on spreading.
The voice said, Crowds estimated, and the picture showed the crowds of mourners and Karen could go backwards into their lives, see them coming out of their houses and shanties, streams of people, then backwards even further, sleeping in their beds, hearing the morning call to prayer, coming out of their houses and meeting in some dusty square to march out of the slums together.
The voice said, Weeping chanting mourners.
There were mourning banners in the streets. Great photographs of Khomeini hung from building walls and many people in the crowd beat themselves on the head and chest.
The voice said, Rivers of humanity, and Karen realized this was the next day now, the funeral, with crowds estimated at three million and everybody dressed in black, all the streets and highways packed with black-clad mourners, and there were people who ran twenty-five miles to the cemetery, ran in grief and mourning, collapsed, carried, pulled along by others, and the roof of a bus fell in under the weight of people trying to see the body.
The voice said, Frenzied mourning. Beating their hands against their heads in grief.
The body was wrapped in a white burial shroud in a refrigerated van that could not get through the streets. Police fired shots in the air to disperse the crowd and make way for the body and there were pictures of fire hoses spraying tight arcs.
The crowd grew and clamored and the van turned back and the body had to be transported to the cemetery by helicopter.
There were aerial shots of the burial site surrounded by crowds. Karen thought they were like pictures of a thousand years ago, some great city falling clamorously to siege.
Then the helicopter landed and the crowds broke through the barriers. The living were trying to bring the dead man back among them.
Karen's hands were over her mouth.
The living forced their way into the burial site, bloodying their heads and tearing at their hair, choking in the thick dust, and the body of Khomeini rested in a flimsy box, a kind of litter with low sides, and Karen found she could go into the slums of south Teheran, backwards into people's lives, and hear them saying, We have lost our father. All the dispossessed waking to the morning call. Sorrow, sorrow is this day.
The living fell upon the body and knocked it to the ground.
The living do not accept the fact that their father is dead. They want him back among them. He should be the last among them to die. They should be dead, not him.
The voice said, Distraught and chanting mourners.
The living beat themselves and bled. They ripped the funeral shroud and tried to take the dead man into their tide, their living wave, and reverse the course of time so that he lives.
Karen's hands were pressed to her face.
The living touched the body, they pressed the imam's flesh to keep him warm. They had bloody shirts and there were towels around the heads of many men, soaked with blood.
Karen felt she was among them. She saw the shrouded body on the litter surrounded by bearded men, black- clad mourners and revolutionary guards, and they were fighting to touch the imam and take pieces of his shroud.
She could see his thin white legs exposed to the light. They were fighting over the body and beating their own faces.
She thought of the delicate tending of the dead and watched the frenzy of this scene and believed she might pass out. It was an injury to the idea that the dead are protected. His delicate hands and legs were so unfairly exposed. The living paraded the body around the compound and there were soldiers firing shots and men with bloodied heads.
But they were only trying to bring him back among them.
The voice said, Eight people trampled to death and many thousands injured.
But it was the tale of a body now. It was beginning to be the story of a body that the living will not yield to the earth. They were passing out from heat and grief. There were people diving into the grave. She saw them throw themselves rag-bodied into the opening. Their bodies did not matter anymore and were limp and bent with grief. They wanted to occupy the grave to keep the imam out.
Karen went backwards into their lives, into the hovels and unpaved streets, and she watched the pictures on the screen.
Water cannons were turned on and the soldiers fired shots and took back the body at last. They pushed it aboard the helicopter and she could see the litter hanging out of the open door and the body exposed on the litter as the rotors turned and the craft began to lift.
But the living swarmed over the helicopter and dragged it back down.
It was possible to believe that she was the only one seeing this and everyone else tuned to this channel was watching sober-sided news analysis delivered by three men in a studio with makeup and hidden mikes. Her hands were pressed against her temples.
She watched the body sticking out of the door and dust kicking up and that mass of black-clad mourners hanging off the skids and dragging the craft down to the ground.
It was the delicate tending of the dead that was forgotten here.
The troops drove the crowd back and the helicopter climbed once more. This time it swept the living away. They fell back from the wind-blast of the rotors and beat their heads and chests.
The voice said, Six hours later, and Karen saw a whole new barrier set up around the site. Cargo containers and double-decker buses. There was a sound track with amplified warnings carrying over the plain that stretched beyond the burial site and there were crowds to the horizon, crowds out to the edge of the long-distance lens.
The helicopter landed with the body in a metal casket, which revolutionary guards carried on their shoulders a short distance to the grave. But then the crowd surged again, weeping men in bloody headbands, and they scaled the barriers and overran the gravesite.
The voice said, Wailing chanting mourners. It said, Throwing themselves into the hole.
Karen could not imagine who else was watching this. It could not be real if others watched. If other people watched, if millions watched, if these millions matched the number on the Iranian plain, doesn't it mean we share something with the mourners, know an anguish, feel something pass between us, hear the sigh of some historic grief? She turned and saw Brita leaning back on the far arm of the sofa, calmly smoking. This is the woman who talked about needing people to believe for her, seeing people bleed for their faith, and she is calmly sitting in this frenzy of a nation and a race. If others saw these pictures, why is nothing changed, where are the local crowds, why do we still have names and addresses and car keys?
Here they come, black-clad, pushing toward the grave. Helicopters flew in low over the plain. They dipped at perilous angles over the heads of the living and enveloped them in dust and noise. People beat themselves unconscious and were passed limply hand to hand over the heads of the crowd to recovery areas nearby.
Sorrow, sorrow is this day.
It was ten meters to the grave but it took the guards at least ten frenzied minutes to reach the spot and put the casket in the earth. It was the story of a body that the living did not want to yield.
Once the body was buried they put concrete blocks on top of it. The helicopters kicked up dust and many mourners wept and fell. When evening came the guards moved a black cargo container on a flatbed truck and placed it over the gravesite. The living climbed the sides of the container and spread flowers across the top and there were photographs of Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini fixed to the metal surface.
The voice said, The black turban, the white beard, the familiar deep-set eyes.
Black-veiled women, the women in full-length veils, Karen tried to think of the word, chadors, women wrapped in chadors came forth and moved in close and there were many hands pressed to the container, there were hands touching the photographs and pressed to the metal.
Karen went backwards into the lives of the women, she saw them coming toward the camera in the narrow streets, then back even further to when they were growing up, to when they put on the veil and looked out at the world from the black wrapping, backwards to what it felt like dressed head to foot in black the first time, calling out a name under the burning sky.
The living carried signs and chanted. Khomeini the idol-smasher is with God today. Hours into night, under floodlights, the living beat their hands against their chests in grief.
