I read her chastising a bunch of religious zealots who, she thinks, in their crude viciousness robbed a great people of their long-lasting dream. And I wonder. I wonder what my country would have looked like today, had “the people” – and not the fanatics – taken control of “their” revolution.
I ask this one question of myself time and again, in one form or other, and the answer is always the same: silence, a long, deep, self-pitying silence. It’s not that I don’t know the answer. I do. Or at least I think I do. But it’s a sense of bitter shame that buries the words. “We might have starved or killed enough to put Pol Pot and his Khmer Rouge to shame,” says an old, Iranian, leftist poet and activist – another intellectual in exile. He recalls the chaotic scene that was Iran in 1979, and speaks honestly about how he thinks the materialists, the Godless revolutionaries, would have treated their fellow God-fearing citizens, had they had it their way. I do wonder. What would have the MKO done? How would they, the only armed opposition to the Islamic Republic to this date, have treated others? We can’t know, of course. But we do know how fluent they were in the business of hatred; that once forced out of power, they assassinated hundreds of their rivals – including the chief justice, the president and his prime minister; we know that they joined forces with Saddam Hussein and fought against their own country.
So, any other saviours for our great nation then? The Soviet-backed Tudeh party, which was above all loyal to Moscow would have welcomed the Red Army with open arms. Or the monarchists, who spent long nights dreaming of another US-backed coup, and the triumphant return of His Brutal Majesty.
Who are those then – I do sincerely wonder – that would have represented “the people” some of us so often talk about? Where are those that would qualify as true possessors of the revolution, and not just a wild bunch who stole it from “the people”? Let us face it: from religious right to atheist left, these were the people. Those who ordered, those who executed, those who made bombs, those who were blown to pieces, those who read the names on the radio, those who listened and walked away indifferently, those who were deified, those who are vilified, those who turned women’s hair into a matter of security, those who grew beards to grow their businesses, those who lied, those who bribed, those who labelled, those who hated, and those who are still labelling and spreading hatred, they were all – and they all will be – the people.
Yes, the Iranian revolution of 1979 wasn’t my revolution. I wasn’t born when it happened. But I lived its outcome every bit as much as my parents – and certainly more than many who at the time left for London or Los Angeles. I lived my childhood, my teens, and my early 20s under Iran’s Islamic Republic. And I don’t regret it. No doubt, many things were less than satisfactory, some moments difficult, even horrible. And for the record, we were not rich, we had no connections whatever to exploit, and we were not religious.
Yet our life was nowhere near the hell some compatriots in exile try to portray. Their views probably have roots in their own experiences. They must have suffered; but so did “the people” who overthrew the Shah. And so will many more if this anger, this bitter divide, and this search for ones to blame endures. So long as we fail to see that the revolution and its aftermath has been – for better or worse – a reality of the people’s making, so long as we fail to appreciate the role each and every one of the people played and can play, the blind quest for the guilty will drag on. And so will the futile wait for a saviour.
Many in the generation that shaped my life saw the world as “good” versus “evil”, “us” versus “them”; they still see the past in black and white. We, the children of the revolution, must give up that narrow outlook, so the next generation of Iranians may live a more colourful life.
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