Shah of Shahs (15 page)

***

The picture was clipped from a newspaper so carelessly the caption is missing. It shows a monument of a man on a horse, atop a tall granite pedestal. The rider, a figure of herculean build, is seated comfortably in the saddle, his left hand resting on its horn, his right pointing to something ahead (probably the future). A rope is tied around the neck of the rider, and a similar rope around that of his mount. In the square at the base of the monument stand groups of men pulling on the two lines. All this is taking place in a thronged plaza, with the crowd watching as the men tugging on the ropes strain against the resistance of the massive bronze statue. The photograph captures the very moment when the ropes are stretched tight as piano wires and the rider and his mount are just tilting to the side—an instant before they crash to earth. We can't help wondering if these men pulling ropes with so much effort and self-denial will be able to jump out of the way, especially since the gawkers crowded into the plaza have left them little room. This photograph shows the pulling down of a monument to one of the Shahs (father or son) in Teheran or some other Iranian city. It is hard to be sure about the year the photograph was taken, since the monuments of both Pahlavis were pulled down several times, whenever the occasion presented itself to the people.

 

A reporter from the Teheran newspaper
Kayhan
interviewed a man who wrecks monuments to the Shah:

—You've won a certain popularity in your neighborhood, Golam, as a man who pulls down monuments. You're even regarded as a sort of veteran in the field.

—That's right. I first pulled down monuments in the time of the old Shah, that is the father of Mohammed Reza, when he abdicated in '41. I remember what great joy there was in the city when news got around the old Shah had stepped down. Everybody rushed out to smash his monuments. I was just a young boy then, but I helped my father and the neighbors pull down the monument that Reza Khan had set up to himself in our neighborhood. I could say that that was my baptism of fire.

—Were you persecuted for it?

—Not on that occasion.

—Do you remember '53?

—Of course I remember. Wasn't that the most important year, when democracy ended and the regime began? In any case, I recall the radio saying that the Shah had escaped to Europe. When the people heard that, they went out into the street and started pulling down the monuments. And I have to say that the young Shah had been putting up monuments to himself and his father from the beginning, so over the years a lot accumulated that needed pulling down. My father was no longer alive then, but I was grown up and for the first time I brought them down on my own.

—So did you destroy all his monuments?

—Yes, every last one. By the time the Shah came back, there wasn't a Pahlavi monument left. But he started right back in, putting up monuments to himself and his father.

—Does that mean that you would pull down, he would set up, then you would pull down what he had set up, and it kept going on like this?

—That's right. Many times we nearly threw in the towel. If we pulled one down, he set up three. If we pulled down three, he set up ten. There was no end in sight.

—And when was the next time, after '53, that you wrecked them again?

—We intended to go to work in '63, when the rebellion broke out after the Shah imprisoned Khomeini. But instead the Shah began such a massacre that, far from pulling down monuments, we had to hide our hawsers.

—Am I to understand you had special hawsers for the job?

—Yes indeed! We hid our stout sisal rope with a rope-seller at the bazaar. It was no joke. If the police had picked up our trail, we would have gone to the wall. We had everything prepared for the right moment, all thought out and practiced. During the last revolution, I mean in '79, all those disasters happened because a lot of amateurs were knocking down monuments, and there were accidents when they pulled the statues onto their own heads. It's not easy to pull down monuments. It takes experience, expertise. You have to know what they're made of, how much they weigh, how high they are, whether they're welded together or sunk in cement, where to hook the line on, which way to pull, and how to smash them once they're down. We were already working at pulling it down each time they set up a new monument to the Shah. That was the best chance to get a good look and see how it was built, whether the figure was hollow or solid, and, most important, how it was attached to the pedestal and how it was reinforced.

—It must have taken up a lot of your time.

—Right! More and more monuments were going up in the last few years. Everywhere—in the squares, in the streets, in the stations, by the road. And besides, there were others setting up monuments as well. Whoever wanted to get a jump on the competition for a good contract hurried to be the first one to put up a monument. That's why a lot of them were built cheaply and, when the time came, they were easy to bring down. But, I have to admit, there were times when I doubted we'd get them all. There were hundreds of them. But we weren't afraid to work up a sweat. My hands were all blisters from the ropes.

—So, Golam, you've had an interesting line of work.

—It wasn't work. It was duty. I'm very proud to have been a wrecker of the Shah's monuments. I think that everyone who took part is proud to have done so. What we did is plain for all to see. All the pedestals are empty, and the figures of the Shahs have either been smashed or are lying in backyards somewhere.

 

The Shah had created a system capable only of defending itself, but incapable of satisfying the people. This was its greatest weakness and the true cause of its ultimate defeat. The psychological foundation of such a system is the ruler's scorn for his people and his conviction that the ignorant nation can always be deceived by continual promises. But there is an Iranian proverb that says: Promises have value only for those who believe in them.

 

Khomeini returned from exile and stayed briefly in Teheran before leaving for Qom. Everyone wanted to see him, several million people were waiting to shake his hand. Crowds besieged the school building where he was staying. Everyone felt entitled to a meeting with the ayatollah. After all, they had fought for his return. They had shed their blood. Elation and euphoria were in the air. People walked around slapping each other on the back, as if to say to each other—See! We can do anything!

 

Seldom does a people live through such moments! But just then the sense of victory seemed natural and justified. The Shah's Great Civilization lay in ruins. What had it been in essence? A rejected transplant. It had been an attempt to impose a certain model of life on a community attached to entirely different traditions and values. It was forced, an operation that had more to do with surgical success in itself than with the question of whether the patient remained alive or—equally important—remained himself.

 

The rejection of a transplant—once it begins, the process is irreversible. All it takes is for society to accept the conviction that the imposed form of existence does more harm than good. Soon the discontent becomes manifest, at first covertly and passively, then more and more overtly and assertively. There will be no peace until the imposed, alien body is purged. The organism grows deaf to persuasion and argument. It remains feverish, unable to reflect. And yet there were noble intentions and lofty ideals behind the Great Civilization. But the people saw them only as caricatures, that is, in the guise that ideals are given when translated into practice. In this way even sublime ideals become subject to doubt.

***

And afterward? What happened afterward? What should I write about now? About the way that a great experience comes to an end? A melancholy topic, for a revolt is a great experience, an adventure of the heart. Look at the people who are taking part in a revolt. They are stimulated, excited, ready to make sacrifices. At that moment they are living in a monothematic world limited to one thought: to attain the goal they are fighting for. Everything will be subjugated to that goal; every inconvenience becomes bearable; no sacrifice is too great. A revolt frees us from our own ego, from that everyday ego that now strikes us as small, nondescript—alien. Astounded, we discover in ourselves unknown energies and are capable of such noble behavior that we ourselves look on with admiration. And how much pride we feel at being able to rise so high! What satisfaction at being able to give so much of ourselves! But there comes a moment when the mood burns out and everything ends. As a matter of reflex, out of custom, we go on repeating the gestures and the words and want everything to be the way it was yesterday, but we know already—and the discovery appalls us—that this yesterday will never again return. We look around and make another discovery: those who were with us have also changed—something has burned out in them, as well, something has been extinguished. Our community falls suddenly to pieces and everyone returns to his everyday I, which pinches at first like ill-fitting shoes—but we know that they are our shoes and we are not going to get any others. We look uncomfortably into each other's eyes, we shy away from conversation, we stop being any use to one another.

***

This fall in temperature, this change of climate, belongs among the most unsettling and depressing of experiences. A day begins in which something should happen. And nothing happens. Nobody comes to call, nobody is waiting for us, we are superfluous. We begin to feel a great fatigue, apathy gradually engulfs us. We tell ourselves: I have to rest up, get in shape, build up my strength. We have to get some fresh air. We have to do something mundane—straighten up the apartment, fix the window. These are all defensive actions aimed at dodging the imminent depression. So we pull ourselves together and fix the window. But everything is not in order, we are not joyful, because the pebble stuck inside us keeps nagging.

 

I too shared that feeling that comes over us when we sit before a dying fire. I walked around a Teheran from which the traces of yesterday's experiences were vanishing. They were vanishing suddenly, and you could get the impression that nothing had happened here. A few burned cinemas, a few demolished banks—the symbols of foreign influence. Revolution attaches great importance to symbols, destroying some monuments and setting up others to replace them in the hope that through metaphor it can survive. And what of the people? Once again they had become pedestrian citizens, going somewhere, standing around street fires warming their hands, part of the dull landscape of a grey town. Once again each was alone, each for himself, closed and taciturn. Could they still have been waiting for something to happen, for some extraordinary event? I don't know, I can't say.

***

Everything that makes up the outward, visible part of a revolution vanishes quickly. A person, an individual being, has a thousand ways of conveying his feelings and thoughts. He is riches without end, he is a world in which we can always discover something new. A crowd, on the other hand, reduces the individuality of the person; a man in a crowd limits himself to a few forms of elementary behavior. The forms through which a crowd can express its yearnings are extraordinarily meager and continually repeat themselves: the demonstration, the strike, the rally, the barricades. That is why you can write a novel about a man, but about a crowd—never. If the crowd disperses, goes home, does not reassemble, we say that the revolution is over.

 

Now I visited the committee headquarters. Committees—that's what they called the organs of the new power. Unshaven men were sitting around tables in cramped, littered rooms. For the first time, I saw their faces. On my way here I had filed in my memory the names of people who had actively opposed the Shah or supported the rebels from the sidelines. Just such people, I assumed logically, ought to be running things now. I asked where I could find them. The members of the committee did not know. In any case, they weren't here. The whole durable structure in which one man held power, a second opposed him, a third made money, and a fourth criticized, the whole complex setup that had lasted for years, had been blown away like a house of cards. The names I asked about meant nothing to these bearded, barely literate oafs. What did they care that a couple of years ago Hafez Farman had criticized the Shah and paid for it with his job, while Kulsum Kitab was kissing ass and making a career for himself? That was the past. That world no longer existed. The revolution had transferred power to utterly new, anonymous people no one had heard of only yesterday. Now the bearded ones sat and deliberated full time. About what? About what was to be done. Yes, because the committee should do something. One after the other, they spoke. Each wanted to have his say, to make his speech. Watching, you could feel that this was essential to them, that they attached great weight to it. Each of them could go home afterward and tell his neighbors, I made a speech. People could ask each other, Did you hear about his speech? When he walked down the street, they could buttonhole him to say respectfully, You made an interesting speech! An informal hierarchy gradually shaped itself: At the top stood those who inevitably made impressive public appearances, while the bottom consisted of introverts, people with speech defects, whole hosts of those who could not overcome their stagefright, and finally those who could not see the point of endless blabbing. The next day the talkers would start from scratch, as though nothing had happend the day before, as if they had to begin all over again.

 

Iran—it was the twenty-seventh revolution I have seen in the Third World. Amid the smoke and the roar, rulers would change, governments fall, new people take their seat. But one thing was invariable, indestructible, and—I dread saying it—eternal: the helplessness. These chambers of the Iranian committees reminded me of what I had seen in Bolivia, Mozambique, the Sudan, Benin. What should we do? Do you know what to do? Me? Not me. Maybe you know. Are you talking to me? I'd go whole hog. But how? How do you go whole hog? Ah, yes, that's the problem. Everyone agrees: That is indeed a problem worth discussing. Cigarette smoke clouds the stuffy rooms. There are some good speeches, some not-so-good, a few downright brilliant. After a truly good speech, everyone feels satisfied; they have taken part in something that was a genuine success.