakers. The spotlights played across the scenery, and then converged on the figure of the Shah. He stood or walked in their beams. It was a one-character play, and the actor was also the director. Everyone else was an extra. Generals, ministers, distinguished ladies, lackeys—the great court—moved across the upper level of the stage. Below came the intermediate levels, and at the very bottom the extras of the lowest category. These were the most numerous. Enticed by high wages—the Shah had promised them mountains of gold—they flocked into the cities from the poor villages. The Shah was always on stage, monitoring the action and directing the extras. If he made a gesture, the generals would stand at attention, the ministers would kiss his hand, and the ladies would curtsey. When he walked down to one of the lower levels and nodded his head, officials would rush to his presence in the expectation of prizes and promotions. Only rarely and briefly would he appear on the ground floor of the stage. The extras there behaved apathetically. They were lost, oppressed by the city, uncertain of themselves, cheated and exploited. They felt like foreigners amid the unfamiliar scenery, in the hostile aggressive world surrounding them. The only point of reference in the alien landscape was the mosque, for there had also been a mosque in the village. So they went to the mosque.

  The play takes place on several levels at the same time; many things are happening on stage. The scenery begins to move and light up, wheels turn, chimneys smoke, tanks roll back and forth, ministers kiss the Shah, officials hurry after rewards, policemen frown, mullahs talk and talk, extras keep their mouths shut and work. There is more and more crowding and bustle. The Shah walks, beckoning here and pointing a finger there, always in the spotlight. Suddenly confusion breaks out on stage as if everyone had forgotten his part. Yes, they're throwing away the script and making up lines on their own. Revolt in the theater! The spectacle turns into something else, it becomes a violent, rapacious spectacle. The extras from the ground floor, long disenchanted, ill-paid, despised, begin storming the upper levels. Those on the intermediate levels now become rebellious as well and join the ones from the bottom. The black flags of the Shiites appear on stage and the war song of the demonstrators pours from the loudspeakers. Allah Akbar! Tanks roll back and forth, the police open fire. The prolonged cry of the muezzin resounds from the minaret. On the highest level, there is unprecedented confusion. Ministers stuff bags full of banknotes and take flight, ladies grab jewelry boxes and vanish, butlers wander around as though lost. Green-jacketed fedayeens and mujahedeens appear, armed to the teeth. They've taken over the arsenals. The soldiers who used to fire on the crowds now fraternize with the people and stick red carnations in the barrels of their rifles. Candy is strewn over the stage; in the universal joy, shopkeepers are throwing basketsful of sweets to the crowds. Even though it is noon, all the cars have their headlights on. A big assembly is taking place in the cemetery. Everybody is there, weeping for those killed. A mother says that her son, a soldier, committed suicide rather than fire on his brethren, the de
monstrators. The gray-haired Ayatollah Teleghani makes a speech. One by one, the spotlights go out. In the last scene the gem-encrusted peacock throne—the throne of the Shahs—comes down from the top floor to the ground floor in dazzling, many-colored radiance. On the throne sits an extraordinary, outsized figure of majestic sublimity, radiating a stunning brilliance of its own. Its hands and feet, its head and its body, are connected to wires and cables. The sight of this figure overpowers us, we dread it, we feel a reflex that would bring us to our knees. But a group of electricians comes on stage, unplugging the cables and cutting the wires. The brilliance begins to fade, and the figure itself grows smaller and more ordinary. Finally the electricians step aside and an elderly, slim man, indeed the kind of gentleman we might encounter at a movie, in a café, or in a line, rises from the throne, brushes his suit, straightens his tie, and walks off stage on his way to the airport.