Robert Fisk: Iran ... A nation still haunted by its bloody past
[Robert Fisk writes for the Independent.]
All revolutions, I suppose, have a symbol. In Chekhov's Cherry Orchard, it's the sound of a distant chain snapping, like that of a bucket in a mineshaft. In France, it was the sans culottes. Maybe in Iran, it was the discovery an American colleague of mine made when he ventured up to the Iranian-Soviet border.
He found one of America's old listening posts still operating, with tired Iranian revolutionaries still staring listlessly at the glowing screens, tracking aircraft deep inside Soviet airspace. Why were they still manning these US bases, he asked? The problem was simple: the Iranians didn't know how to turn them off.
For me, revolutions have to have trains – Strelnikov's great steam loco in Dr Zhivago comes to mind – and Iran's huge post-revolutionary trains, 20 or 30 carriages long, windows smashed, smothered in tulip-draped posters of martyrs, would pull out of Tehran, taking me on massive journeys across the country. We drew into Qom station to find a crowd on their way to a revolutionary court, where a young officer in the Shah's army was fighting for his life, accused of killing anti-Shah demonstrators. I still remember his name – Rustomi – and his brother, in tears, pleading with me to intervene. What could I do? The crowd bayed at him, the same mob, I suppose, that would have mocked the aristocrats in Paris as they faced the guillotine.
There was not much mercy in the Iranian revolution: all the courts did was sentence men to death. But then there hadn't been much mercy before the revolution, when the Shah's imperial guard, the Javidan, or "immortals", slaughtered the crowds. I remember another court, in Tehran, where a man shouted at a torturer from the notorious Savak security service: "You killed my daughter. She was burned all over her flesh until she was paralysed. She was roasted." And the torturer looked back at the bereaved man and said quietly: "Your daughter hanged herself after seven months in custody."..
Read entire article at Independent (UK)
All revolutions, I suppose, have a symbol. In Chekhov's Cherry Orchard, it's the sound of a distant chain snapping, like that of a bucket in a mineshaft. In France, it was the sans culottes. Maybe in Iran, it was the discovery an American colleague of mine made when he ventured up to the Iranian-Soviet border.
He found one of America's old listening posts still operating, with tired Iranian revolutionaries still staring listlessly at the glowing screens, tracking aircraft deep inside Soviet airspace. Why were they still manning these US bases, he asked? The problem was simple: the Iranians didn't know how to turn them off.
For me, revolutions have to have trains – Strelnikov's great steam loco in Dr Zhivago comes to mind – and Iran's huge post-revolutionary trains, 20 or 30 carriages long, windows smashed, smothered in tulip-draped posters of martyrs, would pull out of Tehran, taking me on massive journeys across the country. We drew into Qom station to find a crowd on their way to a revolutionary court, where a young officer in the Shah's army was fighting for his life, accused of killing anti-Shah demonstrators. I still remember his name – Rustomi – and his brother, in tears, pleading with me to intervene. What could I do? The crowd bayed at him, the same mob, I suppose, that would have mocked the aristocrats in Paris as they faced the guillotine.
There was not much mercy in the Iranian revolution: all the courts did was sentence men to death. But then there hadn't been much mercy before the revolution, when the Shah's imperial guard, the Javidan, or "immortals", slaughtered the crowds. I remember another court, in Tehran, where a man shouted at a torturer from the notorious Savak security service: "You killed my daughter. She was burned all over her flesh until she was paralysed. She was roasted." And the torturer looked back at the bereaved man and said quietly: "Your daughter hanged herself after seven months in custody."..