a distant figure to me, having yet more children, suckling one baby from the breast, breaking ice during the freezing winter to get water to wash clothes for the others. She never had any opportunity to get to know any of us – that was the way things were in a society that saw child brides as perfectly normal. Her own mother died in her mid-40s of a heart attack while she was washing clothes by hand. The cycle went on, unfortunately. My sisters never had any education to speak of and Khomeini went on to ‘turn back the clock’ so women could be buried up to the neck and stoned to death for such crimes as adultery.
The years after World War II were a golden age by comparison. Ideas of all kinds were allowed to flourish. Britain had been seriously weakened and its grip on Iran had slackened. The introduction of Soviet troops in the north had inspired many and rocked the ruling class. The country was ripe for change. My grandfather was a simple working man who made quilts for a living – for the Shah’s court – but rather than being a sycophantic flunkey, he somehow knew who his real friends and enemies were. Like millions of others, we were all strong supporters of Mohammad Mossadegh, the prime minister who was democratically elected in 1951.
He was overturned in 1953 with the help of the CIA and Britain’s MI5. My family’s favourite newspaper editor, Karimpur Shirazi, was murdered in prison and his charred remains displayed on posters to ensure that everyone got the message. Richard Nixon, the new vice president of the United States, came over to review the handiwork of the leaders of the new regime. He condemned Mossadegh as a communist and told the Shah that, ‘the coup would establish an island of stability in the turbulent waters of the Persian Gulf.’
Massacres and persecutions were a feature of this new ‘island of stability’, including the arrest of 500 Tudeh sympathisers in the officer corps, most of whom were executed. Everyone kept their heads down. I buried myself in my studies but stayed true to my allegiance to Mossadegh’s ideals, joining others to chant support for him during our 15-minute meal breaks, taking part in demonstrations, and distributing leaflets in support of his party, the National Front. There was no going back for me and I threw myself into the world of the political activist.
I was far to the right of the Tudeh party but I agreed to distribute their leaflets at the school. My luck ran out when, two months after the coup, a hostile teacher caught me and I was hauled before the military authorities and interned in an open air military camp in the centre of Tehran. I was badly beaten, once after my arrest and again after reaching the camp. My home was ransacked and the few books I had confiscated. My arrest even made the national news when they said that I had been arrested for failing to stand up in the cinema before a patriotic song for the Shah. I was eventually released after five months, but was barred from school for a year.
Years later I entered a military training college. The principal hauled me in and, after praising my grades, stated bluntly that I had no future in the armed forces as I would always be politically suspect. This had a devastating effect as my dream had been to work my way into the officer corps and to get rid of the Shah, opening the way back to democracy. But if I left now I would be required to pay back the entire cost of my education. I had to find a way to square the circle. Six months later, after I had passed all my examinations with distinction and moved to the officers training corps, I sneaked out of my barracks. My heart racing, I used a lamppost to clamber over the barbed wire perimeter.
After some time in hiding I was free to go to the University of Tehran. I passed the entrance examinations in five faculties but I still didn’t feel safe. I qualified for a place at a foreign university, but was not granted a visa despite many applications. An exasperated official eventually whispered, ‘You might have passed our exams but you have failed Savak’s. Talk to them if you want to know.’
I finally got permission through my one and only contact with the intelligence services. My father was appalled at the astronomic costs of the US, but the family had a whip-round and, in 1961, I made my way to Wyoming. I took any job that would pay. My fellow students were convinced that I owned at least half a dozen oil wells in Iran and I gave them some cock and bull story about a delayed inheritance. College jobs and summer holiday work enabled me to pay my way to a degree at Brigham Young University in Utah. Initially, I studied petroleum engineering, but moved into economics. I did not forget the huge sacrifice the family had made and saved enough to send back $1,000.
After moving to New York I was able to combine my doctorate with covert campaigning against the Shah (I still have copies of my articles for International and the American Militant, credited to ‘Kaveh Ahangar’). By 1974, the year I returned home to Iran, I had established a reputation as a young tenured lecturer.
Savak had not forgotten me and were unimpressed by the name I had made for myself in the US. With the temperature rising at home I found myself in the firing line once again. But by this time I had learned to box more cleverly, despite regular and extended chats with the secret police who watched my every move. I was a man with a mission. In Tehran I was working at one tenth of the salary I had been offered in the private sector. But money was not important. The real agenda was making contacts and building up influence as the regime moved inexorably into crisis. I accepted invitations to lecture at provincial universities throughout Iran to learn more about the people of my country, their problems and aspirations. It was also a useful method of familiarising myself with the geography of Iran as, after 12 years away, I was something of a stranger.
The 1953 coup had forced the left in Iran to reassess the future and take a long hard look at the nationalist politics of Mossadegh. Tudeh was discredited by failing to act to defend the gains made by the nationalisation movement. It then lost even more credibility when it appeared to subordinate itself to the foreign policy interests of the Soviet Union, which was trying to gain an economic foothold in Iran.
Young people in Tudeh and the National Front found alternative models in both the Cuban struggle as personified by Che Guevara and in the Vietcong’s battle in Vietnam. Their revolutionary ideals led to the formation of a dizzying array of political and religious groups, determined to change the regime. The Fedayeen was one of these groups and they were set up in 1970. Out of this organisation emerged the Rahe Kargar, originally called the Prison Boys. These Marxists broke with the politics of Guevarism and identified the working class as the main agency of revolution. Other young people in the National Front and the religious movement formed the Mojahedin, committed to armed struggle and social change. They were linked with Islam and their secular equivalent was Peykar, a Maoist group with overtones of Marxism-Leninism. They considered Albania ‘the most progressive socialist state in the universe’.
I had moved on too, politically. I still had a soft spot for Dr Mossadegh but now leaned towards some kind of socialism rather than nationalism. Yet the Soviet Union had shown itself to be repressive and China’s Maoist quasi-religious dogma was equally unappetising. Vietnam had demonstrated that the Third World could buck the trend and Castro’s Cuba seemed to offer the way out of tyranny. The Shah made his last visit to Washington to see President Carter in 1977 and we all seethed as he mouthed Nixon’s monstrous phrase about Iran being an ‘island of stability’. Could it be made to happen again? Could 1978 or 1979 be the year of another revolution… and more?
In the late 1970s the Iranian government faced an economic crisis and its counter-inflationary policies led to strikes and even uprisings. No one was left untouched. The millions that had been ruined by the Shah’s policies and now lived in the shanty towns saw their squalid corrugated-iron shacks bulldozed. When they protested, guns were turned on them. But there were more protests, uprisings and massacres and each was larger and angrier than the last. The state response became bloodier, culminating in South Tehran in September 1977 with an outright massacre. Tanks and helicopter gunships tore through wide swathes of Tehran’s poor and hungry.
The world of academia was not left untouched. The university of Tehran sat in the centre of the city. To the north of the campus lay the villas of the rich and to the south