I didn’t see him come into the room although there was a cry of near-hysteria from the crowd as he entered. I glimpsed him for just a moment, advancing at the speed of a cat, a small whirlwind of black robes, his black sayed’s turban moving between the heads, and then he was sitting in front of me, cross-legged on a small blue and white patterned carpet, unsmiling, grave, almost glowering, his eyes cast down. I have always responded badly at such moments. When I first saw Yassir Arafat – admittedly, he was no Khomeini – I was mesmerised by his eyes. What big eyes you have, I wanted to say. When I first met Hafez el-Assad of Syria, I was captivated by the absolute flatness of the back of his head, so straight I could have set a ruler against it without a crack showing. I spent an evening at dinner with King Hussein, perpetually astonished at how small he was, irritated that I couldn’t get him to stop playing with the box of cigarettes that lay on the table between us. And now here was one of the titans of the twentieth century, whose name would be in every history book for a thousand years, the scourge of America, the Savonarola of Tehran, the ‘twelfth’ Imam, an apostle of Islam. And I searched his face and noted the two small spots on his cheek and the vast fluffy eyebrows, the bags under his eyes, the neat white beard, his right hand lying on his knee, his left arm buried in his robe.
But his eyes. I could not see his eyes. His head was bowed, as if he did not see us, as if he had not noticed the Westerners in front of him, even though we were the symbol – for the poor, sweating, shoving men in the room – of his international power and fame. We were the foreign consuls arriving at the oriental court, waiting to hear the word of the oracle. Qotbzadeh sat on Khomeini’s right, gazing obsequiously at the man who would later condemn him to death, his head leaning towards the Ayatollah, anxious not to miss a single word. He, after all, would be the interpreter. So what of the embassy hostages? we wanted to know. Khomeini knew we would ask this. He understood the networks. His last, cynical remarks about newspapers in the final days of his life showed that he understood us journalists as well.
‘They will be tried,’ he said. ‘They will be tried – and those found guilty of espionage will submit to the verdict of the court.’ Khomeini knew – and, more to the point, we knew – that since the revolution, everyone found guilty of spying had been sentenced to death. Then came what I always called the ‘slippery floor’ technique, the sudden disavowal of what might otherwise appear to be a closed matter. ‘It would be appropriate to say,’ the Ayatollah continued, ‘that as long as they stay here, they are under the banner of Islam and cannot be harmed … but obviously as long as this matter continues, they will remain here – and until the Shah is returned to our country, they may be tried.’ The extradition of the Shah to Iran, Khomeini had decided, must dominate every aspect of the country’s foreign policy. Of course, Hart and Jennings talked about international law, about the respect that should be paid to all embassies. The question was translated sotto voce by Qotbzadeh. Khomeini’s reply was quiet but he had a harsh voice, like gravel on marble. It was President Carter who had broken international law by maintaining ‘spies’ in Tehran. Diplomatic immunity did not extend to spies.
He thought for a long time before each reply – here, he had something in common with bin Laden, although the two men would have little reason to share more than their divided Islamic inheritance – and only when he used the word ‘espionage’ did his voice lose its monotone and rise in anger. ‘Diplomats in any country are supposed to do diplomatic work. They are not supposed to commit crimes and carry out espionage … If they carry out espionage then they are no longer diplomats. Our people have taken a certain number of spies and according to our laws they should be tried and punished … Even if the Shah is returned, the release of the hostages will be a kind gesture on our part.’
I still searched for the eyes. And at that moment, I realised he was staring at a point on the floor, at a single bright emanation, a ray of sunshine that was beaming through the high, dirty windows and was forming a circle of light on the carpet. His head was bent towards it as if the light itself held some inspiration. The left arm remained concealed in his gown. Was he watching this sun-point for some theological reason? Did it give focus to his mind? Or was he bored, tired of our Western questions, with selfish demands for information about a few dozen American lives when thousands of Iranians had been cut down in the revolution?
Yet he had clearly decided what to say to us long in advance of the interview. He would already have known that three of the Americans were to be released five hours later, two black members of the embassy’s US Marine guard contingent and a woman, Kathy Gross. But Khomeini simply came back, again and again, to the same argument. Rather like the US television networks, he seemed to be obsessed by only one theme: retribution. He was not going to preach to us, to speak to us of God or history – or, indeed, his place in it. ‘Carter has done something against international law – someone has committed a crime and that criminal should be sent back to this country to be tried.’ His voice went on purging us. ‘As long as Carter does not respect international laws, these spies cannot be returned.’ Then he sprang up, a creature who had lost all interest in us, and the heap of men in the front rows collapsed over each other in the excitement of his departure. One of our drivers stepped forward – our own translator bent towards Khomeini and whispered that it would be the greatest moment in the driver’s existence on earth if he could shake the Ayatollah’s hand – and our driver held the Imam’s right hand and kissed it and when he raised his head, tears streamed down his cheek. And Khomeini had gone.*
This was not just an anticlimax. This was bathos. When one of the freed US Marines, Sergeant Dell Maple, announced that night that the Iranian Revolution had been ‘a good thing’, it was almost as interesting. And from that moment, I decided to read Khomeini, to read every speech he made – heavens above, the Islamic guidance ministry flooded us with his words – to see what had captured the hearts of so many millions of Iranians. And slowly, I understood. He talked in the language of ordinary people, without complexity, not in the language of religious exegesis, but as if he had been talking to the man sitting beside him. No, although he would not have known who Osama bin Laden was in 1979 – the Saudi would not leave for Afghanistan for another month – Khomeini knew all too well of the dangers that the Saudi Wahhabi Sunni faith posed for the Shiite as well as the Western world. In his famous ‘Last Message’ just before his death, when he had probably heard the name of bin Laden, Khomeini inveighed against ‘the anti-Koranic ideas propagating the baseless and superstitious cult of Wahhabism’.
And he knew how to argue against those American conservatives who claimed – and still claim – that Islam is a religion of backwardness and isolation. ‘Sometimes with explicit but crude argument it is claimed that the laws of 1,400 years ago cannot efficiently administer the modern world,’ he wrote.
At other times they contend that Islam is a reactionary religion that opposes any new ideas and manifestations of civilisation and that, at present, no one can remain aloof to world civilisation … In fiendish yet foolish propaganda jargon, they claim the sanctity of Islam and maintain that divine religions have the nobler task of purging egos, of inviting people to ascetism, monkhood … This is nothing but an inane accusation … Science and industry are very much emphasised in the Koran and Islam … These ignorant individuals must realise that the Holy Koran and the traditions of the Prophet of Islam contain more lessons, decrees and commands on the rule of government and politics than they do on any other issue …
Harvey Morris was full of admiration for Khomeini when I arrived at his office to file my dispatch that night in November 1979. ‘You’ve got to hand it to the old boy,’ he said, drawing on another cigarette. ‘He knew how to handle you lot. Yes, our “AK” knows exactly how to handle the kind of wankers we send down to interview him. Doesn’t waste his time on serious theological stuff that we wouldn’t understand; just goes straight to the point and gives us our bloody headlines.’ In his own cynical way, Harvey respected Khomeini. The Ayatollah knew how to talk to us and he knew how to talk to Iranians. And when they read out his ‘Last Message’ after his death in 1989, Khomeini’s words were humility itself. ‘I need your prayers and I beseech Almighty God’s pardon and forgiveness for my inadequacies and my faults,’ he wrote. ‘I hope the nation, too, will