“Divinely guided, Mac. Ali lasted five years, then he was murdered - Shi’ites say martyred. His eldest son became Imam, then was thrust aside by a usurping Sunni. His second son, the revered, twenty-five-year-old Hussain, raised an army against the usurper but was slaughtered - martyred - with all his people, including his brother’s two young sons, his own five-year-old son, and suckling babe. That happened on the tenth day of Muharram, in A.D. 650 by our counting, 61 by theirs, and they still celebrate Hussain’s martyrdom as their most holy day.”
“That’s the day they have the processions and whip themselves, stick hooks into themselves, mortify themselves?”
“Yes, mad from our point of view. Reza Shah outlawed the custom but Shi’ism is a passionate religion, needing outward expressions of penitence and mourning. Martyrdom is deeply embedded in Shi’ites, and in Iran venerated. Also rebellion against usurpers.”
“So the battle is joined, the Faithful against the Shah?” “Oh, yes. Fanatically on both sides. For the Shi’ites, the mullah is the sole interpreting medium which therefore gives him enormous power. He is interpreter, lawgiver, judge, and leader. And the greatest of mullahs are ayatollahs.”
And Khomeini is the Grand Ayatollah, McIver was thinking, staring at the bloody nightscape over Jaleh. He’s it, and like it or not, all the killing, all the bloodshed and suffering and madness, have to be laid at his doorstep, justified or not….
“Mac!”
“Oh, sorry, Charlie,” he said, coming back to himself. “I was miles away. What?” He glanced at the kitchen door. It was still closed. “Don’t you think you should get Genny out of Iran?” Pettikin asked quietly. “It’s getting pretty smelly indeed.”
“She won’t bloody go. I’ve told her fifty times, asked her fifty times, but she’s as obstinate as a bloody mule - like your Claire,” McIver replied as quietly. “She just bloody smiles and says: ‘When you go, I go.’” He finished his whisky, glanced at the door, and hastily poured himself another. Stronger. “Charlie, you talk to her. She’ll listen to y - ” “The hell she will.”
“You’re right. Bloody women. Bloody obstinate. They’re all the bloody same.” They laughed.
After a pause, Pettikin said, “How’s Sharazad?”
McIver thought a moment. “Tom Lochart’s a lucky man.”
“Why didn’t she go back with him on leave and stay in England until Iran settles down?”
“There’s no reason for her to go - she has no family or friends there. She wanted him to see his kids, Christmas and all that. She said she felt she’d stir things up and be in the way if she went along. Deirdre Lochart’s still very pissed off with the divorce, and anyway Sharazad’s family’s here and you know how strong Iranians are on family. She won’t leave until Tom goes and even then I don’t know. And as for Tom, if I tried to post him I think he’d quit. He’ll stay forever. Like you.” He smiled. “Why do you stay?” “Best posting I’ve ever had, when it was normal. Can fly all I want, ski winters, sail summers…. But let’s face it, Mac, Claire always hated it here. For years she spent more time in England than here so she could be near Jason and Beatrice, her own family, and our grandchild. At least the parting of the ways was friendly. Chopper pilots shouldn’t be married anyway, have to move about too much. I’m born expatriate, I’ll die one. Don’t want to go back to Cape Town - hardly know that place anyway - and can’t stand those bloody English winters.” He sipped his beer in the semidarkness. “Insha’Allah,” he said with finality. In God’s hands. The thought pleased him.
Unexpectedly the telephone jangled, startling them. For months now the phone system had been unreliable - for the last few weeks impossible and almost nonexistent, with perpetually crossed lines, wrong numbers, and no dial tones that miraculously cleared for no apparent reason for a day or an hour, to fall back like a shroud again, equally for no reason.
“Five pounds it’s a bill collector,” Pettikin said, smiling at Genny who came out of the kitchen, equally startled at hearing the bell. “That’s no bet, Charlie!” Banks had been on strike and closed for two months in response to Khomeini’s call for a general strike, so no one - individuals, companies, or even the government - had been able to get any cash out and most Iranians used cash and not checks.
McIver picked up the phone not knowing what to expect. Or who. “Hello.” “Good God, the bloody thing’s working,” the voice said. “Duncan, can you hear me?”
“Yes, yes, I can. Just. Who’s this?”
“Talbot, George Talbot at the British embassy. Sorry, old boy, but the stuff is hitting the fan. Khomeini’s named Mehdi Bazargan prime minister and called for Bakhtiar’s resignation or else. About a million people are in the streets of Tehran right now looking for trouble. We’ve just heard there’s a revolt of airmen at Doshan Tappeh - and Bakhtiar’s said if they don’t quit he’ll order in the Immortals.” The Immortals were crack units of the fanatically pro-Shah Imperial Guards. “Her Majesty’s Government, along with the U.S., Canadian, et al., are advising all nonessential nationals to leave the country at once….”
McIver tried to keep the shock out of his face and mouthed to the others, “Talbot at the embassy.”
“… Yesterday an American of ExTex Oil and an Iranian oil official were ambushed and killed by ‘unidentified gunmen’ in the southwest, near Ahwaz” - McIver’s heart skipped another beat - “… you’re operating down there still, aren’t you?”
“Near there, at Bandar Delam on the coast,” McIver said, no change in his voice.
“How many British nationals do you have here, excluding dependents?” McIver thought for a moment. “Forty- five, out of our present complement of sixty-seven, that’s twenty-six pilots, thirty-six mechanic/engineers, five admin, which’s pretty basic for us.”
“Who’re the others?”
“Four Americans, three German, two French, and one Finn - all pilots. Two American mechanics. But we’ll treat them all as British if necessary.” “Dependents?”
“Four, all wives, no children. We got the rest out three weeks ago. Genny’s still here, one American at Kowiss and two Iranians.”
“You’d better get both the Iranian wives into their embassies tomorrow - with their marriage certificates. They’re in Tehran?”
“One is, one’s in Tabriz.”
“You’d better get them new passports as fast as possible.” By Iranian law all Iranian nationals coming back into the country had to surrender their passports to Immigration at the point of entry, to be held until they wished to leave again. To leave they had to apply in person to the correct government office for an exit permit for which they needed a valid identity card, a satisfactory reason for wanting to go abroad, and, if by air, a valid prepaid ticket for a specific flight. To get this exit permit might take days or weeks. Normally.
“Thank God we don’t have that problem,” McIver said. “We can thank God we’re British,” Talbot went on. “Fortunately we don’t have any squabbles with the Ayatollah, Bakhtiar, or the generals. Still, any foreigners are liable for a lot of flak so we’re formally advising you to send dependents off, lickety-split, and cut the others down to basic - for the time being. The airport’s going to be a mess from tomorrow on - we estimate there are still about five thousand expats, most of them American - but we’ve asked British Airways to cooperate and increase flights for us and our nationals. The bugger of it is that all civilian air traffic controllers are still totally out on strike. Bakhtiar’s ordered in the military controllers and they’re even more punctilious if that’s possible. We’re sure it’s going to be the exodus over again.”
“Oh, God!”
A few weeks ago, after months of escalating threats against foreigners - mostly against Americans because of Khomeini’s constant attacks on American materialism as “the Great Satan” - a rampaging mob went berserk in the industrial city of Isfahan, with its enormous steel complex, petrochemical refinery, ordnance and helicopter factories, and where a large proportion of the fifty thousand-odd American expats and their dependents worked and lived. The mobs burned banks - the Koran forbade lending money for profit - liquor stores - the Koran forbade the drinking of alcohol - and two movie houses - places of “pornography and Western propaganda,” always particular targets for the fundamentalists - then attacked factory installations, peppered the four-story Grumman Aircraft HQ with Molotov cocktails, and burned it to the ground. That precipitated the “exodus.”
Thousands converged on Tehran Airport, mostly dependents, clogging it as would-be passengers scrambled for the few available seats, turning the airport and its lobbies into a disaster area with men, women, and children camping there, afraid to lose their places, barely enough room to stand, patiently waiting, sleeping, pushing, demanding, whining, shouting, or just stoic. No schedules, no priorities, each airplane overbooked twenty times, no
