Bonded At Birth

I am a child of the coup d'état, born in Iran a few days after theCIA helped overthrow the popular, democratic government of Prime MinisterMohammad Mossadegh in 1953.

Not long before my birth, facing nationwide protests, the Shah of Iran wasforced to abdicate his power and flee the country. My mother used to tell me howmen and women celebrated in the streets, how strangers gave flowers and sweetsto each other. "The Shah left," they cried with joy. However, thecelebration did not last long. In just a few more days, the political landscapechanged again. Men paid by the U.S. government began to roam the streets ofTehran, armed with truncheons and chains, assaulting Mossadegh's supporters.Soon the Shah returned and Mossadegh was put under house arrest. That was when Iwas born.

A witch-hunt for the followers of Mossadegh, communists, anyone who opposedthe Shah and the coup d'état now began. Many were jailed -- andtortured. Some opposition figures went underground or left the country; the restlived in fear of the Shah and, within a few years, the SAVAK, his brutal secretpolice (also set up with CIA help).

Even as a child, I knew about the SAVAK. I remember adults whispering aboutit at family gatherings. The fear was palpable. I drew the obvious conclusion:The SAVAK was more powerful and far more horrible than Zahhak, alegendary Iranian monster with snakes growing out of his shoulders that I fearedas a child.

My family did not respect the Shah or America; they feared them. Myfather forbade us to mention them at family gatherings. "Politics is notany of our business," he would say. It was his mantra. He feared beingspied on by the SAVAK, our neighbors, or strangers. Later, I learned how theAmericans helped create the SAVAK, trained the Shah's torturers, advised theShah, and closed their eyes to everything that happened in his politicalprisons. I was told how young men and women were tortured in these jails and Icame to agree with my father; politics was not any of my business.

When I was in the fifth grade, I first saw tanks, soldiers, and angryprotesters -- at the intersection by my home. Sticks in their hands, andthrowing stones, these men broke the windows of our local phone booth and of thestores around the intersection. They were shouting, "Death to theShah," "Death to America." I heard the gunshots -- many of them.Scared, yet curious, I went to the rooftop of my house to watch the chantingmen. "Come downstairs," my father shouted. "This isn't any of ourbusiness."

My home was near the main army barracks in Tehran, the elementary school Iattended only a short walk away from the scene of serious street riots. Theschool was somehow an extension of my family: my uncle was the principal, mymother and aunt teachers. I understood the seriousness of what was happening onthe streets only when, in the middle of taking an arithmetic exam, I noticed thevice principal and my aunt in our classroom, whispering to my teacher andglancing at me. I was only half-done when the teacher walked over, examined mytest papers, and whispered the remaining answers to me.

Joining my aunt, I raced home through the tense, half-deserted streets of myneighborhood, leaving the other students struggling with the exam. "Toodangerous to be out. Everyone was worried for you," my aunt said. I did notleave home again that day or the next.

In the streets in those days -- it was 1963 -- people talked about a man theycalled Ayatollah Khomeini. Some liked him; others did not. I was too young tounderstand any of the adult discussions around me, but I could grasp the meaningof the tanks on our streets. Later, I learned that they were in my neighborhoodto quell a rebellion by Khomeini's supporters. As a result, he was exiled toIraq.

In high school, I would see police officers in helmets, swinging theirtruncheons outside the campus of Tehran University; sometimes I even saw thembeating protesting students. But I would walk away, staying out of trouble justas my elders had advised me.

Onto the Streets

Then, one day in February 1970, I didn't walk away.

At six in the morning, my mother woke me and sent off on the chore I hatedmost, buying fresh bread for breakfast. In the neighborhood bakery, I wasdawdling, enjoying the heat of the fire from the glowing oven, the intoxicatingaroma of fresh bread, when a young man in black trousers, a suit jacket thatdidn't match, and a brown, hand-knitted V-neck sweater pulled over a shirt of adifferent color approached me. Short and unassuming, he had an instantlyforgettable face that I remember vividly to this day.

"Sorry for intruding," he said politely, introducing himself as astudent from Tehran University. I can't claim to recall the details of ourconversation, only his question, the one that intrigued me, but left meuncomfortable and scared.

"Do you know about the student strike over the bus-fare hike?" heasked. I did not, I told him, but I certainly knew about the Shah's recentlyannounced plan to increase fares by 150%. Everyone did. This threatened to makemy life far more difficult. I was born to a lower middle-class family and thefare hike would have meant taking the bus to school, but walking forty-fiveminutes to get home. Like many in my school, I was, until that moment, preparedto do exactly that. End of story.

Quietly but passionately, the young man told me of the student decision toforce the government to retract its new policy. "Will you come out and joinus?" he asked, encouraging me to boycott my high-school classes that dayand do just what I had always feared: protest. Although there were no othercustomers in the bakery, the pervasive fear of being watched by the SAVAK leftme feeling uncomfortable. As soon as my bread had been slipped out of the oven,I paid the baker, shook the young man's hand, and rushed home -- not, of course,mentioning a word about my unexpected encounter.

I took the bus to school that morning and was attending a lecture in physicswhen a sudden uproar in the hallway disrupted my peace. Stamping feet, bangingon doors, hundreds of students were marching through the corridors, shouting,inviting everyone to join them in the school courtyard. The teacher, hoping tomaintain order, continued his lecture, but his students simply packed up theirbooks and stormed from the classroom. Following them without hesitation, Ijoined the protest. For a brief moment, my fears, it seemed, had vanished.

From that courtyard, we poured into the streets -- against the Shah, againstAmerica, against everything that had once terrified me -- disrupting traffic,joining others from nearby schools. Rumors circulated in the crowd. Arrests hadbeen made at Tehran University. Students had attacked the Iran-America SocietyCultural Center, breaking windows and chanting anti-American slogans. Later thatday, we rode the bus home -- free. The next day, the government announced apolicy reversal: The bus fares would be left unchanged.

A World of Silences

In college in the early 1970s, some of my classmates would disappear forweeks or months at a time. No one asked why. Everyone knew they had been takenaway by the SAVAK. When they returned, we still did not ask questions.

This happened to a classmate I respected. Like the young university student Imet at that bakery, he was provincial. Most of the other students in the schoolwore jeans or more stylish Western outfits; he wore trousers and suit jackets,the typical outfit of provincial folks. Different as we were, he often engagedme in conversations about life and our studies.

One day, he stopped coming to school. A week passed, then another andanother; still, his seat remained empty. There were whispers about hiswhereabouts, but no one discussed his absence openly. Soon, other students begandisappearing: a petite woman, a tall bearded fellow, and a youth from a far-awayprovince.

Three months passed… and then, one morning, I saw him sitting alone on abench in the main lobby of our school, thin and frail. I embraced him, said afew words, and departed. I wanted to ask questions; I did not. He wanted to tellme stories; he did not. And life went on in that silence.

"No Gas for Iranians"

I left Iran for graduate studies in the United States in 1976. On February 9,1979, an Islamic government replaced the Shah's regime. I watched the massprotests and shootings in Tehran from New York on television. Once again, therewere those tanks in the streets and people chanting "Death to theShah," "Death to America." Once again, they were joyouslyshouting "Long Live Khomeini." The Shah fled the country. I was happyto see him go, happy Iran was free of America.

I read how students and ordinary citizens stormed the Shah's prisons,unlocking every cell, freeing all political prisoners. Some had been in jailsince the 1953 coup d'état. Those opening the prisons fancied turningthem into museums, which would educate future generations in the wrongdoings ofthe Shah and his American supporters. No longer, they dreamed, would Iranians betortured for opposing them.

Such hopes, unfortunately, did not last. By the time I returned to Iran inthe summer of 1979, the country was already facing life under a repressivetheocratic state, albeit an anti-American one. Iranians who took part in themass movement in the streets which, miraculously, overthrew the Shah were nowdealing with a government that wished to control every aspect of their lives. Itpromptly banned all music, foreign movies, and theater; subjected women to whatit considered an Islamic hijab, forcing them to cover their hair and wearbaggy robes in dark colors; it had no hesitation about shutting down newspapersand magazines that questioned its policies. Government militias and paid thugsraided the headquarters of oppositional political organizations, attackedbookstores, and burnt books.

By that fall, the Shah's political prisons were once again being used to jailand torture Iranians. Many of the freed political prisoners had been returned totheir cells. Ironically, this time around, they were charged with being friendsof America, aka "the Great Satan." Anyone who challenged thegovernment was accused of helping the United States to undermine the IslamicRepublic, the cold war with the Great Satan was now a convenient pretext forimprisoning journalists, writers, and student activists -- anyone, in fact, whodared to disagree with the reining theocrats. They were labeled "enemies ofthe state," "agents of America." It was the beginning of a newera.

And yet much remained eerily the same. With many still being jailed andtortured, this time for liking America or being considered its voice in Iran, weIranians remained hostages to the strange, entangled, never-ending relationshipbetween the two countries.

In the U.S., Iran now underwent a similar transformation from ally to enemyafter a group of student backers of Khomeini seized the U.S. Embassy in Tehran,holding 50 of its residents hostage for 444 days. I was back in the Bronx,attending Fordham University, when, during that crisis, Ronald Reagan termedIranians "barbarians." If I was hurt by the label, the Iraniangovernment welcomed it as the best proof of America's "animosity towardsthe Islamic Revolution."

The hostage crisis opened a new chapter in the Iranian-American relationship,evoking anger among some of my fellow students at Fordham. A long banner, forinstance, hanging from a wall of one of the dormitories read: "Save Oil,Burn Iranians." Hoping to offer a sense of the Iranian grievances againstthe U.S. that lay behind these events, I agreed to be interviewed by the studentpaper. I explained the way the effects of the CIA's covert action in the 1953coup had rippled down to our moment, how Iranian democracy had been a victim ofAmerican support for the Shah.

A few days after the interview was published, in a letter to the paper'seditor, a group of students wrote, "The Iranian student must watch his backwhen he walks home alone late at night." Similar threats continued, alongwith occasional physical harassment. Meanwhile, Iranian students in southernstates were reportedly denied service at restaurants and gas stations --"No Gas for Iranians," was a gas-station sign of the times; some wereeven beaten up.

The Reagan administration only increased its rhetoric against Iran in thisperiod, matched phrase for phrase by the Iranians, as the war of words betweenthe two countries became ever more intense. Action replaced words after Iraqidictator Saddam Hussein invaded Iran in 1980, starting an eight-yearbloodletting between the two countries that would leave hundreds of thousandsdead and wounded.

Hoping to weaken, or perhaps topple, the Islamic Republic, the U.S. and itsregional allies -- Saudi Arabia and the Arab Emirates -- aided the Iraqi wareffort, providing Saddam with large grants and credit. Later in the conflict,the Pentagon provided Iraq with invaluable operational and planning intelligenceas well as satellite information about the movements of Iranian forces, evenwhen it knew that Saddam would use nerve gas against them. Meanwhile, thebesieged Iranian government continued to persecute its domestic critics,accusing them of being the agents of the "Great Satan."

Loving the Great Satan

Like many Iranians studying in universities in the West, I stayed away fromIran, later applying for U.S. citizenship and making this country my new home.In May 1995, after sixteen years, I returned as a visiting university lecturer,part of a special United Nations program. The Iran of my childhood was all butgone. Large murals of the "fallen martyrs" of the Iran-Iraq War, andanti-American posters were everywhere. The security forces and the bassij-- the "moral police" -- patrolled the streets in their jeeps andstation wagons. The war with Iraq had long ended, but Tehran remained visiblyunder its shadow -- a city of martyrs and anti-American warriors, theauthorities proclaimed.

Even the street names had changed; many were now named after the martyrs ofthat brutal war. There was nothing left of my old neighborhood. My home, thebakery, my elementary school, everything had been razed. In their place were afreeway and new residential projects. I recognized only four homes at the farend of the alley where I grew up. On a discolored and bent plaque nailed to awall was the name of one of my childhood playmates: "Martyr AliSharbatoghli."

Inside Tehran homes, behind closed doors, lay another Iran, startlinglyunlike the façade so carefully constructed by the government. In the streets,women covered their hair and wore long, baggy robes to disguise their curves;inside they wore Western clothes -- jeans and revealing dresses. They lived twolives.

A version of America, as filtered through Hollywood (and Iranian exiles inSouthern California), was in every home. Through bootlegged music from LA, orthe songs of Pink Floyd, Metallica, Guns N' Roses, and other Western rock iconsof the time, Tehranis embraced what the government called "theinfidel." They danced to his music and imitated the lifestyle they absorbedfrom satellite TV and pirated Hollywood films. Tapes of American moviessometimes made it to the Iranian capital before they were commercially releasedin the U.S. Even those who opposed the U.S. politically and could not forgive orforget its role in the 1953 coup and the Shah's prison state found joy inAmerican pop culture. In private conversations, relatives, friends, evenabsolute strangers inquired about my life in the States or the possibility ofsomehow escaping to America.

It appeared that Iranians could not live without America. Even the governmentneeded the Great Satan to repress its opponents, while Tehranis took refuge inAmerican pop culture to escape the life created for them by that verygovernment.

In 1997, two years after my visit, a smiling reformist cleric, MohammadKhatami, became president. Iranians were energized. Hope returned. And when Ivisited in July 1998, it seemed that a new Iran was truly emerging. Khatami wasbut one of many original architects of the Islamic Republic who were now callingfor a change in direction: a reversal of foreign policy, a freer press, and theexpansion of civil liberties.

Khatami himself championed a radical change in Iran's foreign policy,advocating what was called a "dialogue of civilizations." He set a newtone, calling, in fact, for a rapprochement between Iran and the West,especially the United States. Khatami's presidency helped bring into the opendeep divisions inside the country: between the government and the people as wellas within that government itself. It also highlighted the touchstone role theU.S. continued to play in Iranian politics and society.

Now, however, for the first time in a quarter-century, many believed anopportunity existed to end the hostility that had only hurt the Iranian people.Young and old, Iranians seemed to welcome this chance. Even some among theformer Embassy hostage-takers expressed regrets and became a part of the growingreform movement, while advocating rapprochement with America. Four years afterKhatami was elected president, a poll administered by Abbas Abdi, one of thestudent leaders of the hostage-taking, revealed that 75% of Iranians favoreddialogue with the American people. Abdi was subsequently jailed.

Despite resistance from conservatives, an independent press was emerging; oldtaboos were being questioned. There were political rallies that not long beforewould have led directly to jail; there were informal meetings, debates,protests, art exhibits, theater openings, and a burst of other forms ofpolitical and artistic expression. The fear and anxiety I had sensed everywheretwo years earlier seemed to have abated. Young men and women openly defied thegovernment through their body politics, their recurring protests, their fearlessconfrontations with the police. They broke taboos, expressed their feelingsopenly, and risked beatings and arrest. I encountered a small group of suchyoung Iranians during my overnight detention in Tehran -- a vision of what a newIranian society might have felt like and a painful reminder that the forces ofthe old order were still alive and all too well.

My Night in Jail

It was a mild evening in February 1999.