Shah of Shahs (3 page)

Whoever scrutinizes this photo of father and son, taken in 1926, will understand a lot. The father is forty-eight and the son seven. The contrast between them is striking in every respect: The huge, powerful Shah-father stands sulkily, peremptorily, hands on his hips, and beside him the small pale boy, frail, nervous, obediently standing at attention, barely reaches his father's waist. They are wearing the same uniforms and caps, the same shoes and belts, and the same number of buttons: fourteen. The father, who wants his son—so essentially unlike him—to resemble him in as many details as possible, thought up this identity of apparel. The son senses this intention, and, though he is by nature weak and hesitant, he will try at all costs to resemble his despotic, ruthless father. From that moment two natures begin to develop and coexist in the boy: the inborn one and the parental one that, because of his ambitions, he starts to acquire. Finally he falls so totally under his father's domination that when he becomes Shah many years later, he automatically (but also, often, consciously) repeats Daddy's behavior and even, toward the end of his reign, invokes his father's authority. But at this moment the father is assuming power with all his inborn energy and drive. He has an acute sense of mission and knows what he is after—in his own brutal words, he wants to put the ignorant mob to work and build a strong modern state before which all will beshit themselves in fear. His are the Prussian's iron hand, the slavedriver's simple methods. Ancient, slumbering, loafing Iran (on the Shah's orders, Persia will hereafter be called Iran) trembles to its foundations. He begins by creating an imposing army. A hundred and fifty thousand men get uniforms and guns. The army is the apple of the Shah's eye, his great passion. The army must always have money. It must have everything. The army will make the nation modern, disciplined, obedient. Everyone:
Attention!
The Shah issues an order forbidding Iranian dress. Everyone, wear European suits! Everyone, don European hats! The Shah bans chadors. In the streets, police tear them off terrified women. The faithful protest in the mosques of Meshed. He sends in the artillery to level the mosques and massacre the rebels. He orders
that the nomadic tribes be settled permanently. The nomads protest. He orders their wells poisoned, threatening them with death by thirst and starvation. The nomads keep protesting, so he sends out punitive expeditions that turn vast regions into uninhabited land. A lot of blood flows. He forbids the photographing of that symbolically backward beast, the camel. In Qom a mullah preaches a critical sermon, so, armed with a cane, the Shah enters the mosque and pummels the critic. He imprisons the great Ayatollah Madresi, who had raised his voice in complaint, in a dungeon for years. The liberals protest timorously in the newspapers, so the Shah closes down the newspapers and imprisons the liberals. He orders several of them walled up in a tower. Those he considers malcontents must report daily to the police. Aristocratic ladies faint in terror at receptions when this gruff unapproachable giant turns his harsh gaze on them. Until the end Reza Khan preserves many of the habits of his village childhood and his barracks youth. He lives in a palace but still sleeps on the floor; he always goes around in uniform; he eats with his soldiers from the same pot. One of the boys! At the same time, he covets land and money. Taking advantage of his power, he accumulates incredible wealth. He becomes the biggest landowner, proprietor of nearly three thousand villages and the two hundred and fifty thousand peasants living in them; he owns stock in factories and banks, receives tribute, counts, totes, adds, calculates—if a splendid forest, green valley, or fertile plantation so much as catches his eye, it must be his—indefatigably, insatiably he increases his estates, multiplying his enormous fortune. No one may even approach the borders of the Shah's lands. One day there is a public execution: On the Shah's orders a firing squad kills a donkey that, ignoring all warning signs, entered a meadow belonging to Reza Khan. Peasants from neighboring villages are herded to the place of execution to learn respect for the master's property. But apart from his cruelty, greed, and outlandishness, the old Shah deserves credit for saving Iran from the dissolution that threatened after the First World War. In his efforts to modernize the country he built roads and railways, schools and offices, airports and new residential quarters in the cities. The nation remained poor and apathetic, however, and when Reza Khan departed, an exultant people celebrated the event for a long time.

Here's a picture that circulated around the world in its time: Stalin, Roosevelt, and Churchill sitting in armchairs on a spacious veranda. Stalin and Churchill are wearing uniforms, Roosevelt a dark suit. Teheran, a sunny December morning, 1943. Everybody in this picture is putting on a serene face meant to cheer us; after all, we know that the worst war in history is underway and the expression on these faces is crucial: It has to encourage us. The photographers finish, and the three great ones move into the hall for a moment of private conversation. Roosevelt asks Churchill what has become of the ruler of this country, Shah Reza (if, Roosevelt adds, I'm pronouncing it correctly). Churchill shrugs his shoulders and speaks reluctantly. The Shah admired Hitler and surrounded himself with Hitler's people. There were Germans all over Iran, in the palace, the ministries, the army. The Abwehr became a force to reckon with in Teheran, and the Shah looked on approvingly—Hitler was at war with England and Russia, and our monarch could not tolerate England and Russia; he rubbed his hands gleefully as the Führer's armies advanced. London was worried about Iranian oil, which fueled the British fleet, and Moscow was afraid the Germans would land in Iran and attack in the region of the Caspian Sea. But the major concern remained the trans-Iranian railroad, which the Americans and the British needed to transport food and weapons to Stalin. Then, at a moment of crisis, as German divisions were advancing farther and farther eastward, the Shah suddenly refused the Allies use of the railroad. They moved decisively: Units of the British and Red armies entered Iran in August, 1941. The Shah received with disbelief, as a personal humiliation and defeat, news that fifteen Iranian divisions had surrendered without much resistance. Some of his troops dispersed and went home, while others were locked up in their barracks by the Allies. Deprived of his soldiers the Shah no longer mattered, no longer existed. The British, who respect even those monarchs who betray them, left Reza Khan an honorable way out: Would His Highness kindly abdicate in favor of his son, the heir to the throne? We have a high opinion of him and will ensure his position. But His Highness should not think there is any other solution. The Shah agreed and in September of that year, 1941, his twenty-two-year-old son Mohammed Reza Pahlavi ascended the throne. The old autocrat was a private person now, and for the first time in his adult life he put on civilian clothes. The British sent him to Africa, to Johannesburg (where he died after three years of a dull, comfortable life about which there is not much to say). Empire giveth; empire taketh away.

I see I'm missing or have misplaced a few pictures. I don't have the shots of the last Shah in his early youth. I don't have the one from 1939 when he was attending officers' school in Teheran: On his twentieth birthday his father promoted him to general. I don't have a picture of his first wife, Fawzia, bathing in milk. Yes, Fawzia, King Farouk's sister and a girl of striking beauty, bathed in milk—but Princess Ashraf, the young Shah's twin sister and, as some say, his evil genius, his black conscience, poured caustic detergent into the bathtub: yet another palace scandal. But I do have a picture of the last Shah on September 16, 1941, when he succeeded his father and was crowned Shah Mohammed Reza Pahlavi. Slender, in a dress uniform, a sword at his side, he is standing in the chambers of parliament and reading the text of the oath from a sheet of paper. This picture was repeated in all the published commemorative albums devoted to the Shah, of which there were scores, if not hundreds. He loved reading books about himself and looking through albums published in his honor. He loved unveiling his monuments and portraits. Catching a glimpse of the monarch's likeness was nearly unavoidable. To stand in any given place and open your eyes was enough: The Shah was everywhere. Since height was not his strong point, photographers always shot from angles that made him seem the tallest person in the picture. He furthered this illusion by wearing elevator shoes. His subjects kissed his shoes. I have just such a picture, where they are prostrating themselves and kissing his elevator shoes. On the other hand, I don't have a photo of a certain uniform of his, from 1949. That apparel, pocked with bullet holes and stained with blood, was displayed in a glass case at the officers' club in Teheran as relic and reminder. The Shah was wearing it when a young man pretending to be a photographer but with a gun built into his camera got off a series of shots that wounded the monarch gravely. There were five attempts on his life, in all. Thus around him grew an atmosphere of danger (finally real), and he had to be surrounded by policemen wherever he went. The Iranians resented the fact that, for security reasons, only foreigners were invited to certain celebrations in which the Shah took part. His compatriots also said bitingly that since he traveled almost exclusively by airplane and helicopter, he saw his country only from a lofty vantage point that obliterated all contrasts. I don't have any photographs of Khomeini in his early years. When he appears in my collection, he is already an old man, and so it is as if he had never been young or middle-aged. The local fanatics believe Khomeini is the Twelfth Imam, the Awaited One, who disappeared in the ninth century and has now returned, more than a thousand years later, to deliver them from misery and persecution. That Khomeini almost always appears in photographs only as an aged man could be taken as confirmation of this belief.

This is undoubtedly the greatest day in the long life of Doctor Mossadegh. He is leaving parliament high on the shoulders of an elated crowd. He is smiling and holding up his right hand in greeting to the people. Three days earlier, on April 28, 1951, he became Prime Minister, and today parliament has passed his bill nationalizing the country's oil. Iran's greatest treasure has become the property of the nation. We have to enter into the spirit of that epoch, because the world has changed a great deal since. In those days, to dare the sort of act that Doctor Mossadegh just performed was tantamount to dropping a bomb suddenly and unexpectedly on Washington or London. The psychological effect was the same: shock, fear, anger, outrage. Somewhere in Iran, some old lawyer who must be a half-cocked demagogue has pillaged Anglo-Iranian—the pillar of the Empire! Unheard of, unforgiveable! In those years, colonial property was a sacred value, the ultimate taboo. But that day, whose exalted atmosphere the faces in the photograph reflect, the Iranians do not yet know they have committed a crime for which they will have to suffer bitter painful punishment. Right now, all Teheran is living joyous hours of its great day of liberation from a foreign and hated past. Oil is our blood! the crowds chant enthusiastically. Oil is our freedom! The palace shares the mood of the city, and the Shah signs the act of nationalization. It is a moment when all feel like brothers, a rare instant that quickly turns into a memory because accord in the national family is not going to last long. Mossadegh never had good relations with the Pahlavis, father and son. Mossadegh's ideas had been formed by French culture: A liberal and a democrat, he believed in institutions like parliament and a free press and lamented the state of dependence in which his homeland found itself. The fall of Reza Khan presented a great opportunity for him and those like him. The young monarch, meanwhile, takes more interest in good times and sports than in politics, so there is a chance for democracy in Iran, a chance for the country to win full independence. Mossadegh's power is so great and his slogans are so popular that the Shah ends up on the sidelines. He plays soccer, flies his private airplane, organizes masked balls, divorces and remarries, and goes skiing in Switzerland.

Here are the Shah and his new wife Soraya Esfandiari in Rome. But this is no honeymoon, no fun-filled carefree adventure far from the worries and routines of everyday life; no, this is their exile. Even in this posed shot the thirty-four-year-old Shah (tanned, dressed in a light double-breasted suit) cannot hide his edginess—small wonder, since he doesn't know whether he is going to return to the throne he left so hurriedly, or lead the life of an emigré wandering the globe. Soraya, a woman of
conspicuous but cold beauty, daughter of the tribal leader of the Bakhtiars and of a German woman who settled in Iran, looks more in control: Her face reveals little, especially with dark glasses hiding her eyes. Yesterday, August 17, 1953, they flew here from their homeland in their own airplane (with the Shah at the controls; flying always relaxed him) and checked into the swank Hotel Excelsior, to which dozens of paparazzi have flocked to immortalize each appearance by the imperial couple. Rome is full of tourists in this summer vacation season and the Italian beaches are packed (the bikini is just coming into fashion). Europe is resting, vacationing, sightseeing, dining well in good restaurants, hiking in the mountains, pitching tents, gathering strength for the chill autumn and snowy winter. Teheran, in the meantime, has neither calm moments nor relaxation because everyone can already smell the gunpowder and hear the knives being sharpened. Everyone is saying that something must happen, will happen (everyone senses the wearying pressure of ever thickening air portending explosion), but only a handful of conspirators knows who will begin it and how. Doctor Mossadegh's two years of rule are drawing to a close. Constantly threatened with coups (the democrats, the liberals, the Shah's people, and the Islamic fanatics all are plotting against him), the Doctor has transferred his bed, a briefcase full of pajamas (he is used to working in his pajamas), and a bag full of medicines to parliament, where he thinks he will be safe. He lives and works here, never venturing out, already so broken that those who visit him always tell of the tears in his eyes. All his hopes have vanished, all his calculations have proven wrong. He has eliminated the English from the oilfields, for each nation has the right to its own resources, but he forgot that might makes right. The West proclaims a blockade of Iran and a boycott of the country's oil, which becomes forbidden fruit on the world market. The Shah cannot decide: Should he obey those officers closest to the palace who are advising him to eliminate Mossadegh so as to save the monarchy and the army? For a long time he has been unable to take the final step that would burn once and for all his flimsy bridges to the Prime Minister (they are bound in a struggle that admits of no compromise because it is the conflict between two principles: the autocracy of the Shah and the democracy of Mossadegh), and perhaps the Shah is continuing to delay because he feels some sort of respect for the old Doctor, or perhaps simply because, unsure of himself, of his own will to uncompromising action, he lacks the courage to declare war on Mossadegh. The Shah would doubtless prefer that someone else carry out the whole painful, even brutal operation for him. Still undecided and continually anguished, he travels from Teheran to his summer residence in Ramsar on the Caspian Sea, where in the end he signs a sentence against the Prime Minister. But when it develops that the first attempt to finish off the Doctor has come to light and ended in a setback for the palace, the Shah does not wait for further (and, as it turns out, favorable) events but instead flees to Rome with his young bride. He returns to Teheran a few weeks later, only after the army has deposed Mossadegh and delivered all authority into the monarch's hands.