The Ayatollah Begs to Differ (40 page)

Notes

Iran is widely covered in the Western media, and almost all the major newspapers, news organizations, and wire services have offices or correspondents based in Tehran. There is no paucity of information on current events in Iran, and for every news item referred to in the book that I have not directly witnessed, the sources are either my contacts inside Iran or, in the case of widely reported news, the various media outlets, including Iranian state-owned and private media. A few specific references are given in the notes below.

PREFACE

1. From a quatrain by the twelfth-century poet Sanai. Translated by Coleman Barks. In
Persian Poets
, selected and edited by Peter Washington (New York: Knopf, 2000).

PERSIAN CATS

1. Mujahedin-e-Khalq, the largest political and military group in opposition to the Islamic regime, was initially formed in opposition to the Shah, who referred to its philosophy as “Marxist-Islamic.” The group allied itself with the Islamic Revolution of 1979 but broke with the regime soon after, taking refuge in Saddam Hussein’s Iraq. It has claimed responsibility for some of the most spectacular terror operations against the Islamic Republic, and is on the U.S. and European lists of terrorist organizations. In the 1970s, the group was responsible for the assassination of U.S. military personnel in Iran.

2. Iran’s Jewish community, numbering twenty-five to thirty thousand individuals according to estimates quoted by news organizations, is the largest in the Middle East outside of Israel. Under Iran’s constitution, Jews, along with the other recognized minority religions of Christianity and Zoroastrianism, have a representative in parliament, the Majles. Although many Iranian Jews left during and after the revolution of 1979, Jewish families are still active in trades they’ve been traditionally engaged in for centuries, namely, antiques, jewelry, carpets, and import-export.

3. Saddam Hussein invaded Iran in 1980, igniting the Iran-Iraq war that lasted eight years and resulted in nearly a million deaths. The Iranian Basij, volunteers sometimes as young as ten years old, were famously known to have thrown themselves under Iraqi tanks with live grenades strapped to their waists, and to have cleared minefields by running onto them. Many Basij wore plastic keys around their necks as they went into battle, keys to the gates of paradise.

4. Velayat-e-faqih, or “rule of the jurisprudent,” was the basis of Ayatollah Khomeini’s political philosophy, one he formed and wrote about while in exile in Najaf, Iraq. His argument was that a Shia Islamic nation should be guided by a supreme religious authority, and, in Iran’s case, him. A collection of Khomeini’s writings is available in English:
Islam and Revolution 1: Writings and Declarations of Imam Khomeini
, translated by Hamid Algar (Berkeley, Calif.: Mizan Press, 1981).

5. Agence France-Presse, Tehran, April 23, 2007.

6. It has been rumored that Ahmadinejad was at one time a member of the Revolutionary Guards’ foreign expeditionary force, the Qods Force, and as such may have served in Lebanon in the 1980s, when Iran helped set up Hezbollah. Neither he nor the government has addressed the question, nor, curiously, have they been asked, even by Western reporters.

THE AYATOLLAH HAS A COLD

1. There are many books on the CIA-sponsored coup of 1953, and one particularly well-researched one is Stephen Kinzer,
All the Shah’s Men
(Hoboken, N.J.: Wiley, 2000).

2.
www.pajamasmedia.com/xpress/michaelledeen/
.

3. Hired cars in Iran range from dilapidated old Paykans, 1960s-technology Iranian-made cars (no longer manufactured), to more comfortable Peugeots, to plush new Samands, also Iranian made, but with somewhat more recent technology. For long trips, one must always specify a “comfortable” and “reliable” car.

IF IT’S TUESDAY, THIS MUST BE QOM

1. All satellite dishes are illegal in Iran, although many households, religious and supportive of the government or not, have them. In a country where entertainment outside the home is extremely limited, and where inside the home most people find state-owned television lacking in entertainment value, dishes that pull in signals from Europe and the Gulf are viewed not as a luxury but as a necessity.

2. Qom’s famous shrine and pilgrimage site, the tomb of Fatima (sister of Reza, the eighth Shia Imam, himself buried in Mashhad, in northeast Iran).

PRIDE AND HUMILITY

1. Reza Shah Pahlavi, the last Shah’s father and the founder of the short-lived Pahlavi dynasty, was a great admirer of Germany and all things German, including the fascism of the Third Reich. A modernizer intent on bringing Iran into the twentieth century, he looked to Germany for technology, architecture, and infrastructure, and his coziness with Hitler’s regime (although Iran officially remained neutral in the early stages of World War II) led to his removal and exile by the Allies and his son’s ascendancy to the throne.

2. Political nonfiction books are very popular in Iran and not subjected to censorship as often as one might think, or as often as many novels are. Although I didn’t see a copy in the windows of the Foreign Ministry bookstore, I did see Hillary Clinton’s autobiography (translated into Farsi) prominently displayed, its cover art intact, in almost every other bookstore in Tehran.

3. Photos of the Holocaust conference were published by the wire services, including AP and Reuters. Mohammadi is shown in a Reuters photo smiling as Ahmadinejad warmly greets Rabbi Yisroel Dovid Weiss of the Brooklyn-based ultraorthodox and anti-Zionist group Neturei Karta.

4. The series was called
Zero Degree Turn
and can be viewed on
www.youtube.com
.

5. See Tom Holland,
Persian Fire
(New York: Doubleday, 2006).

6. See Mojdeh Bayat and Mohammad Ali Jamnia,
Tales from the Land of the Sufis
(Boston: Shambhala, 2001).

7. Inter Press Service News Agency, Sept. 5, 2007, and
Guardian
, Sept. 30, 2007.

8. Twelver Islam is the predominant branch of Shia Islam and Iran’s state religion. Twelvers believe in twelve Imams, descendants of the Prophet Mohammad, whom they consider the legitimate rulers of Muslims.

9.
Offside
, written and directed by Jafar Panahi (best known for
The White Balloon
), released in the United States by Sony Pictures, 2006.

10. Agence France-Presse, April 22, 2007.

11. In my regular telephone conversations with individuals in Tehran, even those opposed to the hard-liners told me that in most neighborhoods the effect of the crackdown was not visible in the way that men and women dressed. The chances of being stopped or arrested, in a city of some fourteen million people, were still slim.

VICTORY OF BLOOD OVER THE SWORD

1. The Grand Ayatollahs of Shia Islam all operate their own Web sites, and their opinions on important matters (such as self-flagellation and self-injury) are available online. A Shia Web site has thoughtfully addressed the issue with answers by Ayatollahs Khamenei and Sistani (of Iraq) at
www.ezsoftech.com/mazloom/zanjeer.asp
.

2. My grandfather was a renowned scholar of the Sohravardi (more commonly “Suhrawardi” in the Latin alphabet) “School of Illumination.” Shihab al-Din al-Suhrawardi, one of Iran’s greatest philosophers, lived in the twelfth century, and
Hikmat al-ishraq
is his best-known work. (A translated version,
The Philosophy of Illumination
, by John Walbridge and Hossein Ziai, was published by Brigham Young University Press in 1999.) A physical School of Illumination, where my grandfather taught, still stands in Tehran, and educates clergy and laymen alike on the philosophy, but none of my grandfather’s own books have been translated into English.

3. Ardakan, my father’s hometown, is the site of an important uranium mine, and on a list of suspect nuclear sites in the ongoing Iranian nuclear dispute with the West.

4. Under its constitution, Iran can have numerous vice presidents, appointed by the president. Some have great influence because of their mandate (such as the vice president and head of the Atomic Energy Organization), while others have far less (such as the vice president and head of the National Sports Organization).

PAIRIDAEZA:
THE PERSIAN GARDEN

1. The Persian princess was Shahrbanu, daughter of Yazdegerd III, the last Sassanid (and last Zoroastrian) king of Persia before Muslim rule. Yazdegerd was assassinated in Merv, an ancient city near Mary in present-day Turkmenistan (and once part of the Persian Empire). See
Encyclopaedia Brittanica
, 11th ed.

2. The Muslim prayer, or
namaz
, is always recited in its original Arabic. Although few Iranians, even the pious, speak or know the language, they learn the prayer by rote at an early age.

3. There have been occasional raids on homes that host underground raves of sorts (which make the local news), although it is impossible to know whether they have been identified by government informers or by neighbors’ complaints.

4.
Shepesh’oo
is a common derogatory term for mullahs, reflecting upper-class disdain for the less-sophisticated classes. “Flea-ridden” implies a lower class who do not (or cannot) bathe properly. (Iranian homes generally lacked bathing facilities until the second half of the twentieth century, and the local bathhouse was visited with a frequency dependent upon one’s status and purse.)

5. Many Iranians of a certain age continue to believe that the British somehow control, or at least influence, everything to their favor in Iran. The fact that, despite U.K. involvement in the 1953 coup (or their effectively having instigated it) and a long history of interference in Iranian affairs (including notorious oil and tobacco concessions), the British continue to maintain a large embassy in Tehran (while the United States suffered the indignity of the hostage crisis) is often pointed to (by conspiracy theorists at every social gathering) as evidence that British influence has not diminished with the creation of the Islamic Republic. In the 1970s, Iranian obsession with British intrigue was satirized in one of Iran’s best-selling novels of all time,
My Uncle Napoleon
, by Iraj Pezeshkzad (a friend and contemporary of my father’s at the Foreign Ministry who moved to France after the revolution), which was also turned into a hit TV series of the same name. (See
My Uncle Napoleon
, translated by Dick Davis [New York: Modern Library, 2006].)

6. Kharrazi has admitted his role in the proposal (a role that has been made public in the U.S. media) but will no longer speak about it with reporters. While I was in Tehran in 2007, he told me that he was inundated by requests from U.S. media to go on record about the proposal but that he would not do so.

7. See the official Web site:
www.wechange.info/english/
.

8. See “A Quiet Battle for Rights in Iran,”
Washington Post
, Aug. 26, 2007.

THE AYATOLLAH BEGS TO DIFFER

1. Iran does not recognize dual citizenship (and did not under the Shahs’ regimes). Under Iranian law, an Iranian citizen can only become a national of another country if he or she first renounces Iranian nationality, which has to be done officially. If an Iranian renounces citizenship, however, he or she is no longer permitted to enter Iran, which means that for years most Iranians hid their U.S. or European citizenship from Iranian consulates. Under Khatami (although the law was never changed), Iranians could openly admit to their foreign citizenship, although they had to continue to travel to Iran only on an Iranian passport.

2. According to a statement from his office and reported by the newspaper
Ham-Mihan
, picked up by Agence France-Presse, June 21, 2007.

FEAR OF A BLACK TURBAN

1. A cleric becomes an Ayatollah by consensus of other Ayatollahs, and there are no official rules for acquiring the title. He is expected, of course, to have been a Hojjatoleslam, to have published works on Islamic theory and law, and to have followers, but in Iran is generally elevated to the position when he is referred to as “Ayatollah” by one or more other established Ayatollahs. Rafsanjani began to be referred to as “Ayatollah” in Iranian media in late 2006. See “So You Want to Become an Ayatollah,”
Slate
, April 6, 2004,
www.slate.com/id/2098364/
.

2. Press conference in Baghdad, Feb. 11, 2007, conducted by anonymous Pentagon officials. See
news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/middle_east/6351257.stm
.

3.
The Trial of Khosro Golsorkhi
was also broadcast on Iranian state television immediately after the revolution, but has since been banned in Iran. Poor-quality bootleg DVDs are, however, available.

A Note About the Author

HOOMAN MAJD
was born in Tehran, Iran, in 1957, and lived abroad from infancy with his family, who were in the diplomatic service. He attended boarding school in England and college in the United States, and stayed in the United States after the Islamic Revolution of 1979. Majd had a long career in the entertainment business before devoting himself to writing and journalism full-time. He worked at Island Records and Polygram Records for many years with a diverse group of artists, and was head of film and music at Palm Pictures, where he produced
The Cup
and James Toback’s
Black and White
. He has written for
GQ
, the
New York Times
,
The New Yorker
, the
New York Observer
,
Interview
, and
Salon
, and has been a regular contributor to the
Huffington Post
from its inception. A contributing editor at
Interview
magazine, he lives in New York City and travels regularly back to Iran.

FOOTNOTES

^*1
Pious Muslims always include the phrase “Peace Be Upon Him” or its abbreviation when writing the name of the prophet (though not necessarily when speaking his name).
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