abduction, mass rape, and forced starvation occurred. To save ammunition, victims were often killed with hammers, axes, knives, and swords. Women and children were killed in mass drowning operations. Thousands were burnt alive. The Armenians were removed from their homes by Ottoman Turkish forces and marched into the Syrian Desert to die of thirst and hunger in the burning sun. Others, who numbered in the thousands, were driven into caves where bonfires were lit in front to cause death by asphyxiation. As renowned journalist and Middle Eastern historian Robert Fisk points out, “The caves were the world’s first gas chambers.”
When Hitler wanted to convince his generals that a massacre of the Jews would be tolerated in the West, he invoked the Armenian Genocide, saying, “Who, after all, speaks today of the annihilation of the Armenians?” Churchill wrote of their slaughter describing it as a “holocaust” and referred to the Turks as war criminals.
In a chilling parallel to the words later used by Himmler when instructing the SS, Talaat Pasha, the Turkish Interior Minister, sent instructions to a subordinate on what to do with the thousands of Armenians in the town of Aleppo, stating, “You have already been informed that the government… has decided to destroy completely all the indicated persons living in Turkey… . Their existence must be terminated, however tragic the measures taken may be, and no regard must be paid to either age or sex, or any scruples of conscience.”
There were a number of photos on display in the museum, which graphically showed some of what had happened. They were far worse than the depiction of hell in the church. It left me feeling numb.
After a good look around the museum at some of its less depressing displays, Ricardo and I went outside in search of a taxi. There was only one parked opposite the church, which proudly sported an Audi badge despite being a clapped out Hillman Hunter. I tried joking with the driver about this in the hope of building a bit of rapport and cutting a good deal. He quoted an astronomical price knowing full well he had a monopoly and could charge whatever he liked. Ricardo turned to me and said with a grin, “Try telling him he’s beautiful.”
“
He burst out laughing as did Ricardo and I, but it was still no good and in the end we crossed his palm with far too much silver and paid the full fare.
Back at the hotel, Ricardo and I said goodbye for the final time. He was flying to Shiraz, which was my next destination, but would be leaving for the former historic city of Bam—devastated not too long ago by an earthquake which killed 40,000 people—before I arrived. From Bam, Ricardo would travel overland to Pakistan and then all the way to Nepal. We promised to keep in touch.
CHAPTER FOURTEEN
One of the quirky things about Iran is all of the items for sale that were discontinued in the West decades ago but are still produced here and presented as modern and cutting-edge. A case in point is the 1960s Hillman Hunter automobile, which until as recently as April of 2005 still rolled off the Iranian production lines.
En route to visiting Esfahan’s historic bridges, I noticed a large appliance shop with row upon row of seventiesstyle fridges in avocado and harvest gold. They were brandspanking-new and gleamed as if they’d just come out of the factory, which of course they had. At home, these styles were all old and decrepit, so looking at them in such perfect condition was a bit like going back in time. I spent a good while browsing around the shop, much to the amusement of the staff, who realized I obviously wasn’t going to buy one and stick it in my backpack.
Making my way to the city’s historic bridges, I also noticed the proliferation of shops selling embroidered pictures of Jesus alongside ones of Imam Mehdi and Our Lady—something I certainly wouldn’t have expected to see for sale in an Islamic Republic.
I finally reached the Chubi Bridge, which was built in 1665 to help irrigate nearby palace gardens via a canal. It was lovely, with twenty-one arches, and had great views both up- and downstream. I didn’t cross since I was heading farther down the river; instead, I just sat on the bank and took in its splendor and that of the river and distant mountains.
Further downstream, I reached Esfahan’s star bridge, the Khaju Bridge. It was built by Shah Abbas II in 1650 and had twenty-three huge arches and terraces constructed on two levels running along its 433-foot length. On the bridge was a large central pavilion, the remains of a number of period paintings and tiles, as well as some old stone seats used personally by the Shah to take in the view.
The Khaju Bridge also serves as a dam and contains locks on the lower terraces, which regulate the flow of the river, but more importantly it also contains tea shops. I stopped on the bridge for a slow cuppa and sat with many locals doing the same. It was a sunny day, the views were great, and the tea was plentiful—this was the life.
After my beverage stop, I started the long walk to the Golestan-e Shohda or The Rose Garden of Martyrs—a sprawling cemetery for the Iranians killed in the Iran-Iraq War. Here thousands upon thousands of graves, all accompanied with photos, were located. I took off my hat and began a respectful walk around, looking at the pictures of those that had died.
The sheer amount of graves and the fact that I was looking into the eyes of the dead made it all the more poignant a demonstration of just what a terrible waste of human life the war had been. A woman close by bent down and placed a flower on a grave, reminding me that for every picture there were grieving family members suffering unimaginable loss. And what a loss the war had been.
It began in 1980 when Iraq’s president and then U.S. and British lapdog Saddam Hussein tried to take advantage of Iran’s post-revolution domestic chaos by making an opportunistic invasion of the oil-rich Khuzestan province. This was encouraged by the then-head of the CIA, George Bush Senior. It was a huge tactical miscalculation and served only to strengthen the Islamic Revolution by giving the government an enemy against whom to rally the people and an opportunity to spread the revolution by armed force. Iraq had better military equipment but was much smaller than Iran. The Iranians were therefore able to use their numerical superiority to push the Iraqis back to the border. This was achieved by 1982. By this time, Iran had a more ambitious agenda and wanted to seize the holy cities of Karbala and Najaf in Iraq.
The Western powers backed Saddam, although America happily sold weapons to both sides. The U.S. also provided satellite images to Saddam so he could gas the Iranians on the al-Fao Peninsula, and U.S. warships assisted by destroying Iranian oil platforms in the Persian Gulf.
The war continued until 1988 when a cease-fire was finally declared. It finished with neither side achieving anything except a staggering death toll. Nearly three thousand Iranian villages and eighty-seven Iranian cites were bombed, causing roughly 5 million Iranians to lose their homes and livelihoods and forcing 1.2 million to flee eastward. Half a million people died on each side and the war is estimated to have cost a staggering 1 trillion U.S. dollars. The war officially ended in August 1990, just before Iraq was again devastated in the first Gulf War. In this, they lost a further 250,000 men, women, and children as a direct result of the war. A further half million children died as a result of the U.S. and British led sanctions (a policy described by the UN’s humanitarian coordinator in Iraq as “genocidal”), and 1.8 million people were made homeless. The latest figures (as of 2009) for the second Iraq war, Operation Iraqi Freedom (sic), are 1.3 million dead Iraqis and 4 million Iraqi refugees (see JustForeignPolicy.org/Iraq).
As I looked at the endless photographs in front of me, I thought of former British Defense Minister Alan Clark’s wellpublicized comment that, “The interests of the West were best served by Iran and Iraq fighting each other, and the longer the better.”
It wasn’t better for all the youngsters in front of me now that had their lives and bodies obliterated, Mr. Clark. Looking into the faces of all the dead made it impossible not to think of the current chaos just across the border in Iraq, where these photos were repeating themselves thanks to the cowardly actions of Bush and Blair. But it was all too easy for me to get annoyed at politicians.
I’d been fifteen at the time of the first Gulf War, and every morning on my paper route I’d read all the propaganda in the papers before I delivered them. Not knowing then that the CIA had installed the Ba’ath Party from which Saddam Hussein emerged (described by the CIA man responsible as “my favorite coup”), or anything of the support Saddam received from the West when it was in “our” interest, led me to conclude that it was a simple
