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In the Rose Garden of the Martyrs
Christopher de Bellaigue
A superb, authoritatively written insider’s account of Iran, one of the most mysterious but significant and powerful nations in the world.Few historians and journalists writing in English have been able to meaningfully examine post-revolutionary Iranian life. Years after his death, the shadow of Ayatollah Khomeini still looms over Shi'ite Islam and Iranian politics, the state of the nation fought over by conservatives and radicals. They are contending for the soul of a revolutionary Islamic government that terrified the Western establishment and took them to leadership of the Islamic world.But times have changed. Khomeini's death and the deficiencies of his successor, the intolerance and corruption that has made the regime increasingly authoritarian and cynical, frustration at Iran's economic isolation and the revolution's failure to deliver the just realm it promised has transformed the spirit of the country.In this superbly crafted and deeply thoughtful book Christopher de Bellaigue, who is married to an Iranian and has lived there for many years, gives us the voices and memories of this 'worn-out generation': be they traders or soldiers, film-makers or clerics, writers or taxi-drivers, gangsters or reformists. These are voices that are never heard, but whose lives and concerns are forging the future of one of the most secretive, misunderstood countries in the world. The result is a subtle yet intense revelation of the hearts and minds of the Iranian people.
CHRISTOPHER DE BELLAIGUE
In the Rose Gardenof the Martyrs
A Memoir of Iran
COPYRIGHT (#ulink_db2f2f6e-235c-5f68-8e6b-34e10b9ec8b1)
HarperCollinsPublishers Ltd 1 London Bridge Street London SE1 9GF
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This edition published by HarperPress 2005
First published by HarperCollinsPublishers 2004
Copyright © Christopher de Bellaigue 2004
Sections of this book have appeared in Granta, the London Review of Books and the Paris Review
Christopher de Bellaigue asserts the moral right to
be identified as the author of this work
Extracts from the poetry of Rumi reprinted
by permission of Threshold Productions
A catalogue record for this book is
available from the British Library
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Source ISBN: 9780007113941
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Version: 2019-07-24
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DEDICATION (#ulink_64568961-edc4-5b90-aa86-259fabdc5f11)
Each day more than yesterday,
and less than tomorrow
CONTENTS
COVER (#u04253c66-8e43-5ad1-b0ed-dd0b200528be)
TITLE PAGE (#u81a70b1a-7e88-58a9-bd0a-b67cc2b2b6b6)
COPYRIGHT (#ueb2bc157-6320-5d7e-b126-f2e0920a0e20)
NOTE TO READERS (#u8d7ac4e7-364a-5688-a355-955147d21ca8)
DEDICATION (#ua9fbf7b3-e4a1-5fa9-87be-7b5a0e2d611f)
DRAMATIS PERSONAE (#u6b3fd73d-a21b-52de-a889-4f692b57c7d2)
MAPS OF IRAN (#ub420f9e6-18a2-586b-a4d5-0e8b5c3f00d3)
1 Karbala (#u10aa6230-103c-59a3-8d99-feeb32c04bb5)
2 Isfahan (#uc9cab0d4-9156-5c9b-9dd9-a7bc13f2dc07)
3 A Sacred Calling (#u03742ddc-ddd8-5b45-af14-311fd494d021)
4 Qom (#litres_trial_promo)
5 Lovers (#litres_trial_promo)
6 Reza Ingilisi (#litres_trial_promo)
7 Gas (#litres_trial_promo)
8 Parastu (#litres_trial_promo)
9 Friends (#litres_trial_promo)
10 Ashura (#litres_trial_promo)
BIBLIOGRAPHY (#litres_trial_promo)
ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS (#litres_trial_promo)
ABOUT THE AUTHOR (#litres_trial_promo)
AUTHOR’S NOTE (#litres_trial_promo)
PRAISE (#litres_trial_promo)
ABOUT THE PUBLISHER (#litres_trial_promo)
DRAMATIS PERSONAE (#ulink_492a36da-eb44-5623-8113-b2b48fc0c4e5)
Abdolrahman, Hassan: American convert to Islam who carried out an assassination on behalf of the Islamic Republic and then took refuge in Iran.
Alavi Tabar, Ali-Reza: Islamic revolutionary and holy warrior in the war against Iraq who later became an influential figure in Muhammad Khatami’s reform movement.
Amini, Reza: subordinate of the famous Isfahani commander Hossein Kharrazi.
Bani-Sadr, Abolhassan: the Islamic Republic’s first president, who later revolted against Ayatollah Khomeini and was forced into exile.
Bazargan, Mehdi: provisional prime minister after the Revolution, who resigned during the US hostage crisis.
Emami, Saeed: senior Intelligence Ministry figure of the 1990s, alleged mastermind of the ‘serial murders’ of dissidents.
Forouhar, Darioush: a minister after the Revolution, he fell out with the religious establishment and was one of the final victims of the ‘serial murders’.
Forouhar, Parastu: justice-seeking daughter of Darioush Forouhar.
Ganji, Akhar: investigative journalist, jailed for his part in exposing the ‘serial murders’ of dissidents in the 1990s.
Ghorbanifar, Manuchehr: arms dealer involved in the Iran – Contra scandal.
Hashemi, Mehdi: fanatical revolutionary whose rift with the establishment led to the exposure of the Iran – Contra scandal.
Hossein b. Ali: third Shia Imam, who was killed at Karbala in 680.
Khalkhali, Sadegh: revolutionary official, Iran’s ‘hanging judge’.
Khamenei, Ayatollah Ali: second president of the Islamic Republic and Khomeini’s successor as Supreme Leader, or Guide, of the Islamic Revolution.
Kharrazi, Hossein: inspirational Isfahani war commander.
Khatami, Muhammad: elected president in 1997, he failed to implement most of the democratizing reforms that he envisaged.
Khomeini, Ayatollah Ruhollah: father of the Islamic Revolution and the Islamic Republic’s first Supreme Leader, or Guide.
Makhmalbof, Mohsen: revolutionary film-maker.
Montazeri, Ayatollah Hossein-Ali: Khomeini’s designated successor, stripped of the succession for being too independent.
Muhammad Mossadegh: controversial prime minister who nationalized Iran’s oil industry and was deposed, in a CIA-run coup, in 1953.
Pahlavi, Muhammad-Reza: the final Shah of Iran, deposed in the 1979 Revolution.
Pahlavi, Reza: the founder of the Pahlavi dynasty, the Shah’s father.
Rafii, Muhammad-Ali: Isfahani cleric, subordinate of Hossein Kharrazi.
Rafsanjani, Ali-Akhar Hashemi: president between 1989 and 1997.
Rezai, Mohsen: Revolutionary Guards commander during the Iran – Iraq war.
Shirazi, Sayyad: army chief during the Iran-Iraq war.
Teyyeb, Haji-Rezai: Tehran mafioso.
Zarif, Sadegh: revolutionary, seminarian and, latterly, film-maker.
MAPS OF IRAN (#ulink_ee8371fe-9561-5175-8b1a-1bb4fc373133)
CHAPTER ONE Karbala (#ulink_a61c5994-a4a4-5428-bc6a-e61fb3cebc42)
Why, I wondered long ago, don’t the Iranians smile? Even before I first thought of visiting Iran, I remember seeing photographs of thousands of crying Iranians, men and women wearing black. In Iran, I read, laughing in a public place is considered coarse and improper. Later, when I took an oriental studies course at university, I learned that the Islamic Republic of Iran built much of its ideology on the public’s longing for a man who died more than thirteen hundred years ago. This is the Imam Hossein, the supreme martyr of Shi’a Islam and a man whose virtue and bravery provide a moral shelter for all. Now that I’m living in Tehran, witness to the interminable sorrow of Iranians for their Imam, I sense that I’m among a people that enjoys grief, relishes it. Iran mourns on a fragrant spring day, while watching a ladybird scale a blade of grass, while making love. This was the case fifty years ago, long before the setting up of the Islamic Republic, and will be the case fifty years hence, after it has gone.
The first time I observed the mourning ceremonies for the Imam Hossein, I was reminded of the Christian penitents of the Middle Ages, dragging crosses through the dust and bringing down whips across their backs. In modern Iran, too, there is self-flagellation and the lifting of heavy things – sometimes a massive timber tabernacle to represent Hossein’s bier – as an expression of religious fervour. The Christian penitents were self-serving; calamities such as the Black Death provoked a desire to atone, to save oneself and one’s loved ones from divine retribution. Iran’s grieving does not have this logic. This is no act of atonement, but a sentimental memorial. Iranians weep for Hossein with gratuitous intimacy. They luxuriate in regret – as if, by living a few extra years, the Imam might have enabled them to negotiate the morass of their own lives. They lick their lips, savour their misfortune.
I see Hossein alongside Tehran’s freeways, his name picked out in flowers that have been planted on sheer green verges. I see his picture on the walls of shops and petrol stations, printed on the black cloths that are pinned to the walls of streets. The conventional renderings show a superman with a broad, honest forehead and eyes that are springs of fortitude and compassion. A luxuriant beard attests to Hossein’s virility, but his skin is radiant like that of a Hindu goddess. He wears a fine helmet, with a green plume for Islam, and holds a lance. I once asked an elderly Iranian woman to describe Hossein’s calamitous death. She spoke as if she had been an eyewitness to it, effortlessly recalling every expression, every word, every doom-laden action. She listed the women and children in Hossein’s entourage as if they were members of her own family. She wept her way through half a dozen Kleenexes.
Every Iranian dreams of going to the town of Karbala, the arid shrine in central Iraq that was built at the place where Hossein was martyred. I went there myself, the camp follower of American invaders, and visited the Imam’s tomb. Inside a gold plated dome, Iraqis calmly circumambulated a sarcophagus whose silver panels had been worn down from the caress of lips and fingers. They muttered prayers, supplications, remonstrations. Suddenly, the peace was shattered by moans and the pounding of chests, splintered sounds of distress and emotion. Five or six distraught men had approached the sarcophagus. One of them was half collapsed, his hand stretched towards the Imam; the others shoved and slipped like landlubbers on a pitching deck. My Iraqi companion curled his lip in distaste at the melodrama. ‘Iranian pilgrims,’ he said.
It all goes back to AD 632, when the Prophet Muhammad died and All, his cousin and son-in-law, was beaten to the caliphate, first by Abu Bakr, the Prophet’s father-in-law, and then by Abu Bakr’s successors, Omar and Osman. Ali gave up political and military office, and waited his turn, and the modesty and piety of the Prophet’s time was supplanted, according to some historians, by venality and hedonism. After twenty-five years, following Osman’s brutal murder, Ali was finally elected to the caliphate. But his rule, although virtuous, lasted only until his murder five years later and gave rise to a rift between his followers and Osman’s clan, the Omayyids. The origin of the rift was a dynastic dispute, between supporters of the Prophet’s family, represented by Ali, and the Prophet’s companions, represented by the first three caliphs. It prefigured a rift that continues, between the Shi’as – literally, the ‘partisans of Ali’ – and the Sunnis, the followers of the Sunnah, the tradition of Muhammad.
After Ali’s murder, Hassan, his indolent elder son, struck a deal with the Omayyids. In AD 680 Hassan died and Ali’s younger son, Hossein, took over as head of the Prophet’s descendants. Hossein was pious and brave and he revived his family’s hereditary claim to leadership over Muslims. This brought him into conflict with Yazid, the Omayyid caliph in Damascus. When the residents of Kufa, near Karbala, asked Hossein to liberate them from Yazid, the Imam went out to claim his birthright, setting in train events that led to his martyrdom.
One night, on the eve of the anniversary of Hossein’s death, I put on a borrowed black shirt and took a taxi to a working-class area of south Tehran. The main road where the taxi dropped me was already filling with families and men leading sheep by their forelegs. Cauldrons lay by the side of the road. Everyone wore black; even the little girls wore chadors, an unbuttoned length of black cloth that unflatteringly shrouds the female body. I entered a lane with two-storey brick houses along both sides. There was a crowd at the far end of the street, their backs to us, and their silhouettes were flung across the asphalt. Black bunting had been strung between lampposts. Walking towards the crowd, I fell in step with a middle-aged man who was being followed by his family. I heard him mutter, ‘Hossein …’ He looked shocked and puzzled, as if he’d just received news of the Imam’s martyrdom.
At the far end of the street there was a stage marked out by pot plants. In the middle of the stage was a bowl of water, resting on a green cloth. The middle-aged man’s wife and daughters went to the opposite side of the stage, where the other women and children were gathered under an awning. His teenage son joined a group of young men with gelled hair on the right. To the left was backstage, and an orchestra that consisted of two tombak drums and a trumpet. I stayed on the near side. Suddenly, the men in front of us parted to allow a stream of piss, from a camel trembling bow-legged in the arc lights, to run down the street.
A young trumpeter played a riff and the obscene Damascene appeared stage left. (Everyone recognized Yazid: he wore a cape of red and yellow to accentuate his licentiousness, and he wasn’t wearing so much as a scrap of green, the colour of Islam.) His helmet was surmounted by yellow plumes. His fat face was expressionless. After prowling around, he started to shout evil words into the microphone he was holding, which was connected to a loudspeaker that in turn felt as though it was connected directly to my ear.
Although he ruled the lands of Islam in the name of Islam, Yazid was notorious for his depravity. Today, Iranians loathe him as if he were still malignantly alive. They recall the menagerie of unclean animals such as dogs and monkeys that he is believed to have kept at court. They talk disapprovingly of the ‘coming and going’ – a common euphemism for frenetic sexual activity – for which Damascus was known. It is said that he was as devious as he was deviant.
Perhaps Hossein had reckoned without the deviousness. By the time he and his companions bivouacked at Karbala, near the banks of the Euphrates, the caliph had bribed the inhabitants of Kufa to revoke their support for him. His small force was greatly outnumbered by the army that Shemr, Yazid’s commander, had raised. Shemr had cut off Hossein’s access to the Euphrates, and Mesopotamia in summer is as hot as hell.
Onstage, the players were relating the entreaties, negotiations and moral dilemmas that preceded Hossein’s martyrdom. The women and children in Hossein’s entourage were suffering from the heat. Since there were no women onstage, we learned this from a narrator, a slim, alert version of the man playing Yazid – his brother, perhaps. Suddenly, there was activity stage left and Yazid returned. The actor’s movements and expression were the same, but now he wore green from head to toe. He had changed character and had become Hossein.
