I felt the tension for the first time at the beginning of September 1978 when we reached the Turko-Iranian border on our way home from our summer trip to the UK. We were travelling in dad’s brand-new dark-red Ford Taunus, the same car that had brought Mum, Aunt Marjaneh, my two-year-old sister Golnar and me all the way from the UK to Iran via France, Italy, Yugoslavia, Bulgaria and Turkey. My parents planned to go to the UK every summer so that I could keep practising my English and they could visit their friends. But this was not to be. Our first summer holiday in Europe was to be our last for many years to come. That summer was going to change many plans. The Islamic Revolution was on its way.
My parents had no way of knowing what was going on in Iran. The Internet, mobile phones and satellite TV were yet to be invented and there was no radio in our car. It was there, at the border, that we realized something was up. Dad returned to the car after talking to a young man in Customs, flushed with anxiety and rage. He bent to whisper to Mum: a cinema had burnt down in Abadan while screening the Iranian film The Deer and 300 people had burnt to death.
The journey from the border to my grandfather’s house in Tehran took two days through the mountains, fields and deserts of Iran. I hadn’t travelled much in Iran before and it was my first glimpse of the complete range of landscapes, from the high, cold mountain roads and the eternally green fields of the north to the burning desert sun of Qazvin. Dad drove all the way without stopping for a night’s sleep. We slept in the car while he drove and Mum and Aunt Marjaneh took turns during the night to keep Dad Company and make sure he didn’t fall asleep at the wheel. Mum insisted a few times that we pull over and sleep for a few hours in a hotel but dad refused. He was very concerned about the situation and wanted to get to Tehran as fast as possible. After weeks of living in the car, fed up with sleeping and eating in it, I wanted to get home too. Dad thought it would be a good experience for us to drive through all those countries but I didn’t find it interesting anymore; all I wanted was my own bed to sleep in. Eventually, dad stopped the car in front of Hadj-Agha’s house. He was my maternal grandfather and we were going to stay with him for a few days before moving into the new flat that dad had rented from friends.
No sooner had we arrived than we heard that Khomeini, in exile in Iraq, had issued a statement blaming the Shah for the tragedy in the cinema. I don’t remember how he related this incident to the Shah but people believed him; they always believed what a mullah said and, since the film was critical of the regime and advocated armed resistance against its tyranny, it seemed plausible enough. This incident was the trigger that ignited the rage of the nation against the regime, a rage that would accumulate over the next few months and explode with the sudden overthrow of 2,500 years of Iranian monarchy.
That was the first time I heard the name Ruhollah Khomeini. Twenty days later, something else happened. The police had opened fire against a demonstration in Tehran’s Jaleh Square and killed a great many people: some said 4,000, others 90,000. Everyone was enraged. Unfamiliar with the notion of death, I couldn’t understand why. But that state of innocence was soon to be lost. Only a few days later Mum took me to school to enrol me in the second grade and someone mentioned that Charlie Chaplin was dead. This was someone I knew, someone who made me laugh—and I understood death for the first time.
The next two months are a blur. My clearest memory is of the tension: the tension in the air, rank with a mixture of fear and bravado. And the red slogans on the walls: ‘death to the Shah!’ ‘Hail to Khomeini!’ And the twisted faces of the people who were afraid to speak to one another and who wondered how this drama was going to end.
Then, all of a sudden, the silence broke and the vibrations in the air turned into a storm . . . The main Bazaar, the heart of the Iranian economy, along with all the schools, universities and hundreds of shops and other businesses, went on a national strike. I didn’t fully appreciate what was going on except for the joy of not having to go to school any more. It was a second summer holiday, although it also meant that I was not going to see my very best friend, Azadeh. We sat beside one another, we studied together and we chatted between classes. I still remember her dark curly hair and her brilliant mathematical mind: she could do the most complicated sums in her head, without putting pen to paper. When the schools shut down I didn’t get a chance to say goodbye nor did I have her phone number. We took our time together for granted; when you are a child, everything seems eternal. I would discover all too soon just how wrong we were.
My father and his friends got together every night, endlessly discussing the changes over vodka and cigarettes. Sometimes, they listened to Khomeini’s fiery speeches, recorded on audiocassettes and smuggled into the country through Kuwait or Iraq. They were excited and happy, eager to be a part of what was happening. I remember some of them: Reza Company, an electrical engineer, and Hormoz, a lecturer in electronics, both members of the Tudeh (People) Communist Party; and Bahram, a nationalist like dad.
I found it hard to understand why everyone hated the Shah. At school we’d been taught that the Shah was our nation’s loving father; he cared about all his children and shed tears whenever he heard of a citizen in distress. We also sang the National Anthem every morning: ‘Long live our king of kings, for whose grace the country stands forever . . .’ But dad disagreed and finally expressed his contempt when he heard me humming the Anthem one day. I felt his hand on my shoulder and when I turned back I saw ‘the look’ in his eyes. He was very angry.
‘Arash, the Shah is bad!’ he said. ‘We don’t want him to live long! He has killed many young people, he doesn’t let people talk, he has sold our homeland to America, he has ruined the country. I don’t want my son to sing this cursed anthem.’
‘Then what should I sing, dad?’
It was then that he taught me ‘Oh, Iran’, a song by the poet Gol-e Golab, written during the Second World War when Iran was occupied by British and Russian forces. Although it never was, nor would ever become, the official anthem of Iran, it has always been considered so by the people.
Oh Iran, oh bejewelled land
Oh, your soil is the wellspring of the arts
Far from you may the thoughts of evil be
May you remain lasting and eternal
. . .
Since your love became my calling
My thoughts are never far from you
When I returned to England after Neda’s death in June 2009, to testify to her death and to finish the course in publishing I had begun in Oxford the previous year, my Italian friend Nina told me, ‘I can’t believe it! These Iranians on the streets are being killed, beaten, detained, tortured, but they’re not giving up!’
‘Yes, I know,’ I answered briefly, and left. Late for an appointment with my professor, I didn’t have time to explain that this was part of the package of being Iranian. I couldn’t tell her that Iran is not a mere country to Iranians but a concept that unites them regardless of ethnicity, dialect or religion. As an identity it is both a blessing and a curse; it is also a dream that has helped the nation endure a history full of struggles, the only dream worth dying for. Iran is a proud and stubborn nation. I couldn’t tell Nina that the Iranians were already ‘Irani’ when the Aryans began their long migration south from the frozen lands of Siberia 4,000 years ago. Some left for the Indian peninsula, some settled in the green lands of Central Asia and some others entered the plateau that is today called Iran, ‘the land of the Aryans’. This land has been invaded and destroyed several times over the past 2,500 years, yet throughout a succession of occupations by Assyrians, Greeks, Romans, Arabs, Mongols, Turks, British and Russians, the people have remained Iranians. Four hundred years after the Arab occupation they revived their language. When they realized that they could not resist the might of the Arabs and that they must either accept Islam or die, they transformed it into Shiism, a religion more compatible with their own Zoroastrian and Manichaean beliefs. Unlike many other ancient civilizations conquered by the Arabs, the Iranians never ‘became’ Arabs nor did they accept Arabic as their native language. Today, they speak the same language in which their beloved poets Roudaki, Firdowsi and Khayyam wrote their poems more than a millennium ago.
‘Iranian’ is not a nationality but a way of life. It would stretch Nina’s credibility if I told her that the Iranians, in keeping with Zarathustra’s 3,000-year-old teachings—that their only choice lay between being a Soldier of darkness or a Warrior of Light— still believed in the eternal battle between Good and Evil. They had to choose and their decisions would determine the outcome of the war. Dying on this battlefield is the highest honour for an Iranian. That is why, over the past century, Iran has witnessed at least four major uprisings and a war: the Constitutional Revolution of 1905–11; the uprising in defence of Prime Minister Mosadeq in 1953; the Islamic Revolution of 1979; the war with Iraq from 1980 to 1988 and the 2009 uprising against the fraudulent presidential election.
But let’s go back to 1978.
The Shah, deciding in desperation to suppress the riots, appointed one of his generals as the new prime minister and initiated a curfew after dark. Khomeini, who had moved from Iraq to Paris, directed the people to shout ‘Allah-o Akbar’ (God is Great) from the rooftops every night at 9 in protest against the curfew. People obeyed, including my father and his friends, none of whom were even remotely religious. Khomeini also asked the soldiers to either defect or join the civilians. It was then that Uncle Reza, Mum’s brother doing his military service, defected and went into hiding so that he would not be forced to take up arms against the people.
It was a joy to go up to the rooftops every night; we knew all our neighbours would be there, shouting ‘Allah-o Akbar’ and sharing the latest jokes about the Shah or his prime minister. We children were allowed to stay up past our bedtimes and join our parents on the roof. We lived in a flat in a two-storey building that my father had rented from an old friend and university colleague; he lived on the first floor with his family and his son Kami and his daughter Nazi were my friends. We played on the roof while our parents laughed and shouted; every once in a while we joined in the ‘Allah-o Akbar’, too.
‘Why are you shouting “Allah-o Akbar”?’ I once asked dad. ‘You’re not religious!’
‘We have to show this tyrant king that his commands are no longer valid in this country,’ he responded. ‘We have to show him that we are many and that we are united.’
Thirty years later, Mir-Hussein Mousavi invited the people of Iran to do the same thing every night, to show their outrage at the 2009 election fraud and to protest against the tyranny of the regime. Ironically, shouting ‘Allah-o Akbar’ from the rooftops was banned in 2009 by the same regime that was born from these shouts 30 years earlier. Even more ironic was that while the Shah merely ignored the shouts, the police of the Islamic Republic attacked our homes and arrested our people.
A few days later, General Azhari, the new prime minister, was questioned by the press about the nocturnal shouting. ‘I have been investigating the case,’ he answered. ‘I was even out last night. Those are not real people shouting: they are only a few playing “Allah-o Akbar” tapes.’ The idiocy of his comments further inflamed the people. Invited by Khomeini to rally in the streets on the day of Ashura, to prove to Azhari that, in fact, the people against the Shah were not so few, they responded in force.
Ashura is the most important day in the Shia lunar calendar and one of the most significant annual events in Iran. It is the anniversary of Imam Hussein’s martyrdom about 1,300 years ago. Imam Hussein was the son of Imam Ali and the grandson of the Prophet Muhammad. When he defied the tyranny of Caliph Yazid, he and 71 of his friends and family were massacred in an unequal battle near Karbala, south of Baghdad in today’s Iraq. Since then, every year, Shia Muslims honour this day by mourning for Imam Hussein. For the Iranians, he is the ultimate symbol of the battle between Good and Evil, of resistance and bravery and of the fight to the death for an ideal.
Dad took me to the enormous Ashura demonstrations of 1978.Though practically no one stayed indoors, Hadj-Agha was one of the few who did. A zealous believer and a self-taught Muslim scholar with a deep knowledge of Islam, he was not happy with the Islamic movement led by the clerics. He was also a fierce critic of Khomeini. He owned a prestigious Islamic bookshop near the main Bazaar, which was also a meeting place for religious scholars and clerics. Almost everyone in the book industry and in religious circles believed him to be the absolute authority in the field of Islamic books. He was the one who cautioned Mum and my aunt each time they left the house to join the demonstrations.
‘You don’t know these mullahs as I do. You shouldn’t trust them.’
Once he told me a story about his encounter with Khomeini. They had met in the late 1950s when they were both middle-aged and Khomeini was only one mullah among many. Khomeini had gone to Hadj-Agha’s bookshop and asked for a particular book. Hadj-Agha brought it out and criticized the author’s point of view. Khomeini frowned and told Hadj-Agha that he was not supposed to talk about such delicate matters; that he had better take care of his bookshop instead of meddling with specialist fields. Hadj-Agha remained silent for a second, and then said: ‘I know as much as you about these matters. The only difference is that I am working hard to earn a decent living. You’ve never done a day’s work in your life! You prefer to exploit people’s religion for your livelihood.’ Khomeini threw the book on the counter and stormed out. I like to imagine that it was then that Khomeini decided to be more than a mullah; to be, rather, a political leader.
Nonetheless, Hadj-Agha was also a fundamentalist. He forced my mother to leave school when she was 16 despite all her tearful pleas to be allowed to study for a few more years. He believed that girls weren’t supposed to study beyond a certain level; although when it came to Aunt Marjaneh, four years younger than Mum, he changed his mind in the light of the current feminist movements and decided to let her go to university. He even paid for her stay in Cambridge while she studied English.
But Mum was forced to marry when she was 17. She had to choose between several suitors and she chose dad only because he promised to allow and help her study for as long as she wished. But Mum soon became pregnant; I was born and then they had to move to the UK. She attended an art college in Birmingham for a while but she had to wait a few more years for her high-school diploma.
Hadj-Agha was furious with dad for naming me after Arash instead of after an Islamic hero such as Ali or Muhammad; he believed these pagan names would propagate heresy in Iran. He always teased me by saying that Arash wasn’t a hero at all: a proper hero wouldn’t die after simply shooting an arrow. According to him, Imam Ali was the real hero: he could decapitate 700 heretics and traitors in only a day!
Anyway, there we were in the crowd on the day of Ashura 1978. I had never seen so many people in the same place asking for the same thing—neither had the rest of the world. It was said to be the biggest protest meeting in history. Millions of people marched from 24 Esfand Square to Shahyad Square. Given the multitude of people, the police were advised not to interfere. Men and women walked in separate clusters. The most important thing I noticed was the dramatic change of fashion among women. Those young girls who had appeared in tight jeans or miniskirts and fashionable hairstyles just the day before were now completely covered in Islamic hijabs, chadors or headscarves, even those who, like my mother, didn’t usually observe the hijab. Khomeini was now the official leader of the anti-Shah movement and people strongly believed that Islam was their last resort and only saviour.
There was more diversity among the men: they wore fashionable bell-bottoms, long, pointed shirt collars and sported the layered hair and sideburns popular in the 1970s. I could also see men with short hair and beards that marked them as zealous Islamists; they were in their mid-30s and mid-40s and wore long-sleeved shirts with or without a jacket—short sleeves were far too immodest for the likes of them. I could also see unshaven older men who wore the brimless, rounded Kufi hat and who were immediately identifiable as the true followers of Khomeini. It was a sea of diversity among the men and a wave of uniformity among the women.
When I could no longer walk, dad carried me on his shoulders and we continued towards our destination. He believed it was something I had to witness because he thought it unlikely that such a thing would ever happen again. The Shah was doomed and victory was close.
But he was wrong. Thirty years later, on 15 June 2009, I saw and was part of an even larger demonstration at the same place. There were differences, of course. For one thing, the names had changed: 24 Esfand was now Enghelab (Revolution) Square and Shahyad was Azadi (Freedom) Square. But the changes in the people were more drastic: this time men and women walked together, and the diversity was more evident among the women despite the fact that they were all forced to wear the hijab, the legacy of their mothers. In 1978, women chose to abandon their freedom to dress as they pleased; in 2009, women were struggling to regain this very freedom.
I remember most of the chants and slogans at the Ashura rally. The most popular was also the most amusing: in response to Azhari’s stupid remark about the nightly ‘Allah-o Akbar’, people shouted: ‘Azhari, you idiot, tell us if we are tapes now! Tapes don’t walk in the streets, you four-starred ass!’ Other slogans were simpler and more to the point: ‘down with the Shah!’ ‘Hail to Khomeini!’ ‘Independence, Liberty, Islamic Revolution’.
But there were significant differences between the many chants and slogans. The communist guerrillas sang the Persian version of ‘El pueblo, unido, jamas sera vencido’ (The People, united, shall never be defeated); the Mujahideen-e Khalgh or the People’s Mujahideen, a group that followed an ideology based on an incompatible mixture of Islam and Marxism, sang: ‘I swear by the name of freedom, I swear by the name of your last moments, that your path will be our path, oh martyrs’; the Islamists chanted ‘Allah Allah Allah, Allah-o Akbar, La Ilaha Illallah’. Some people simply walked quietly, and there were others, including dad, who cherry-picked the slogans. He would shout ‘down with the Shah!’ but remained silent when others hailed Khomeini or asked for the Islamic Revolution. When I asked him why, he simply answered that he didn’t believe in Khomeini.
‘So why are you here with all these people who love him?’ I asked.
‘After the Shah is gone, we will be free and people can choose whoever and whatever they want. That is the meaning of democracy. No one man will have all the power: the power belongs to the people, even the minority.’
He was wrong, again.
I couldn’t care less about the freedom of our nation at the moment as I was furiously trying to regain my individual freedom from dad. Star Wars: A New Hope was on at the cinema and all my friends had been to watch it. Mum and dad, fearing a repeat of the Cinema Rex tragedy in Abadan, refused to let me go. I begged them, with tears in my eyes but they were unrelenting. I listened enviously to friends who chatted about the film, about Darth Vader’s outfit and all the strange creatures and robots. This to me was the cruellest thing parents could do to their children—deny them what their peers had the right to know—and for that I couldn’t forgive them.
Confronted with the huge uprising, the Shah sacked General Azhari and appointed a new prime minister. Shapour Bakhtiar was a moderate member of the Nationalist Front and one of the followers of Dr Mosadeq, the popular prime minister of the 1950s. After nationalizing Iranian oil and winning his case against the UK at the International Court of Justice, he organized a semi-coup and forced the Shah to leave the country only to be counter-attacked by US forces who overthrew him and returned the Shah to his throne. This incident was the main source of anti-US feeling among Iranians. If the people wanted a change of regime, insisted Bakhtiar, it should happen through a referendum. But Khomeini declared that it was too late and demanded Bakhtiar’s immediate resignation if he wanted to be accepted by the Revolution. Bakhtiar attempted to encourage the people to accept a democratic process but in vain. It was all over for the Shah—he now had to reap what he had sown for the past 30 years: the suppression of the media, the torture and execution of any man or woman who opposed him and his ironfisted rule of the country. Weary, the people no longer wanted the reinstatement of a constitutional monarchy.
On 16 January 1979, I was at my aunt’s. I was playing in the alley with my cousins Kazem, Soussan, Soheila and their neighbour Ahmadreza, a few years older than I, who was encouraging us to write slogans—‘death to the Shah’ and ‘Hail to Khomeini’—on the walls with our crayons. Suddenly, dad’s dark-blue Peugeot 304 turned into the narrow alley and screeched to a halt. He jumped out of the car, flushed with excitement and smiling from ear to ear. Crushing me in a bear hug, he shouted: ‘Arash, the Shah is gone!’
It was a simple piece of news that had seized the city: ‘The Shah is gone.’ ‘Shah Raft’ was the headline in every newspaper in the country, printed in the biggest, boldest typeface and celebrated by a veritable tsunami of people in the streets dancing and shouting ‘The Shah is gone!’
Dad took me home to pick up the rest of the family. Aunt Marjaneh was staying with us but suffering from a bad back ever since the long trip from the UK. Hence no one expected her to join us on our celebratory trip. But she began to cry; she had always dreamt of this day and now she couldn’t be part of it. So dad helped her down the stairs and adjusted the car seat to let her lean back in a comfortable position. And we set off to celebrate the Shah’s flight into exile.
People wore hats made of newspapers with the headline ‘The Shah is gone’ and danced and chanted as they wiped the city clean of every symbol that reminded them of the reign of the Pahlavi dynasty. Pictures of the Shah were pulled down and burnt and statues of the Shah and his father, Reza Shah, were smashed to pieces. With the rest of the country that night, I witnessed one of the greatest collective festivals of our nation.
Unfortunately, it was also going to be the last time that the people of Iran would partake of such unanimous and unadulterated joy.
The Shah left the country on 16 January 1979. Khomeini returned from exile two weeks later, on 1 February, and went to the holy city of Qom to choose his government.
On 9 February, all my father’s friends gathered at our home. The Revolution had almost succeeded. The Army had joined the people on Khomeini’s order. People had taken control of the infantry and were now armed. The only barrier between the people and the final victory was the Immortal Guard, or Javidan, the main unit of the Imperial Guard named after the ancient Persian royal guard or Persian Immortals, and National Television, which had been totally under the regime’s control. My friend Kami and I were in the living room, in front of the TV, waiting for the weekly Rangarang show that broadcast clips of the latest Iranian pop music. But the TV was only broadcasting classical music: no news, no shows, not even a presenter. Kami decided to call the TV channel; after many attempts, someone finally answered.
‘Excuse me, sir, why isn’t the Rangarang show on air?’
After listening for a few seconds, he hung up in silence.
‘What did they say?’ I asked, excited.
‘He said what a stupid boy I was to call at this point asking for a stupid show. He said that they were “in a bloodbath”. What’s a bloodbath?’
The final battle took place on 10 February. Armed civilians had already confronted the Immortal Guard and the streets were red with blood. Mum, Golnar and I were not allowed to leave the house but dad left early in the morning. Later, I realized that he had been driving the university ambulance all day, taking wounded people to hospitals; he had nearly been shot, too.
But there was more terrible news on the way. Dad did not come home until late. When the phone began to ring violently— in those days it was hard to interpret any movement, sound or image as non-violent—I answered it. It was Agha-djoon asking for dad in a strange tone of voice that I couldn’t quite understand. Later that night, when dad finally came home soaked in the blood of God knows how many murdered civilians, his eyes the blood of God knows how many murdered civilians, his eyes year-old uncle, had been shot by the Immortal Guard in front of his bakery while trying to save a wounded protester. He had died on the spot. A photo of Uncle Habib’s body in the morgue, lying alongside two other ‘martyrs’ of the Revolution killed on the same day, was published in the press the following morning. That sight of his pale, naked and lifeless body introduced me to the gruesome face of death, a face I was destined to live with. This was the first of many deaths I would face in my life.
The people finally took over the TV and the next day the first thing we heard was the excited voice of a guerrilla declaring, ‘From now on you will hear the real voice of the people and the Revolution.’ Khomeini called that day, 11 February, ‘The day of Allah’ and declared the end of 2,500 years of monarchy in Iran and the beginning of the reign of Islam, a new era in which the people would control their own destinies. Kami and I, on the other hand, had no idea that we would never see Rangarang or any other kind of pop music on TV for many years to come.
I began to look for Azadeh as soon as I arrived in the school yard on that cold morning in February 1979. I had just turned nine. I was happy to be back after the long strike, to be able to see my classmates again, especially Azadeh, and to be able to play in the yard. I was also happy because my parents were happy. Although I still couldn’t realize the full extent of the change, I clearly felt that the tension in the air had been lifted, a good enough reason to be happy.
I wanted to share this happiness with Azadeh. No one knew why she wasn’t there since none of us had been in touch during the strike. I thought that perhaps her family was away and had not managed to return in time for school and I tried to cling to this theory in order to deal with the disappointment of not seeing her. Then the bell rang and we were called to stand in line. We wondered what was going to happen; in the past, this was when we had to chant ‘Long live our king of kings’ but there were no kings left to pray for.
I was asking my friend who stood behind me in the line about Azadeh, when the sound of a strange song in a different language interrupted me. A fifth grader on the balcony beside the headmaster was reciting some verses from the Quran. We were supposed to stand in silence and listen to those Arabic words whose meaning completely eluded us.
When it was over, the headmaster, a middle-aged, bald man, took the microphone, thanked the boy and invited him to leave the balcony. Then he began to talk about the changes. He welcomed us back to school and then went on to tell us how important this Revolution and our new-found freedom were. He said that, henceforth, instead of chanting that evil anthem of the previous regime, we would listen to a few uplifting verses of the Holy Quran every day and . . . I lost track of his words. He talked for half an hour while we stood there, shivering in the cold. We soon began to yawn and shuffle our feet. I began to tease the girl in front of me; others shared jokes or planned games for the break after the first class. And then, suddenly, we realized that the headmaster was silent. We looked up at him again and saw lines of deep sorrow marking his face. My heart began to pound. The students fell silent, as if they had realized that the most important part of the speech was yet to come.
‘This freedom has not been achieved without the sacrifices of thousands of martyrs, whose blood has washed this land free of the devil’s footprint,’ the headmaster shouted, trying to hide his emotions. ‘Our school, too, has lost an angel in this battle for Freedom and Justice.’
I felt I could no longer breathe.
‘Azadeh, your classmate, was shot last week while she was with her father in the street. She is one of the martyrs to whom we owe . . .’
I seemed to have frozen at the words. The headmaster’s voice translating a verse from the Quran echoed in my ears, a verse we were destined to hear hundreds of times over the next decade, ‘Think not of those who are slain in Allah’s way as dead. Nay, they live, finding their sustenance in the presence of their Lord.’
How can I describe the feelings of a child who realizes that he has lost his beloved friend? I was filled with a deep and overwhelming hatred. The Shah disgusted me—he had killed my Azadeh, he had killed Uncle Habib. It was then that I knew why the people hated him so and why they demanded his death in their angry shouts. The coward who claimed to be the Father of the Nation had killed my Azadeh to keep his throne. I couldn’t cry because of the immense void that opened up within me. I felt as if someone had ripped out my heart.
I couldn’t go back to school the next day or the day after; a high fever burnt me up from within. I couldn’t believe that Azadeh was no more. So this then was death: when there is no chance left to see a loved one again. No, it wasn’t death. Perhaps death would be easier. This was grief. I never really understood how she died. A stray bullet on the street had hit her and that was all I ever knew. Despite my parents’ care and the visits to the doctor, it was Madar who saved me from going mad. She was there for me through it all, telling me stories about Heaven and how wonderful it was: no one had to go to school or wash their hands or brush their teeth; children were turned into little angels with wings. I could talk to Azadeh in my prayers; and each time I prayed her wings would grow a little more until, one day, she could fly back to our world and see if I were all right.
And I believed her. That’s how I survived. After a few months I could no longer remember Azadeh’s face, no matter how hard I tried, but I continued to pray for her. Every night at first, then every other night, then every week, then every once in a while, until I grew up and realized that no wings were large enough to help her fly back to me. And after a few years it was too late anyway; I had lost my faith in angels.
This was how our generation entered childhood, baptized in death and hatred. We learnt about death even before we had a chance to learn about life. We were told that when the Hidden Imam emerged, accompanied by his 313 supporters and riding on his horse, he would slay all the infidels in the world and he wouldn’t stop shedding blood until the waves of blood lapped against his saddle. It was imprinted on our flesh and written into our bones that today might be our last day on earth and that we must make the most of it.
Islam had taken over. The revolutionaries broke the prison gates and released the political prisoners while thousands of convicted criminals seized this opportunity to flee. Khomeini appointed Mehdi Bazargan, a religious liberal nationalist, as provisional prime minister while a new constitution was being written. Then, in the blink of an eye, he founded the ‘Committees’—a parallel police force controlled by the revolutionaries who did not trust the official police—and the Revolutionary Court which was made responsible for trying the officials of the Shah’s regime or the ‘traitors to the nation’ as they were called.
Then the arrests began. Former ministers and prime ministers, generals, heads and agents of SAVAK—Sazeman-e Ettela’at va Amniyat-e Keshvar, the National Intelligence and Security Organization—and other officials who had not managed to flee the country in time were arrested within a few days and taken to the Revolutionary Court. The trials were fast and ruthless. Almost all the detained officials were accused of being ‘corruptors on earth’, the ultimate accusation in Islam and one that demanded the death penalty, a fate that befell most of the new political prisoners.
People lingered over every photograph showing the bullet riddled bodies of the ‘traitors’ lying in the morgue. No one appeared to be critical of these arbitrary executions; everyone was convinced that they had been served their due. I certainly agreed: these were the people responsible for Azadeh’s death. We children cut out pictures of the executed pro-Shah traitors and collected them without comprehending the meaning of execution. We were taught to celebrate these deaths: the disciples of Lucifer slain by the Angel of Justice. We had no idea that this dreadful death would soon come knocking at our own doors.
No one knew exactly what was meant by an Islamic Republic but more than 98 per cent of the people voted for it on 1 April 1979, in the so-called Spring of Freedom, merely because Imam Khomeini had said, in reply to discussions on the nature of the future regime, ‘I say Islamic Republic: not a word more, not a word less.’
This wasn’t the only concept invented by the new leader; he also came up with the Velayat-e Faqih (Rule of the Islamic Jurisprudent; a faqih is an Islamic jurist). No one knew what this meant either but the people voted for it all the same when they opted for a constitution based on this concept. By the time they understood what it really meant—that an Islamic government should be ruled by a Shiite faqih acting as a vicar for the Hidden Imam during his Occultation—it was too late. This faqih, whose power is said to come directly from God and whom the people may only identify or recognize rather than elect, is the omnipotent ruler of the country. The Vali-e Faqih or Supreme Leader is identified by a council of faqihs whose members are elected by the people. However, the candidates have to be first approved by the Guardian Council, another council of faqihs whose members are, unsurprisingly, chosen by none other than the Leader himself. This closed circuit offers no options for disqualifying the Supreme Leader. He—it could never be a she—has the authority to make legal decisions within the confines of Islamic law. He also has absolute control over every political, judicial, legislative, economic, social and cultural decision in the country. He has the power to suspend the Constitution and some of the Islamic Laws (Sharia) if he sees fit. The Supreme Leader is endowed with the same authority that the Hidden Imam would have after emerging from his centuries of Occultation.
People were so intoxicated with joy at the abolition of the monarchy and the fall of the Shah, and so hypnotized by the charisma of Khomeini, that they did not realize what they were doing: they were replacing a constitutional monarchy (with limited power) by an absolute monarchy. They were giving their ruler free reign over their lives, they who had fought so hard to win their freedom.
The last two months of school were over before we knew it. We were ordered by our teachers to tear out the first pages of our schoolbooks, the ones containing portraits of the Shah and the Royal Family, and to burn them in the school yard. Other pages relating stories of the Shah and his kindness were to be dealt with in the same way. Two of the three TV channels had been shut down. Since most of the station’s staff had been sacked and there had been as yet no time for restructuring, the one remaining channel broadcast for only three hours a day and its repertoire consisted almost entirely of news bulletins, recitations from the Quran and revolutionary songs.
At the beginning of the summer, when Mum finally got her high-school diploma and was admitted to an undergraduate course in nursing, we moved to a larger house with a swimming pool in North Tehran. The only reason dad could afford the rent was that the owner of the house had fled Iran for fear of being arrested as a collaborator with the Shah’s regime and he had been looking for a decent family to take care of the belongings he was leaving behind in the cellar. That house, with its swimming pool and large garden full of fruit trees, marked a new period in my life: for a while, at least, I was happy. It was also during this summer that I met Imam Khomeini.
Madar, who wanted to help me forget the tragedy of Azadeh, believed I should stay with her in the city of Qom for a while. But dad disagreed. While Madar believed religion would help me endure the pain better, dad believed that family rather than religion should be my source of strength. Then Madar played her trump card: if I went with her to Qom, she would take me to meet Imam Khomeini. This was an offer I could not resist; it would silence my classmates forever. And I had a most important request for the Imam.
Dad finally agreed to let me go with Madar. We set off very early in the morning to avoid the intolerable summer heat. We changed buses twice before we reached Tehran’s South Bus Terminal where we bought two tickets for Qom. Madar bought a sandwich and a drink for me, and we were on our way.
Between Tehran and Qom lies a desert, a yellow sandscape that extends in every direction until it meets the cloudless blue sky. Buses then did not have air-conditioning; as soon as the sun came up, everyone began to perspire and had to fan themselves. It was the day before Ramadan and everyone was in a state of high excitement at the thought of beginning the month of fasting in the Holy City of Qom. Every so often, someone would shout: ‘Salawat for the health of Imam Khomeini!’ or ‘Salawat for the health of the driver!’ or ‘Salawat for your own health!’ Salawat may be loosely translated as ‘blessings’ but it actually refers to a specific kind of prayer that is very important to the Shiites. Whenever someone shouted ‘Salawat’, all the passengers followed it with ‘Oh God, let your blessings be upon Muhammad and his family.’ The Sunnis only use the first part; they do not mention Muhammad’s family for they do not believe in the transmission of sanctity from father to son. This is the source of a major conflict between the Shiites and the Sunnis.
When the Prophet Muhammad died in Ad632, a dispute broke out over his successor. Those who were to become the Shiites—the followers of Ali—believed that, shortly before his death, Muhammad had publicly named Ali, his son-in-law and cousin, as his successor and the first Muslim Caliph. Those who went on to become the Sunnis claimed that Muhammad had never nominated a successor. As Ali was arranging the Prophet’s funeral, another group met to choose Abu-Bakr, the Prophet’s father-in-law and one of his closest companions, as Caliph. Since then, the followers of the Prophet have been divided into the Shiites, who believe Ali was the successor chosen by God, and the Sunnis, who believe the Caliph should be chosen by the elite. The Shiites, especially the Twelver Shiites, believe that Ali and the 11 descendants of Muhammad (the Imams) through his daughter Fatima Zahra and Ali carried the true legacy of the Prophet; that they were immaculate like the Prophet and that they remain the true governors of the Muslim world. According to the Shiites, the direct descendants of the Prophet should be venerated and be paid the highest respect. A male descendant is known as sayyed(‘Master’ or ‘Lord’) and a female is known as sayyedeh, and they represent a form of Islamic aristocracy.
Our family is part of this group and my father is designated ‘Sayyed Jalal’ rather than merely ‘Jalal’ on any of his Id. But, being a sceptic, he refused to use the title when registering my name. It wasn’t even an Iranian title, he was quick to point out, but an Arab one.
Khomeini was a sayyed and this lineage nourished the prophecy-stricken minds of the public who had been waiting for more than a thousand years for a son of the Prophet to come forth and shake the pillars of earthly tyranny. Not surprisingly, and unlike dad, being a sayyedeh meant a lot to Madar. The title confers a certain authority and people would, by and large, trust those who bore it. She believed that as true carriers of the Prophet’s blood as well as Ali’s, we had a responsibility to be there for our people, to care for them and to help them when they were in need.
Many years later, after the extraordinary success of Dan Brown’s The Da Vinci Code, my wife Maryam asked me to tell her the story; she didn’t have time to read it herself. I explained that the author claimed that Jesus Christ had not been celibate; that he had fathered a child, whose bloodline still existed and that the mythical Holy Grail represented this bloodline. Maryam laughed and said, ‘Really? That’s what it’s all about? He’s simply introducing the concept of sayyed into Christianity! That too at the beginning of the twenty-first century when even we have begun to rid ourselves of these superstitions!’
The sayyeds were granted the right to use a green shawl or hat as a mark of their unique lineage, green being the colour of the Prophet’s family. It was the colour Mir-Hussein Mousavi, also a sayyed and one of the supposedly ‘unsuccessful’ candidates at the 2009 presidential election, chose for his campaign. Rapidly taken up by his followers, it turned into a symbol of the protest that rose up against the electoral fraud and which was later transformed into a general call for democracy. According to Shiite believers, green reflects the true nature of Islam—peace and prosperity—and thus was chosen as the symbol of this concept 1,400 years before the foundation of Greenpeace, dedicated to environmental activism.
The only exception to this ‘wearing of the green’ was among the mullahs: mullahs who were sayyeds used a black turban to distinguish themselves from the others who wore white.
This was how Madar began my initiation into the Shiite faith through the stifling heat of that long journey across the endless desert. But it helped to take my mind off the mirage of a distant sea on the horizon that constantly appeared and disappeared. We passed a large whiteness in the desert which Madar told me was the Salt Lake, a small lake surrounded by a thick layer of salt left from Tethys, the ocean that had covered Iran around 90 million years ago. This white field and the frequent ‘Salawats’ of the passengers were to be our only distractions on the road; hence my attentiveness to Madar’s stories on the way.
After two hours of that brutal journey, a change in the scenery was greeted by joyous shouts and incessant ‘Salawats’: the Golden dome had appeared on the horizon, a tangible replacement for the recurrent illusion of the sea. This, I realized, was the highlight of the pilgrimage: the travellers had endured the heat, the boredom, the bumpy road and the alarming noises of the coach’s engine just for this glimpse of the Golden dome of Holy Masoumah. We had arrived!
A few years later, when the motorway between Tehran and Qom was opened, the journey became much shorter and easier, especially as the coaches and cars were now air-conditioned and there were more service stops on the way. But this modernization seemed to take away the magic of that first glimpse of the Golden dome long before one actually arrived at Qom. Today, Qom has become a large city; even when you stand in the heart of town, you have to search for signs of the holy shrine and its golden dome.
Madar lived in a room rented from an old lady who had a house with a small garden. The old lady lived alone and each evening one of her many children would pay her a visit. She had let out the room to Madar for a very low rent in return for her company. The house was only five minutes from the Haram or shrine of Holy Masoumah; so after lunch and an afternoon nap the first thing we did was set off on a visit.
Holy Masoumah was the sister of the eighth Shia Imam, Imam Reza, one of the most respected Imams who is now buried in Mashad in eastern Iran. She began her long journey from Medina in the Arabian Peninsula to her brother in Mashhad but fell ill on the way and died in Qom inAd816 when she was only 18 and still a virgin. Her tomb became one of the most venerated pilgrimage sites for the Shiites and one of the most prestigious religious schools was founded in Qom in her honour, turning it into one of the most important religious centres in the Shia world alongside Najaf and Karbala in Iraq.
It was a long time before I fully understood her importance; it seemed to me that she had done nothing special to deserve such veneration. But many years later, during my studies of Iranian mythology, I finally understood. ‘Masoumah’ in Arabic can be translated as ‘the Immaculate One’, just like the name of the ancient Iranian goddess Anahita, an idea that may have lent itself to the concept of the Immaculate Conception. Anahita was the goddess of water—springs, rivers and seas—and associated with fertility, healing and wisdom. The peoples of the deserts and wastelands, who were particularly devoted to her, built shrines to encourage her to bless their lands with water. Legend has it that Qom once held a shrine to Anahita; it was rededicated to and renamed in honour of Masoumah to prevent the Arab conquerors from destroying the shrine or banning worship there. This was only one of the many Islamic masks that the Iranians put on their ancient traditions and holy places to prevent their destruction by the Arabs who sought to demolish every remnant of the pre-Islamic civilization of Iran. In South Tehran, for example, an Anahita temple atop a mountain was renamed ‘Mount of Bibi Shahrbanoo’, Imam Hussein’s wife, and the tomb of the Iranian Emperor Cyrus the Great in Pasargad was renamed ‘Tomb of Prophet Solomon’s Mother’.
None of this was of the slightest interest or concern to those zealous believers who went every evening to visit the shrine and to pay their respects to Holy Masoumah, including Madar. There were hundreds of people there, perhaps even more than a thousand, preparing for the month of fasting by asking the saint to purify their souls and intercede on their behalf with God so that He would accept them in the month of his feasts, which was what Ramadan was usually called: the Feast of God. I, however, could never understand why people were not allowed to eat or drink anything during God’s feast.
Almost half the crowd comprised clerics or students at the religious school of Qom on their way to becoming mullahs. I was hoping to see Imam Khomeini there but Madar disappointed me by saying that he had more important things to do at the moment. However, another Grand Ayatollah was present and people were waiting in queues for a chance to kiss his hand. (It was Ayatollah Shariatmadari, whose rank among the Shiite clergy was by no means lower than Khomeini’s.) I, too, joined the queue for the privilege of kissing his hand, for privilege it seemed to me then. He was one of the clergy who, in 1963, declared Khomeini a Grand Ayatollah to prevent the Shah from executing him: the judiciary did not have the authority to execute, or even imprison, a Grand Ayatollah.
When it was my turn to kiss the old man’s hand, I felt just a little disappointed. I had expected a personality with eyes as piercing as those of Imam Khomeini. But this was just an old man, sitting there with his hand extended, indifferent to the kisses bestowed upon it by the people. I bent and kissed his hand and walked away towards Madar who was waiting for me, both excited and envious for women were not allowed this show of affection. How could I have known that Ayatollah Shariatmadari was now one of the most prominent critics of Khomeini? That he claimed Khomeini’s idea on the Rule of the Jurisprudent to be completely against Shiite ideology? In three years’ time, he would be arrested, beaten and dismissed from his rank of Grand Ayatollah on the orders of the very man to whom he had given the title 15 years earlier. He died while still under house arrest in 1986.
Madar took me inside the shrine. It was a huge building with three gigantic prayer halls, in the centre of which stood the burial chamber, confined in a golden cage. An opening above the cage allowed people to throw in money, offerings to ensure an answer to their prayers. It was almost sunset and everyone was waiting for the sound of the azan, the call to prayer.
Although I am not a religious person, the sound of the azan has always fascinated me. There I was, standing in the middle of the huge courtyard, watching people doing the wuzu—the Islamic pre-prayer ablutions—when thousands of white doves landed on the golden dome of the shrine and turned it white. The sun had disappeared; the sky had turned crimson and flung red and yellow shadows on the scattered clouds when the first words of the azan suddenly echoed in the air, inviting people to collective prayer: ‘Allah-o Akbar, La Ilah a Illallah.’
Madar stood among the women and said her prayers. I didn’t know how to pray, so I stood a little way off, near the pool, watching the birds.
Praying was another thing I was going to learn during my stay in Qom.
Meeting Imam Khomeini had been my only reason for coming to Qom with Madar and I kept asking her about it. ‘We have to wait for Mustafa, the landlady’s son, to show up first,’ she said. He was a volunteer who had joined the newly founded Revolutionary Guard and had many friends in Khomeini’s household. While we waited for his visit, Madar and the old lady took on the task of my Islamic training, of which praying and fasting were the most difficult aspects. Praying involved my memorizing a lot of Arabic words that meant nothing to me despite Madar’s efforts at explaining. I wondered why we had to pray in Arabic and not in Persian; if God knew everything, surely he must know all the languages. But Madar explained that Islam was not an individual religion; it was a religion that united mankind, and prayers, especially collective prayers, were a symbol of this unity in which no race or colour enjoyed any advantage. Muslims have to pray to God in a common language and, as Allah had spoken to his Prophet in Arabic, Muslims offered their prayers in that language. So in Mecca, when millions of people from around the world join in prayer, they all pray in the same language: a remarkable demonstration of unity. Years later, I realized that Muslims, despite their common language of prayer, are far from being unified. Exactly a year after this trip to Qom, Iraq attacked Iran and the two Muslim nations slaughtered one another for eight years, both in the name of Islam.
The fasting aspect was more challenging, although the rules were simpler: don’t eat or drink anything; don’t tell any lies; don’t swear; and don’t hurt anyone between sunrise and sunset. Not swearing and not lying were easy but not eating or drinking for 15 hours for a nine-year-old stuck in the summer heat of that desert city was an entirely different matter. I was therefore allowed to practice ‘Sparrow-head Fasting’. I would fast from sunrise till noon; then I would have lunch and fast again till the evening. A gentler version of the adult fast, this is designed to encourage children to participate in the fasting month. For me, even this was a serious challenge.
We were not supposed to tell lies or swear during the month of fasting; were we then allowed, I asked Madar, to do so during the rest of the year? She smiled and replied that human beings are creatures led by the twin drives of anger and self-protection. Swearing is a natural way of releasing anger, and lying is an instinctive attempt at self-defence. However, these instincts belong to the lower regions of the human soul and we have to learn to overcome them through this month of spiritual discipline.
As I had nothing else to do, I learnt how to pray and began to practise my fasting skills.
The big day finally arrived. After talking to one of the guards at Khomeini’s residence, Mustafa took me there on his motorcycle. Every afternoon, the Imam opened the door of his house to visitors even though not all of them could be admitted for the house was small. The guard took me in through the back door and before I knew what was happening I found myself in a corridor, standing in front of a tall old man in a white gown and a black turban.
‘Where are you running to, young man?’ he asked, putting his hand on my shoulder.
‘I want to see . . .’ I held my breath as soon as I looked up and saw those two black eyes under the two thick eyebrows and that white beard, so much like Santa Claus. I was silent for a few seconds, and it was only his encouraging smile that helped me continue.
‘I . . . I wanted to see you, Imam.’
He chuckled and patted my cheek.
‘So you have, son. What important matter brings you to me?’
I had none. All I could come up with was, ‘I want sugar cubes . . . for dad.’
Everyone laughed at my answer, while the Imam nodded to the young man beside him who went off somewhere. The sugar was Madar’s idea. According to her, dad did not observe his duties as a Muslim: he did not pray nor did he fast; hence, the only thing that could absolve him would be eating something blessed by the vicar of the Hidden Imam.
‘What is your name, son?’
‘Arash, sir.’
‘And your father’s name?’
‘His name is Jalal, sir.’
‘Master Jalal, you are not supposed to disrespect your father’s name.’
The young man returned with a handful of sugar cubes. Imam took them in his hands, put his hands in front of his mouth and uttered a prayer and a blessing. Then he put the cubes in my hand and asked, ‘Is that all, Master Arash?’
I bent to kiss his hand but he responded in a manner quite different from Ayatollah Shariatmadari: he withdrew his hand, bent over me and kissed my forehead.
‘You never bow to anyone other than Allah, of whom I am only a humble servant,’ he whispered in my ear. His gaze was overwhelming. A blazing intelligence mixed with a kindness and a seriousness that made it impossible for anyone to hold his gaze for more than a few seconds. Caressing my face, he moved towards the crowds waiting in the courtyard for a glimpse. ‘Send my greetings to your father, Master Arash,’ he said as he left.
And that was it. I never got the chance to tell him that I had lost my friend to the Revolution. I wanted him to pray for her, I wanted to make sure that she became an angel. That was my main reason for wanting to see him. Despite not a word on the matter, something in his eyes assured me that Azadeh was happy.
Summer was over sooner than I thought. At the school enrolment we were told that girls and boys were no longer allowed to go to the same schools; since my school had been chosen as a school for girls, my parents had to find a boys’ school for my third grade. Mum began her undergraduate nursing course and was very excited about the dawn of a new phase in her life. Dad had become dean, Faculty of Metallurgy, University of Science and Technology, and Uncle Mohammed, my mother’s brother, back from Paris after completing his PhD in Sociology, was employed at the Sociology Research Centre at National TV. Despite being forced to change my school, everything still seemed all right. I didn’t really care about having no female classmates; I would have more fun with the boys. The girls would only remind me of Azadeh.
However, after a while, not having any female classmates felt strange. We no longer competed for the girls’ attention and the rate of cursing, swearing and bad language steadily increased. It was then that I learnt about sex and I couldn’t believe my ears until I asked dad what ‘fuck’ meant and why anyone would want to fuck his friend’s mum. Dad was forced to give me ‘the talk’ much earlier than he had planned.
We were given new schoolbooks with the picture of Imam Khomeini on the first page. Every morning we stood in line in the yard while someone recited a few verses from the Quran and then we had to listen to the new National Anthem:
The Islamic Republic has been established,
To give us both religion and this world.
Because of the Iranian Revolution,
The palace of oppression has been destroyed.
The image of our future is the picture of our Imam Our everlasting force is our faith and unity
God’s hand is helping us,
And in this battle He is our guide.
In the shadow of the Quran,
Let Iran stand forever.
It would be many years before it was replaced by something a little more meaningful.
Nothing had really changed in our lives other than what we were taught each day at school: to love Khomeini, which I didn’t mind since I loved him anyway; the atrocities of the Shah’s regime, which I already knew about; and training in Islam, which I was already receiving in good measure from both Madar and Hadj-Agha. But dad was already beginning to worry. Other than classical music and revolutionary songs, music was banned under the Sharia. Films, when they were shown again at the cinemas and on TV, were censored. Most of what we saw on TV was either revolutionary films such as Z and State of Siege, or from the Second-World-War era about Yugoslavian partisans fighting the Nazis, or Russian black-and-white films such as How the Steel Was Tempered. More and more women began to wear headscarves or chadors—although it wasn’t compulsory yet—and more and more men displayed short beards, thus conforming to the Islamic prohibition on shaving facial hair.
Aunt Marjaneh, a graduate in political science, had been employed by the Ministry of Education and appointed the headmistress of a small elementary school in an extremely poor district in South Tehran. She was very happy with her post because it gave her an opportunity to educate and help some of the city’s poorest children. She had always dreamt of following in the footsteps of her role model, Samad Behrangi, a teacher and children’s writer who had drowned in the river Aras 10 years ago. It was a mysterious death that most of the opposition groups attributed to the Shah’s secret service.
It was Aunt Marjaneh who took charge of educating me in the concepts of justice and equality. She wasn’t a communist but she had considerable respect for its ideas, especially the need to provide equal opportunity. She was always encouraging me to read Samad’s stories, the most important of which was The Little Black Fish. A little fish lived with his family in a small stream but wanted to know about the world beyond. He decided to leave the dirty stream in search of the sea, about which he had heard from a travelling fish. When he finally reached the sea, he fought the dreaded Pelican and ultimately sacrificed his life to free the other fish from the terror of that predator. I remember crying for nights when I first read it; Mum had to ask Aunt Marjaneh not to recommend any more stories to me. But neither Marjaneh nor I cared and she continued to initiate me in the world of stories without happy endings—the life of Che Guevara, of Martin Luther King and of the Iranians who had been assassinated by the Shah’s regime. She believed I needed to grow up strong in order to survive in a cruel world. I believe she was right— although I still preferred the fairy tales with their happy endings.
Her position as headmistress would give her the power to put some of her ideas into practice; at least, that was what she thought at the beginning. Every once in a while she took me to her school where I made friends with the boys even though we were from completely different worlds. They were from poor and uneducated families, the sort of people I couldn’t and wouldn’t have known if it weren’t for Aunt Marjaneh. She tried hard in the local department of the Ministry of Education to raise enough funds to buy new clothes for her pupils before New Year’s Eve, and added extra classes for them dedicated to reading and discussing books. On one occasion, accompanied by the ‘Tutor of Islamic Manners’, a new post in the school created after the Revolution to ensure that children received proper instruction on Islamic good manners, she took me to the homes of a few of her students to hand out the new clothes she had succeeded in buying for them. Seeing the smiles on the faces of those children and their families in those modest little flats gave me enormous pleasure. Aunt Marjaneh was doing her best to teach me that I didn’t need to be rich to be happy. Whenever I craved something, the memory of the sparkle in their eyes brought me down to earth.
But Aunt Marjaneh didn’t really succeed in her efforts. A year later, the parents of one of her pupils complained about her to the Ministry of Education, claiming that she was trying to corrupt their child’s mind with communist ideas while teaching them things that they didn’t need to know. She was soon demoted to teaching Arabic and, two years later, was relegated to administrative work with no direct contact with the children. She became seriously depressed and some time later, on the spur of the moment, she resigned from all her responsibilities and left Iran for Germany with her husband and young son. Other than very short visits to the family, she never returned to Iran.
The combination of her teachings and my Islamic training turned me into a fanatic. I began to pray three times a day, trying to hide it from dad who I believed was opposed to my new and consuming interest in Islam. I refused to sleep in my comfortable bed and preferred the bare floor without a pillow or a mattress on the grounds that there were millions of people who couldn’t afford a comfortable bed and I wanted to show my solidarity with them. I ate only as much as I needed and refused to eat anything delicious lest I be led astray by the pleasures of this world . . . I was only nine years old.
But it wasn’t easy to deceive dad. Once, while I was praying, he opened the door to my room. I couldn’t interrupt my prayer; it is a cardinal sin to do so unless it is a matter of life and death. Dad said nothing and quietly closed the door. When I finished praying, I didn’t dare walk out of my room; I didn’t want to face dad who, I believed, would receive me with ‘the look’. After a while, however, he knocked on the door and entered my room with a smile.
‘I’m sorry I entered your room without knocking. If you want to pray Arash, pray,’ he chuckled. ‘It’s your decision. Don’t be afraid. I’ve always taught you to be a free man. You are free to choose what you want to believe in.’ He knew that my fervour wouldn’t last long but he did begin to pay me more attention. It was then that we set off on our book-hunting quests.
If you go to Enghelab Street in front of the University of Tehran, you will be overwhelmed by the smell of books. About 200 bookshops stand side by side, a heaven for book-lovers. There are all kinds of bookshops: specialist, academic, trade or children’s. But, quite literally, all you see as you leave the university are books. It’s hard to walk in Enghelab Street and not buy a book; or, at least, to not spend a good deal of time browsing.
This was where dad took me once every month. I was given a certain budget to buy whichever books I liked, provided that I read them before our next visit. Of course, ‘whichever books’ is a little exaggerated, for dad had a huge influence on my choices. I was introduced to the classics of world literature: Leo Tolstoy, John Steinbeck, Anton Chekhov, Alexandre dumas, Jules Verne, Mark Twain, Robert Louis Stevenson and more. We also bought books by Iranian authors such as Sadeq Chouback and Bahram Sadeqi, although, because of the bitterness of their content, dad preferred that I begin by reading the world classics.
I was fascinated by Enghelab Street. This was the wellspring of democracy. Thousands of people walked on the pavements and discussed current affairs as they browsed. On the other side of the pavement, facing the row of bookshops, stood the stalls of the second-hand book dealers who also sold alternative ‘white-cover’ books, books by communist authors and not published by mainstream publishing houses. In-between the stalls stood the newspaper sellers, each with their particular titles. Hundreds of papers and news-sheets were published at that time, each with a specific political affiliation: Islamic, nationalist, liberal and a wide range of leftists, and each with slightly different approaches—Marxist Islamist, Leninist, Trotskyite, Maoist, etc. And everyone stood around passionately debating the latest issues, defending their ideologies and propounding their views on the best ways of governing the country.
I looked forward to our monthly visits to Enghelab Street and, in-between them, fervently read everything I could. My introduction to world literature was dad’s way of preventing me from becoming a dogmatist, which was what happened to most of the children who received only the Islamic training that dominated school curricula. On the other hand, Madar and Hadj Agha bombarded me with religious books containing the stories of Adam and Eve, Noah, Abraham, Moses, Jesus, Muhammad and the 12 Imams. It was as if there were an unspoken competition between dad and Aunt Marjaneh on one side and Madar and Hadj-Agha on the other for my attention. However, I didn’t think about these things at the time. I just enjoyed reading and became addicted to books.
The scenes I saw in Enghelab Street in 1979 were actually the dying breaths of a newborn democracy that was soon to be suffocated by the smoke of a fiery tyranny whose flames had just appeared on the horizon. There was nothing tangible to support these anxieties. Khomeini in Qom acted as the spiritual Father of the Nation and pretended he wasn’t interfering directly in politics. Bazargan, the liberal-nationalist prime minister was trying to prevent the fundamentalists from taking over the government and to open the doors to negotiation with the US and other Western countries. Various political groups and parties were jostling for seats in the first Islamic Consultative Assembly, or Parliament, and a fundamentalist Islamic terrorist group which had assassinated a few prominent political and religious figures after the Revolution was quelled and its leaders tried and executed. Nevertheless, everything seemed to promise a golden age of democracy and liberty.
Nothing could be farther from the truth.
Every child in every corner of the world knows about limits. Parents would be at a loss without limits. The moment children begin to talk, sometimes even before that, parents make sure they know what they must not do: must not swear, must not speak with your mouth full, must not pee in your pants, must not hurt other children or animals, must not be rude to your parents, must not watch TV if you have homework, must not stay up after bedtime, etc. And children must, by their very nature, keep pushing at these limits. This constant tussle over boundaries between parents and children is part of what psychologists call ‘growing up’.
Like any other child, I knew there were things that I wasn’t supposed to do but in the autumn of 1979 I faced a whole new pedagogic phenomenon: what we couldn’t do didn’t bother me anymore; it was what we could do that I was desperately eager to find out. And it wasn’t only us, the children, who had to worry about pushing the limits. For the first time, our parents and teachers were all in the same boat.
The Revolution had revealed a whole new aspect of prohibition. Regardless of people’s age, as 1979 drew to its close, almost everything was prohibited: contact between the sexes; dancing; laughing loudly; eating pork or drinking alcohol; keeping dogs; wearing short-sleeved shirts, T-shirts or shorts; listening to music; enjoying American films; watching superhero cartoons; Walt Disney; singing; partying; listening to foreign radio stations; going to the beach with the family; playing cards or chess or backgammon; wearing a tie; shaving your beard; showing any part of the body other than your hands and face, wearing make-up or smoking (for women); criticizing government figures; following any religion other than Islam, Judaism, Christianity and Zoroastrianism; converting from Islam; saying that America was not the Great Satan; not hating Israel; not cursing the royal family; not shouting three ‘Salawats’ whenever we heard the name of Khomeini . . .
And it wasn’t a matter of choice. People could be punished for what they did or did not do. The vigilante committees formed after the Revolution were now responsible, instead of the old official police force, for making sure that people acted in accordance with ‘good Islamic manners’. They took over the streets after 9 p.m. and checked cars at crossroads and squares. They searched the boot to make sure it carried nothing suspicious, be it weapons or alcohol. Sometimes, especially if the driver wore a tie, he was asked to exhale directly into their faces—to check whether or not he had been drinking. Before the Revolution, before the prohibition on alcohol, no one indulged in drinking and driving. But in an ironic turn of events, ever since the Revolution, Iran has been one of the few countries where people continue to drink and drive. Alcohol is illegal anyway and using public transport when you smell of drink is even more dangerous than driving a car in that condition. You may just get away with the latter but certainly not with the former.
People began to fight back, of course, and combated the terrors of the night guards with a unique and unbeatable weapon: the cucumber. Cucumbers became the most important evening accessory for those who had been drinking. As soon as a driver saw the beams from the guards’ torches waving down his car, he and his friends would wolf down a cucumber in an attempt to hide the telltale smell. Another popular weapon was garlic. Iran must be the only place, outside of vampire legends, where garlic has been used as a weapon against evil. Well, peppermint sprays were not yet available in the Iranian market—and nor was the breathalyser.
Wearing ties was not as strictly prohibited but it was seriously frowned upon. Imam Khomeini, assuming that the tie was something Western, had dismissed it as a ‘collar and chain’, ‘the symbol of our enslavement to imperialist cultures’.
Painting human figures and sculpting were also frowned upon. These forms of artistic expression were considered attempts at imitating God the Creator as well as an unwanted reminder of the pagan tradition of idol worship. Music was considered sacrilegious because the pleasure it provided its listeners was capable of making them forget the real ecstasy achieved through prayer. But it soon got rather complicated. Every revolution relies firmly on its symbols and most of these are the result of some form of artistic expression; hence, the authorities needed to draw a line between what art was good and what was evil: what was allowed and what was not. All music other than revolutionary songs and traditional Iranian music was banned; solo female voices were absolutely taboo. Every form of painting was considered evil unless it portrayed Imam Khomeini or a revolutionary or religious scene.
We were in school until midday, after which I went home, had a nap and then began my homework, which, even at the elementary school level, seemed overwhelming. The children’s programmes on TV would begin at 5 p.m. and I had to struggle to finish my homework in time.
Feature programmes were broadcast only between 4 and 10 p.m. There would be a recitation from the Quran between 4 and 4.30, after which would begin Missing Persons. I couldn’t go out. I was alone at home and had usually finished my homework. I had even found time to read a few more pages of my book. By the time Missing Persons began, I was bored to death, impatiently waiting for the children’s shows. Missing Persons had the simplest structure in the world: a photo of a missing person appeared on the screen and the narrator gave a brief description about him or her: the date of disappearance; the age of the person; and whom to call if anyone knew their whereabouts. Initially indifferent to it, in time I devised an entertainment out of the show. Looking at the missing persons’ photos while listening to their details, I would try to imagine what might have happened to them. In my mind they had all run away from home to see the world. They were wandering aimlessly, bent under the weight of their rucksacks, or were tracing the path along some mysterious map at one end of which lay treasure. A series of extraordinary events and fantastic creatures. That was how I killed time, and most of the novels and stories I wrote years later grew out of those imaginings.
At last the children’s shows would begin. They were meant to last for an hour but two-thirds of that hour was devoted to instructions in good Islamic manners or to the greatness of the Revolution and Imam Khomeini. These were interspersed with some short animated films, the most memorable being a Polish one about a dog looking for its bone, and another about two brothers quarrelling all the time until they were taught to share their belongings.
When the children’s show came to an end, there was nothing left to watch on TV: a mullah would appear and speak for hours on religious matters. In any case, my parents would have come by then and we could play a board game while they waited for News Hour to begin, the signal for us children to go to bed.
It was the most boring life imaginable, and it seemed as if the days would never end. But events outside our home were not so boring. Things were changing. Despite Bazargan’s efforts to rebuild the bridge between Iran and the US, Khomeini’s anti US remarks were continually fuelling the tension. On 4 November 1979, around 500 students who called themselves the ‘Muslim Student Followers of the Imam’s Line’, attacked the US Embassy and took 53 US diplomats hostage. Despite Bazargan’s efforts at persuading Khomeini to release them, Khomeini issued a statement supporting the takeover of the US Embassy: he called it ‘the second revolution’ and claimed that the Embassy was ‘a den of spies’. Bazargan resigned and sanctions were imposed against Iran for the first time.
Most of these students later became prominent political figures in Iran. They became the main supporters of Muhammad Khatami’s call for reform in 1999, and most of them are now in prison or in exile.
♦♦♦
The grown-ups talked about nothing but the first presidential election of 1980. We children, too, had finally found something to be excited about: something new was happening in a society rendered dead and silent after the occupation of the US Embassy. There were 10 candidates from different political groups. Masoud Rajavi was the only person whose candidacy was not approved. Leader of the People’s Mujahideen Organization, an extremely popular group especially among the young, he was disapproved of because he hadn’t voted for the Constitution of the Islamic Republic. That was interpreted as possible disloyalty to the regime.
Looking back at those days I see them filled with a sense of unreality. Of the candidates on the first presidential list, seven suffered gruesome fates only a few years later: Bani-Sadr, Madani and Mokri fled Iran and chose exile; Forouhar, Sami and Ayat were assassinated; Ghotbzadeh was executed.
Everyone was aware that Khomeini supported Abolhasan Bani-Sadr against the will of the Islamic Republic Party led by Muhammad Beheshti, Hashemi Rafsanjani, Ali Khamenei and Mir-Hussein Mousavi. Bani-Sadr was a nationalist Islamist and a close friend of Khomeini in Paris. Khomeini never supported him publicly but his support was undeniable. That was why, although no one really knew him, Bani-Sadr won the election with 76 per cent of the votes. He made it his job to attempt to reconcile different groups and parties and he tried to prevent the regime from becoming a religious fundamentalist one. He tried to control the Revolutionary Guard, the Committees and the Revolutionary Court, and to restore the professional army, police force and the judiciary. But his efforts only succeeded in precipitating what he most feared.
It was the beginning of a new era in Iran, one in which Iran was to make more enemies than friends, and any hopes for a real democracy were to vanish into a distant future. The sequence of events put an end to all hopes of reconciliation between Iran and the US. It also put an end to Khomeini’s alleged detachment from politics. Shortly after the presidential election, on the pretext of a heart attack, Khomeini returned from Qom to Tehran because of ‘the proximity of better medical facilities’ but, as events proved over the next few months, it was to take over the country and get rid of any opposition standing in the way of his vision of an ideal Islamic society. And the first step in this direction was the war he launched against one of Iran’s most important national traditions: the highly un-Islamic Norouz or Iranian New Year celebrations.
♦♦♦
The Gregorian calendar used in the West and in many other parts of the world means nothing to the Iranians other than a convenient method of communication with the rest of world. The Iranians have their own solar calendar in which the New Year begins not on1 January but on 21 March, the date of the vernal equinox. The origin of the tradition, which is at least 3,000 years old, is attributed to Iran’s mythical King Jamshid. Paradoxically, the inception of the Iranian calendar is determined to be Ad622, the time of Prophet Muhammad’s Hegira or Migration from Mecca to Medina, thus making it a blend of Iranian and Arab traditions. Accordingly, 1980 corresponds to the year 1359 in the Iranian solar calendar. The Iranians also recognize the Islamic lunar calendar, which is the point of reference for important religious dates and ceremonies but no one can deny that the most important day in an Iranian’s year is Norouz.
There are special traditions for celebrating this day of which the Wednesday Feast or Fireworks Wednesday (Chaharshanbe Suri) is the most important. The Wednesday Feast, a prelude to Norouz, is held on the last Tuesday night of the solar year. People are supposed to cleanse their souls by leaping over a fire, chanting, ‘Let your fiery redness be mine and my yellow paleness be yours.’ This passage through fire, the only element that cannot be polluted, is believed to burn away all the evil in them so that they may enter the New Year with their souls purified.
Another part of the ritual involves people, especially children, knocking on their neighbours’ doors with white blankets draped over their heads. Those who open the doors are supposed to hand out a special mixture of nuts traditionally known as ‘problem-solver nuts’. It is believed that eating these nuts will help overcome problems. This tradition is rooted in the Zoroastrian belief that in the last days of the old year, the Farvahars or guardian spirits return to earth to visit their families. The children draped in blankets symbolize these spirits and the giving of the nuts is a sign of both respect and hospitality. Since time immemorial, Iranians have celebrated the Wednesday Feast by lighting fires in the alleys and in the fields and setting off fireworks. For children and young people it is the most joyful day in the year after Norouz itself.
Norouz begins precisely at the time of the vernal equinox, when the sun enters Aries—the beginning of spring in the Northern Hemisphere. Unlike the fixed date of the Christian New Year, the beginning of the Iranian year varies with the date of the equinox. And there are things that must be taken care of before the turn of the year.
All the members of the family sit round a haft-sin table, a crucial part of the Eve. On the table must be seven items, all of which begin with the letter ‘s’ in their original Persian form: sabzeh, sprouting wheat or lentils symbolizing rebirth and greenery; samanu, a traditional sweet pudding symbolizing affluence; senjed, the dried fruit of the oleaster tree symbolizing love; sîr or garlic symbolizing medicine and healing; sîb, an apple symbolizing beauty and health; somaq, berries from the sumac tree symbolizing the redness of sunrise; sonbol or hyacinth symbolizing youth; and serkeh, vinegar, symbolizing age and patience. The other items on the table are candles; a goldfish— a recent addition to the table inspired by the Chinese tradition of releasing a goldfish in water on New Year’s Eve; the Quran— in pre-Islamic times this would be the Avesta, the sacred book of the Zoroastrians; and the collected poems of Hafiz, Iran’s national poet.
After the turn of the year, officially announced by the firing of canons, people greet one another with kisses and the children receive gifts or money. Then everyone sets out to visit friends and family. This visiting ceremony continues for 13 days; and on the thirteenth day of the first month of the year, Farvardin, the New Year ceremonies end in Sizdah Be-dar, the day of ‘Getting Rid of Thirteen’. Since 13 is considered unlucky, on the thirteenth day of Farvardin, which often corresponds to 1 April or April Fools’ day in the Western calendar, the day is spent outdoors, picnicking, telling jokes and playing pranks. Many believe that April Fools’ Day springs from this more ancient custom.
At the end of the day, people leave the green sprouts in running water, release the goldfish into a lake and return home. Norouz is over and they are now ready to begin the year.
I describe these things in such detail because Norouz is the Iranians’ last shred of hope at a time when their own particular identity is under threat of disappearing into a global, undifferentiated homogenized Islamic dogma. Keeping that identity alive is a matter of life and death for them. When the Arabs invaded and occupied Iran, the Muslim Caliphs tried hard to abolish Norouz and replace it with the Islamic Eids or other celebrations. The Iranians absorbed these Eids into their calendar but not at the expense of Norouz; it was never lost and retained its primacy in the calendar as the most important day of the year. This single day symbolizes the coexistence of diverse tendencies embedded at the heart of Iranian society: 3,000 years of a proud history alongside deep-rooted Islamic beliefs. These two elements do not always work well together.
Iran’s new Islamic regime, believing in a certain Islamic internationalism, was against any national tradition that could jeopardize the unity of Muslims worldwide and hence did not support Norouz. One of the first things that happened before the first Norouz after the establishment of the Islamic Republic was a series of long speeches by several mullahs and close friends of Khomeini condemning Norouz as ‘pagan superstition’; the Wednesday fireworks were also banned a little later. When we heard from our teachers that there would be no fireworks that year, we were furious for the first time since the Revolution. The Wednesday meant a lot to us; it was a night when we got together, had fun, pursued our own little adventures, enjoyed the fireworks, jumped over the fire and celebrated all night. Our decision to ignore this order was almost unanimous and, surprisingly, also backed by our parents’ support.
On the last Tuesday of the year, people ignored the ban and went out into the streets to carry on with their ceremonies as usual. However, everyone felt the renewed tension in the air, a tension we had thought was over with the Revolution. Revolutionary Committee vehicles moved through the streets trying to extinguish the fires but as soon as they had moved on we set off new ones. There was no violence but Committee members tried to convince people that this was a pagan tradition and that good Muslims should not follow the ceremonies of the ‘fire worshippers’, a name commonly given to the Zoroastrians. These were semi-independent bodies established in the chaotic early months of the Revolution. They were not answerable to the central government and they were armed and dangerous.
No one wanted trouble.
Everyone knew that Chaharshanbe-Suri could never be abandoned. What no one realized was that, for many years to come, this last Tuesday of the year would mark a symbolic opportunity for the Iranians to prove to the fundamentalist regime that they would never forsake their Iranian identity and traditions. They would venerate Chaharshanbe-Suri and Norouz as much as they did Ashura and Ramadan—they had to coexist. Each year, police brutality against the Chaharshanbe-Suri ceremonies increased. The following year the police attacked the boys and girls who were celebrating, thereby inciting the crowds to react violently. Soon the ban on fireworks was flouted through the use of home-made ones that often exploded with disastrous results. Chaharshanbe-Suri, the day of soul-cleansing and joy and charity, turned into a violent and dangerous day when young people were beaten and persecuted by the police on the one hand and endangered by their home-made fireworks on the other. But Chaharshanbe-Suri was never abandoned. In the suffocating fundamentalist atmosphere that was soon to be established, it became the one day in the year when people could shout out how much they missed their joyful celebrations.
The climax of this confrontation occurred in March 2010, when Supreme Leader Ayatollah Khamenei declared that Fireworks Wednesday was against the Sharia; it amounted to ‘fire worship’ and he forbade people from going out and celebrating on the streets. Furious with the way he had authorized the use of violence against the Green Movement after the presidential election of 2009, millions of people around the country challenged his authority by lighting fires in the streets.
The government attack on Norouz itself was milder because it had succeeded in locating a quote from Imam Jafar Sadeq in praise of Norouz. But Khomeini tried to downplay its importance in his speech on the first day of the New Year by declaring, ‘As long as there is oppression in the world, we have no celebrations.’ He failed to make a similar pronouncement on Islamic celebrations, though. They tried to cancel the holiday on the Thirteenth of Farvardin but the people simply ignored their efforts and refused to show up for work. Instead, they went out to the countryside and celebrated their ‘Getting Rid of Thirteen’, thus forcing the regime to recognize this day; it did so but changed its name to ‘day of Nature’ in an attempt to deny its pre-Islamic origins.
The 13 days of Norouz was my only opportunity to meet almost every member of our large family. In the first week, it is the duty of the younger generation to visit its elders; the following week the elders reciprocate. In the spring of 1980 we did everything that the traditions demanded in order to guarantee a fabulous year ahead: we cleansed our souls by fire, we summoned the support of our guardian spirits, we did charitable deeds, we showed our respect to our elders, we sat beside the haft-sin table, we killed the Unholy Thirteenth and we released the goldfish and put the green sprouts in water. Nothing could go wrong in the year that had just begun.
We could not have been more wrong.
♦♦♦
‘Have you not seen what your Lord did to the friends of the elephant?’
We recited the ‘Surah Elephant’ from the Quran all day at school and heard it repeatedly on the radio and on TV. For those unfamiliar with Quranic lore, it may seem odd that God should really care about punishing the friends of an elephant; those who advocate animal rights might well be offended. But for us it was very significant: the story of the ‘friends of the elephant’ is to Muslims what the story of David and Goliath is to Jews.
But why was it relevant to that day, 25 April 1980? After all attempts and negotiations to release the 53 American hostages had met with failure, the US military launched a rescue operation. But three out of the eight helicopters in Operation Eagle Claw were caught in a sandstorm in Iran’s Tabas desert and three more were destroyed or left behind because of a refuelling accident, thus leading to the death of eight Americans. Operation Eagle Claw ended with an embarrassing statement by Jimmy Carter which, later, became instrumental in his defeat in the US presidential election.
But, on our side, we were reliving a myth. According to Islamic lore, Abraha, ruler of Yemen, decided to destroy the pilgrimage site of Kaaba in Mecca, the most important city in Arabia—and now in the entire Muslim world—in order to draw the pilgrims to his own magnificent church. Leading an army of 40,000 men on a white elephant, he attacked Mecca and none of the nomadic Arabs could stop him. But just before he entered the city, a cloud of birds called Ababil—more familiar in Iran today as the name of one of the unmanned aerial vehicles—appeared in the sky and began to throw stones at the army of Abraha. It was destroyed within minutes and he was forced to retreat.
The regime announced that the failure of the US Air Force was a repeat of the Mecca incident: Allah had again destroyed the forces of evil attempting to invade the Holy Land. This proved that God was protecting the new Islamic Republic and that Khomeini was, indeed, God’s Chosen One. In his speech, he said:
This stupid operation failed according to God’s command. O warrior nation of Iran, you heard about the American military intervention and you also heard Carter’s excuses. I have said several times that Carter is ready to do anything to be re-elected; he is prepared to burn the world . . . Carter has not realized what sort of nation he is facing and what doctrine he is challenging.
Khomeini insisted that the sandstorm was a sign of God’s support and the nation believed him. I, of course, wondered how the Americans reacted to being called ‘friends of the elephant’. However, when the diplomats were finally released seven months later as a result of increasing international pressure and the threats of newly elected US President Ronald Reagan, no one asked if they were to be released without any gains for the regime of Iran. No one wondered what the point of the Ababil was, anyway. From then on the US became the Great Satan and the Islamic Republic of Iran became the rightful capital of God’s sovereignty on earth. It was time to move forward and destroy the last remnants of the empire of evil in Iran and Khomeini launched his campaign with the hijab. Now that it had been demonstrated that he was indeed God’s Chosen One, no one dared defy his orders.
It was officially announced that, henceforth, women had to wear a hijab in public workplaces and regulations were designed to define exactly what was meant by correct hijab: hair should be covered; a long, loose coat should be worn to conceal the prominent parts of the female body; and no make-up was to be used. Amazingly, men, even non-religious ones, were the strongest advocates of the hijab movement and many forced their wives to submit to this new law. President Bani-Sadr claimed in a press conference that a certain ray emanating from a woman’s hair could prompt lustful thoughts in a man. And the hijab was designed to prevent the pernicious and evil effects of this very ray. It took a year before the law on the hijab was passed; from then on, women were compelled to wear it everywhere.
♦♦♦
I was finishing my third grade and I had already made new friends. However, because the sanctions against Iran had caused massive inflation, I couldn’t keep up with my friends financially. Inflation didn’t have a significant effect on their lives—their parents were entrepreneurs who could simply increase the price of their goods in response to the rate of inflation. My father, on the other hand, was a simple university lecturer whose salary had remained the same for the last two years: Rls 120,000 was worth US$1,700 the year earlier but had now sunk to a mere US$800; and the value of the rial was dropping daily. Two years later, his salary would be worth only US$200. Meanwhile, prices steadily increased and the government was too busy to think about the salary of its employees.
I had to get used to the change in our lifestyle—we could no longer buy anything we wanted. We lived in a smart part of town whose inhabitants were pretty well off but even though the rent was exceptionally low we couldn’t afford to live up to the standards of the area. Nor did we dare move out. I realized I couldn’t afford to keep in touch with my friends and I busied myself with activities that didn’t involve socializing: reading, swimming, experimenting with chemicals or my microscope.
Just before the summer holidays, after Mum had finished her second semester nursing exams, she came home from university with tears in her eyes. Dad tried to console her while they discussed the new situation in whispers. Something was wrong. Determined not to be left out of whatever it was, I asked her what had happened.
Mum explained that the much-anticipated Cultural Revolution had finally begun. At the beginning of the year, Khomeini had declared that the universities must be ‘cleansed’ from Western, imperial and communist influences. He said that we should not be afraid of the sanctions and military invasions but rather of the pro-West attitudes of the universities. No one believed he meant what he said until, in June 1980, it was declared that students could not go back to the universities for the next academic year. They had to wait until the Cultural Revolution and the ‘cleansing’ were complete.
‘Every time I think I’m finally following my dream, something horrible happens,’ Mum told me, sobbing.
‘Ever since I’ve been a child I’ve wanted to become a doctor. But then I was pulled out of school and forced to marry!’ She would never forgive her father for this.
‘And when I wanted to begin again, I got pregnant,’ she went on though she made sure I wasn’t offended.
‘I don’t mean I didn’t want you but I did have to wait a little longer. When I finally managed to begin again it was too late for medicine. And now I can’t even study nursing!’ she said, and burst into tears again.
‘Mum, they might open the universities soon.’
‘They won’t—they’re following the example of the Cultural Revolution in China.’
She was right. She had to wait two years before she could go back. Mum fell into a deep depression from which she emerged only when the Ministry of Education announced that students could apply for jobs as teachers while the universities remained closed. This hope of a new career was the only thing that saved Mum.
To make things worse, on 22 September 1980, the Iraqi army, led by Saddam Hussein and backed by almost every country in the world, attacked Iran by land and air.
Childhood was over.
[Read the next 400 pages in the book, The Gaze of the Gazelle]
