[Reader-list] Iran Diary—Part 2

[Yogi Sikand]

Iran Diary—Part 2

Yoginder Sikand

No one is quite sure when the conference is to start.
We have not been supplied with a schedule of the
proceedings. After a sumptuous breakfast, I wait at
the lobby for the other participants. Perhaps they
might know what is to transpire next. Slowly, some of
them begin to mill around in the lobby. I hear four
different versions about the time and venue of the
conference. I also hear tongues, including my own,
click in irritation.

I step out to take a walk in the lawn in front of the
entrance to the hotel. The morning traffic on the road
ahead is almost incessant. At the equivalent of four
rupees a litre, petrol is plentiful and cheap in Iran,
although under American-inspired sanctions Iran has
been denied oil refining technology, which means that
it has to import most of its refined oil in exchange
for crude oil exports. Yet, despite this and the
recent rationing of petrol imposed by the government,
limiting it to a hundred litres per vehicle a month,
traffic on Tehran's roads is heavy, but well
organized. The smooth broad roads ensure that traffic
jams are rare.

I spot a board above the entrance of the hotel
proclaiming 'The Revolution of Imam Khomeini Shall
Continue Until the Arrival of the Imam Mahdi'. I
notice little of this revolutionary fervour among the
visitors at the Hotel Esteghlal, however, who arrive
in their swank foreign-made cars. Hardly any men sport
the beard or stubble that was almost mandatory during
the heady days of the Revolution of 1979. They are
mostly in neatly starched suits or informally dressed
in jeans and T-shirts. Few chador-clad women are to be
seen. Clearly, it seems to me, on the cultural front,
the advocates of the Islamic Revolution have much to
be worried about.

I walk down the boulevard to a shopping district
nearby. The crass consumerism that pervades all around
strikes me in the face. So, too, are the obvious class
divides. Iranian Islamic scholars have penned numerous
tracts on 'Islamic economics', arguing for an economic
model that places piety, moral values and concern for
the poor at its centre. The overloaded and overcrowded
shops that I see before me indicate the difficulty of
translating revolutionary ideals into practice.

I buy myself a foot-long multi-flavoured ice-cream for
the equivalent of fifteen Indian rupees, which lasts
me till I get back to the hotel half an hour later.
The organizers of the conference have suddenly got
their act together, and are herding the participants
into a bus waiting in the porch of the hotel.

The bus takes us to an enormous stadium-like
auditorium a short distance away. This, we are
informed, is a hall used for international functions
organized by the Iranian government. The railings
around the auditorium are decorated with brightly
coloured banners bearing finely crafted calligraphic
slogans hailing the twelfth Shia Imam, the Imam Mahdi,
on his birthday, with which our conference coincides.
In addition are giant pictures of the Ayatollahs
Khomeini and Khamenei. A bevy of guards stands at the
gate, which swings open as we walk inside in file,
headed by Masoud Pour Sayed Aghaei, the director of
the organization that is hosting us, the Bright Future
Institute. He wears the uniform of a Shia cleric—a
loose white gown and a black mantle. The ponderous
black turban that he bears on his head marks him out
as a Sayyed, a descendant of the Prophet Muhammad. He
has been bestowed with the honorific title of 'Hujjat
ul-Islam wal Muslimin' or 'The Proof of Islam and the
Muslims', indicating that he occupies a very senior
position in the Shia clerical hierarchy.

The guards salute the participants as they pass
through the gate. Suddenly, I feel important.

The Bright Future Institute is not a tutorial centre
for school students seeking a bright future, as its
name might seem to suggest. Rather, it sees itself
charged with the very serious task of heralding the
arrival of the Imam Mahdi, who, in line with Shia
belief, will rally with Jesus Christ to put an end to
the Anti-Christ and establish a global government. The
conference that we have been invited to aims to
discuss various aspects of the doctrine of the Imam
Mahdi. My paper is on a bizarre cult figure, a certain
Pakistani maverick called Riyaz Goharshahi, who made
the pompous claim of being the Imam Mahdi of the
Muslims, as well as the Promised Messiah of the Jews
and Christians and the Kalki Avatar of the Hindus, all
at the same time.

The conference hall is the grandest I have ever seen.
It must have a seating capacity of well over two
thousand. I settle into a comfortable reclining seat
near the podium and watch people saunter in. Most of
them are Iranians, but there are a fair number of
Arabs, Indians and Pakistanis, some Africans and a
couple of Europeans. There are several Shia clerics,
distinguishable by their graceful costume, sitting
together in front. They exude a certain aura and
charm, with their carefully-wound turbans and long
robes and the black mantles tossed around their
shoulders. A young man sitting next to me, an Iranian
engineer who has prepared a paper on 'The Global
Governance System of the Imam Mahdi', informs me that
among these are some very revered Grand Ayatollahs.
These include Ayatollah Jamaati, the head of the
Guidance Council, and Ayatollah Mahdavi Kanei, one of
the leading clerics of the Shia world.

The conference is inaugurated by recitation of verses
from the Quran, followed by a choir singing
inspirational hymns. The chair for the morning's
session mounts the podium and greets the participants,
who number more than five hundred. He announces that
the arrival of the Imam Mahdi will be heralded by the
Shias, in particularly by the Iranians, and that the
Islamic Republic of Iran will continue until the Mahdi
establishes his global government. Meanwhile, he
advises, Shias must prepare for his return from his
present state of occultation which has lasted for more
than a thousand years.  For this purpose, he stresses,
the government, the media and the education system
must be pressed into service. The United States, he
claims, is conspiring to weaken 'Mahdist teachings'
and has, he alleges, even formed a team to research
the subject. Shias, hewarns, must be aware of these
plots. His speech is interrupted several times, as
indeed in the case of all the other speakers that
follow him, by enthusiastic cries from the audience
offering salutations to the Prophet and his family,
whose descendants are held in particular esteem by the
Shias.

A couple of other speakers, including some Ayatollahs,
take their turn to make broadly the same sort of
appeal to the audience. Then, all of a sudden, people
get to their feet and a curtain of silence descends on
the auditorium. A handsome middle-aged man, dressed in
a simple grey suit, walks down the aisle to take his
seat along with the Ayatollahs. He is surrounded by a
large crowd of admirers. I recognize him from his
pictures I've seen: Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, the President
of Iran. He is the chief guest of the conference. I'm
elated, and feel even more important.

Much reviled in Western propaganda, Ahmadinejad is
clearly a charismatic figure, admired by millions of
Iranians. His austerity is proverbial, so I understand
from what many Iranians tell me. When once asked by an
American television station, "When you look into the
mirror in the morning what do you say to yourself?",
his reply, so it is said, was , "I see the person in
the mirror and tell him, 'Remember, you are no more
than a small servant. Ahead of you today is the heavy
responsibility to serve the Iranian nation'". On
becoming President, he is said to have donated all the
valuable Persian rugs that graced the office of the
Presidency to a mosque in Tehran. He did away with the
opulent lounge for visitors, replacing it with a
simple room with the barest of wooden furniture. He
ordered that the President's special aircraft be
converted into a cargo plane in order to lighten the
burden on the public exchequer, and he himself flies
in ordinary commercial airlines. On many occasions he
has joined the cleaning staff of Tehran municipality
to clean the streets in the area where is house is
located. His own personal assets are modest by any
standards: he owns a car manufactured three decades
ago and a small house that he inherited from his
father, located in one of the most deprived quarters
of Tehran, where he still lives. He refuses to take
his personal salary, saying that it actually belongs
to the Iranian nation. Clearly, leaders of other
countries, particularly Bush and his friends who have
now mounted a vicious vilification campaign against
Ahmadinejad, can profit from his austere example.


Ahmadinejad looks firm but yet somewhat gentle at the
same time. He is an impressive speaker, and the
audience listens to him in rapt attention. His speech,
delivered in Farsi, is simultaneously translated into
various languages. He talks of how all the many
prophets have all taught the same basic thing, worship
of the one God, the Ultimate source of all power.
Imperialist forces, he says, are working against God's
plan for humankind and would meet divine wrath. The
Imam Mahdi will put an end to their oppression. That
is why, he says, the imperialists are as mortally
afraid of the Imam Mahdi as the Pharoah was of Moses.
'Apologists for imperialism claim that liberal
democracy and capitalism represent the end of
history', he says, 'but it is actually the history of
the oppressors that is coming to an end, to be
replaced by the rebirth of humankind based on unity
and faith in the one God'.

The President's speech is greeted with a passionate
outburst of salawats. As he descends from the podium
he is surrounded by a swarm of admirers, pushing and
shoving each other to shake his hand or receive his
autograph. I join the crowd, trying to nudge my way
through, but I am forced aside by a bunch of excited
women jostling to catch a glimpse of the President as
he makes his way out of the hall. Once the President
leaves, the crowd rushes towards the rows of tables on
which cups of tea and chocolate biscuits have been
laid out.

The tea is over by the time I manage to get in, so I
step outside for a well-deserved cigarette.



-- 
Sukhia Sab Sansar Khaye Aur Soye
Dukhia Das Kabir Jagey Aur Roye

The world is 'happy', eating and sleeping
The forlorn Kabir Das is awake and weeping