At the conclusion of the speech “guns fired, bells rang, trumpets sounded, people shouted acclamations and a nationwide celebration began.” The King, Queen, and Crown Prince Reza left the Salaam Hall, reported one guest, “ignoring the bows and curtsies that bent the audience like the wind does the wheat,” to the accompaniment of a choir who sang the special coronation ode: “The King of Kings is wearing the crown. May you reign forever in the kingdom of [our] hearts.” They processed through the grounds of the Golestan along a 150-yard red carpet, past sun-dappled rose gardens and dancing fountains to receive the acclamation of several thousand guests clustered in viewing stands.
From Golestan the newly crowned King and Queen rode back to the Marble Palace in a gold coach specially built for the occasion by Viennese craftsmen and drawn by eight magnificent white Hungarian stallions. Lancers on horseback wearing silver Prussian helmets led the way as planes overhead bombed the procession route with 17,532 roses, one for every day of the Shah’s life. “The crowds were enormous,” reported the Washington Post correspondent, “mostly male and young and mostly shabbily dressed. The spectators cheered and clapped and in places were nearly out of control, trampling down trees as they surged. A few women set up the high ululation of the Muslim world. Bands played and whole battalions, drawn up in close order, saluted.” The Pahlavis smiled and fluttered their hands in appreciation. “The procession moved at a walking pace through a city that had been decorated in the manner of a country fair but on an infinite scale. There were vast gaudy crowns, millions of electric bulbs, new fountains, triumphal arches made of hardboard and everywhere the green, white and red flag of Iran.” The festivities continued until well after midnight, the mood on the streets joyous and exuberant. “The sleepless population either arranged parties, attended carnivals or simply took delight in roaming the streets, with or without vehicles, causing endless traffic jams,” reported Tehran’s English-language Kayhan International newspaper. “In the streets, and in the smaller hotels, all forms of dialects, from the south to the north of the country, could be heard. Farmers, who normally go to bed at dusk, were still on the streets by 1:30 a.m. this morning.”
In the afternoon, the Pahlavis attended a three-hour military parade, and in the evening there was a banquet at the foreign ministry followed by a royal command performance of Iran’s first scored opera at the Rudaki Hall, Tehran’s gleaming new concert pavilion. At midnight the capital was the scene of a spectacular fireworks display. Even the Shah’s severest critics, the intellectuals, were prepared to concede him a day in the sun. “He launched a revolution without killing the kulaks [wealthy peasants], and he rode out the cold war without becoming a satellite,” conceded a Tehran university professor who admitted that he still opposed the Shah. “On balance, the price we’re paying for so much progress—and you can toss in the price tag of the coronation—has so far been quite acceptable.”
Foreign guests left Tehran deeply impressed by the pageantry and popular show of support for the monarchy. “It had been a dignified, rich and popular coronation,” noted a British observer. “It was a morning of dazzling jewels that really were as big as pigeons’ eggs, of innumerable diamonds, of heavy robes encrusted with gold pearls, of curved swords held high in the air at the salute,” said an American present. “It was Byzantine in its remote magnificence. It was heavily military. It was the sort of occasion which when it happens causes people to say that it can never happen again.”
7
ROYALS AND REBELS
Wake up! Pay some attention to reality and the questions of the day.
—GRAND AYATOLLAH RUHOLLAH KHOMEINI
I always had in mind the Romanovs.
—QUEEN FARAH
In his place of exile a world away from the Ruritanian scenes of splendor unfolding in the Shah’s capital, the old man was up before dawn and for the rest of the day kept a routine so exact that locals in Najaf liked to say they could set their watches by his daily walk to the holy shrine. After rising at five to pray, and breakfasting two hours later on cheese, bread, and nuts, Grand Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini spent the morning catching up on the latest news, reading books, writing lectures, and meeting with admirers and aides. The midday prayer was followed by lunch; a long nap; and more reading, writing, and meetings. The workday ended at five, when family members joined him for a half-hour stroll. After a modest dinner and evening prayers, then more reading and writing, the lights were dimmed at ten. “Even we were affected by his discipline,” said one young admirer who later served as Khomeini’s bodyguard. The Grand Ayatollah’s rigid focus, work ethic, and modest diet were if anything reminiscent of the man he sought to destroy, and like the Shah he went to great lengths to conceal his true nature from the Iranian people, whom he also believed instinctively preferred strongman rule. “In private meetings,” recalled his bodyguard, “he was very happy and joking. But at the same time, when he had public meetings he was stern and unsmiling.”
Khomeini brooded and contemplated his future. “I do not know what sin I have committed to be confined to Najaf in the few remaining days of my life,” he complained during his first bitter years in the dusty town. Living in a foreign country surrounded by Sunni Arabs, isolated from his admirers, shut off from everything he knew in Qom, the Grand Ayatollah referred to himself as “this old man who is spending the last moments of his life.” The Pahlavi regime hoped that the longer Khomeini remained out of the public spotlight, the greater the chance he would fade from memory. Savak’s Parviz Sabeti infiltrated his household with informers. General Nasiri informed the Shah that “the old shark has had his fangs pulled out.” Now in his midsixties, the Grand Ayatollah faced the very real prospect that he would never set foot in Iran again, let alone live to see the destruction of the Pahlavi Dynasty.
Najaf’s clerical establishment regarded Khomeini as an interloper and viewed him as an unwelcome troublemaker. Grand Ayatollah Mohsen Hakim, Shiism’s paramount marja, made his feelings clear when he publicly snubbed the newcomer upon his arrival in Iraq. “Najaf, like Qom and Mashad, was a center of intrigue and gossip at the best of times,” wrote Khomeini’s biographer. “Religio-political rivalry is as intense among the Shia clergy as in any political party and sometimes borders on the childish, with grand ayatollahs refusing to speak to each other. With their lives of loyalty that resemble those directed by tribal chieftains rather than spiritual elders, the great Shia religious centers have always looked like a confederacy of fiefdoms.”
During one of their rare encounters, Grand Ayatollahs Hakim and Khomeini debated the merits of launching a second rebellion against the Pahlavis and their White Revolution. In the Shia tradition there was no more epic religious narrative or morality play than the martyrdom of Imam Husayn and his family at the hands of the wicked Caliph Yazid at Karbala in AD 680. Hakim disputed Khomeini’s claim that the Shah had become the new Yazid and that the ulama had a duty to lead a second revolt against the Iranian monarchy.
“If we staged an uprising and people suffered there would be chaos and people would curse us,” Hakim warned. Though Khomeini had gained infamy for his leadership role in challenging the Shah, his fellow marjas still commanded greater support among the people.
“When we staged the uprising it only raised the esteem in which we were held,” Khomeini challenged Hakim.
“What should be done?” replied Hakim. “We must balance our actions against the result. There is no point in sending people to their deaths.”
Khomeini argued that deaths were exactly what the revolutionary movement needed. Martyrdom was to be celebrated and welcomed, not feared or discouraged. “We must sacrifice our lives,” he retorted. “Let history note that when religion was in danger a number of Shia ulama stood up to defend it and a group of them were killed.”
* * *
REBELLION OF A different kind was brewing in the palace.
Less than eighteen months after Princess Shahnaz was seen weeping at her father’s coronation, the Shah
decided his daughter was “full of crazy ideas,” so crazy indeed that he questioned her sanity and threatened her with disinheritance. With her finely sculptured cheekbones as though carved from marble, her father’s expressive brown eyes, and a striking physical resemblance to the ill-fated Hollywood actress Sharon Tate, Princess Shahnaz was as beautiful as she was restless. Her marriage to Ardeshir Zahedi had crumbled following the couple’s return to Tehran after years abroad representing Iran in London and Washington. Ardeshir’s rapid ascent through the ranks continued with his appointment as foreign minister. His former wife chose a very different course. Like so many young educated Iranians from well-to-do families, in the late 1960s Princess Shahnaz embarked on a quest for personal and spiritual self-enlightenment that led her to the great love of her life and the man many royalists would later blame for helping seal the fate of the dynasty.
Khosrow Djahanbani was the son of a respected former general who had served Reza Shah as the heir to one of Iran’s great families. The Djahanbanis were related to the Qajar princes and princesses and circulated in the highest echelons of Pahlavi society. Khosrow’s brother Nader was a dedicated air force pilot, beloved by his men, and so good-looking that he earned the moniker “the blue-eyed general.” Khosrow, with his wild mane of coal-black hair, angular good looks, and penetrating eyes, cut an equally dashing if decidedly more mercurial figure. He returned home from several years spent studying in New York and affected the mannerisms, dress, and louche drug habits of a Greenwich Village hippie. His admirers and critics attested to his handsome, brooding charm but also his danger and arrogance. Djahanbani moved around town with northern Tehran’s beautiful young things, the sons and daughters of prominent businessmen, public officials, and generals who dabbled in pseudo-Marxism, indulged in cocaine, hash, and heroin, and entertained utopian fantasies about throwing in their lot with the working class and joining the barricades for a republic that would presumably abolish their titles and privileges and take away their trust funds. In choosing Khosrow Djahanbani, Princess Shahnaz could not have taken a more unsuitable lover, though that was undoubtedly part of his allure. To her father’s consternation, Shahnaz adopted Khosrow’s lifestyle and financed the couple’s habits with the stipend she received as his daughter.
Every effort the Shah made to separate the couple only strengthened the girl’s willful determination to be with her lover. Djahanbani’s conscription into the army backfired when he was court-martialed and imprisoned for a minor offense, so that by the early summer of 1969 the Shah’s firstborn child could be found standing in line each morning outside Tehran’s main prison awaiting the start of visiting hours. The Princess, who made no effort to cover her head or otherwise disguise her appearance, emulated her lover as she would a marja so that she no longer cared what people thought. When Djahanbani was transferred to a second prison, outside Tehran, Shahnaz exiled herself to Switzerland and wrote her father a letter declaring her intention to marry the convicted criminal. Matters came to a head in the first week of August 1969 when Djahanbani was released from prison to avoid public scandal. His lover returned from Geneva for one final attempt at winning her father’s approval for marriage. On the evening of August 5, Alam instructed the Imperial Guard to prevent Djahanbani from entering the princess’s residence until he had arrived to escort her to Niavaran to see her father. To his fury, he learned the released felon had already made his way inside the house. Alam ordered the commander of the guard to enter the property and expel Shahnaz’s lover, by force if need be. But Shahnaz told him over the phone that if Djahanbani was taken away she would join him. Alam begged her to avoid confrontation and scandal. She finally backed down but only on the condition they spend another hour in each other’s company. Alam agreed and in the event was kept waiting until three in the morning for the lovers to finish.
The next morning the exhausted Alam received Djahanbani at Saadabad. To his surprise, the young man promised “to abandon his hippyfied ways and face up to reality.” Father and daughter held a separate meeting elsewhere in the palace and their reunion also went better than expected. The Shah assured the Princess that he loved her and promised not to stand in the way of her happiness even if her heart was set on marriage. All he asked was that she show respect for her family, whose public reputation was threatened by her scandalous behavior. Like Khosrow, Shahnaz agreed to change her lifestyle. The two older men were relieved at the outcome, sure that the two youngsters had sobered up to their familial responsibilities. But six weeks later, following a lovers’ quarrel, Shahnaz took an overdose of sleeping pills. She was revived just in time, and the couple was reunited.
Court Minister Asadollah Alam asked the question on the everyone’s mind: “Where on earth is this love affair going to lead us?”
* * *
IN JANUARY AND February 1970, while the Shah, Queen Farah, and their children left Iran for an extended forty-day ski vacation in Switzerland—far longer than usual—Grand Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini delivered a series of thirteen lectures to seminary students in Najaf that laid out his blueprint for the overthrow of the monarchy and the establishment of an Islamic state.
In his lectures, known colloquially as the velayat-e faqih (“guardianship of the jurists”), Khomeini challenged the conventional belief within Shiism that Islamic religious scholars should remain above the social and political fray and that the laws of Islam “remain in abeyance or are restricted to a particular time or place” until the return of the Hidden Imam, twelfth successor to the Prophet Mohammad. Khomeini bolstered his case by pointing out that the Prophet had not only founded a religion but also led a government and commanded an army. By this logic, the only individuals qualified to make, interpret, and implement laws were the mutjahids (religious scholars). They, and not any king, or president, or constitution, were the only acceptable guardians of the state until the Hidden Imam returned to usher in the end of days. Any form of government that was not Islamic in character was therefore illegitimate and must be annihilated: “We have in reality, then, no choice but to destroy those systems of government that are corrupt in themselves and also entail the corruption of others, and to overthrow all treacherous, corrupt, oppressive, and criminal regimes.”
Khomeini ferociously rejected the 1906 constitutional settlement and declared his intention to bury it once and for all. In that vein he expressed disgust with the mainstream moderate religious establishments headquartered in Qom, Najaf, and Mashad. By discouraging their followers from entering politics the marjas and grand ayatollahs were little more than “pseudo saints” and “negligent, lazy, idle and apathetic people.” “Wake up!” he sneered. “Pay some attention to reality and the questions of the day. Do not let yourselves be negligent. Are you waiting for the angels to come and carry you on their wings? Is it the function of the angels to pamper the idle?” True Islam, in Khomeini’s rendering, was not moderate or mainstream or quiet—anything but. True Islam “is the religion of militant individuals who are committed to truth and justice. It is the religion of those who desire freedom and independence. It is the school of those who struggle against imperialism.” He all but challenged his eager young followers to return to their seminaries, overthrow their teachers, and launch a cultural revolution.
[The ulama] must be exposed and disgraced so that they may lose whatever standing they have among the people.… Our youths must strip them of their turbans.… I do not know if our young people in Iran have died; where are they? Why do they not strip these people of their turbans? I am not saying they should be killed; they do not deserve to be killed. But take off their turbans! Our people in Iran, particularly the zealous youths, have a duty.… They do not need to be beaten much; just take off their turbans, and do not permit them to appear in public wearing turbans. The turban is a model garment; not everyone is fit to wear it.
Khomeini’s plainspoken delivery, rough street language, and call for violence resonated with young militants in the late sixties and early seventies, a time
when university campuses and high schools around the world were in open revolt against authority. Among Iran’s educated youth population—prime beneficiaries of the Shah’s reforms—the air was thick with talk of revolution against his authoritarian, pro-American regime. Iran was an old country with a youthful population. In 1970 an estimated 54 percent or 14.5 million Iranians were aged under twenty-four years and thanks to the White Revolution were on average the most literate generation in the country’s history. As their families moved through the ranks of the middle class, and as they gained an education, many young Iranians who a generation earlier might have toiled in the fields had the luxury of focusing on broader philosophical issues and indulging in politics. They were inspired by events in the region. Though they were not Arab they could hardly be unmoved by the staggering setbacks their fellow Muslim brethren had suffered in recent years. For many Muslims, Israel’s victory in the 1967 Six-Day War shattered the belief that Western ideas held the key to a prosperous and just future. With the old panaceas—nationalism, socialism, and secularism—identified with failure and humiliation, their search for solutions led many young Muslims, Sunni and Shia alike, back to the mosque and the old ways.
Disillusioned with the West, young students and intellectuals rediscovered Islam with all the fervor of first-time love. A new generation of leftist scholars, most notably Iran’s Ali Shariati, helped bridge the gap between Marxism and Islam by explaining that the Prophet Mohammad had also emphasized social justice, brotherhood, and opposition to tyranny. Shariati’s interpretation of Islam as a revolutionary belief system proved a drawing card for throngs of young liberals and leftists who associated the Pahlavi monarchy with dictatorship, state repression, censorship, and foreign interference. Iranian students blamed the United States for propping up corrupt regimes throughout the Middle East to ensure a plentiful supply of cheap oil, support for Israel, and containment of the Soviet Union and Arab regimes. Their teachers encouraged their cynicism by reminding them of the American role in the overthrow of the martyred Mossadeq, which had ended Iran’s messy postwar experiment with democracy and paved the way for the Shah’s royal authoritarianism.
The Fall of Heaven Page 19
