Books |
Shah of Shahs
Ryszard Kapuscinski
By
Published: Jun 18, 2009
Category:
Non Fiction
Between a tyrant and a religious fanatic, who’s worse? When the Shah of Iran was overthrown, four decades ago, we might have said it was the Shah. But for all his suppression of dissent, the Shah did a great deal to modernize Iran: during his 37-year reign, national income rose 423 times, per capita income soared, and literacy programs created a country better prepared for greater prosperity.
His successors have turned the clock back. They rule according to strict religious doctrine, which is — no surprise — excessively strict for women. In late September, a 22-year-old woman was arrested because she wasn’t wearing a head scarf. A few days later, she died in jail. Protests followed. In the last two months, Some 15,000 Iranians have been arrested and several hundred killed. The Times has a good summary of this hardline government’s crackdown.
And now Iran is playing in the World Cup. Before their match with England, players on Iran’s national team didn’t sing the national anthem. When they scored a goal, they didn’t celebrate. When was the last time you saw elite male athletes stand in solidarity with women? Watch their silent protest.
We can’t understand what’s going in Iran without a guide who can unravel the strands of its complicated history. Fortunately, there is a world-class guide, likely unknown to you: Ryszard Kapuscinski. And a brilliant, short book, “Shah of Shahs.”
In case you are unfamiliar with Kapuscinski, here’s the primer: He was probably the best foreign correspondent of the last half century. Born poor in Poland, his childhood was a witness to war and death. And as a writer, that was his mission: covering war and death. Conflict zones were his home, especially in Africa; it’s said he witnessed 27 revolutions and coups, was jailed 40 times and was sentenced to death on four occasions. He was a friend of Updike and Marquez — that says a lot right there. He died in 2007.
Kapuscinski did not parachute into a hot spot like, say, Hunter Thompson and look for colorful scenes. Before he went anywhere, he read everything on that place and those people. Then he checked into a less than spectacular hotel — for a while, as Poland’s only foreign correspondent, he was a journalist without a budget for expenses — and talked to people. To little people, that is. He rarely wasted his time getting the official lies from the great and mighty.
Does he have a point-of-view? Believe it. “Every revolution is a drama, and humanity instinctively avoids dramatic situations.” But, at the same time, “authority provokes revolutions.” That conflict is the story of the Iranian revolution of 1980, which saw the Ayatollah Khomeini overthrow the Shah.
As Kapuscinski watches TV, he sees fields of flowers. (Iranians plant gardens at the tombs of poets.) And he sees photographs. Some are of young people, “missing” since the protests that sparked the revolt. Others are of government officials who will be executed that day.
Then he examines other “photographs” — significant moments in the Shah’s family history. It’s a quick tour of 20th Century Iran, with brief stops for trivia. (The last Shah wore elevator shoes.) Here’s the free money from oil. Here’s the Shah extending diplomatic immunity to American military personnel and their families. Here’s Savak, the secret police, arresting and torturing and, only at the end, asking questions. And here’s Khomeini, saying the same thing for 16 years: “The Shah must go!”
“The Shah left the people a choice between Savak and the mullahs,” he writes. “And they chose the mullahs.” Who could blame them? To look up and see bodies tumbling out of helicopters, to know there are 6,000 prisons in your country, to hear that three-year-olds are being taken away — at a certain point, any alternative looks good. And then, thirty years later, it doesn’t….
So you get a sense of the sophistication of this book, here’s how it ends:
When I want to cheer myself up, I head for Ferdousi Street, where Mr. Ferdousi sells Persian carpets. Mr. Ferdousi, who has passed all his life in the familiar intercourse of art and beauty, looks upon the surrounding reality as if it were a B-film in a cheap, unswept cinema. It is all a question of taste, he tells me: The most important thing, sir, is to have taste. The world would look far different if a few more people had a drop of taste. In all horrors (for he does call them horrors), like lying, treachery, theft, and informing, he distinguishes a common denominator – such things are done by people with no taste. He believes that the nation will survive anything and that beauty is indestructible. You must remember, he tells me as he unfolds another carpet (he knows I am not going to buy it, but he would like me to enjoy the sight of it), that what has made it possible for the Persians to remain themselves over two and a half millennia, what has made it possible for us to remain ourselves in spite of so many wars, invasions, and occupations, is our spiritual, not our material, strenght – our poetry, and not our technology; our religion, and not our factories. What have we given the world? We have given poetry, the miniature, and carpets. As you can see, these are useless things from the productive viewpoint. But it is through such things that we have expressed our true selves. We have given the world this miraculous, unique uselessness. What we have given the world has not made life any easier, only adorned it – if such a distinction makes any sense. To us a carpet, for example, is a vital necessity. You spread a carpet on a wretched, parched desert, lie down on it, and feel you are lying in a green meadow. Yes, our carpets remind us of meadows in flower. You see before you flowers, you see a garden, a pool, a fountain. Peacocks are sauntering among the shrubs. And carpets are things that last – a good carpet will retain its color for centuries. In this way, living in a bare, monotonous desert, you seem to be living in an eternal garden from which neither color nor freshness ever fades. Then you can continue imagining the fragrance of the garden, you can listen to the murmur of the stream and the song of the birds. And then you feel whole, you feel eminent, you are near paradise, you are a poet.
That’s real writing. And this is a real book.
To see a short film about Ryszard Kapuscinski, click here.
To buy “Shah of Shahs” from Amazon.com, click here.
