SKYSCRAPER HEAVENS
The title of the book is Skyscraper Heavens. It came to mind in the dark before daylight last week, December 31, 2014.
The Skyscraper is a male-dominant image, a phallus, a corporate, higher than you, conception of engineers, developers and heads of law firms, banks and insurance companies, to name a few. It also has a history [See “Tower of Babel”Genesis 11:4 et seq.], the necessity of shared resources of a unit or firm [e.g. a library or intelligence unit], The World Trade Center Attack, Manhattan, New York City, New York, September 11, 2001, as well as to objectify in concrete, glass and mirrored terms the concept of professional success in the industrial era [see Marcuse, Herbert The One Dimensional Man (1964); see also the history of modern hi-rise design perhaps beginning with the Eiffel Tower], but design engineering is not a central theme of the underlying work, also known as Installment 77 on http://www.johnrubens.wordpress.com, nor of the fictional work a treatment of which follows.
The dialogue in Skyscraper Heavens seeks to create a mosaic which ideally reveals Marcusian dialectic themes of “opposition” and “containment” by interspersing it against the backdrop of a 1978-1980 revolution.
Prologue:
When I was a student at Warren College, one of a cluster of colleges at the University of California at San Diego, I took a job as a janitor, cleaning dorm rooms during the transition from Spring to Summer Quarter in 1980. One day, I was browsing the cork bulletin board at the Student Center in my spare time and came across a 3 x 5 inch flash card soliciting a ghost writer for a book about the Iranian Revolution. American hostages were still being held in Tehran at the time, and being a Lit./Writing major, I took down the phone number on the card and contacted ‘M’ for the first time. ‘M’ was a newly arrived resident of the United States, a former professor and the Director General of Educational Research of the National University of Iran, Tehran (1966-1978); we started work on the book in San Diego on July 7, 1980. I was so happy working on a book about a major media event I remember riding my brown Schwinn ten-speed all the way from La Jolla to the Marine Corps Air Station—Miramar. Stardom was just over the next hill, or so I thought. That was thirty-five years ago.
We worked almost every weekend for a few hours and then his wife would cook an Iranian dish for the family which we would share at the kitchen table once we were finished working on the book. It got hot and steamy toward dinner time and Mrs. ‘M’ smiled as we relinquished the dining room table back to her to set. The whole family was called in from the other rooms in the house and we would sit down together at a big round table adjacent to the kitchen to enjoy each other’s company and the delicious food prepared just for us.
The book was ready for submission that winter under the title The Iranian Revolution: Iran’s Struggle with a New Father. Although I did not find a publisher willing to take on the responsibility of publishing such a controversial work at the time, I did get two encouraging rejection letters, one handwritten simply stating the work was not their “cup of tea.” [A copy of the translated text is currently located at the blog johnrubens.wordpress.com under the title Installment 77: Call No Man Father copyright July 8, 2014].
‘M’’s son wrote me in 2014 that the gist of the story which follows was sold to an unidentified buyer by his father for “not much money” in my absence.
The names of the people, places and institutions in this work of historical fiction have been changed to protect the innocent and a few conjectures added due to the benefit of revelations gained from continuing education and the added perspective from the mere passage of time.
Prelude:
Call me Khalid. I’ve got a story to tell you about the Baugi Revolution, or what I remember of it, back in 1978-1981, but I’ll begin by telling you some of the major political events that took place twenty-five years before that in the early 1950’s which had some bearing on the seminal stirrings and the foment of revolution that took hold in the late 1970’s:
Father May I?
Doctor Rahmat, a populist, led the people of Baug from 1950-1953 as their Prime Minister. He supported inclusive government but his administration became increasingly criticized because the population of Baug was disjointed and spread out over a large geographical area. The metropolis of Tealandir was the governing seat of Baug and as its Capitol, rulings from Tealandir affected every Baugi, even if they lived thousands of miles away. Many grew dissatisfied with life in Baug, and opponents of the Rahmat Administration became openly vocal about the incessant compromising that had to be done to mollify every stakeholder and citizen of the country.
For their part, the huge oil companies of United Corporate [UC] could not stand Rahmat’s laissez-faire government and decided to overthrow him with a coup d’etat. UC supported the coup because they wanted to install a former leader of Baug, Amir, back to lead a dictatorial government allowing UC greater influence in the ways and means of petroleum procurement. The Amir Administration would be hailed as a model of the Common Concept of Mutual Interest [CCMI] between Baug and UC, which had been strained for as long as anyone could remember.
A dark-haired female lawyer named Jaleh, told me the logistics of the 1953 coup d’etat were spear-headed by the Central Wombat Agency [Wombat] of United Corporate, in conjunction with disaffected youth of Baug. In the first salvo buffeting Rahmat, demonstrators shouted taunts, degrading his name while alternatively lifting praises to the Amir day throughout the day and night. The relentless distraction of the loud demonstration, and Rahmat’s misplaced trust in the lawfulness of the assembly allowed the demonstrators to overcome Rahmat’s Guard and enter his compound. After a brief struggle, strong men of the coup seized Dr. Rahmat and transported him to prison for further judicial handling once the Amir’s government was firmly established in Baug.
The success of the coup made the return of the Amir imminent. Another rival of Rahmat’s government, the Emilians to the West, were able to conceal Amir not only for his and his family’s safety but to preserve an opportune moment such as the one in 1953 where in spite of the odds Amir would regain the Imperial Throne of Baug as His Eminence. For his part, Amir was grateful and indebted to his Emilian benefactors, and planned to lead Baug to an alliance with them and their Western allies. The designs Amir had envisioned before the Great War, to lead a land of skilled and educated peoples as one nation could now move forward to fruition, or so he thought.
Let’s Flashback: Why Rahmat’s Government Was “Troublesome”
The Rahmat government gave people a sense of freedom and liberty that they had been denied for many years under previous leaders of Baug. His Administration was modeled after democratized nation-states such as Sargon and Jahanjir. In those democracies, citizens were allowed to retain certain inalienable rights allowing them to think and act on their own initiative and to speak out loud what they believed to be true. These freedoms were upheld as rights protected by the Baugi Constitution until the coup toppled Rahmat’s Administration in 1953.
The Bahram Party
The numerous political parties which existed in Baug during Rahmat’s rule were allowed to co-exist and thrive in accordance with the concept of free-will embedded in the Baugi Constitution. The lax attitude in the regulation of social discourse however, created an opportunity for the Bahram Party to rock the delicate balance which shaped Baug and kept peace within its borders. The Bahram Party was determined to destabilize “peace” in Baug at whatever cost, and to overthrow its opposition, whoever that might be, at any given time. During times of unrest, Bahram was able to make inroads at fracturing the confidence Baugis still had in their free democratic Constitutional society.
The Wombat Agency, as one might expect, did not like Rahmat’s tolerance of Bahram Party members. Bahram distributed pro-Xerxes propaganda with bravado aimed primarily against Sargon. The leaflets and tracts lambasted Sargonian foreign policy and its “imperialistic” motivation to dominate the vital interests not only of Baug, but those of the entire developing world. The populace of Baug was paying attention to the juggernaut. Bahram supported Xerxes, the leading communist nation, and other nations of the world less technologically advanced than Baug. It opposed Sargon’s influence or that of any of its allies in Baug.
The Bahram Party continued to gain popularity under Rahmat until Sargon took action to counteract their propaganda drive. The Sargonian plan for dissolution of the Bahram Party was two-fold: 1) to diminish influence of the country of Xerxes in Baug and 2) once Xerxesian influence waned, Sargon could regain access to Baugi oilfields without public unrest [Sargon and Jahanjir were shut out of the Baugi oil industry during Rahmat’s Administration due to his belief Baug was not getting a fair price for its crude oil from them].
Yesterday I, Khalid, had tea with Jahan, Jaleh’s “cousin”, as he said, at a small café in Tealandir. The café was filled with wicker chairs and teakwood tables stained with the residue spilled drinks of darker colors. He said Rahmat started planning an oil embargo as soon as he assumed power in 1950 because that is the platform he ran on. Sargon and Jahanjir were not paying a fair price for Baugi crude oil so Rahmat would not sell them any.
Many Baugis were very sensitive to oil-interested politics in the early 1950’s. Between 1951 and 1953, oil production in Baug was at a virtual standstill because the service contracts between Jahanjir and Baug to extract and distribute petroleum were seen by most Baugis as unconscionable. For instance, it was widely publicized that Jahanjir only paid royalties of 16% of the profits it made on Baugi oil and that Sargon bankers were driving inflation higher as the price of crude and products that relied on oil escalated.
In response to Baugi’s oil embargo of the early 1950’s, Jahangir gave the Rahmat Administration an ultimatum: either relent and end the embargo or suffer naval occupation of the Baugi Gulf (with all the implications of a “blockade”). The Baugi populace reacted tout de suite: they told foreign oil businessmen and technicians they were no longer welcome in Baug. The Baugi’s natural petroleum resources they had been exploiting since the turn of the 20th Century could no longer be accessed by the West so they would have to leave. After the mass expulsion of the Western oil interests, Rahmat set out to nationalize oil.
Once the oil sector in Baug stabilized, foreigners would again be able come to work in Baug, but solely for the nationalized program, not for oil companies under Jahanjiri jurisdiction. Jahanjiri workers, primarily engineers, did not like this arrangement, feeling like second class citizens working for the now state-owned Baugi oil company. Disgruntled workers complained to their sovereigns and the Jahanjiri government persuaded the workers to abandon their positions in the Baugi petroleum industry and leave the country. Baugi engineers and technicians did not have the expertise to run the petroleum industry in their country without outside help and the industry fell into disarray. If that was not enough, no one was buying Baug’s crude oil product due to political pressure from Jahanjir. Jahanjir made a spectacle of Baug’s “breach” of its contract with them and sued them in the International Court located in Fairhausen, a city in the Western Alliance States. The way Jahan told it to me at the café, the Jahanjiris relied too much on their outspoken political persuasiveness and economic clout than by the nuts and bolts of contract law enforceable by the Court. They thought the situs of the Court being in the Western Alliance would aid them in a decision favorable to them, or at least more favorable than the current state of embargo. Nevertheless, the International Court ruled in favor of the Baugi Government.
The ruling was based on the fact that Jahanjir began exploiting Baug’s petroleum resources under alleged contracts that were not produced at trial by the Jahanjir, and Jahan told me, “the Baugs allegedly did not have copies of the agreements to enter into evidence.” The Court went on to point out that Baug had won a hard fought independence from Jahanjir and was no longer a colony of the British Empire but a sovereign nation. As such, a sovereign nation not only has the right of self-determination, but the means to ensure that right. The holding of the Court: Baug had sole right to all mineral resources located beneath the ground of its territories. Although the Baugi government asked for restitution, it could not prove theft of its sovereign natural resources over the preceding sixty years. Since neither Baug nor Jahangir produced copies or originals of any “agreements” the two sovereigns may have been working under since Baug’s independence as a State in the late 19th Century, neither did the Court retroactively nullify said “contracts” but did nullify any supposed “agreements” either of the two countries may have thought they were working under going forward.
As Jahanjir Recedes from the Baugi Oil Picture in the mid-1950’s, Sargonian Oil Companies Step Up Negotiation Efforts to Win Contracts in Baugi Petroleum Interests
Baug’s Achilles Heel: Another Treacherous Ally
Initially, Sargonian Oil Companies supported the Rahmat regime. Former Sargon President Parry West Troopman was sent as an Ambassador to Baug to discuss possible oil trade with Rahmat’s Administration in 1953. Sargon’s Acting President, though a rival of Troopman, knew it was important to send a “balance by imbalance” message to Rahmat. A rival diplomat of high regard sent to meet with the Baugi Prime Minister meant Rahmat would have to be on his toes—all ten of them, in order to discern what this show of enthusiasm from Sargon, an ally of Jahanjir, indicated for Baugi business concerns.
For his part, Rahmat wanted to aggravate Sargon, but at the same time continue to sell and ultimately transport oil to them. Meanwhile, Jahanjir urged all their allies, not merely Sargon, but all its allies not to buy oil from Baug in order for their economy to suffocate. Baug suffered severely from the embargo, but did not crack. Oil production slowed to the point they could barely supply its own people with fuel. Baug’s inability to produce surplus oil for export was a key cause of their rising inflation and huge trade deficit.
The Bahram Party relished the fact that Rahmat was in a bind, after all, they wanted to rule Baug in his place. On the issue of oil exports, the Bahram Party actively opposed Rahmat’s suspension of oil exports to the West and provoked public outcry. Soon, Rahmat’s once adoring public was demonstrating in the streets of Tealandir. In 1953 Baug, Rahmat needed money more that the “West” needed oil (the War in the East was winding down as well, meaning the demand for oil was slackening anyway). Rahmat, determined to sell more oil to American oil companies, set about to quell Bahram-inspired rumors and retain his composure, after all, the plurality of Baugis still admired his steadfast political objectivity, honesty and manner.
Sargon and Jahanjir had and continue to have radically intertwined economies, and therefore, both countries had and continue to have identical vital interests in Baug. Rahmat “blinked”. He was forced to sell oil to Sargon’s oil companies because some of his major domestic political antagonists were impatient with the rising inflation and lack of revenue from oil, by far Baug’s primary natural resource and source of income. If that was not enough, Xerxes did not approve of the Rahmat regime either. Along with Sargon and Jahanjir, the former allies of the last Great War devised a plan to boycott Baugi oil even if it was offered to them for sale below market. The three-way solidarity was enough to ensure an economic depression in Baug at the time.
Hello fellow traveler, I hope you’re enjoying the story, there isn’t much sex but a bit of religion and violence in the story ahead. Khalid here, the sumptuous Jaleh told me once that Xerxes was like the player who likes to wait for the odds to improve at the table or in the market, but at the same time, test the opposition at intervals designed to throw isolated world powers off-balance thereby possibly gaining advantage. For some reason, the three nations, Sargon, Jahanjir and Xerxes working as a unit was a material change in position adverse to Rahmat’s Administration. They were focused on destablilizing him, and that was bad news for Rahmat.
The Bahram Party in line with their Xerxesian overlords stepped up efforts to disenchant and launched ad hominem misinformation campaigns against Rahmat, including rumors he was a “puppet of Sargon”. Like bees buzzing around his head, Rahmat’s adversaries began to overwhelm him. Divisive domestic and Western factions attacked him for crippling Baugi economy by his “out of touch” leadership. Inflation, along with the civil unrest that followed it, was the “Achilles heel” that led the populist leader straight to a prison cell.
At some point just before the coup with Rahmat still in office and the embargo ongoing, an Emilian ship loaded with Baugi oil was seized by the Jahanjir Navy in the Kasparian Ocean. As political tensions between Jahanjir and Baug increased, Sargon, for its part, sought new methods of gaining access to Baugi oil. The “new methods” apparently were working in tandem with allies of degrees measured from past relations in the midst of wartime.
Jasper Hossein Amir Shahraz [Amir]
Jasper Hossein Amir Shahraz [Amir] sent a Declaration to Prime Minister Rahmat informing him he was deposed of his authority and that General Arman would assume the Office of Prime Minister. Rahmat would have none of it. He had just won his case on Baug’s entitlement to all natural resources beneath the earth’s surface within its borders at the International Court in Fairhausen and wanted to parlay that victory into something greater. He had some clout left, at least internationally. He could appeal to the United Patrons and Matrons (hereinafter referred to as UPM). Prime Minister Rahmat had it figured right this time. Amir’s Plan A, the Declaration, backfired and the royal contender to Rahmat’s populist government was forced to leave the country, first to Dilshad, and later to Emilio in fear for his life.
Within three days Amir and his close associates arranged Plan B: a plot to overthrow the Rahmat-led government. Amir’s flight to Italy provided a diversion for General Arman, who was also in hiding, to arrange the coup against the IF, Rahmat’s political party. Rahmat continued to maintain if not enjoy a large following in Baug due to the fact that Amir and his associates were afraid of how Baugi’s and specifically how city folk in Tealandir might react to this “coup” also known as “General Arman’s Plot. The principal and most vocal opponent of General Arman’s Plot was the Bahram Party, who had been growing progressively stronger under Rahmat’s Administration. The main advocates, and parties to General Arman’s plot, according to what I heard from Hussein, a poly-sci professor at Tealandiri University were Sargon, Jahanjir and Xerxes. General Arman attempted to act as go-between, peacemaker and benefactor to those three parties to the agreement and Baug. In exchange for the “beneficial” arrangement, the three super-powers agreed not to interfere with Arman’s Plot or stage a meddling counter-coup once the effective takeover of Baug was accomplished by General Arman.
Up until 1953, of the major world powers, Jahanjir had the most regulatory influence in Baugi trade matters. As the year passed, American diplomacy and persuasiveness won out as did General Arman in the coup of ‘53. Jahanjir had two basic interests in Baug: the first and foremost concern was the dissolution of the Bahram Party and its entrenched propaganda machine, the other, once dissolution of the Bahram Party accomplished or nearly certain to be accomplished, Sargon could simply fill American oil tankers with lawfully purchased Baugi oil. To achieve these two objectives quickly, strategically and efficiently, Sargon decided it would be in its best interests to re-introduce Jasper Hossein Amir Shahraz as the leading royal head of state of Baug.
Oh man, does this stuff drain me. Yeah, it’s your storytelling stranger Khalid again. Hope to make your acquaintance someday dear reader. Maybe I wasn’t clear about how the 1953 coup was effectuated. A re-hash of the events follow:
THE COUP D’ETAT: 1953
A rabble of pro-Amir demonstrators, led by twenty-one Baugi military officers, staged the coup which was organized by Sargon’s Executive and its Wombat Quick Squad. Some of the twenty-one officers overseeing and/or carrying out the rebellion were enemies of Rahmat held in Baugi prisons at the time. After the success of the coup, Rahmat was thrown into a prison cell, and the internal Baugi officers that helped orchestrate the coup were set free.
The Bahram Party told its members and officers that a new Baugi government must be formed as soon as possible so that General Arman would not have the time to consolidate his power in a military dictatorship. As far as the communists were concerned, anarchy and revolution were preferable to having all the authority with Arman or anyone else. Bahram had a plan of their own and it did not include Amir, Dr. Rahmat or General Arman. The communists intended to “fatigue the new government,” until an opportune moment could set the stage for yet another uprising. In this way, they would not have to “double-cross” their compatriots in Xerxes while they for their part were allied with “the West” at the outset in the 1953 coup. Xerxes planned to allow the Wombat-devised coup to go forward then seize control of the Baugi Government at their discretion. Bahram Party organizers wanted to install a leader who they could manipulate while consolidating their own party’s political power. In 1978, the Ayatollah Babak was to become this individual.
Around the same period, a network of communist military officers were discovered accidentally by General Arman’s government. A specific officer was apprehended carrying a suitcase with the names of 1200 people that had infiltrated the Baugi military service. Six hundred of the names found were part of a conspiracy of anti-Amir military officers ranging from lieutenant to colonel (hereinafter Sr. Officers). The names of the other six hundred soldiers (hereinafter Jr. Officers) were written down in a complicated code. A major in Arman’s armed forces, distinguished as an expert code breaker, was called in to decipher the names of the Jr. Officers found in the briefcase. Unbeknownst to Arman, the code breaker he “hired” was a communist infiltrator who took the codes of the 600 Jr. Officers and fled the country, never to be found again. Fear and intrigue prevailed in the wake of the disclosures of the Baugi Major who left the service of the country. Since the identities of the 600 Jr. Officers remained unknown, the secret police and informants later investigated the case in an attempt to uncover their true identities. Communist influence seemed to pervade daily life in Baug, but such was the case in almost every country of the world, including Sargon in 1953. Even in Xerxes, its leader Payam was said to be livid with rage at his daughter’s defection to the West and was nearly as totalitarian and brutal as he was during the era of his dissident purges.
The Amir’s personal guard was not without its defectors. One morning before the Great War, Amir found a derogatory letter at his bedside when he awoke and knew he could have been killed that night. That incident shook his confidence so much he was visibly shaken when he appeared in public. Due to the circumstances that surrounded the coup and the prior letter of warning, Amir was suspicious of his allies, even his closest friends. Il etait raison [French: “He had good reason”]. What was not as apparent perhaps, was Arman’s transfer of power back to the Amir after the coup.
Amir Takes the Helm of Baug
Along with the six hundred Senior Officers that were arrested by General Arman’s forces, the Baugi Government arrested several communist politicians. Of these, forty were executed and the others imprisoned. The strong military response of Amir and Arman frightened the general Baugi population. The aggression was seen as a totalitarian gambit and short term strategy utilizing martial law; yet, unlike before, there were no protests over the government’s consolidative action. It was under these coercive circumstances that the Baugi oil pact(s) with the Western powers and Sardonian oil companies was ratified by the Baugi Parliament. The Parliament decided that eight major concessionaires from different countries should undertake the production and sale of Baugi oil. Rahmat’s government, and his goals for Baug were over shut down and a new regime had begun to greet the populace with different goals and different ideals to focus upon—and it pleased the Amir’s Western benefactors.
Major Petroleum Concessionaires from Sargon
The major concessionaires of Baug’s oil resources were based and/or headquartered in Sargon and paid taxes to them. General Arman made a deal with Sargon’s oil companies and was awarded a foundational fee of 60-70 million dollars to use as he pleased. In the new Baug-Sargon oil contract, 51% of the net oil profits belonged to Baug, while 49% belonged to Sargonian oil companies that owned the concession. Sargon was the Principal was responsible for exploration, feasibility studies, production, sales and distribution, including associated storage and transport of the petroleum product(s) and could deduct these expenses from the gross revenues.
Xerxes Bears Gift
In the early 1950’s, Xerxes wanted the ouster of General Arman at any cost. In an act of goodwill, they returned eleven tons of gold it had acquired from Baug during the last Great War. Although former Prime Minister Rahmat had demanded return of the gold while he was yet in office, Xerxes did not oblige him with the transfer at that time. Now that circumstances had changed with plans for the coup in place, Xerxes hoped the gold “gift” would help ease relations between the two countries before the change-over. Baug had the oil to make this initial gold “investment in the future” worthwhile.
Baug was enthusiastic about the gold returned by Xerxes to its sovereign soil, however, trade relations between the two countries remained muted. Sargonian and Jahanjiri concessions were already paying top dollar for Baugi oil and Xerxes could not compete with their bids. Rather, they temporarily took a “backseat” to their former allies in regard to Baugi oil exports. Xerxes made it clear they would not interfere with the West’s arrangement with Baug only if assurances were promised that first advantage or first right of refusal would be given to Xerxes in other domains and endeavors in the future, whatever they may be (e.g. wheat from Sargon, most favored nation trade status, or future oil contracts). A “divide and conquer” strategy was replaced by one of bargain and compromise—a cold war of global trade. The understanding was “We’ll let you have your way this time but you better make sure we get ours ‘next’ time or were taking it.”
Khalid here again. The publisher wants everyone to read this book! Why after thirty-four years would I want thousands of readers to read about a revolution so current they made me change the names, places and institutions it refers to? My own mother finds it confusing. Some say if it’s worth doing, it’s worth doing right. Others add if you don’t enjoy what you do, don’t do it. Still others say “Just do it.”
Khalid is here to tell you what Jahan told me: war is tricky business. So here I am plugging along with this account where the names have been changed to protect the innocent. Money does talk and whether you are a multinational corporation or a sovereign nation, you have to back up what you say or have hell to pay. You may end up in clown’s gear like me, in prison or dead. Sarkis Reuben has an interest in a company that will delete your history so you can start a new one. Look him up on the internet. Of course, his name has been changed for purposes of this book, but you get the idea. The name of the company he’s invested in is called Cybercrust. His company will turn your history to dust in the blink of an eye. Whether you are a multinational corporation, a university, a sovereign nation or just an individual like you or me, you can wipe out what you’ve said in the past for whatever reason. Now you don’t have to back up what you said before. “New day, fresh start” as my stock broker told me time and again.

BARGAINING WITH THE BIG GUYS
Negotiations with the Middle East in the early 1950’s became the precedent for a new type of agreement between the superpowers of the Sargon, Jahanjir and Xerxes with respect to Baug. Xerxes conceded to Arman’s policy in order to focus its attention in other areas of the world, such as Rosana, its southeast neighbor. Xerxes felt that the Northern Rosana government, an assured acquisition of theirs, could do their bidding for them against South Rosana, without getting their own hands “soiled” in war. Once Xerxes found a sympathetic group to do their bidding for them, there was no reason why they should not prioritize the aid they give to comrades abroad in order to overcome their mutual enemies.
In Baug itself, the situation was not as clear-cut in regard to Xerxes’ influence within its borders. Those that opposed a communist state outnumbered those who wanted one; that was the pluralistic sentiment. But like a boat in rough water, Baugis were unsure what their neighbors favored as far as public policy or governmental structure(s). What the plurality did agree on was they wanted change. Change was the only “mantra” anyone had any assurance in.
As a result of the foregoing, Xerxes did not interfere with Baugi trade during the early 1950’s or threaten it with coercive tactics that would “rock the boat” now being led by the “West”. No, Xerxes was determined to “wait it out” for the appointed time when they could tell Sargon or Jahanjir, “Our turn now–move over!”
AMIR AND THE FOUNDATION OF HIS SECRET POLICE FORCE O.I.H.S.B.
In 1958, Wombat established a secret police force (secret service) for Amir called the Organization of Information and Homeland Security of Baug (hereinafter referred to as OIHSB). OIHSB was established to maintain order and keep the power in the hands of its ruler, Amir. OIHSB used totalitarian techniques and used totalitarian methods to achieve political stability. This Unit would be known to capture and detain anyone who opposed the State or who displayed dissatisfaction with the new regime.
There were several groups of individuals (probably some individuals were in more than one group Jaleh, the first Baugi I met in Sargon, told me) who opposed Amir. The different types of organizations, or “groups” with differing views on Amir were: 1) the Baugi National Front, or BNF of which Dr. Rahmat was a party member and who was imprisoned when Amir seized power successfully after the 1953 coup d’etat, 2) the Communist Party, aka the Bahram Party and 3) Clerics (i.e. the Ayatollahs). Amir used his secret police force OIHSB to suppress all these “groups” from interfering with affairs of State in Baug.
PRESIDENT JETHRO JOSEPH KINNET’S INFLUENCE IN BAUG (circa 1960-1963)
During Jethro Joseph Kinnet’s term of office (1960-1963) a wave of political “coup d’etats” swept the third world [hereinafter referred to as the “developing world”]. Political unrest prevailed in many parts of the world south of the equator. The reasons for the unrest were a general dissatisfaction with their respective governments and the widespread desire to establish a “better society” even if by means of violent upheaval(s). Kinnet’s method of restraining communist governments from taking over smaller, underdeveloped countries was to influence the presiding government to respect human rights. Kinnet’s diplomacy acted as a deterrent to anarchy and revolution in Baug because Amir knew what limitations Kinnet might impose on him should disorder reign in the streets. Kinnet’s theory was that if the people were content with their government and their leaders, they would have no imminent reason to break with the status quo and revolt.
Kinnet was the significant factor which led to many reforms in Baug under Amir’s Administration. He advised the Amir in the early ’60’s to moderate the use of his power keeping in mind his duty to serve his constituents. Baug was a model of a transition State, not entirely advanced, but not developing either, but ancient. In other countries, where the close monitoring of its national rulers was not as comprehensively studied as it had been in Baug immediately after the last Great War, it was found communist governments could readily assum power after a developing nation became discontent with its leaders. Kinnet stressed the development of a policy for human rights that would appease the public and decrease the chance of a revolution from occurring. The Kinnet Administration recommended Dr. Rahimi, Secretary of the Financial Ministry in General Arman’s Cabinet to be appointed the new Prime Minister. Rahimi was very close to the Kinnet family and had represented Baug in the recent oil pact with several Western concessionaires. The Western nations of the Sargon, Jahanjir, Fairusa and Gaspar seemed to agree on Rahimi as Prime Minister as they found him to be an able negotiator. Rahimi was ultimately appointed through Kinnet’s influence and Amir made special efforts to tolerate his rival’s presence; they were not the best of friends. Since Rahimi had been installed at the urging of Jethro Kinnet, he had a special distinction in Parliament that none of the other members had. Rahimi was relatively insulated from Amir’s overseeing and had the right to express his personal views at Parliamentary sessions even if they were incongruous to Amir’s.
REFORMATION: THE SIX PRINCIPLES
Amir and Rahimi worked together to reform the Baugi Constitution. The work product of their tenuous political alliance was called the Six Principles of Amir’s Revolution. These principles were as follows:
1) All large land owners transfer some of their land to the peasants who had worked it as lessees. Up until the reform, landlords would rent out their acreage to peasants much like European feudal lords had done with serfs in the Middle Ages. Now, peasants could be farmers, ranchers or entrepreneurs with a chance to make a living for themselves and enjoy the windfall of fruits from their labor and management.
2) Young, educated people were sent to villages to teach the peasants how to read and write. The young adults also familiarized the country-dwellers with recent technological advances in health, medicine and agriculture.
3) Medical school graduates must spend at least two years serving the village poor in Baug without a salary prior to entering the greater medical profession [in lieu of mandatory military service].
4) Nationalization of Baugi forests, which had been owned by private landlords before the reform.
5) Bestow women with rights equal to those of men
6) Establish new election regulations.
Two of the six points infuriated the clergymen. They didn’t like the transfer of land to the peasants or making women’s rights equal to those of men. The transfer of land to the peasants meant they would have to rely more on almsgiving from them rather than solely from the wealthy landowners. Prior to the reforms, clerics received an allowance from the rich landlords. After the reforms, they were at the mercy of the almsgiving of the peasants who were now an intermediary endowed with the means to give back to the clerics what was once given to the clerics directly from the wealthy. The clergymen’s “job” prior to the reforms had been to quell dissent among the poor so they would cause landlords a minimal amount of “trouble”. Clerics did not believe women should be granted equal rights to men but rather, subject themselves ultimately, to the dictates of men. Accordingly, Ayatollah Babak accused Amir of formulating the Six Principles due solely to Sargonian and Flintonian influence. Ultimately, Amir had the power to silence Babak and other clerics by imprisonment, so most of Baug’s priests obeyed him, however reluctantly.
THE AYATOLLAH BABAK AND THE SHIET DENOMINATIONS OF ISLAM
Both major denominations of Islam, Shiet and Sunni, co-exist in Baug, although Shiet (or Shia) is much more prevalent within its borders. In fact, Baug is the hub of the Shiet denomination. Babak was among the Shiets since birth, and had been recognized as a Great Ayatollah at the suggestion of Sayyid Shahin Darien [(1905-April, 1986) hereinafter referred to as Darien]. Darien was a Grand Ayatollah of Northern Baug who recommended Babak ascend to the position of Grand Ayatollah during the reforms of the 1960’s-1970’s. The Shiets have a ceremonial rite in memory of Imam Hossein, the nephew of Mohammad the prophet, founder of Islam in the seventh century A.D. In 1963, during the ceremonial day of Hagation, an anti-Amir demonstration was held in Tealandir, led by the Ayatollah Babak. The demonstrators shouted derogatory remarks and slogans against Amir until he ordered his guards to open fire into the assembly. Approximately one hundred people were killed in the shooting that afternoon, although Babak went on record accusing Amir of executing 15,000 people. The Ayatollah Babak’s claim that 15,000 people had been summarily executed by Amir’s guard backfired.
There exists an allegory known to Baugi’s which Amir used to persuade his people he was “right” and Babak was obviously “wrong” about the summary executions. Jahan told me the story went like this:
“Once there was a very powerful king who conquered India named Nader Shah. One day, he became very angry with one of his subjects and ordered he be given 1,000 lashes and thrown into the dungeon. The condemned man was giddy with laughter when he heard the sentence.
‘Why are you laughing?’ asked the king.
‘Your highness’ replied the sentenced subject, ‘either you have not had the experience of being whipped or you cannot count. If one is to endure 1,000 lashes, he certainly will not live to see his prison cell!’
The allegory was thus used to parody Babak’s penchant for exaggeration. A videotape of the incident clearly shows no more than 100 could have perished. Thus, Babak either could not “count”, or he made use of puffery and chicanery to bolster his contention he is morally superior to Amir. Since it had to be assumed the Ayatollah Babak learned to add long ago, Amir’s regime persuaded the people that it was Babak, and not himself, who used exaggeration to shuffle the facts and hide the truth from the people.
Similar events led by the clerics beholden to Babak occurred elsewhere in Baug, but most people accepted the Six Principles because this aspect of Amir’s reform freed them from the domination of the landlords. Babak had misread the sympathies of the majority of Baugis and his reputation was tarnished. Soon after the Hagation uprising and subsequent smaller demonstrations throughout Baug, Amir sought punishment for the Ayatollah Babak. The Grand Ayatollah Darien was instrumental in saving Babak from execution as well as affording him exile in neighboring Dishad. The general population revered Ayatollah Babak as a figurehead of Shiet Islam and would have objected to any violent means of punishment in any event. Pushed into a corner and wanting to absolve himself of the violent governmental responses to the Hagation and “after-shock” demonstrations, Amir settled on the solution of exile for Babak, as it would at least diminish his influence in Baug. Babak was later made a “Great Ayatollah by Darien in 1965.
AFTER PRESIDENT KINNET OF SARGON
Some months after these demonstrations, on November 22, 1963, Sargon’s President, Jethro Joseph Kinnet was assassinated during a campaign trip to Sargon’s southern perimeter, Fallas, Sextus. After Kinnet’s death, Amir removed Dr. Rahimi from office in the absence of political pressure from the Kinnet Administration. Amir had been afraid of Rahimi as a mouthpiece of scrutiny and a threat to his regime’s unquestioning control. Amir chose a relatively inexperienced man named Aspar Jesper Parviz [hereinafter referred to as Parviz] to succeed Rahimi as Prime Minister. Parvis was essentially another of Amir’s “yes-men” and allowed Amir to exploit his ignorance of the affairs of state. The manipulation of Parviz by Amir was so complete, it gave the public the impression the two men were coordinating the balance of power in the constitutional Baugi government when in actuality, Amir had become a virtual dictator of Baug in the wake of Kinnet’s death.
Inflation characterized the term of Parviz’ office, and after a few months, on March 7, 1964, Navid, a more knowledgeable politician, became the new Prime Minister of Baug. Navid was supported by Sargon and the price of domestically purchased oil in Baug rose dramatically in order to sell large quantities at a discount to the Western oil companies abroad. During his term in office, Navid raised the price of petroleum twice. Baugi’s were furious with Navid’s actions, especially since they were still coping with the inflation brought on by what Jaleh told me became known as the “Parviz slipshod Administration.” Although the international spot price of oil remained relatively constant, Baugi domestic oil prices continued to increase under Navid’s leadership. Meanwhile, the public grew increasingly furious.
The stage was gradually being set for revolution. Public sentiment was boiling over with negativity directed at the Amir regime and more individuals were speaking out and sharing their negativity with neighbors, friends and colleagues. The end of inflation and “hard times” seemed nowhere in sight and the populace found itself of the brink of chaos. Tension over the inflation situation was causing fissures in the ancient civilization of Baug.
THE SIX PRINCIPLES: THEORY VS. PRACTICE
In time, the “Six Principles” of Amir were not enforced by his administration and the populace began to believe he had deceived them. The land that the peasants received from the landowners was rapidly being sold off to pay the delinquent loans they took out to begin farming the land. The bubble the Six Principles created was bursting. During the first year of the cooperative effort, the government stopped funding the peasants and they had no chance of paying back their loans unless they were extremely fortunate with their first harvest. There was no subsidy to save their land or a bridge program to stop most farmers from being evicted from their land. Without a ‘bumper crop’ or favorable commodities prices at which to liquidate their agricultural products, the lack of follow-through on the government subsidies caused the eviction of many farmers from land transferred to them just a year earlier. Ms. Jaleh said these evictees became known as the vagabond peasants who were forced to migrate to various cities where they could find work to support themselves and their families.
GUL AS PRIME MINISTER
Khalid: “The years started to melt together in 1965.”
Navid was assassinated by a secret organization belonging to the clerics in February, 1964 and Gul, who was the Finance Minister in Navid’s administration, became the new Prime Minister in January of 1965 and served in that position until his arrest following the Baugi Revolution of 1978 and ultimate execution on April 7, 1979. Gul’s first decision in office was to decrease the price of oil to domestic buyers. This was significant in that it was perceived by the public as a goodwill gesture and eased tense public relations between them and the Baugi government.
Gul’s political platform seemed honest and open to the public compared to recent occupants of the Prime Minister’s seat. He criticized the way his predecessors had mishandled its affairs, and accepted the shortcomings of his own role as Finance Minister under Navid. He announced a new governmental policy was being formulated and his constituency was eager to believe his optimistic outlook for Baug was sincere. Gul’s dreams of effortless prosperity were short-lived however. In 1963, during his tenure as Finance Minister under Navid, he imposed heavy property and luxury taxes on the rich. During the next 14 years after he became Prime Minister, Gul imposed 250 additional taxes above and beyond those citizens were already paying under the Navid Administration. For example, if an individual, group or family wanted to travel outside of Baug by air, the principal traveler had to pay a two hundred dollar travel tax in addition to the respective airfare charge(s). Subsequently, a one hundred and fifty dollar surcharge was imposed and collected for each additional passenger on the flight as well. This policy, as could be expected, infuriated the rich, but appeased the poor whom Amir was most anxious to please at this time because they rarely if ever flew.
GOVERNMENTAL CONTROL OF IMPORTED AND EXPORTED ITEMS
All important imports and exports were governmentally controlled under Gul’s Prime Ministry. The most important commodities traded in Baug privately, at least in part, are grain, sugar, oil and industrially manufactured items according to Jahan and Jaleh. The services the government controlled exclusively before the Revolution were the railroads, the postal service and the airlines. Managers of the various smaller divisions of commerce were bribed on a regular basis while others simply embezzled surplus money using accounting principles and methodologies enabling them to “skim off the top” of the accounts without anyone being the wiser (See also #slushfunds). The government was unable to supervise all the subsidiary commerce division heads and graft soon became prevalent. Division managers enriched themselves often without being called to account for their actions to the public’s detriment.
For example, if an individual asked for permission to build a house, the housing office might say, “No, not unless you pay me this extra fee (as a bribe). During the rampant corruption of the division managers, one “minister” was found to have embezzled four million U.S. Dollars from an undisclosed sugar contract. When questioned by reporters about the embezzlement, Prime Minister Gul said governmental officials “deserved” the added monetary job perks due to the important vital nature of the work they accomplished for the Baugi people.
BAUG AS A MEMBER OF OIL EXPORTING SOCIETIES (OPS)
In an act of goodwill toward his people, Amir had the foreign concessionaires in Baug dissolved and nationalized oil resources within its borders about the time of Kinnet’s death in 1963. The foreign oil companies could continue to sell and distribute the oil, but the petroleum products themselves were declared a public trust by him.
The nationalization of Baugi oil meant both increased revenues and greater political leverage within the OPS cartel, of which Baug had recently become a member.
AMIR’S DOMESTIC POLICIES, FOREIGN RELATIONS COMPARED
International leader and investor Amir placed large sums of money in foreign accounts and bought foreign denominated securities to assure the safety of his family’s assets were he to be thrown out of Baug as he had been during his confrontation with Dr. Rahmat in the early 1950’s. Among Amir’s holdings was a 25% ownership in a German-based corporation named Roulet, and a relatively large position in Pan World Airways. Amir also built oil refineries in Ponce, Irdut and Padistan and gave financial aid to the United Mind Republic, Jahanjir, again Padistan and several of the developing countries. within Ponce. In 1976, the economy of Jahanjir was in recession and in dire need of economic stimulation. Amir’s immediate investment and the currency float between Baug and Jahanjir spelled increased Jahangiri employment and a shot in the arm economically.
I’m going to see Jahan before he goes to Dilshad. His cousin Jaleh was a silent third party most of the time when we met together. I doubt she’s coming this morning. I knew whatever I told Jahan would get back to Jaleh, but on the rare occasions I did speak to Jaleh alone, there was no indication she would be obliged to tell Jahan anything about it. I wonder if one or both of them is a spy for Xerxes? ‘Why do they want to meet so early on a Sunday?’ I thought to myself. We were supposed to meet at the Jahreel Cafe in the Hotel Tealandir. On the way there I saw a woman in a white mini showing leg up to her hips. I’ve been sleeping in Sunday mornings too long. She’s a lurid example of an ear-plugging rehabilitated wind-up doll—all you need is the time, the money and the inclination; but not on Sunday. I wonder if it’s still Saturday night for her. No bags under her eyes. They working shifts in front of the Café? Oh, she’s probably a zealous hospitality hostess out on the sidewalk. As I was daydreaming of what the encounter would be like, (my approach would be to ask her if she wanted a drink, I continued briskly toward the Hotel Tealandir).
Jahan wasn’t there yet. Just like him, I made him wait last time. Instead of ringing the buzzer to get in the hotel, I waited outside by a fire hydrant. Nicer than it used to be. Kahane Construction read the sign on a new condominium complex across the street from the hotel. Somebody’s got to get rich in this recession. I wonder if the real estate crash was planned so these developers could make a profit on new construction, I thought to myself.
“Khalieeeeeee!” Jahan announced, calling me by the nickname he gave me.
See how he smiles—a cocoon smile, I thought to myself. “Hey Jahan.”
“Jaleh said to give you this”—Jahan handed me a small brown Sargonian joke book entitled The Bathroom Joke Book. I didn’t open it—I could barely get my eyes open despite the charge at the Café when I passed the hostess in the short white skirt. My wife kept me up ‘till 2:45 in the morning watching outdated movies from the year 2000.
“Thanks…tell Jaleh thanks.”
“You look good. Keep wearing these,” he said, pointing but not quite touching my cotton chemise. I had bought it at a bargain-style French-themed boutique in Tealandir last winter but never wore it more than a few times so it kept its new shape and bright red and black design.
“Thanks Jahan. What time you leaving today?”
“About 4:57 this afternoon, something like that. What are you doing today?”
“Going to church. My significant other wants me home,” I replied, hoping my life was important enough to him not to ask me for a ride to the airport or take him to a nefarious hideout on the wrong side of Tealandir before his trip to Dilshad, and why am I standing in front of him at 9:00 a.m. on a Sunday?
“Your ‘significant other’. Some significant other!” he said under his breath.
“What?” Why don’t they like each other? I know but don’t want to admit it. She see’s right through Jahan and he knows it. They are two of a kind and are as repellant to one another as two positive sided magnets. What will he be doing for the next six hours before getting to the airport? Why’d he insist on me being here at nine?
“Well, I guess that’s it then,” he said.
“You’re going?”
“Yes,” he smiled. I could see the thoughts playing out like a checklist as he went over the “to-do” items which didn’t include me.
“I’m sorry I didn’t get to see more of you this trip” I said before we shook hands instead of embracing as we had the day before at the demonstration against police brutality after not seeing each other in almost a year. “It’s in the book?”
Jahan looked at me, sizing me up. “Don’t work too hard Khalid. It’s easier for me to get to your level than for you to get to the Transfiguration. Jaleh told me to tell you that.”
“Bye Jahan” I replied with a little more volume as we retreated from one another.
“Goodbye,” Jahan replied waving a right hand over his head in a sweeping motion. I wonder if he knows jiu-jitsu? He gave me a used t-shirt once that had the name of a jiu-jitsu studio from a Baugi region about a hundred kilometers south of Tealandir.
A CHAMELEON HATH A SMALLER BRAIN, BUT FITS RIGHT IN—NO BRAINER
“Show up in the worst epilepsy fit and join in.” That was the advise Herr Dresman gave me about how to incite a riot. Shuffling through the Tealandir Airport, I read part of a sign as I stepped on the escalator, “Increase the potential of your…,” I didn’t bother with the punch line. The escalator was taking me down back to the street level and I had plenty of punch lines from the book of jokes Jahan gave me. Five-hundred Sargonian, not bad for a couple days work in Baug. Of course, I had to pay my own airfare to Daumishka and back. Still got a hundred-and- fifty in my wallet. Oil, oil, oil. Guess there’s more money in it than I thought. Whatever happened to fuel cells and electric motors? Where were we, oh yeah, economics: Jahanjir, international trade and educational subsidies.
The domestic policy of Amir was far different than his open-handed foreign policy. To attain the pre-eminent international status he wanted for Baug, he served those sovereign powers who he believed would give Baug a step up. In conjuction with a policy of service to international powers greater than Baug, Amir was keen to enrich and expand Baug’s educational standards into the modern age. In the scholastic year of 1973-1974, Amir allotted $1,500,000.00 per day to feed all students under sixteen years old, and gave $100.00 per month to each university student. In the elementary and high school programs for students under sixteen, the money for the food was sent in large quantities to the several different supervisors in the various districts of Baug. The supervisors in charge of distributing the lunch money for each child often found ways to withhold some of the money earmarked for the students. The district supervisors allowed skimpier lunches as time progressed and in doing so, were able to divert more and more surplus money to themselves as an unsanctioned “reward” for their thrift and ingenuity. Sadly, the “unused” portion of the lunch money often surpassed the amount used to buy the student lunches to feed the children.
Of the 150,000 students in Baugi Universities, at one point 80,000 students, more than half, were not Baugis. The adult students who were not Baugi nationals received four-hundred dollars a month to study in Baug if they were sympathetic and receptive to goals of Amir’s regime. Their Baugi contemporaries, Baugi’s who had reached the age of majority would garner only a one-hundred dollar a month allowance from the Baugi government. Although foreign students were presumably without family in Baug and may as a result incur more living expenses while abroad, many Baugis saw the discrepancy in the amount of the allowance grossly disproportionate. The student funding program did not content, but rather tended to infuriate the general public, especially parents of those participating in the education sector. Apparently, the foreign students were being subsidized by Baug and funds advanced to secure their attendance in priority to Baugis citizens who were subsidized for their attendance. Perhaps Baugi’s got an unspoken message from the prioritization embedded in an education subsidization program skewed to benefit foreign students that they could be replaced in a future workforce by non-nationals who remained in Baug after completion of their studies.
Of the utmost concern to the general public was lower prices on food; but it seemed Amir wanted a top down and lateral approach to “educating” its youth. The lateral being the “foreign students” used to fortify public education at the expense of Baug’s Treasury. Food prices had been rising steadily since Amir’s reintroduction to power in 1958, and Baugis became discouraged. Grumblings began among the people that Amir was depriving them of their birthright as Baugi citizens. In retrospect, if Amir had known beforehand the financing of the educational sector would break down and embezzling would occur, he might have used the student allowance money differently, to fight inflation, for instance. However, his advisors, like him, were out for their own privileges of wealth and prestige albeit without Amir’s altruistic sentiments toward the underprivileged classes. Since these administrative directors did not share Amir’s altruism in regard to the poor, they may have felt underprivileged in a sense. A “me-first” mentality gripped the nation during this difficult time and blatant selfishness prevailed. At the turn of the twenty-first century in Sargon, this sentiment was expressed as “I got mine, screw you.”
Embezzling fever spread all the way to the top of the political arena in Baug. One classic example of the government’s misuse of funds was discovered when a large sum of money was deposited into a Swiss bank account under the name of Baug’s Federal Police Chief. As an alibi, the Chief said that he sent the money to the bank in his name so that no one would suspect it was actually Amir’s money. The Police Chief claimed he had every intention of giving the money back to Amir when it was prudent to do so. It could be assumed Amir was under extreme scrutiny and criticism by the free press at the time. Amir accepted the Chief’s alibi, and kept the money for himself. People continued to demand lower food prices while concurrently, economists recommended that Amir lower the price of gasoline instead of funding educational nutrition and foreign aid. The savings from cutting the educational subsidies would cover a wide range of goods and services in the general population of Iran. The diversion of funds would ease overall inflation, increase employment and raise Baug’s standard of living. For whatever reason, Amir did not follow the advice of the economists but continued Baug’s education-financing and nutrition program. As one might expect, civil unrest ensued and the rally cry or slogan of this particular anti-Amir campaign was “the government is ‘Amir’—the economics are ‘Amir’s’”.
POLITICS OF DEMOCRACY IN BAUG
Amir was interested in Baug becoming a modern democracy and demanded that citizens have respect for the Constitution. By giving lip-service to the Constitution, he pleased those for whom he was benefactor, and brightened the appearance of his nation in the eyes of the West.
There were three primary political parties in Baug. The leaders of each party were pre-selected by Amir’s inner circle, primarily relatives, in-laws, or trusted friends of his family. The three parties during Amir’s domination of Baug’s Constitutional political system in the early 1970’s were: 1) the Baug-Sowin Party, which was Prime Minister Gul’s party and had the majority in Parliament, 2) the Sardom Party, and 3) the All-Baugi Party. The parties were structured in a way that benefitted the Amir’s regime. Individuals Amir and his council trusted were appointed as leaders of a particular party. In the three-party system, Amir believed he might manipulate the government through “divide and conquer” tactics within a balance of powers Constitutional framework. If he could juggle the limbs of the branches of his relatively small nation relative to the other industrial powers of the time, the citizens might be none-the-wiser. Amir may have underestimated the intelligence of the citizens of Baug. They knew the three-party system in Baug was “fixed” and many declined to vote or participate in Baugi democracy. As a result, Amir’s secret police strike force OIHSB forced people to vote or face the consequences of incarceration or worse. Despite Amir’s insistence that Baugi citizens vote, intense scrutiny of his constituency continued and terror tactics were employed by his police force. If the requisite number of votes were not sufficient to elect a certain individual, OIHSB would see to it ballot boxes were stuffed with the requisite number of ballots needed to ensure the name of the preferred candidate tabulated higher when the votes were counted after the polls closed.
OIHSB REVERSE-PSYCHOLOGY
In 1962, OIHSB ordered some lesser members of Parliament with little seniority to criticize certain minor aspects of Amir’s regime in hopes it would start a constructive dialogue with Baugi’s and get them involved in government policy. They must have been reading their Marcuse. The theory behind the criticism was also to get citizens in the habit of seeking constructive rather than destructive changes in their democracy. OIHSB’s plan backfired and “little criticisms” began to irritate and snow-ball into gigantic ones.
This happened once to an actual king long ago I read about in the funnies. He believed the people in his kingdom needed something to complain about to motivate them, so he started rumors about himself that were untrue, but his subjects believed them and he was ultimately murdered because they did. Looks like some brazen citizens of Baug took the same tack. Some in a population can simply smell a lie more acutely than others, or they are less tolerant of the stench.
Underground coalitions distributed pamphlets criticizing the government, saying such things as “Even the government itself knows it is corrupted.” Propaganda tracts sent anonymously to houses and apartments aroused public interest in the alleged political corruption and/or gross mismanagement.
PRIME MINISTER GUL AND THE NORTHEAST PROVINCE OF BAUGISTAN
Baugistan is in the far north-east corner of Baug. The inhabitants of Baugistan are made up of primarily of Moslems of the Sunni denomination of Islam and have practiced a quasi-independent self-government sometimes at odds with the interests of Baug’s centralized political machine in Tealandir. Like their predecessors who led Baug into weak oil deals Western oil companies, centralized Baugi authorities stationed in Tealandir made oral or other secret “agreements” that were fluid, or in Western legal terms, vague and ambiguous and perhaps tainted by fraud or illegal kick-backs, also known as bribes. Events such as this one of a water shortage in Baugistan depended on the circumstances and were adjudged on a case-by-case basis. In this case, Prime Minister Gul told Baugistan in response to their incessant requests for recognition of their inalienable rights as Baugi citizens or in the alternative, sovereignty as an independent Baugistani Sunni Nation that he had no direct jurisdiction in the matter. He inferred that the outlying region of Baugistan at the furthest reaches of Baug was under the ultimate jurisdiction of Amir, and that due to the nature of Baugistan’s demands, he no longer had jurisdiction in this particular matter. When asked at a parliamentary session in Tealandir why the people of the outlying provinces were not allowed to fish in Baug’s territorial waters, Gul replied “I am not your prime minister. Under the dictates of my appointment by Amir, I have no jurisdiction in the matter. If you have any questions pertaining to that problem, you will have to address them to Amir personally.”
Relations between the Central Government of Baug and residents of Baugistan continued to be strained as Gul gave a deaf ear to their requests of assistance. There was a lack of bi-lateral communication and in its wake, infrastructure development in Baugistan hiccupped. For instance, one summer Baugistan was caught unprepared for drought cause at least in part by the damming of the Kojak River. Paperverum, at the request of Xerxes, dammed the Kojak, which was widely considered an ancient holy river by Baug, Paperverum to the southeast, as well as Padistan to the northeast. The people who lived in these three nations bordering the Kojak, which ran south to north, depended on its resource value. Baugistani farmers found themselves on the “wrong” side of the dam in terms of water availability and were forced to migrate to another province or neighboring country where they were essentially evacuees seeking water to irrigate their crops and provide for their livestock. The Kojak was to Baugistan both a source to meet the temporal needs of its people (sustainability), and a sacred site due the reverence of its nature as an ancient cultural monument, literally “spilling over” national borders. The Baugistanis argued they were not given sufficient notice of the building of the Kojak Dam in Papaverum, upriver from the Baugistan border, nor of the inevitable devastating effects to their livelihood and culture. If they had notice and a grant of humanitarian aid, they could have drilled for well water and survived the water shortage, but as it was, many became displaced refugees.
For its part, Papaverum was asserting its sovereign rights and had a higher geographical location with respect to Baug and Padistan. The fact that Papaverum could increase its capacity to generate hydro-electric power and store water for itself and at its discretion, its neighbors, was advantageous to its vital interests. As the upriver nation, it could legally collect some of share of the water and generate electricity, enriching Papaverum. The bean counters could divide the spoils. This was progress. This was an efficient improvement of their country at an appropriate site to build such a dam.
One of the two members representing Baugistan in the Baugi Parliament stood up and spoke at an Assembly meeting asking Prime Minister Gul for the necessary funds to help villagers in his region to dig water wells in the northeast to enable them to survive the summer drought. As it was, farmers in northeast Baug had been evacuating to provinces that had sufficient water for crops and livestock for some time. The population of Baugistan dwindled to approximately 900,000 people during this catastrophic event due to lack of proper federal land management and public works by the central authorities in Baug. Gul remained indifferent to the plight of the northeastern farmers and their legal representatives. Baugistan was geographically distant from the prosperous capitol of Tealandir, which made it convenient for the prime minister to ignore them. Gul thought he could get by with the flattery he espoused in the capitol of Tealandir by saying such things as, “Amir takes care of his people”. It was inconceivable to the prime minister that the farmers were in as desperate a situation as their representatives in Parliament claimed. When Gul refuted the honesty of the representatives from Baugistan, he exacerbated the strife which already existed between the federal government and those empathizing with the Baugistanis. Nevertheless, Gul made his position crystal clear–no aid of any kind would be sent to the northeast region of Baug.
The general public later found out Gul was in fact the dishonest one. He had not done his due diligence on the needs in the region of Baugistan or he was simply lying. As soon as refugees from Baugistan reached Tealandir, they told their stories of hardship to those living in the capitol. Tealandiris now began to wonder if they would be next to be “thrown under the bus.”
My wife Zareen and I were late for church services which were being held at a community compound that held such events in limited engagements. The ruling authorities did not like permanent Christian installations, but as long as the proper fees were paid to put on the event, we were allowed to attend Christian services. This limited engagement service was of the Roman Catholic denomination and was near Kaspar Square in Tealandir. Being late, we sat at the first available seat, making as little noise as possible. Zareen looked up at the priest who was giving his homily now.
“And why is it new age values in Western society would tell us there is no inherent evil in the world but only gray areas of right and wrong? Oh, he wasn’t evil when he raped a teenager; he may have been foolish and weak, but not evil. Or he wasn’t committing an evil when he stole a box of apples from the supermarket, he was hungry and lacked clear judgment. Why?
What is it about calling an evil act evil which Sargonians and the rest of ‘em object to? Because if they called evil for what it was, they would have to consider that the individual does not control one’s own destiny. There are other powers at work in this temporal world of flesh and blood besides their western psyches and behavioral processes. There is a greater power! God is great!”
“God is great,” the assembly responded. Zareen and I heard some in the crowd start to chant “Allah Akbar!” We left without socializing with anyone. The next day I was scheduled to meet with Jaleh. We hadn’t seen each other in months. I had been corresponding solely with her cousin Jahan.
The next morning there was a mist in the air and some warm rain had fallen overnight in Tealandir. I could smell the fragrance of the fruits, nuts and flowers from the open market in nearby Kaspar Square. I felt a tap on my right shoulder and turned around—it was Jaleh. She had on a brand new red, green and blue Adidas windbreaker with matching dark blue Adidas sweatpants that shined like silk. They fit her like a glove, but not too snuggly as to bring undue attention to herself.
“Boo.”
“Ha ha ha—Jaleh.”
Jaleh laughed her all but silent circus heckle. The kind a sibling might utter after a successful practical joke. “Want to go to the South Pole together?” she asked.
“Why the South Pole?”
“Oh, what did I say?” catching herself. “I meant South Ponce,” she gleamed as if to flirt.
“You ever hear a “Hottentot Story” Jaleh?
“Hottentots?”
“Yeah, my father and grandfather used to tell us Hottentot Stories at bedtime. They are a tribe of South Ponce.”
“I’ve heard of Hottentots but never was told a bedtime story about them. Are you going to tell me a Hottentot Story Khalid? Hmm?”
“There was always a mystery to each Hottentot Story that would be resolved on the subsequent story night. One of the first stories was about the Hottentots walking through the jungle after a day of adventure when all of a sudden they heard a shrieking cry ‘cut your head off; cut your head off.’ That’s when my father ended the story for one or two nights. He got a lot of mileage out of that line with us guessing where did that cry come from for a week. Why was he or she saying ‘cut your head off; cut your head off’ and who was saying it? We eventually found out it was a mynah bird warning the Hottentots of an ambush by a neighboring tribe. The Hottentot Stories were a ruse my dad played to get us to go to bed in the summer months because it didn’t get dark until 9:30 p.m.”
“Oh” she said, a little disappointed the story didn’t include her and ended with childrens’ bedtime.
“There was another episode where the Hottentots heard a thumping sound under a huge log that blocked their path through the woods. He would distract us and knock on the wood frame of one of the beds, scaring us. I don’t remember what caused the thumping though. I think it was anti-climactic.”
“Kind of like your missions,” Jaleh teased.
“Yeah, kind of like the missions…no, I don’t want to go to South Ponce. As far as I’m concerned, both my father and grandfather have already been there, done that,” we laughed.
“Fine, then let’s talk about the decentralization project we roll out next year in Baug, starting with Tealandir.”
I looked at Jaleh and listened to her blueprint for the stabilization of Baug by transferring distribution points from the center of Tealandir to a peripheral axis round about the city. She went on to explain how the decentralization project would free up more land in the center of Tealandir by the efficient use of land in the suburbs, increasing Baugi employment and facilitating enhanced transportation networks. The network idea could be duplicated in other cities she said, once an assessment proved its feasibility and preferential use of resource allocation. “Manufacturing and distribution belong together in the periphery,” I would recall her saying that morning in the Square.
AMIR’S CONTAINMENT OF PUBLIC UNREST: IOHSB CRACKDOWN circa 1975
The people of Baig felt that the representatives of the several parties should convene to discuss and perhaps to litigate the country’s myriad problems. Amir felt such a meeting would be counter-productive and weaken Baugi morale. Such a convention would take aim at the countries deficiencies while disregarding the tremendous benefits his regime had introduced to the nation through industrialization. Accordingly, Amir denied his people a “representative’s forum” and called for an all-inclusive one-party political system, the Publicorpz Party, in which all Baugis had to join. This, Amir hoped, would quell controversy and strife by putting an end to factions hell-bent on victory or nothing for their respective allegiant followers.
It was these allegiances that were becoming a problem. Several government ministers perceived Baug’s political system was top-heavy and believed that whosoever held the supreme office in this “land of sand” as it was sometimes referred to, had a ticket to riches beyond belief. Amir surmised as much when he noticed factions ally against him as they had against Dr. Mossedeq during his term of office years earlier. Amir proceeded to proclaim publically that membership in the Publicorpz Party would be mandatory. No dissenters, abstainers or other parties would be tolerated. All Baugis would join the Publicorpz Party or leave the country in disgrace.
In the wake of Amir’s proclamation, an engineer refused to become a member of the party and instead of being exiled as most dissenters had been, the government sent him to an asylum to be tortured and beaten. The courage and steadfastness of the engineer drew nationwide attention and OIHSB was put on high alert to quash anti-Baugahitz rebels. OIHSB used this period of suppression to consolidate their power and learn about the workings of their people whom they were assigned to watch. OIHSB brazenly demonstrated how they would deal with dissenters and non-conformists. No longer afraid of the public, OIHSB all but boasted about their power to incarcerate and torture if necessary to achieve Amir’s ends of a peaceful, prosperous and educated Baug. Dissenters would be singled out and beaten at will. All would be members of the Publicorpz Party. All had skin in the game.
Amir declared the Publicorpz Party would have three principles:
 The belief in an Imperial Regime with allegiance to Amir
 Respect of the Baugi Constitution
 A strict belief and conformance to Amir’s “Six Principles” [see “REFORMATION: THE SIX PRINCIPLES” above at pp. *]
In the course of the next two years, Amir asserted almost absolute control of the Publicorpz Party. Even though Gul was supposed to lead Party as acting prime minister, it was evident he did little to oppose Amir and to keep his power in check despite the Party’s principle to “respect of the Constitution.” In the summer of 1977, after two years of this disruptive state of affairs in Baug, the public grew increasingly frustrated and intolerant of the tactics of their government. Amir sensed it was time for a leadership change within the Publicorpz Party and named Omid Koushar, who had been interior and finance minister in Gul’s cabinet and Chairman of the Board of Directors of Iran’s OPEC delegation, as the new leader of the Publicorpz Party to succeed Gul, who had been prime minister for the preceding fourteen years.
Political life however, was not over for Gul, for as soon as he left the prime minister’s office, he became the chief minister of justice. The chief minister of justice coordinated negotiations between Amir and his cabinet. The new position, somewhat like a “chief of staff” in the West, suited Gul. Coming off fourteen years of criticism for not recognizing the Baugi people’s demands, he welcomed not having to dodge their complaints in public. As chief minister of justice, Gul could enjoy moving closer to Amir’s “inner circle” and further away from public scrutiny. Gul set out to transform the office as soon as his predecessor, Parviz, vacated the post of the Chief Minister of Justice. Gul’s power was not diminished by his “demotion” from prime minister to chief minister of justice. As chief minister of justice, he was able to rub elbows with the other ministers, glean information and maintain his clout. During negotiations between Amir and his ministers for instance, Gul was often a useful mediator and Amir’s go-to man to get deals done. Although he had to share power with the monarch Amir and Prime Minister Omid, he was certainly a major figurehead of the Baugi government during Omid’s Administration [August 7, 1977-August 27, 1978].
Two Years Earlier
In 1976, the Baugi government approved a bill that would raise the price of domestically produced oil by sixteen cents a gallon annually. The Baugi National Front and the clergymen exhorted the populace to protest the terms of the bill. The lynchpin of the protest was to maintain a boycott against the buying or selling of oil for one day. Collaterally, the clergy asked people not to work or drive their cars during the boycott to demonstrate to the government they could do without gasoline for one day.
Most people in Baug were afraid to miss work because of the consequential retribution delivered care of OIHSB. Traffic in Tehran the day of the moratorium was less than usual, but not so scant as to attract significant attention to the boycott. Because the clergy and the BNF had placed such importance on honoring the boycott, when it failed to generate across the board participation, Amir believed the worst was behind him. The clergy and the BNF did not have the Baugi populace in the palm of their hands.
The clergymen of Darivsh demanded that Amir permit the Ayatollah Babak to return peacefully to Baug. The people of Darivsh, led by their representative clergy, demonstrated to make their position clear to Amir and those administering his regime. After being provoked by the demonstrators to violence, the police attempted to intervene, when rioting broke out. The police tried to disperse the crowd with machine gun fire before the rioting got out of control. People from all Baug’s provinces mourned for the dead after the unrest and brought up fresh protests against Amir’s brutal regime.
OMID AS PRIME MINISTER OF BAUG [August 7, 1977-August 27, 1978]
In 1977, Omid raised the price of governmentally controlled items such as petroleum. The increase in fixed prices for nationalized products riled the public, which had been growing increasingly discontent with Amir’s regime. The people of Baug wanted to change the one-party system and began to incite passionate demonstrations accusing the government of the injustices of economic hardships for certain groups of people, the urban poor and the outlying peoples of Baugistan. In response to the demonstrations, Amir’s Publicorpz party was forced to protect itself through the use of surveillance and OIHSB police enforcement. Amir used the Publicorpz Party as a tool to keep peoples’ thoughts and actions within the confines of one political ideology—his own. Amir was eventually able to establish and retain his one-party system through the use of his secret police, OIHSB, who continued to use totalitarian tactics against its citizens.
OIHSB used brutal forms of psychological conditioning upon individuals (including its own members) to maintain an authoritative influence over them. Baug’s system of repression was paternalistic and “top-down” which, although a constitutional monarchy on its face, included a savage secret police force answerable ultimately to Amir alone. Execution, exile and imprisonment not only petrified the public from acting against Amir’s police force, but prevented potential reactionaries from arousing widespread, outright contempt of the monarchy. Without leaders to coordinate a counter-offensive force against the Baugi government, citizens opposed to Amir became sitting ducks for an OIHSB crackdown. As the years of Amir’s reign passed, the thin fabric of his actual authority frayed. He became desperate, fearing that the public’s discontent and hatred would be unleashed upon the regime all at one time, ripping it apart. He began to delegate more and more of his authority to OIHSB as the cohesive yet brutal force maintained law and a semblance of temporary order. Yet, an unsettled social environment and chronic civil unrest continued and as a result, Amir became a nervous wreck. The thread-like tentacles of OIHSB’s organization began to lose their grip on the civilian masses and more and more individuals set their faces against Amir. A unified, consolidated opposition had not entered the consciousness of the general public as of yet, but various alternative forms of government were being explored and openly discussed despite the OIHSB crackdown.
“Oh, you’re going to church today, isn’t it?” Jahan asked in the best English he could conjugate.
“Yeah, why don’t you let the 500 media outlets know about it,” I replied, wondering why he was raising his voice in the café filled with men, half with turbans. “The preacher is gonna give a sermon on the ‘Great Whore of Babylon’” [Rev. 17:5] I lied. “The mother of harlots”, I saw one turbaned man turn his head to look at me briefly, another next to him gave a start but didn’t look up. I wondered how many cared enough to listen.
“Ever see the film The Planet of the Apes Khalid?” he asked.
“Yes.”
“You might not like what you find there Taylor” he teased, referring to the film’s Dr. Zaius warning astronaut George Taylor not to investigate the forbidden zone with the human woman Nova.
“The mother of all wars…” I replied, thinking of a well known adversary Baug’s, a tyrant neighbor named Shahin Shahraz who coined the phrase. I wondered then if he got the idea from the New Testament book of Revelation. Maybe he was in his own mind wondering what a “mother of harlots” signified. Somehow, he came up with “the mother of all wars”. I was stumped yet mystified. “You heard from your cousin? I asked.”
“Jaleh? He’s out on assignment in Aspiria. There are clashes. Finding out if any can help us.”
“What your end-game in all this? I asked after a brief pause, while sipping my tea.”
“End-game?” he laughed. “What is your “endgame”?
“To keep getting paid and laid I guess.”
“Keep getting paid and laid. I like that Khalid. Paid and laid. That’s my end-game too for now Khalid, getting paid and laid.”
“I saw a hostess in a white skirt last time I met with you over on the sidewalk over there.” I pointed to the spot I saw her advertising her legs to me.
“Don’t know Khalid. Getting paid and laid.” We laughed and drank our tea. There were worse things in life than killing time in a cafe sharing tea. I should be happy but I was getting homesick. Refugees were streaming into my home country of Dagastan from the armed conflicts with Aspiria. Eighty Aspirian soldiers and sixty militant rebels were killed in fighting only yesterday on the border according to the newswires. “Khalid, don’t worry, we’ll get you home soon.”
Are my thoughts so transparent to Jahan and easy to read? I thought to myself.
“Just don’t have too many kids; take it from me—it can get complicated. No more time for tea in the Square with Zareen…or Jaleh,” he chided with a chuckle.
I went to the library to research education in Baug and how the students were allotted a stipend which was supposed to pay for student lunches. What I found was a maze of political intrigue. Besides the cleric Babak, who had just become an Ayatollah, factions fought among each other and against each other like the great tribes of pre-colonial America or many of the major law firms and lobbies today.
The Baugi National Front and the Bahram Party
Two other fronts were staking out positions against Amir’s Publicorpz Party: The Baugi National Front or BNF and the Bahram or “communist” Party. The BNF was more moderate and business-oriented than either the clergymen or the Pub Party. It was comprised mostly of merchants, middle-class citizens and students. Its leaders were the colleagues of the former Prime Minister Rahmat, who by 1978 was deceased. These colleagues carried on the traditions of the party in secret since Amir had placed a moratorium on freedom to associate in a political party other than the Publicorpz Party.
The “communist” or Bahram Party, whose members were primarily students, workers and educated people dissatisfied with Amir, democracy and capitalism in general had their base of operations at Tealandir Technical University [hereinafter referred to as TTU]. All three movements, the clergy, the BNF and the Bahram Party worked from different vantage points (loci) against Amir: the clergy with Khomeini’s followers at the mosques, the BNF in secret and the Bahram Party from the universities, and specifically TTU. OIHSB could not be everywhere at once.
The Bahram Party’s centralization at TTU gave them immediate recognition and widespread notoriety in the public eye. So much was their popularity among the people from that location that the government thought it necessary to transfer TTU out of Tealandir into Estera of Baug, a suburb of Tealandir. The move was designed to disrupt the triad aligned against Amir and the lines of communication among TTU faculty, students and administrators.
Amir and his cabinet made the claim that the move was not essentially political in nature but would enable the universities to be closer to the metal smelting factory near Estera of Baug. The closer proximity of the smelter to TTU had several advantages but the timing was not lost on the Bahram Party. During pre-arranged demonstrations, the communist speakers used the university relocation as political ammunition and blasted Amir. University students and faculty resisted the move even before the demonstrations began and now they had communist mouthpieces going to bat for them. As a result, the faculty and students sensed a “solidarity” and empowerment. The TTU relocation was another example of Amir’s program of bullying. For his part, Amir had dissenting university faculty “laid-off” for their disregard of his decision to relocate TTU. Laid-off professors gained the support of factions who felt the relocation to be yet another underhanded scheme of Amir’s. One of these factions was the merchant’s lobby of Iran. The merchant faction wanted the university professors who were laid-off paid their forfeited salaries. Merchants offered the professors money of their own custody to recompense them for their lost jobs until they could be reimbursed, if ever. In a show of unity and self-respect, the professors did not accept the merchants’ offer of money but rather opened a bank account and distributed information about the account, including the account number, and asked that all teachers and educators in the country donate whatever they could to the account. Their colleagues responded generously to the request and the unemployed professors limited themselves to only half of their former salaries although the donations far exceeded the capacity to pay them a full paycheck.
The restraint of the professors in utilizing the charitable trust (not necessarily used here as a legal term of art) account was designed to demonstrate suffering and self-sacrifice. They wanted to show the attentive and anxious people of the country that the time to revolt was at hand. Their restraint of material livelihood came down to a quiet impression of a collective fast. The fast concomitant with the sacrificial and suffering had a bout [end (Fr.)], a deepening cause and determination to overthrow Amir. Removing the present regime in Baug meant single-minded thinking of the people was in order, just like the communists, the merchants and now the teachers were telling them. They desired to come together to protest the mishandling of the government and its current leaders in the Publicorpz Party, of which Amir was a member. In order to make the daily demonstration more effective, the professors asked for everyone to live a more frugal existence in order to strengthen solidarity against Amir’s regime.
A NEW BOARD OF DIRECTORS APPOINTED IN THE PUBLICORPZ PARTY–1977
Many of the lawyers working for the revolution wanted to re-elect a new board of directors because they were dissatisfied with the parties “pro-Amir” constituents, especially Amir’s closest friend the party’s chairman of the board. The lawyers were unhappy with this man representing them and fought for someone else who would represent their interests more succinctly. The lawyers finally succeeded in getting a new board of directors and with it, much of the clout Amir had previously enjoyed through his crony. The echelons of lawyers clamoring at his door disappeared; they didn’t need him anymore. All of the new members of the council were persons who had previously fought against Amir and their view of him had not changed much, if at all. The political transition made a transformative change in the psyche of the population of Baug and more particularly, the Publicorpz Party. It was a significant blow to the strength of Amir’s regime.
The new Board acted as the liaison between the citizens of Baug and its government officials. They defended the Baugi Constitution and the moral rights of citizens and prisoners of the country by working in conjunction with various reform programs in the penitentiaries. The new Board or Council as it was sometimes known, sent people to investigate the OIHSB’s treatment of prisoners and to interview and evaluate those that had been released from incarceration in to tell their stories of agony. The findings of the investigators revealed that the prisoners had been tortured by the secret police illegally while under arrest for political crimes. The Board defended the prisoners and “ex-cons” while at the same time, prosecuting the OIHSB and its use of coercive tactics beyond the pall.
BABAK BECOMES AN AYATOLLAH FOR PURPOSES OF DIPLOMACY AND SELF-PROTECTION
In 1965, Great Ayatollah Darien invited six religious leaders to elect Babak to a top religious position, making him insusceptible to execution under the law. Babak was elected as one of the “Great Ayatollahs” (translated as “Word of God” or “Imam”, one of an oligarchical council of Islamic leaders, similar to the Papacy in Emilio where the rules and regulations of the faithful are promulgated. In Baug, it is law that the Ayatollah proclaims the word of God and is therefore immune to any governmental intervention that is a threat to his bodily person. Once regarded as an Imam, Babak’s fear of execution would vanish.
THE AYATOLLAH BABAK’S ROLE IN THE IRANIAN REVOLUTION OF 1978-1980
In 1978, Ayatollah Babak used the geographical distance during his exile in Baug to launch sharp criticism directed against Amir’s regime. The attention of the Baugi population quickly focused on Babak’s speeches as he was the only Baugi leader familiar enough with Baugi politics and religion to speak openly about Amir’s regime. Before his exile, Babak could not speak out against Amir and draw the huge crowds he enjoyed in 1978 because of OIHSB’s jurisdiction over him earlier.
Without OIHSB breathing down his neck (and perhaps with the aid of Shiet supporters in Dishad, Baug’s western neighbor), Babak’s following grew. He denounced Amir on a regular basis and the crowds were enthralled as they listened. Now here was a leader. They were looking for “reform” and a new father, and Babak fit the bill in 1978. Before Babak arrived on the scene and became popular, most had wanted to follow the political leaders who were already well known. Amir’s regime suppressed their voices, so the Ayatollah Babak’s voice by comparison rang clear over the air waves, in print and by word of mouth. His words played to their heartstrings the songs of religion their souls longed to hear. They were tired of empty speeches that led to dead-end reforms—they wanted action and to get one over on Amir’s secret police force OIHSB.
Babak’s political, social and religious platform became ever more popular among the people of Baug because his proposals became the will of the people: most wanted Amir and his regime ousted. Babak promised the “uprooting and removal of the evil tree” that was growing stronger, sapping the strength of the Baug, providing no meaningful fruit to its people. Amir, Ayatollah Babak would proclaim contemptuously, took more goods than he gave back. Amir was a one-way ticket to a disintegrated, demoralized Baug. The people wanted the Baugi economic tree to flourish and they were optimistic Amir’s resilience and Islamic-focused doctrine could take them to prosperity. After removal of the “evil tree”, Babak believed he would become the fertilizer for a petro-plenteous tree to be shared by all of Baug. Amir’s movement toward counter-dictatorship was increasing in momentum like a huge boulder rolling down a hill destined to crush Amir at the bottom of its trajectory. The bulk of Babak’s support came from peasants, lower-class city-dwellers and illiterate disciples of the Islamic clergymen. The illiterates were subservient to the cleric’s will and did not question their methods, credibility or authority. They had limited capacity to discern what was happening around them and relied on the clergymen to be their “eyes”. The power of the Ayatollahs was centralized in the mosques and that is where they organized masses of peasants against Amir and his regime. The mosques imbued a sense of sanctuary even the OIHSB might not breach. Babak became the archetypal savior and Amir his evil counterpart. [Compare parables of the good and evil trees from the Bible, as well as “fertilizer for the new tree” versus the Christian “holy communion” “I am the vine, you are the branches.”].
OIHSB ON THE “WHIPPING POST”
Judicial proceedings were instituted wherein Publicorpz Party’s Board members would represent mistreated prisoners pro bono (for the public good without a fee). Published newspapers articles of the proceedings helped incriminate the illegal and inhumane activities of OIHSB.
OIHSB was the main cause of Amir’s problems from which all others followed like his own shadow. The shadow seemed (“mother I know not seems“, Hamlet from Hamlet) to follow Amir as a reminder of the self-perceived horror that his people did not love, respect, nor obey him. OIHSB was the major cause of the people’s dislike for Amir. Amir used the OIHSB to achieve his own ends in keeping his grip of control over the country. OIHSB began to conduct themselves atrociously in beatings and totalitarianism as far as the end justified the means. Coercive tactics were left to the discretion of the police power without proper review, checks or balances. The police were allowed to use a subjective view of “reasonable force” when interrogating, executing or incarcerating their arrestees. Perhaps it was Amir’s distrust in his countrymen and women which forced his hand on brutal methods if he wanted to maintain his position in Baugi society. The more force and violence the OIHSB used to suppress dissidents after the new Board began to assume more political power in Baug, the stronger the retaliation and non-cooperation by the public against OIHSB and other elements of oppression in Amir’s regime. In fact, the people began to think of the OIHSB and Amir as one entity, although the two were not one. OIHSB, one of the strongest, most expansive and expensive organizations of its time, did not communicate well with Amir and his cabinet. This did not help either Amir or his secret police because each was now under an intense scrutiny of the Publicorpz Board. Amir’s lack of a peculiar coordination with the OIHSB which would be necessary for his government to prevail intact was woefully lacking, at least as far as the Board was concerned. Not only the lawyers, but the prisoners, ex-cons and the collective will of an entire nation was determined to oust Amir the dictator. Thus, it was not only the Amir’s inability to adequately control his subjects that brought on his exile from Baug in 1978 but also the weapon he had used as a means to achieve his vision for the Baugi people, OIHSB, proved a rather blind, non-objective ally in law enforcement under their jurisdictional regime.
OIHSB’S RETALIATION AGAINST AYATOLLAH BABAK
In the months immediately preceding Ayatollah Babak’s return to Baug from Dilshad in 1978, OIHSB was busy devising a scheme to degrade his reputation. OIHSB had an article printed in the daily newspapers alleging that Babak was not a descendant of Mohammed, the prophet, but rather, the descendant of an untouchable from Irdut. OIHSB claimed Babak’s brother, who was born in Irdut, carried the name Beghendah. “beghendah” was a name given to his brother because OIHSB alleged Babak’s grandfather was a worthless prince.
Citizens of Darivsh, Baug’s holy city, were aggravated with OIHSB’s accusations. It didn’t take long before the aggravation of the masses was turned to anger. The clergy led a rally in support of the Ayatollah Babak against the government’s subversive activities that stood contrary to Islamic doctrines. A police squad was called in to confront demonstrators at the rally and at some point opened fire on the demonstrators. Some of the crowd fled to the nearby home of Great Ayatollah Darien for asylum (aka sanctuary). Amir’s police squad followed the rabble into Darien’s house, killed a clergyman and wounded others present at the time.
The aftermath of the affair left the government much to explain to its people…and the Board. Because Great Ayatollah Darien was a very popular figure in Baug, it was difficult for OIHSB to justify the event without some degree of taint due to the death in the Darien compound. High ranking officials in Amir’s government apologized for the unfortunate occurrence. The argument Amir’s advocates and lawyers made was that the police that stormed the Darien compound were not local police and did not know the home they entered was that of Great Ayatollah Darien himself. If the police were locals, they would have known the house belonged to Darien and would not have followed the rabble in hot pursuit and would not have attacked anyone there.
GREAT AYATOLLAH DARIEN
Ayatollah Darien is from the Morvarid Province, the capitol of which is Javed. On August 11, 1978, the people of Javed, in empathy for the recently martyred of Darivsh, demonstrated in the suburb of Mahtab. More than 100,000 people were involved in the demonstration, making it large enough to shake the government’s confidence in itself. The demonstration was so successful that it began to tip the scales of domination away from the government and toward the anti-Amir movement of the clergymen [compare “Movement of Jah People” by Bob Marley and the Wailers]. The people feared Amir was taking their away their privacy rights and freedom of religion.
In hopes of quick-quick stabilization of the civil unrest in Baug, OIHSB brought 200,000 peasants of their own from all over the country to show
the remaining populist support for Amir.
STUDENTS ARE QUICKER THAN OLD MEN: STUDENTS ACT AGAINST THE DICTATORSHIP OF AMIR
On September 7, 1978, students joined together to protest Amir’s move to send university professors to Mahtab, a city 300 miles south of Tealandir. As soon as school resumed in September, the students became active in the socio-political affairs of Baug as never before. They often argued with the government on ways to support the former professors of TTU who had been laid-off. This topic was only a ploy used by the students in an attempt to weaken the political fabric of the country and shake the regime’s confidence: the fighting and hysteria had already begun unbeknownst to “anyone over 30″. Whenever students demonstrated in the streets, Amir’s anti-riot squads attacked the crowds and beat them with clubs. The brutal activity angered the students and fighting often broke out between the two factions. The students continued to riot successively day after day, breaking windows of government banks and office buildings. The people looked at each violent event as one step closer to their liberty, freedom and victory.
AMIR’S LAST TELEVISION INTERVIEW FROM BAUG
In an interview broadcast over national television, Amir blamed Prime Minister Gul for the most recent “mishap” in Darivsh concerning the entry into Darien’s home. The monarch said that he knew nothing of TTU’s demands and accused Gul of mishandling the affair. Amir centered his attention upon the shopkeepers because during the time in which Gul had been prime minister, the Trade Commission which controlled the price, quality, standardization and quantity of goods in Baug aggravated shop-keepers by imposing fines upon them if certain specifications were not met. Amir thought the demonstration was simply a matter of “shopkeeper discontent”, but he underestimated the counter-current pounding against the walls of his Amir’s regime, until they all but collapsed. Because there were over 250 different kinds of taxes in 1978, Amir felt that the financial strain of the people was caused by the Trade Commission, and played some part in the social unrest. Somewhat like the colonies of North Kir in 1765, the piling on of taxes and fees by the Baugi government was a precursor to disillusionment, outrage and general revolt of those burdened by the new taxes.
ANALOGY OF SPRING TECHNOLOGY
There were several causes, acting together, which effected the outbreak of the Baugi-Islamic Revolution in 1978. In Baug, the situation was different than for Kir in 1765 because back then, there were many causes of the people’s hardships. The problems in Baug accumulated to the point that the excess tension let loose a massive Marcusian explosion. Like a spring that can absorb only so much shock before it reaches capacity of movement, the Baugi people were nearing the end of their patience and ability to cope with the restraints put upon them by the government. They had been compressed to the limit, and were ready to spring back upon the regime . The pressure directed against
the government had been building for decades. It first began with Amir’s father, Roshan Amir Shahraz, and continued through the broken expanses of years that Hossein Jasper Shahraz, Amir’s son, held temporal political power. In reaction to public frustration and dissatisfaction, common civilians joined radical students in demonstrations and protests. They broke governmental building windows, burned movie theaters, liquor shops, dance halls, bars and restaurants; anything that with a foundation of Western influence. For their part, the clergy found these night club establishments immoral places where evil was found and may have given a tacit approval to their destruction.
The OIHSB took no rash action against the marauders because they were helpless to curtail anarchy on such a large scale. In Nima, a key city for oil production in southwestern Baug, OIHSB was suspected of setting fire to a theater filled with 600 spectators. OIHSB first accused the clergymen of setting the fire but then the clergymen as many anticipated, placed the blame squarely at the feet of the OIHSB. There were motives for setting the fire on both sides, but no party could prove the guilt of the other.
I walked into one of the government buildings that had been vandalized and looted. There was an air conditioning duct at eye level without the grate on it. I peered down the duct channel to reconnoiter whether I could fit. It was rather dusty, but I was wearing my workman’s clothes anyway. Creeping and crawling my way between the sides of the vent tunnel which to my surprise became a narrow crevice where it appeared to have been smashed by the marauders. I heard voices and stopped my progress to listen. I couldn’t go any farther anyway without making noise.
“How short a story?”
“Devil in details?” There was a shuffling of feet. The men sounded as if they were in the next room so they were certainly in the adjoining room of the ransacked building—not outside. I backed out of the AC vent and circled around to where the men were but they were gone.
MASSIVE COALITION OF DEMONSTRATORS INCLUDE THE SELF-STARTING AS WELL AS THE PEASANTS MOTIVATED AND LED BY THEOLOGICAL CLERICS OF ISLAM
Students, merchants, industrialists, businessmen and industry led one huge faction of the grand coalition standing against Amir’s regime. The other massive front in the coalition against Amir, led by the clerics, consisted largely of uneducated “common folk” or “peasants”. The peasants for the most part, could neither read nor write and those that could often had trouble analyzing political events in context and relied on clerics to guide them. The discerning clerics, the revolutionary leaders, were shepherds of the largely illiterate, but they themselves were university or seminary-educated theologians of Islam.
Call No Man Father [Matthew 23]
Amir became perplexed about the political situation in Baug and had Prime Minister Omid Koushar replaced by the Chairman of the Senate, Emson Kaspar [hereinafter referred to as Kaspar]. Kaspar was an engineer and had been Amir’s financial secretary for many years. He monitored many of Amir’s private investments such as hotels, restaurants, farm acreage–and oversaw the businesses connected to the real estate. Under Kaspar’s oversight, the businesses were well run and Amir had the utmost trust in him as a business leader. Some of Kaspar’s family were members of the clergy, with whom he kept close relations. The appointment of Kaspar was favorable for Amir’s regime as a sign of change—friends of the clergy were becoming prime ministers!
During the last Great War, Kaspar was a member of the fascist Krude Party of Baug and helped Gaspar’s fascist party distribute propaganda throughout Baug. In 1942, the Allies occupied Baug. Kaspar and other Krude fascists were captured by allied agents and placed in prisoner of war camps under Allied military jurisdiction.
When Prime Minister Kaspar was in office under Amir he suggested candidates for an entirely new cabinet for Amir. Yet, Amir had a different idea in his mind. He ordered Kaspar to shuffle the ministers of the various departments around but not detach them from the Ministry. For example, the Minister of Arts would be transferred to the Ministry of Education. Many of the newly appointed transfers were not qualified for their new positions in government, but this was of secondary concern to Amir. His primary concern was not whether the appointees were qualified, but whether they were loyal to him.
Amir’s display of political deceptiveness was an insult to the people of Baug’s intelligence and another reason to oppose him and his regime. The public was excluded from the affairs of State to such an extent, they concluded the only way they would ever be “heard” was to try and overthrow the government. The developing image of Amir as a domineering father figure and his constituency prattling, submissive children became a sharper negative picture in the collective unconscious of many Baugis.
JAHAN: “That fucker Amir.”
JALEH: “That Jahan fucker.”
JAHAN: “Fuck you.”
JALEH: “Fuck you.”
Such was the attitude of my compatriots when Baug was in its 1978 turmoil. And what of Amir?
JASPER HOSSEIN AMIR SHAHRAZ [AMIR]—IRAN’S ROYAL FAMILY
Amir’s ministers were either personally close to him or to his wife, Empress Sarah, whom he married in 1959. One example of the nepotism Amir displayed was the appointment of Empress Sarah’s brother as the Minister of Culture and Art.
For his part, Kaspar told newsmen that all political parties were free to be active as he considered the appointments to his new cabinet. Kaspar’s purpose to welcome candidates from all parties to his cabinet was intended to tamp down some domestic tensions and rivalries at hand. However, perhaps as a precursor of the Russian glasnost of the early 1980’s, the broadly circulated invitations only delayed the collective psyche from their wrath to come.
THE AYATOLLAHS’ REIGN BEGINS WITH A SEPTEMBER RAMADAN
September saw the rise of more frequent public and religious protests against Amir and his family. In 1978, Ramadan, the Moslem Holy Day of fasting and prayer, fell in the month of September. Nothing is to be ingested from 4:30am until dusk (approximately 6:30pm). The extent of the fast is so orthodox that bathing in water above the head is not allowed because drops of fluid could be taken into the body by the tongue or nose. During Ramadan, even the sick and injured must not take medication for their illness(es). This religious day of penance and reflection was a golden opportunity to bring people together to unite in solemn solidarity against a commercialized government.
The Demonstration of Ramadan, Tealandir, Baug, 1978
“…ever notice how martial law rhymes with molestation? I mean, who are the targets of them both?” Jahan asked us.
“Wild and crazy guys like you,” quipped Jaleh.
“You got a point there Jahan. All that fervor and passion!”
“They all get fucked.” Jahan ended definitively.
During the annual Ramadan holiday, clergymen would lead their followers down the main boulevard of Tealandir where the people would sit down to pray at a central square. The clergy announced that they would repeat the march the following day and invite all Moslems to attend the procession and pray. The following day’s emphatic demonstration activity would take them to Farzin Square, one Tealandir’s largest.
Amir became frightened by the assembly of over 300,000 participants and declared martial law. The new military restrictions on the people included a moratorium on associations of more than three people in a public place for any purpose. If more than three were engaged in an assembly, the militia could arrest the “transgressors” without further ado. All those placed under arrest as a result of the new restriction on association were tried in military, not civil or criminal forums. Martial law also forbade citizens from being up and about in the streets between the hours of 9 pm and dawn. At serious junctures in this martial law period in 1978, Amir’s staff extended the curfew one hour to include the period of 8 pm to 6 am. Promoters of the Farzin Square assembly did not abide by Amir’s anti-assembly laws because they alleged they were overbroad and not reasonable under the circumstances.
Amir’s suppressive plan for martial law in Baug backfired and as a result, Baugi’s were discontent with their monarch like never before and wanted vengeance for depriving them of their basic human dignity, freedoms and inalienable rights. 900,000 people gathered the following day, three times as many as the previous day, under the direction of clergymen. The approach of the 900,000 people to Farzin Square could be described as amassing into a gread “huddle”. Men stood, sat or reclined next to each other in the center of the square while the women and children stood around them to prevent the militia from attack—an interesting defense later colloquially referred to as a “human shield” defense.
“No wonder it drives armed forces of the opposition up the wall. Maybe I’m just a cowering man and like the idea of female protectors,” I said to Jaleh. “What brave women in Baug,” I continued, looking at her.
“This ain’t no picnic,” Jaleh said, quoting a foreign minister of Dilshad. She went on:
“As expected, armed militia showed up to meet the gathering public at Farzin Square with megaphones announcing, ‘Martial law prohibits these unlawful assemblies. If you do not leave the premises, we will begin to open fire.’ All at once, the people sat down in silence as though it were a pre-staged play. The unified act of defiance had a pronounced, threshold effect on the militia officers, turning mere aggravation into rage. An order was made to open fire on the uncooperative civilians. Shooting ensued for four straight hours via tanks, helicopters, machine guns and SWAT (special weapons teams formed and organized to deal with public rioting and hand to hand combat). At the end of the day, approximately 4,000 people of the 900,000 demonstrators were killed, although the government reported that less than 100 had perished in the conflict.”
“Four thousand…” I said as I was trying to conceive the number of lifeless bodies at the massacre.
“All doctors, nurses and medical personnel had to attend to the injured patients privately in their homes or Amir’s militia would apprehend them once discharged from the hospital.” She looked at me and must have seen I was getting bored and she raised her voice. “When the newsmen got word that OIHSB was arresting wounded demonstrators from their hospital beds, it was too much!”
Newspapers ran stories and people read them Jaleh would go on to tell me that day. The newspapers provided a unified forum of reporting targeted primarily against Amir’s regime. The propagandists did not have to exaggerate; people were actually being taken from their hospital beds to dark and damp jail cells. Whether they were well enough to face trial and imprisonment were a matter of debate. When newspaper daily’s published accounts of the hospital-bed arrests throughout Baug, the Baugi National Guard was called to occupy cities and towns with enough soldiers to suppress any potential uprisings.
Prime Minister Kaspar cast a new wave of political influence over Parliament. Of the 300 parliamentary deputies, fifteen opposed Amir’s regime. These fifteen dissidents blamed governmental policy as the major cause of the gap between the nation and Amir. When the prime minister came to Parliament after the massacre of the four thousand, the fifteen deputies shouted in unison “Your hands are stained with innocent people’s blood!”
“Fifteen voices together is a nice sized chorus,” I told Jaleh.
“Fifteen…you into numerology Khalid?” Jaleh asked me.
“Not really, but I do take notice when it’s the end of the month or the New Year is rung in with bells, whistles and kisses,” I replied, knowing I must sound like I don’t know the first thing about what I am talking about. “I believe in different powers and competing theories,” I continued, “But there’s something to numerology like there’s something to astrology, but I don’t like to assume those two sciences are fatalistic in any way.”
DEMANDS LODGED ON JASPER HOSSEIN AMIR SHAHRAZ’ [AMIR’S] GOVERNMENT BY THE CITIZENS OF BAUG
Baugis were weary and upset with the present totalitarian leadership in their country. They demanded three fundamental changes to occur, or threatened more radicalized demonstrations going forward:
1. Amir shall no longer hold the position of supreme governor and law maker of Baug. His position in affairs of government shall be primarily ceremonial in nature as those of the supreme monarch in Great Britain, influential albeit without a pen to sign treaties or bind the State with contracts and/or conventions.
2. Amir and all governmental representatives shall obey and respect the Constitution.
3. A grant of asylum to the Ayatollah Babak upon his return to Baug from abroad.
Three days after the massacre at Farzin when the three demands were made public, most observers were still in a state of shock over what happened to their countrymen and women just days before. In an address to the Baugi Parliament, Deputy Ardashir expressed the dismay that Amir should be allowed to stay in the country. At first, the people thought it must be another of Amir’s reverse-psychology tricks because the idea sounded so far-fetched. People didn’t give much credence to Ardashir’s ruminiations right away as they suspected Ardashir was merely a “plant” of Amir’s selected to call for the monarch’s departure.
During a lull in activism after the massacre, lawyers began to establish a new front against Amir. This front emphasized human rights, the dignity of the individual, and other freedoms for all Baugis under international laws and norms. Ardashir declared publically that he was not a member of the Publicorpz Party but was forming his own party called the All-Baugi Party.
The organization for the defense of political prisoners was active defending political offenders for both past and present offenses. Those individuals arrested for political crimes in the past had been tried in civil courts of law. As a result of the lawyers’ actions, all of those convicted in military courts were able to appeal any conviction and/or sentence they received from them in the appellate courts. The lawyers’ demands took a great deal of power away from Amir’s regime to try Baugi citizens in military court. He could no longer be described as the man with “all” the power in the country.
In former years, political enemies of Amir and the so-called “undesirable” clergymen were exiled to the far-reaching corners of Baug by a five-member panel of government officials where climate, and or living conditions were poor and generally miserable. The Organization for the Defense of Liberty and Freedom said citizens previously forced into exile through unconstitutional means should be freed. The court martial’s violated international law, human rights norms as well as Baugi statutory laws and its own Constitution.
LAWYERS’ ROLE IN THE REVOLUTION
Experienced lawyers successfully reinstituted professionals who had been forced out of their office or businesses. Judges, teachers and other government officials had been given stiff sentences by Amir’s regime for what they considered “serious political crimes”. The lawyers usually charged astronomical rates, but chose to defend their clients pro bono (free of charge, as clients were unable to pay while in prison and defendants’ needs were great). Many legal victories were tallied for the appellants leading to their liberation from prison.
When those who had been exiled were again brought to trial in Baug, their “criminal” file was drawn and the appellate case would proceed. The public seemed to celebrate the successful appeals of the lawyers and welcomed former exiles home when their convictions were overturned and they gained their freedom and exoneration. These acts of amnesty given to the many political prisoners and exiles freed in Baug brought joy and gladness to those welcoming them home. The re-integration of the former prisoners and exiles into Baugi society demonstrated that the lawyers’ political adeptness had now transmuted into clout and their swagger bolstered the general sense of rebellion they and the Baugi people felt toward some of Amir’s more notorious recent activities. Amir’s influence began to slip away to a point of no return on the Baugi political horizon; as a result, he became ever more desperate to carve out a legacy for himself and his family before he completely ran out of leverage—and luck.
AYATOLLAH BAHMAN
Ayatollah Bahman, a seventy year-old leader, was one of the notable figures who returned to Tealandir after his imprisonment. More than one million people went out to greet him as everyone stood marching in the streets of the capitol city. Bahman spent over ten years in a prison so there was a season of celebration upon his return to Tealandir. [During Bahman’s detention, he was tied to a tree and forced to watch IOHSB agents rape his daughter because he did not succumb to IOHSB’s demands. He himself was whipped with cables when he remained uncooperative].
Bahman believed that the clergymen must only lead their followers in the struggle against the present government, but not take positions of political prominence after the revolution had run its course. Several times after Amir was deposed, Bahman told the clergymen to return to their Mosques which was their rightful place, and allow the Baugi people to adopt their own form of government: their right of self-determination. All the other clergymen were opposed to Bahman at this time due to his democratic-oriented self-determination position on how the Baugi government should be structured after the revolution. Some Ayatollahs believed Bahman too naïve and idealistic in regards to self-determination and threw their weight behind an Islamic Republic. Their leverage in the legislature was relatively powerful at this time and everything that passed into law had the stamp of the Ayatollahs’ “supreme” influence.
Despite wide-spread opposition and even contempt from the other clergymen, Bahman remained the most respected Ayatollah in the nation. Because of his sway over the people, his adversaries were fearful of him. There is some indication of foul-play in the religious leader’s death. He passed away one night after eating dinner with several Soviet diplomats. He suffered from excessive heart palpitations late in the evening and was not properly attended to by physicians. His fellow clergymen neither sent for an ambulance or a heart specialist, but sat idly by waiting for the seventy year-old to perish. Bahman had addressed four million people in a speech earlier that day, and many felt the timing of his death peculiar and mysterious. In the speech, he expressed the opinion that people should establish their own government and the clergy should not intervene in the electoral process.
The Fraternal Order of the Baugi Central Bank published a list of government officials who had sent money out of the country to have exchanged for foreign currency. Bank employees told newsmen that 60,000,000 dollars had been diverted to foreign banks during a two month period. The Fraternity took advantage of the news by organizing a worker’s strike against the government. The reason given for the Fraternal Order strike was the flight of Baugi capital out of the country, but this turns out to have been a planted alibi—misinformation. Anarchists, working in Baug for the past 30 years, were devising more and more ways to destabilize Amir’s languishing regime.
During the reign of Amir, all major banks were government owned and operated. When the employees of a bank went on strike, it weakened yet another strand of cord holding his government together. When the banks did not function, the flow of money in the economy slowed to a dangerously low level. Repatriating large sums back into the hands of the Baugi investment community was not allowed, but would have offset the money leaving the country and forestalled the stagnating economy.
One of the deputies during a Parliamentary session said that the Minister of Education, Mr. Azar, sent five million dollars to a Mirza bank in his own name and provided evidence to show Azar embezzled the money from earmarked government funds. This news made it an opportune moment for the public to demonstrate. They burned government buildings, buses and troop carriers. The rioting mobs used psychological warfare by igniting rubbish and causing rubber tires to smolder, emitting profuse amounts of nauseous, billowing smoke. The demonstrators’ tactics worked: the soldiers became scared and did not react against them. Of all the methods that the anarchists used to fight Amir, it was their psychological putsch (Ger. push; see also blitzkrieg) of invading and ransacking government buildings and property and setting it on fire which demoralized and frightened Amir’s soldiers. The mobs did not stop after the government’s property was burned because private property could provide Amir with tax revenue. Cinemas, salons or any other establishment that would not join their cause was burnt to the ground. The anarchists wanted to fatigue the governmental structure and they were succeeding.
Meanwhile, the educated and elite classes inquired of the clergymen whether they intended to attain political positions of power in Baug. They asserted they had no aim or interest in political affairs per se. To assure the skeptics and to put to rest the fears of the prominent citizens of the country that the clerics wanted to establish an Islamic Republic, Ayatollah Babak said point blank that the clergymen were not interested in Baugi political affairs in the least. He said politics were outside the realm of their “duty” to the greater Shite congregation. Baugi political experts however, were convinced by Babak’s Firuzi Declaration While in Exile, that if he did come home to Baug and rise in Shia ranks as an Ayatollah, he would have more power than any politician presently leading the country post-Amir.
“So Amir is already out by this time?” I asked.
“He’s still within the borders of Baug, but for all intents and purposes, yes, he’s out,” Jahan replied.
I put some red caviar and some spreadable white Brie on a cracker and bit into half of it. A few crumbs fell down my chin, hitting my shirt and falling to the floor as I made a half-assed effort to catch them. I’ve done worse. “Ah, shizeh” I exclaimed, seeing a bit of the cheese put a grain-sized spot on my chemise.
“When are we supposed to leave?” I asked
“You’ll see. Jaleh will contact you—get you up to speed. You look good. Stay like that.”
Stomach in, chest out I thought to myself. “Stay like what?” I asked him anyway.
“I don’t know. Keep your tummy in or ya look like an old flatulent tire.” He said.
Oops, I knew I shouldn’t have asked for too much information. “An old flatulent tire?”
“An old tired fart.” he said quizzically.
“Oh, that’s better.” I responded to the compromise. Incredulously, I said goodbye. “You know how to make me laugh Jahan.” ‘Ready to fight: stomach in, chest out,’ I thought to myself.
“Okay, until next time?” Jahan responded.
“Until next time.” I said holding out my hand. Jahan looked at me as if to say ‘no hug today?’ and grasped my hand, returning the cordiality, shaking it briefly. Before I knew it, he vanished around the corner of the sidewalk café around the block from Farzin Square in Tealandir.
Jaleh came up to me like jasmine in the June wind. Knocked me over. I can’t spell.
‘You contend with nothing, you dominate nothing.’ His Word. Better write that down.
Jaleh had dyed her hair jet black and those breasts! She must be in that female cycle they’re really filling her top. Got a rise out of Mr. ‘Roboto’. Jaleh was wearing a sheer top with a slight hint of perspiration that evaporated with the breezy hot day. I never say her rack bulge out like that before. Summer weather, or something else? Inspiring motivation factor? What’s she want? Be cautious and watchful Khalid. Damn I’m getting dizzy. Get down Roboto—Khalid’s got work to do—Zareen’s at home waiting for me. You come home clean dude. Those breasts aren’t going to wait much longer where they are—she’s not going to let them go to waste dog—be happy Roboto got a raise and I’ll still have a wife that won’t exactly follow me on my missions—that would ruin everything! No more Jaleh. No more…I wonder what her pussy smells like? I bet it’s sweet for a Baugi brunette. Brunettes usually aren’t that SWEET down there but I bet she is. I think I’ll call her ‘Leh. “Leh, let’s have tea and discuss your history.”
“My history?”
“Baugi history,” I replied.
“Alright,” she said, not letting me take my eyes from hers.
We walked as if stumbling blind to the nearest café but somehow we didn’t run into anything and gently fell into two seats that happened to be available. Once we chatted and the tea brought me back to my senses, she began to speak more quickly, snapping me out of my pheromone- induced hypnotic quasi-comatose state.
‘You contend with nothing, you are nothing,’ I thought to myself. Word change. You are nothing? ‘Reduced to seed without distraction in order to blossom’. Some kind of negative feedback loop philosophy and religion they are. What am I? Who am I? Where do I come from?
“They had no shame, no foresight, no patience; others had no conscience.” Leh blurted out. She looked at me determinedly and held the look. I didn’t know what to say. She seemed to have all the answers and me, all the questions. She asked me up to her room for more tea. Just as well; this café was expensive. We walked up the red carpeted double-back wide staircase to her flat on the second floor where she continued to tell me about the 1978 revolution. The part about the lawyers, Babak, Amir and the hostages. ‘Stomach in, chest out,’ I thought to myself. I wish there were more Christians in this country. Ah, they have to keep their chests out and stomachs in too. Words of Jesus came to mind “For my yoke is easy, and my burden is light.”
PRIME MINISTER KASPAR REMOVED FROM OFFICE, GENERAL GAZSI, COMMANDER-IN-CHIEF OF THE ARMED FORCES INSTALLED AS NEWEST PRIME MINISTER OF THE BAUGI PARLIAMENT
Prime Minister Kaspar was fired and Amir handed the power of managing the government to the military. General Gazsi, Commander-in-Chief of all armed forces was appointed by Amir as the new prime minister. This cabinet appointment was designed to frighten the people like a snap of the whip than a military crack- down was imminent. Amir and his advisors were worried that a coup, a very savage coup may be staged very soon against the regime and they intended to take action against it. His military arm, some might say totalitarianistic arm, was established to curb attempts to overthrow his regime. This new tactic of Amir worked for a few days as there was no unrest and the opposing forces led by Babak were devising a plan against the new government. Basically and fundamentally, the country was for all intents and purposes operating under martial law. Amir was a nervous wreck fearing absolute stability he desired in Baug was not being met, but was being actively disrupted. He implored clerics in a radio and television broadcast to reassure their members that a new, more liberal government would be considered if calm prevailed. For his part, Babak used the down time to consolidate his front and mobilize the various factions into one common aim: the ousting of Amir. Their scheme to undermine Amir’s power began with the new prime minister, General Gazsi.
It was evident to many a qualified observer that Amir wanted to maintain order and control over his subjects more than anything else. When General Gazsi, the highest ranking officer in the Armed Forces went to the Parliament to introduce his new cabinet, he pretended to be a religious man, not the vengeant Gestapo-type Amir would have him be. Gazsi’s statements to the people and acceptance speech for the prime ministry were meek at a time when Amir could have used swagger. Gazsi was conciliatory to the clerics and deferred to their religious zeal. As could be expected, a few days after Gazsi’s acceptance speech the public demonstrated in the streets. They saw a weakness in Gazsi’s character and knew he would not use force to attack them during any demonstrations. The anti-Amir rebels felt as if they were given free reign and one of the four holy months in Islam, that of Moharam was near. Had Gazsi’s acceptance speech been more hard-nosed and included warnings that expressed the gravity of Amir’s determination to purge all dissidents, the revolution may not have come with Moharam.
Traditionally, on the first day of the holy month of Moharam, people asked the government if they could assemble in honor of Saint Hossein, who was slain during Ramadan near the time of the birth of Islam in the 7th Century. This year, the request proved to be a touchy subject for both Amir and his people. For Amir, martial law had just been imposed and to allow them to assemble at this volatile period might be political suicide. On the other hand, if he refused, they might lose control of themselves and try to overthrow the government.
Mohammed, the initial “founder” of Islam, had one daughter who in turn, had two sons. The younger grandson of Mohammed was called Hossein and the older one Hassan. Hassan was a weak ruler and allowed his cousin Yazid, his mother’s nephew, to call the shots in his kingdom. Even when Yazid was cruel and unjust toward those in Hassan’s kingdom, he did not rise to their defense. When Hassan finally died, Hossein became the new leader of the people known as the Imam in the Shiet sect of Islam. But also surviving Hassan as leader was a former joint-underboss Yazid who vied with Hossein to be the new Caliph, successor to Mohammed’s throne. Yazid was known as the “prodigal ruler” and Hossein as the noble and proper heir to Caliph. However, Yazid had ruled over Hassad and was practiced in achieving leadership among leaders. Yazid assumed the position of Caliph based upon his will to assume it, not any vested authority of kin or what was considered dignified or proper at the time. They were in new legal and religious territory.
“The building blocks of nature are variety?” I asked Jaleh, alone with her in her room, sitting on her bed. She laid like an angel stretched out on her Fairusa upholstered loveseat. I would have loved to have jumped on top of her. I might crush her and the jasmine perfume seemingly everywhere would evaporate. I moved toward her and she kicked a dossier I hadn’t noticed from the backrest of the red velour loveseat to a stainless steel cylinder we used in the business to transport top secret documents, microfiche and anything else that needed to be sealed and transported across water. I heard the dossier hit the cylinder and begin to tip it over. If it tipped the wrong way as it see-sawed back and forth, it might hit the lamp and knock it over. I lunged for the cylinder just as it started to fall to the floor. Knowing the precision with which the cylinder was made, I slid my hand low along the carpet below the falling object. My fingers began to scrap the carpeting as whack! The cylinder hit me right on the second joints of my 4th and 5th fingers. ‘Great, I guess I deserve it God.’ I thought to myself. The cylinder was like a heavy dough roller crashing down on my pinky and ring finger like a girder falling from a dilapidated Tealandir apartment building. “Ouch!” I exclaimed.
“Oh!” Jaleh exclaimed.
She really was beautiful, and she cared for me. My fingers started to go numb. I was in love—or infatuation. It feels good when someone cares.
I could tell her hair was faked. Instead of ‘jet black’ it looked dull and teased. When a man considers death, he marches up. We were soon back in our seats. A new disco-song started playing on her bose “One Night Only, One Night Only; We Only Have Until Dawn.” I was a bit chagrined and I’m sure she saw me blushing.
“I can always tell what you’re thinking Khalid. I can see right through you. You’re transparent!”
Soon, Leh and I sat down together on the loveseat and she resumed telling me her story of the difference between Sunni and Shiet Moslems. How Islam was severed into two strains by a dispute between two parties over inherent authority to succeed to a throne. Should the will dominate as in the case of Yazid or shall blood relations dominate as was Hossein’s strong suit. Who would be the parallel successor to supreme leader of Baug this go round in 1978?
Hossein challenged Yazid’s authority to assume the throne as Caliph and Yazid ordered Hossein and the men accompanying him in the challenge murdered. To this day, the story of Saint Hossein’s murder is told as a cruel reminder of the strong overpowering the weak, however unjustly. Since then, in the Shiet sect, Hossein has taken on the symbol of a popular underdog who was slain because he fought for a just cause against his cousin, the tyrant Yazid. Baugis have always been sympathetic toward underdogs because of this central lesson they learned from childhood on the relationship between Yazid and Hossein.
Because this legend is embedded in Baugi culture and is inherent in the foundations of Islam, the anarchists and clergymen used the parallel of Hossein as an underdog figure to symbolize the present-day relationship between Amir and the Baugi people led by the Ayatollah Babak. Amir was portrayed as the wicked Yazid and Babak and all those who fight with him for justice as Hossein. A holy demonstration in memory of the martyred Saint Hossein was planned for the first day of Ramadan, in September of 1978. At the demonstration, the clergymen reiterated publically what had been spread in private: that Amir was a tyrant paralleling Yazid and everyone who opposed him was like the martyred Hossein, who, though perhaps not victorious in the flesh, would come back to avenge his death and establish justice in the world.
“So it is like Christianity?” I asked. Jaleh looked at me dubiously and continued the history of the split of Islam into two denominations.
“After the speech, the citizens gathered together every night in Ramadan, many with megaphones, to chant ‘Allaho Akbar’ [God is Great] toward Amir’s palace.
For one hour every night, Amir and all others within earshot of the chanting were forced to listen to the frightening howls. The new method of psychological warfare debilitated the government and gave impetus to an oil workers’ strike which the opposition forces led by Babak hoped would make the national economy of Baug effectively bankrupt.
The strike did in fact crush the government’s power over the population. On the ninth and tenth days of Moharam, the days in which Hossein was killed at the inception of Islam in 600 A.D., the people of Iran demonstrated in huge numbers crying, “Amir is the symbol of Yazid in our time!” Martial law was ineffective when three million people had taken to the streets demonstrating against the government.
Communist guerrillas arrived at 5 a.m. one morning and ransacked a central police station in Tealandir. They killed several guards in the attack by bombing parts of the station with grenades and Molotov cocktails. The guerrillas distributed tracts asking for individuals’ cooperation during the transition to a new government by violent means. These guerrillas had access to the weapons and small bombs needed to carry out the revolution. Sometimes these guerrillas attacked soldiers as they rode by in personnel carriers, killing many of them, and making them wary of future troop movements along main thoroughfares and corridors. The lorries carrying soldiers were inconvenienced and strategized out of relevance. This type of guerilla activity sparked a flame of concern in Amir’s quarters and they were perplexed about ways they could bring back law, order and freedom of movement. The daring of the guerrillas in their confrontations with Amir’s guard gave people the courage to carry on with the coup–the communists’ tactics were effectively working step by step towards an end–the ouster of Amir. The communist’s desperate, hasty attitude to bring about the revolution quickly was contagious and spread throughout the country as the month of Moharam progressed. Newspapers went on strike because Amir had tried to control their content, denying journalists and readers freedom of the press. The television media was not allowed to write or broadcast what they wished, and as a result, many of the radio and television stations joined the print journalists and publishers in a general strike.”
“Here’s the rest of it in a memo Khalid. Try not to knock over any tables with cylinders on your way home,” she said, handing me the professionally bound “Memo of the Moharam –Ramadan Demonstrations 1978”. I continued reading about the demonstration on the train on my way home where I would be with Zareen again.
‘As winter progressed, heating oil became unavailable to the public due to increased demand and a virtual stand-still in production due to strikes. General Alborz, a high ranking officer in the North Bahar Treaty Organization (hereinafter NBTO) studied the political unrest in Baug for one month. Alborz’ report was sent to Sargon President Riymi Dauber and NBTO chairpersons meeting in Western Bahar. It advised the support of Ayatollah Babak instead of having the country further disintegrate into chaos and allowing communist guerrillas to re-organize a Xerxes-controlled Baugi government. If the communist forces assumed power in Baug, the people would follow them like another of Xerxes’ socialist satellite countries which existed in the late 1970’s. The NBTO committee concluded that a religious government in Baug would tend to counteract any communist infiltration since one of the Xerxes Communist Party’s main tenets is a determinant disbelief in God and that religion is “an opiate of the people”. If a religious republic replaced the Amir monarchy, it was believed by the NBTO analysts that monetary support and/or military intervention would be less likely to be required from the international community to circumvent extreme Xerxesian influence in Baug. Part of NBTO’s conclusion was based on the presumption Ayatollah Babak would institute rigid adherence to an Islam code of conduct with severe internal consequences to those who opposed him while governing the newly proposed Islamic Republic of Baug.
Amir, knowing his situation as the countries continuing monarch was growing dire, asked Dr. Javed, the leader of the Baugi National Front, to become the new prime minister. Dr. Javed flew to Paris to meet with Babak who although exiled, was now constructive ruler of Baug by the de facto fiat of NBTO. If Babak approved of his appointment, he could become the next prime minister. There was some argument at the outset of their discussion, but it was decided between the two that as long as Amir was in power, Javed would not become prime minister or take responsibility for the acts of Amir’s government, in the past or going forward. General Alborz, in the company of the Sargonian Ambassador to Baug as well as several members of the press, went to Amir’s palace to discuss the monarch’s departure from Baug.’
DR. MORVARID ARASH ACCEPTS THE OFFICE OF PRIME MINISTER OF BAUG’S PARLIAMENT–1978
After a press conference, Amir asked Dr. Saleh Roshan to become the new prime minister of Baug since Javed declined the post. Roshan consulted leaders of the BNF, but they refused to throw their support behind him. After repeated attempts to persuade his colleagues to allow him to take on the job, Roshan became dejected and turned down the prime minister’s position reluctantly. Having failed twice to appoint a prime minister, Amir asked Dr. Moravid Arash of the Baug Party, a sub-party of the BNF, to act as prime minister. The Baug Party was established during the last Great War. Only Dr. Javed held more prestige than Dr. Arash in the BNF-Baug Party political structure. Dr. Arash accepted Amir’s offer, but the BNF and the Baug Party drove him from power and the alliance. Arash was known as a brilliant and experienced politician, possessing a fluency in three foreign languages: English, French and German. A well-travelled man and proficient orator, Arash sought to quell discord in Parliament.
When Arash was 17 years-old and a student in Fairusa, he joined the Fairusa Republican Party and helped fight Pankco’s dictatorship in Vesper. During the last Great War, after Fairusa had fallen and came under fascist Gaspar occupation, Arash joined the Fairusa resistance to combat the fascists. When the last Great War came to an end, Arash returned to Baug in the ranks of the Baugi National Front [BNF] and fought off Jahanjir oil companies interested in exploiting Baugi oil. Arash was a very close companion to Dr. Rahmat who led the BNF and Baug itself in the early 1950’s. After the coup d’etat removed Rahmat from power in 1953, Arash was arrested as well and sent to prison without trial where he remained for the next five years. The same man that jailed him was now exalting him to the second most powerful position in Baug: prime minister.
DR. MORVARID ARASH’S ANCESTORS WERE OF THE ARASHI TRIBES
Arash’s father was the leader of the nomadic Arashi Tribes. In 1900, Arash’s father fought against the dictatorial monarchy in Baug in favor of a democratic form of government. After a dozen years of democracy at the turn of the 20th Century, Roshan Amir Shahraz, Amir’s father, reinstated the king’s consummate dictatorship and the concomitant royal monarchy in Baug.
Although all parties and factions seemed aligned against him, Dr. Arash accepted the prime ministry provided Amir leave the country. During the search for a successor to Amir, General Gazsi remained the acting prime minister of Baug. General Samir Hossein Yesfir, Superior Commander of the Baugi Air Force who went on trial immediately after the revolution, invited all military commanders to attend a conference organized by General Cyrus Moshah . Moshah met General Alborz at the conference, who favored Amir leaving the country. Alborz referred Moshah to three or four other individuals who coordinated Babak’s activities in Tealandir. General Alborz later met with Ayatollah Shahin about the expulsion of Amir. At the time of these discussions, General Gazsi had a heart attack and immediately left the country for “treatment.” Dr. Morvarid Arash stepped into the position of prime minister after these “coincidences” came about and Amir made it apparent he was leaving the country on a “long vacation”.
Behind the domestic scenes of everyday life among the peasants, NBTO members met in Bahar to discuss Amir’s desublimating predicament and decided it would be best if he left his throne immediately. As soon as the Parliament officially elected Arash as the new prime minister, Amir was on a plane to Farhoud where he was given political asylum. Arash declared he supported the Baugi Constitution and the rights contained therein protecting individual freedoms of Baugi citizens.
AYATOLLAH BABAK CLAIMS ARASH A TOOL OF AMERICA
Ten Thousand (10K) Baugi demonstrators chanted in the streets of Tealandir to show their support for the new prime minister. Some of the clergymen, including Ayatollah Darien, supported the newly drawn Baugi Constitution, but Babak said anyone who supports the new Constitution is his enemy and an enemy of all Moslems [A Jesuit Roman Catholic priest recently (2013) downplayed the significance of the U.S. Constitution compared to the Catholic faith]. Babak claimed further that Arash was a tool of Kir and which would enable them to bring back Amir once the people tired of demonstrating in the streets. Babak previously told journalists one month prior to Amir’s exodus that he condoned the Baugi Constitution except the Article allowing Amir to hold the highest position in the country, enabling him to make laws by executive order and using his veto to defeat proposed legislation. When Amir left Baug, Babak changed his platform to suit his new taste: he wanted the Baugi Constitution to be scraped and rewritten [without a completely new draft of the Constitution, Babak could not take the country’s power into his own hands. Prime Minister Arash would retain supreme control over Baugi policy while he, Ayatollah Babak, would fade helplessly into the background, another feeble clergyman sent out to pasture.
When Arash became prime minister, he returned freedom of the press to publishers, released all political prisoners, dissolved OIHSB, discontinued martial law, cut exorbitant taxes and gave exiles the right to return home. However, when the newspapers began to roll the presses again, they did not praise but attacked Arash, aye and that severely.
THE AYATOLLAH BABAK ACTS
Babak gave a signed declaration directing an engineer named Ferdows Farhang to go proceed to Southern Baug and speak with designated oil production workers in order to arrive at a suitable oil production quota to meet solely the domestic needs of the country. After one week, the workers agreed to produce about six to seven hundred thousand barrels of oil per day to meet the needs of Baug. After the limitation was established, the electric company in Baug went on strike to protest the appointment of Arash as prime minister. Without electricity, the oil could not be distributed adequately and shortages were widespread. The strike was another ploy used by employees to mobilize revolutionary forces around Babak and drive Arash out of office. The electricians’ and laborers’ strike succeeded and all political parties followed the advice of the Ayatollah Babak. The striking workers believed, as Babak had informed them, that Arash was a puppet of Kir and Flint.
Three weeks after Arash’s appointment as prime minister, Babak decided to return to Baug from Firuz, Fairusa. Arash asked one of the political leaders, named Paiman to give Babak advance notice so that he and the Ayatollah could meet upon his arrival in Baug. At first Babak accepted, but the next day, he retracted his acceptance and said Arash must resign as prime minister and that he would not meet or discuss the matter with him further until he did so. The reason that Babak would not meet with Arash was because Babak wanted to appear to the public that he, not Arash was in control of Baug. He would not concede power or legitimize the Office to the prime minister.
During the revolution in Baug, Babak revealed a lack of self-confidence when confronted with issues by the media or in public appearances. He would not debate with other leaders whether they be Baugi or foreign. For instance, Babak did not accept an audience with Burt Salmeini of United Corporate, to negotiate with Babak over release of the 52 Sargonian hostages who had been captured by “students” from the Sargonian Embassy in Tealandir. Babak did not meet with foreign leaders because he did not like to compromise if he didn’t have to and he didn’t have to. As long as he held ultimate power in Baug, his diplomatic style tended to be stubborn and unyielding. Whereas if Babak found himself in front of television cameras, he often looked down at his knees or hands self-consciously. At times, it seemed to some that Babak had faith, but no confidence in himself. Others noted his nervous “stage fright” was not due to modesty or being shy since he was not known to be a man one might describe as “humble”.
THE MEN BEHIND BABAK
The three people who backed Babak in his quest for dictatorship were Dr. Harved Sarahim, Payam Gulzar and Casper Basir. These three men planned to groom the Ayatollah for the coming riots, strikes and demonstrations. Sarahim, a naturalized Sargonian citizen and Gulzar, who was educated in Sargon were interrogated by various interviewer who asked the two whether their primary allegiance was with Sargon or Baug. Newspapermen were suspicious of the duality expressed by the bias Sarahim and Gulzar, who have Sargonian credentials, would have in backing Arash, a Baugi political figure. They had Sarahim and Gulzar in a Catch-22 —if Sarahim’s allegiance was still with Sargon then his allegiance could not be said to be entirely supportive of Baug. Many also thought Sarahim was a member of Wombat because he swore an oath to Sargon when he became a citizen of that nation, but if his allegiance was not with Sargon, Baugi journalists could not take him at his word since he renounced an oath of support to a foreign entity. If he “lied” to Sargon, he could not be trusted to keep his word of allegiance to Baug. Sarahim and Gulzar were never popular politicians and it appeared to some they used Babak as a tool for their political opportunistic maneuvering. Gulzar lived in Sargon on two separate occasions. Once as a young student where he was expelled for mischievous conduct and later on, after jumping into politics and becoming an Aspirian citizen, he returned to study psychological warfare at the prestigious Sargon Intelligence University to become an expert in the subject. Gulzar’s interests led him to acquaint himself with Rosnef Terradat, leader of the Basir Liberation Organization [hereinafter BLO], and the two men became close collaborators and friends.
ARASH’S SHORT TERM OF OFFICE
Arash hatched a plan to begin a liberal republic designed around the Constitution, and not based on Amir’s whims. People were relieved after Arash gave a speech delineating his plan, and they hoped their freedoms and the government’s liberal attitude would continue. The public’s attention however, soon became transfixed by the savior of Baug, who promised instantaneous results: the Ayatollah Babak!
Arash secretly sought to hamper the free functionality of the Tealandir Airport in an effort to delay Babak’s actual arrival in the country. Baugi Air Force officials and/or functionaries however offered to pick up the Ayatollah Babak in Firuz, Fairusa. The Fairusa Government did not allow foreign military jets to land on their airstrips at the time, but understood the Baugi military was now taking orders from Babak, not Arash, who in turn continued to take orders from Amir. The news of the air force officers’ proposal to pick up the Ayatollah in Firuz also emboldened rising Baugi dissent indicating a Baugi military rebellion in the works. After the Firuz escort incident, insubordination and outright flagrant failure to follow orders spread rapidly throughout the Baugi military services. More servicemen than ever were opposed to Amir’s authority over them. Within Amir’s special guard unit, one soldier utilized a machine gun to kill more than twenty Baugi officers while dining. A number of other soldiers deserted their encampments and fled to neighboring rural villages Absent Without Leave (AWOL).
“I’m getting sick, let’s take a break,” I told Leh.
“Have it your way, but this briefing has got to be done or my ass is grass as you say Khalid.”
“Your ass ain’t grass,” I tried to assure her.
“Covered in it. Cover my ass with grass,” she cooed
GREAT DEMONSTRATION OCCURS
The people gave Arash an ultimatum: if he does not allow Babak’s arrival in Tealandir, they would begin firing ammunition on all government agencies and their employees. The threat against his administration was one of guerrilla-type warfare. Moreover, Arash could not overcome the public’s insistence on bringing the Ayatollah Babak home to Baug. After a week of negotiations, Babak arrived in Baug by plane at the Tealandir Airport. Seemingly every business and organization had a secret plan designed to weaken Amir’s control and influence over them by weakening his functionairies, including Arash. Another example of factions arising in Amir’s government was an organization set up among members of the Baugi Air Force to co-opt the military commanders. The defecting air force officers recruited others in the ranks to break from Amir and Arash and join them in loyalty to Babak. Once the threshold of defectors to loyalists in Amir’s regime was met, the political power of Amir was siphoned off to Babak. The defectors were able to convert other air force officers to their organization by emphasizing service to Islam, not Amir.
These rebels who organized the arrival of planned a mission to receive the Ayatollah Babak ran like clockwork. Babak’s arrival marked his first time in Baug since he was exiled by Amir in 1963. At his arrival in the Capitol of Tealandir, Babak’s visage revealed its all-too-familiar signs of grim seriousness. He had presence. It was arranged that he go to Tealandir University to meet with professors to discuss plans for the revolution. Babak’s council however, advised him to go to Goudarz, a public cemetery, instead. A meeting at the university with the revolutionary coordinators would only weaken the Ayatollah’s power at a “petit summit”. If he agreed with their suggestion to go to the cemetery, he would give clerics more power once the revolution was over. If he disagreed, it might erode his power as a supreme leader in the post-revolutionary political structure and they might find themselves taking orders from revolutionary-minded professors. The inner circle of the Babak clan leaked the missive that the streets of Tealandir were too crowded to meet with the professors right away, but they (the clerics) would do so as soon as time permitted.
VIOLENCE AT THE DEMONSTRATION: CREATION PARTY vs. THE DEMOCRATIC SHAHEEN FRONT [DSF]
“Do I have to hear this?” She looked at me; kind of felt sorry for me like a mother would when her boy had to test his bravery against an adversary he had to face with a stronger personality during a “coming of age” test.
“Comes a time…? Is that it Leh?”
She smiled and nodded her head ‘yes’ slowly and gently. Walking over to a safe hidden in the closet she paused, turning around to look at me. Seeing I was paying attention, she beckoned me near. I watched as she turned the combo: 04-34-7. A hailstorm would not quash my bullets.
“Morphine?” I ventured a guess.
“I’m a doctor,” she surrendered.
“Doctor? Medical doctor?” I asked.
“That’s the one. If we need this during the rout, I wanted you to know where you could find it. Did you memorize the combination?”
“Yes.” After falling back into a black leather couch, he realized he didn’t love her anymore in a romantic way.
“It’s time for you to go,” she said.
I picked myself out of my seat and called 911.
“911 Operator, What is your report?”
“There’s a gathering at the Goudarz Cemetery out front and it looks like “good nite Amir.”
“What is your report Sir?” the operator asked pointedly.
“You might want to send police to the Goudarz Cemetery. There appears to be another gathering building. A demonstration against Amir,” Khalid reported.
“Your name?” the operator asked? The Creation Party and the Democratic Shaheen Front.
“What was that?”
“A contest.”
Khalid hung up the phone.
THE GOUDARZ CEMETERY—AYATOLLAH BABAK PRESIDING
At the Goudarz Cemetery, Babak was able to impart a religious significance to all those who perished in the recent spate of guerrilla warfare and to emphasize that there was nothing more important for him to do than honor of the first fallen in noble cause of freedom. His supporters advised him to pacify the crowd in order to reflect upon the freedom fighters who made the present moment possible at the cemetery and to bring them together in solidarity. The Ayatollah Babak had come a long way from Firuz to mourn the dead at Goudarz and nothing, neither the up-and-coming rebellion nor matters of State would make him divert his focus.
Babak’s speech at the cemetery made it clear that he knew very little about mere politics. He spoke like a parrot, dictating the points told to him by his handlers.
“Sounds like electioneering,” I volunteered.
“It is. He’s seeking legitimacy at a graveyard” she contended, regarding presumed Babak’s preparatory rehearsals for the address at Goudarz.
“He renounced the Baugi Constitution and said their forefathers had no right to dictate the way of a ‘new Baug’. In renouncing the old constitution, Babak proposed the adoption of a new constitution, one in which he will ‘choose his own prime minister.’”
Doctor Jaleh continued, “Ayatollah Babak rejected life in a palace and resided in a school dormitory. He led a simple life just like the ancient prophet Mohammed. Different groups of people went to visit the Ayatollah in his apartment, and they passed by the austere black-robed figure with waves and cheers of admiration. Throughout the cheering, Babak remained motionless (no one must get a view of his new dental work!). In the days of the prophet Mohammed, the oral orifice was often closed for hygienic purposes to hide decayed teeth and their odor from bystanders. In the 7th Century A.D., it was regarded as indecent as it was now in Babak’s case, to show the interior of one’s mouth. ‘Did he have dental work or didn’t he?’
Babak was soon transfigured into a demigod among the citizens of Baug. The five other Ayatollahs who were more learned in Islamic doctrine that Babak were forced to pay homage to him as their leader or be accused of high treason. In due time, the five other Ayatollahs recommended Babak as the new leader of Baug with hopes that in time, his power would diminish.
FERDOWS FARHANG AS PRIME MINISTER
Babak appointed Ferdows Farhang as the new prime minister of Baug. He requested that Farhang, the leader of the BNF, resign his post as President of the Baugi National Front Party and follow him unconditionally. Political power could then remain under the clergy’s umbrella. Although the BNF did not foresee Babak’s tactical move to consolidate power and neuter the independent decision-making capabilities of their politicians, they continued to show support for the Imam.
Political power over the country began to change hands when the Ayatollah’s staff did not allow former Prime Minister Arash’s appointees to be installed in their posts. All previous appointment orders made by Arash were revoked and any such further orders would be made by Farhang, Babak’s ‘First Officer’.
Havoc brewed in the military ranks as well. When a regiment was out on patrol, soldiers would often disobey their commanders’ orders to execute dissenters of Amir by turning around and shooting their commanders!
One week after his arrival in Tealandir, Babak’s revolutionary council began to spread the rumor OIHSB soldiers appeared at his dormitory residence to frighten and intimidate him. The rumor was unfounded, but it attracted the public’s attention and gave Babak’s camp additional impact in criticizing the existing government. On February 10, 1979, a clash arose between the government soldiers and the general public due to the rumor and many casualties ensued. The next day in a town east of Tealandir, Babak supporters met at a local air force base to discuss plans for the revolution. Amir’s guard was still in the country trying to maintain order even though Amir had departed to Baug, attempted to break up the meeting once they found out where it was being held. Within half-an-hour, news of the confrontation spread throughout the city and martial law was re-instituted by the new prime minister. People were told to vacate public streets from 6 pm until noon the following day.
Babak became apoplectic at a private meeting on the air force base. He was angry due to the use of force Amir’s soldiers exercised on the public; it also happened to be convenient and advantageous to do so. Babak ordered everyone to demonstrate that evening in protest to show the government that they were not to be bullied by Amir’s guard or other kind of martial law oppression-procedures. He also unloaded the ‘bombshell’ that Amir’s covert guard hiding within the military were planning a coup to reinstate Amir! Babak and/or his advisors thus used psychological warfare to frighten Amir’s last remaining loyal guardsmen. His forces burned all flammable material and filled the streets with smoke. The smoke-screen terrified Amir’s guard because they were unaccustomed to the eerie gloom cast upon the city from the smoldering red flames and putrid chemical smoke. On the main street of Tealandir, the crowds shouted out to Babak that he allow them permission to engage in holy war. The crowds were ecstatic over the prospects of fighting for their benevolent leader, the Ayatollah Babak.
Meanwhile, in the east corner of Tealandir, a group of Baugi Air Force soldiers were found demonstrating against Amir. When the pro-Amir commanders heard this, they ordered a nearby outpost to quell the demonstration and punish the transgressors. ‘Punishment’ for the Baugi High Command meant deploying tanks and automatic weapons in a police action. The commander at the scene used an army installation on the outskirts of the city as a forward base to use in the assault on the mutinous soldiers. If the installation was on the outskirts of the city, the motorcade of army personnel would not have to traverse the streets of Tealandir which were constantly full of rioting people and smoke.
Communication of the attempted ‘punishment’ was quickly intercepted by Babak’s forces. Two politically active military organizations that had been in hiding, Rostam Khalq, a religious-socialist group and Saiar Khalq, a radical communist organization, heard that Amir’s guard were soon to attack the air force installation east of Tealandir. They took the opportunity to intervene, supplying rebels with Molotov cocktails, rapid-fire machine guns and various automatic rifles. When the two rebel organizations came to the aid of the protesting soldiers, their guerrilla-like warfare outfoxed Amir’s guard. Molotov cocktails were thrown at Amir-loyalist tanks, setting them afire and debilitating their forces. When all the soldiers in Amir’s tanks were dead, rebels salvaged whatever working weapons they could and distributed them among the people with the proviso they were to fight off what remained of Amir’s small army.
When Amir’s guard was all but defeated by the guerrillas, the Guard commander in Tealandir asked for the assistance of the commander in Hoomanshah, a city about 400 miles west of Tealandir, to fight the mounting aggression of rebel forces. The newly summoned regiment moved toward the districts of Tealandir from Hoomanshah, but were halted when they came upon Faraz, a city 20 miles north of Tealandir due to an angry, uncooperative rebel mob. Residents were told of the reinforcements headed their way and were ready with machine guns and Molotov cocktails to greet them. The citizens put up such a persistent and effective fight that the soldiers never did arrive in the capitol.
In all of Baug, most of the civil police stations were seized by the guerrillas and people of all walks of life defied any and all civil authority departments affiliated with the government. Women had important roles in fighting the troops as well. They made sand-bag barricades for the rebel fighters and nursed the hungry and wounded in their homes. At the end of the day, eastern Tealandir was occupied and controlled by the rebels.
The next day as could be expected, the city was in a shambles and the political tension rose to an alarming degree, one could probably say redline. Dr. Arash, the former prime minister, spoke in the Parliamentary Senate asking all the commanders of the legitimate army to return to their posts and carry on with their usual duties. However, many of the commanders already sympathetic to the cause of Babak saw opposition to the growing rebel forces both unwise and unproductive. Soldiers having heard of the political rhetoric in parliament, were seen placing flowers in their gun barrels as a gesture indicating they would not shoot their own fellow citizens–peace was at hand.
At two o’clock in the afternoon local time, the national emergency broadcast station issued a report describing the Faraz showdown. ‘Hoards of citizens, led by the two guerrilla organizations, attacked both military garrisons and police headquarters in downtown Tealandir. General Khosrow, the former Chief of Police and commander responsible for enforcing martial law was taken captive in the raids’. After Khosrow was arrested, the entire city was engulfed in chaos. No one from Amir’s former government held any position of authority or even influence in the capitol. Each sector of the city had an organizing arm represented by committees who made their headquarters in the local mosques of each strategically significant neighborhood. Armed youths, taking their orders from various committees, began to control the affairs of Tealandir. Armed confrontations and skirmishes that befell other major cities in the country were similar in nature to the conflict transpiring in the capitol; it was after all, a revolution.”
TWO GUERRILLA GROUPS: TIP OF THE SPEAR
“The street rioting was well staged by the two guerrilla groups: Saiar Khalq and Rostam Khalq. In one instance, when a rabble of angry demonstrators arose, trying to take over a police station, two experienced commandos from the Saiar Khalq crashed down the station door with the rear end of their military truck. The ruptured rear-entry allowed the rebels to overtake the installation despite the non-stop firing by guards within the sealed building. Thus, the newly formed ‘district committees’ took over the governmental installations to serve as outposts for the two guerrilla groups operating either tacitly or explicitly for the Ayatollah Babak.”
“So any jerk that got to the head of a committee was untouchable,” I said.
“As untouchable as Elliot Ness,” Jaleh replied.
She continued, “At the end of the two days of all-out rebellion, one could not distinguish Tealandir from a city in Bahar following a blanket bombing raid, but the sight of the destruction only furthered the rebel population’s endeavor to overtake the ailing Amir government. The rebel peoples demolished buildings impulsively so that all forms of the old regime could be removed from their sight and minds. They placed steel girders across the thoroughfares to prevent tanks from traversing the guerrillas newly gained territory. Buses and lorries were continually burnt by the rebel peoples in protest and payback for the bitter years of oppression under Amir’s previous administration. The prevailing attitude among the active revolutionaries was annihilation now, reconstruction later, two separate and distinguishable steps. The Baugi Revolution of 1978 was like a civil war without a president presiding over the troops.
Yet, despite the disorder, people united in the difficult days of the revolution to help one another through the shortages and casualties that beset the population. Signs of improved conditions began to appear after a relatively short time and people shared what little they had with their comrades. Youth Volunteers distributed motor oil and gasoline among the people in rationed amounts and shopkeepers sold their food inexpensively in temporary kiosks set up in tents at the marketplaces. The entire country helped to rebuild the broken nation. People were considered themselves “brother and sister” because they were all fighting for a common cause, the extinction of Amir’s ugly regime.
Babak’s Revolutionary Guard was faced with a problem however. They had distributed thousands of guns to help in the revolution against Amir and his guards but now that the fighting was over, they wanted to get them back to avoid possible use in a “counter-revolution” against the Ayatollah Babak. The threat of a second coup against the new revolutionary government prompted Babak to demand the return of all guns to the mosques.”
“When there are so many guns ‘assassinations come cheap’” Jahan said.
“Overabundance of anything is bad news.” ‘Is that joke in poor taste? Is that even a joke or a snarky comment?’ I thought to myself after saying it.
Jahan looked at me intently–then looked away. He took over the telling of the story for Jaleh.
Jahan continued, “The main focus of the government and its people was still the elimination of the former regime, and the execution of its officials. Babak used the element of revenge and concept of justice to keep his people spirited as they began to rebuild the new republic. Most people knew a sense of unity was required if they were to successfully establish a new government, so they returned the guns they had received from the guerillas to the mosques, and followed their orders without question. It had been seven months since production in the country was moving at full capacity, and when the new regime was quasi-established, it was time to step-up production again. The employees needed a salary for their labor and the Ayatollah needed capital to strengthen his fledgling regime, and everyone needed energy. When it was safe, the two major organizations that worked underground to overthrow Amir’s regime, the Saiar Khalq and the Rostam Khalq, came out into the open for the first time. They knew that they would be thanked for their accomplishment this day. Glorified and not vilified.
When they came out into the open, they encouraged employees to choose their own administrators from among themselves, like labor unions. The elected council would then represent the organization as a whole and would facilitate achieving the objectives of the union by acting as coordinators, advocates and influential spokesmen. Each of the ‘councils’ pledged their allegiance to the Imam and his welfare, to the support of the Ayatollah’s party, backed by the strong arms of Saiar Khalq and Rostam Khalq, as well as for national unity. Operatives of the Ayatollah’s new party asked factories to dedicate their companies to the Ayatollah. The council in each factory named itself “the committee of the Imam” to emphasize its loyalty to the new Eminence, Ayatollah Babak.
Thereafter, Babak and his committees had vast control over all private and public companies. Members of his special party would infiltrate the companies’ labor force when voting time came for the election of a company council. To insure that the leaders of each company were faithful to Babak, the Revolutionary Guard pre-selected the possible candidates for the position before nominating them. The voting procedure, if it can even be characterized as ‘voting’ became a corrupt ritual of formal appearances. Instead of private balloting, voting was carried out in vast assembly halls, with the prospective leaders chosen by Babak’s collaborators and presented to the workers as ‘good and able men’ in the service of the Imam, who was considered as infallible as a Pope might be. After a random show of the employees’ hands, whether it be one or one hundred hands counted for him, the man who was pre-selected to lead the organization wound up winning the election. These leaders often knew nothing of managing a large corporation. The only prerequisite to acquiring a leadership position was a zealous loyalty to Babak’s new regime and contempt for all those who dared to oppose it. The Imam’s party wanted to change the whole structure upon which businesses, governmental utilities and the general economy was based. The former hierarchical business structure that had been adopted from ‘Western capitalism’ was declared obsolete and replaced by a new strategic management and production blueprint of the Imam Committee. The new economy was based on a ‘union superstructure’ which gave some of the savvy committee heads an advantage over the Ayatollah Babak, whose knowledge of leadership was mainly steeped in Islamic clerical hierarchies. A large union like those existing in ‘the West’ were formed by the committees calling themselves a ‘council’, and the Imam Committee incorporated the idea into their own governing structure. The union’s council theoretically based its corporate decisions on the will of the laborers within that Union. The main glitches in the new superstructure were a dis-connect between the managers and their ability to run the organization and/or business, as well as between the managers and the Imam, who knew relatively little of the businesses and/or organizations reporting to him. Due to poorly organized logistics following the insurgent revolution, expertise was again lost as it had been decades before, during the transition to the new government in Baug. The resulting outcome was a chaotic Baugi economy in the late 1970’s.
The laborers within the large companies retaliated half-heartedly to the Babak Committee’s high-pressure prodding by simply not working to their capacity. They knew an outright strike or revolt would not be wise at the time since human life no longer seemed sacred. The Ayatollah would just as soon execute dissenters than allow them to meddle in his plans. Members of anti-Babak forces were massacred by the dozens every day in Baug, so company employees mostly kept quiet to avoid incrimination and charges being brought against them.”
“299th Precinct—the end of the road.” I blurted.
Jaleh continued “Babak somehow found out about slacking employees and declared that working was a religious duty for all Moslems and that ‘[anyone who does not work hard is not only anti-Moslem but could be considered an agent acting against the Imam]’. If someone was accused of being a spy within a particular organization or company, he could count on joining the former high-ranking officials of Amir’s regime on execution day.
ISLAMIC COURTS
The new justice courts were incorporated into an Islamic-based court system. Although many of the Baugi people were practicing Moslems, they were unaccustomed to such quasi-religious procedures infused in court procedures and found them strange. In the former judicial system, courtroom protocols were structured like those found in France, Belgium and Switzerland, by a model civil law instituted by statute which had its origins during the reign of Napoleon Bonaparte. The reason for Baug’s judicial system possessing similarities to those in Western Bahar was that most of the attorneys and judges that practiced law in Baug had been educated in countries within Western Bahar. Many followers of Babak’s regime were against the civil judicial system because they saw it as an unfair tool in the hands of the OIHSB. During periods where ‘martial law’ was imposed on civilians and civil law suspended, military courts could often determine the fate of not only military personnel, but of civilians as well. When military courts tried defendants, OIHSB prepared the evidence in such a way that the accused would invariably be proven guilty. Since the military court was largely, if not entirely under OIHSB’s control, no one undesirable to Amir’s regime could escape its peculiar forum of judgment. Under Babak, the Islamic courts, as defendants, lawyers, professors and journalists soon discovered, the ‘reformed’ methods of civil and military justice could carry with it harsher scrutiny and sentencing than the maligned legal system that preceded it.
In the new Islamic Court, clergymen preside as both judge and trier of fact as opposed to a court judge or a jury as is common elsewhere. The Islamic Courts were not a new invention but rather were created fourteen centuries earlier during the founding of Islam. The due process is quite simple and expedient. The Islamic ulama (priest) simply asks the accused various questions and decides for himself if the person is guilty or innocent of the charge(s). Once a Decision is made, the ulama needs only two people to confirm the accused’s conviction and sentence. In capital cases, if an individual, in the cleric’s opinion is assisting ‘corruption on the earth’, the defendant is entering into a battle against God and the Islamic brotherhood, and should be executed. In the laws of Islam, a condemned individual must be executed immediately without being given food or drink. To give a condemned person ‘good things’ that God has provided is a sin and as far as Islamic doctrine is concerned, God’s blessed creations are meant to be partaken solely by the faithful and not the corrupted.
Shiet law dictates that the judge in a particular case should not let emotional states such as sadness, worry, sleepiness, hunger, thirst or nervousness affect his objectivity when judging an individual. The trial therefore, is held during the day and the accused is given the right and opportunity to defend his or her self. Though the public disapproved of the former judges and judicial methods of Amir’s regime, they felt the new court system could prove even worse as it lacked the checks and balances of a ‘Western’ judicial system. One individual or group of complicit clerics could decide a defendant’s fate. The clergy may not always abide by their own religious codes of mercy and consistency regarding their interpretation judicial procedure in establishing justice.
Dissatisfied, the people wanted the right to an impartial jury and an attorney as they had been in the past. Babak, ignorant of modern legal procedure, said that no other judge is as important or as necessary as the clergyman. He claimed it is the clerics alone that should decide the fate of a man, since it is God’s Court which he presides over. As the supreme leader of the nation, Babak was also establishing himself as the final arbiter in the courts of law in Baug. Babak’s belief about the administration of justice however did not necessarily parallel the Islamic (especially Shiet) codes of justice they sought to replicate by statute. Some of the other Ayatollahs rebuked Babak’s view on legal procedure, saying that in capital cases, everyone had the right to defend his or her self from execution with a more comprehensive form of due process, but Babak remained firm; the clergy alone would adjudicate justice. The clerics used the courts as a platform from which they could express their disapproval with Amir’s regime. Their propaganda was effective in labeling Amir as evil and his legal system unjust.
Ayatollah Mahbod, imprisoned during Amir’s regime, believed that the rightful place of all clergymen was the Mosque, not the courts or parliament. He stated religious leaders should not delve into political affairs but be content with the simple life of a clergyman. His views correlated with the one expressed by Ayatollah Bahman, who stated that clergy should interfere with the process of government only when necessary to correct poorly managed or corrupt institutions, their officers and/or functionaries.”
SAIAR KHALQ AT TEHRAN UNIVERSITY
Saiar Khalq declared they wished to demonstrate at Tealandir University then march to the Ayatollah Babak’s residence located some two miles away. Babak refused their proposal because they were communists (and by implication, “irreligious”). Because of the Ayatollah’s refusal to allow the march, Saiar demonstrated at the university and prepared speeches for the approximately 150,000 people who attended. They did not march to Babak’s home, nor did they carry his picture on placards, exalting his image and name. The Saiar Khalq was angered that Ayatollah Babak would not allow them a greater reign of influence after all they had done to put him where he was politically.
“’Without us, where would you be?’ typical.” I added.
One could observe those who gathered at Tealandir University for the Saiar organized event were of the educated classes worried about Baug’s future. By joining the assembly organized by the Saiar Khalq Party, they demonstrated their unhappiness and discontent with the Babak Party’s agenda, which they considered opposed to their own. The core constituency of the Saiar Party was comprised primarily of students and educated laymen. Although a small political party, they were very experienced in organizing political activities. Babak’s goals opposed those of Saiar Khalq due to the fact that inter alia, Baug retained elective democracy in the midst of its Islamist reformation. The bottom line for Babak’s democratic regime was to lead the illiterate of the country, as there were more of them than literate peoples. At a meeting with illiterates and peasants of the Islamic faith, Babak spewed out his disgust for the knowledgeable and intellectuals of Baug saying, ‘[This country belongs to you, the illiterates. Knowledgeable people do not have a share in the Islamic Republic. We need faith, not knowledge. The knowledge of the scholars belongs to Western science and we will have no part of that here. Let the scholars confide in (their former Prime Minister) Arash.’]”
“Why are we going over the past?” I asked them.
“So we know the present,” said Jaleh.
“Islamic State?”
“ISIL, Al Queda—religion is rising Khalid,” Jahan joined in with a smile.
“Yeah, religion is rising like a balloon ready to pop,” Jaleh added.
“There will be wars and rumors of wars,” I mumbled half-heartedly to myself.
Ayatollah Bahman, who had a following of educated individuals, met with Babak to discuss his upcoming trip to Darivsh, a Moslem holy city in Baug. Bahman believed that if Babak left Tealandir for Darivsh, it would signify a shift away from the political scene in the capitol city. However, Babak’s trip effected just the opposite result. It aroused Baugi’s to celebrate the Ayatollah’s coming reign over the entire country! The factions that opposed the Imam dared not speak against him at this time as public support for him was too great. Upon Babak’s arrival at the Sepehr School in Darivsh, he would deliver a speech that laid out the groundwork for the future government of Baug. [The Darivsh School was a centuries old institution where Babak and four of his colleague great Ayatollahs had been educated in the religious sciences of Islam.]
The major aims of Babak’s speech at the Sepehr School were:
1. To re-establish an Islamic government as it was during the period of the great prophet Mohammed.
2. To remove Western influence(s) from Baug as completely as possible.
3. That Baug shall act independently, and resist impositions of foreign powers for political, economic and/or military reasons. [Although he vaguely referred to Xerxes in his address as “the East”, the main thrust of his argument against foreign influence was directed against the Sargon and Flint.]
4. The State emblem of the lion and the sun must be removed from the Baugi flag to be replaced by new symbols representing the Baugi Islamic Revolution. The emblem of the lion and the sun was a symbol of royalty, and the revolution did away with the monarchy’s role in governing Baug.
5. Babak and his colleague Ayatollahs wanted to establish a special ministry to direct others to do what was dictated to them through the written law of the Koran, the Holy Scriptures of Islam, and to avoid that which was contrary to the Islamic doctrines contained therein. These two points: to do what was right and avoid what was wrong, were the most important duties a Moslem had, according to Babak. Babak went on further to state that it was every Moslem’s duty to watch out for one another’s brother on the spiritual road. After catching someone in sinful behavior, a mild reprimand is in order. The second time one is caught in sin, a strong reprimand, and physical beating is called for on the third offense.
In a nationally televised broadcast, Babak was seen with other clergymen that had less than stellar reputations among the people. One of those accompanying Babak for instance, was a known smuggler. Another, Babak’s son-in-law, was known as a real estate tycoon who sold lands set aside for the religious and diverted the proceeds of the sale to his personal benefit. Merchants had sold him land below market prices and wrote off the discount as a charitable tax deduction. In turn, Babak’s son-in-law resold the parcels on the open market to the highest bidders and made a tidy profit from the sales. Babak remained silent about the real estate sales of his son-in-law during the broadcast although he included him in his administration. The son-in-law was valuable to the Ayatollah for his worldly knowledge and shrewd business savvy.
Babak said in the broadcast he would break up the Department of Justice. Justice Ministers would no longer be allowed to eat or drink out of silver tableware or have female secretaries. A few days after Babak made the statement forbidding these luxuries, the engineer, Prime Minister Farhang noted the rif-raf that frequented the Ayatollah’s company on television and became concerned with the import of such a public display of Islamic political unity. Farhang said that the clergy were gossiping about him behind his back. The prime minister and the clergymen were trying to debase each other’s reputation because their political views did not mesh. After Farhang accused the clergy of spying and gossiping on him, the clergy told journalists they were referring to the lifestyles of Farhang and those like him. The clergy claimed that the prime minister had a young female secretary, drove a Mercedes-Benz automobile, and worked in an office covered with Tahmoureese carpets. Farhang retaliated by saying that at the present time, even a shopkeeper can afford a Mercedes, and having female secretaries was not that unusual, even in Baug. He asked the clergy point blank: “Is it unusual for me to have my own personal secretary?”
Baug’s recent intensive and strict orders disturbed the Baugi people because they felt that all citizens should have equal status under the new government, but it did not play out that way. So, throughout the Baugi business world, employees refused to obey their superiors. Banks began to open, but because former business owners had fled the country, the acumen of the business managers and their subordinates was woefully lacking. Due to a challenged functionality, the government gradually consolidated all of the private banks into a nationalized fund and promulgated their existence to interested parties, but even this did not significantly help alleviate poor economic conditions in Baug. The Army too became discombobulated and government officials reduced mandatory military service to one year only, from a two-year stint.
In spite of these changes, many of the higher ranking officers (colonels and generals) were leery of returning to their garrisons due to their possible arrest and execution via the Revolutionary Guard of Ayatollah Babak. The new regime established the Revolutionary Guard to protect itself as there was no other police force equipped or organized to do so at the time. The conditions for membership in the Revolutionary Guard were very simple, yet demanding: a strong belief in Islam, and an unconditional devotion to Ayatollah Babak as their ruler. The Guard was rapidly formed and aided by Barbadis who benefitted from Babak’s government. Babak came out in support of the Barbad Liberation Organization [BLO] and was very supportive of their measures.
Under Barbadi direction, the Guard raided the homes of the rich, took their valuables, and executed many of their inhabitants. After the evacuation of the rich families from their homes, the clergymen, while accusing the wealthy of committing the crime of “self-indulgence” by having an overabundance of luxurious and superfluous possessions, usurped the houses and expensive cars to run their own ‘meaningful and important’ duties for the new regime. The clerics rationalized that they were the best recipients of God’s good gifts as they were involved in His mission. The clergymen brought many priceless and rare articles, antiques and jewels to their own homes and used the personal property themselves or sold them for a very good price at market.
Prime Minister Farhang expected Babak to give him more freedom to run the government from his position than former Prime Minister Arash, but on the contrary, Babak gradually took power away from Farhang. Babak and his savvy son-in-law made laws and issued orders that suited their peculiar tastes. What “tasted” good to the Ayatollah Babak did not always “taste” good the next person at the table. Rules and regulations were constantly promulgated and repealed. Babak’s regime organized a Revolutionary Council composed of clergymen directed to help control the proper functioning of Islamic Baugi society. All but three of the council members had the discretionary authority to order commandos drawn from the Revolutionary Guard to enforce executive authority—their authority. The Revolutionary Council or “committee” was often referred to colloquially as the “Rhommittee“. The Rhommittee used gunman at their disposal to exercise authority in matters of State. When they thought it necessary, they would take appropriate weaponry to initiate armed government reprisals against the opposition. The Rhommittee would target the particularly wealthy residents to be thrown out of their homes and executed. It was not necessary for the Rhommittee to get a warrant or injunction. The fleeting whim of one of its respected members was enough to sentence anyone to death. They attacked homes in the dead of night in surprise raids. When the wealthy occupants were arrested, they were offered the ultimatum to give up their homes and possessions or face the death sentence. The Revolutionary Council brought individuals to court and accused them of financially aiding Flint. The punishment for such a crime was death, and the only remedy to avoid capital punishment was to bribe the Chief of the Revolutionary Guard with all the worldly possessions he could muster.
Newspapers informed people that the Revolutionary Council was taking bribes from the rich to avoid prosecution. To prevent a scandal, Babak spread the rumor that OIHSB had influenced members of the council. In point of fact however, all of the former members of OIHSB had fled, been imprisoned, or executed. Babak selected one of the clergymen as the chief coordinator of the Rhommittee squads in order to prevent corruption and ensure justice. It took a lot of time to control the factions within the Baugi Revolutionary Council as a whole because of the anarchy and disruptions occurring daily.
Babak gave the newspapers the freedom to write anything they wished; they were not censored or repressed. Babak wanted Farhang to promulgate a republic based on Islam. The adherents of political party rule and the generally educated population believed in the separation of church and state: that religion and politics should be kept separate when governing the nation and not intertwine, but stand side by side. Those who supported the separation of church and state reasoned that there was no recent model of an Islamic republic in Baug and that it was risky to embark on such a great dislodgement of Baug’s Constitutional government. Without a proven track record of whether an Islamic Republic would function as planned, many Baugis were reticent about handing government leadership over to Moslem cleric overlords.
POST-REVOLUTION POLITICAL PARTIES–THE THREE HOUSES : BABAK’S ISLAMIC PARTY ON THE RIGHT, THE BAUGI NATIONAL FRONT ON THE LEFT AND THE STUDENT COALITION FOR ACTION IN BETWEEN
There were three main streams of political thought and affiliation after the most violent demonstrations and police actions in Baug. The transitional government as Baug moved from a monarchy to an Islamic Republic. One group was Babak’s religious society that was by now incorporated into the governmental structure. Another was comprised of politicians from the Baugi National Front (mostly the educated classes) and the younger generation of “students” generally considered mid-way politically between the clergy on the right and the BNF on the left.
Prime Minister Farhang and his acting cabinet selected “Democratic Islamic Republic” as the title of the political system of the “new Baug”. The greatly respected Ayatollah Bahman agreed with Farhang’s choice of the name of the Republic, but the Ayatollah Babak did not like use of the word “democratic” to describe any aspect of Baug as it was a Western term and should not lend any Western meaning on what was to be Baug’s sovereign State structure.
The debate was on. Newspapers were filled with editorials on what kind of regime would rule Baug and what would be its name? For his part, Babak showed distain for the word and concept of “democracy”. For their part, the plurality of the press favored the more clearly defined term “democracy” to be added to “Islamic Republic”. Babak threatened his adversaries on the future name of the Baugi government by painting them as profane and deserving of punishment.
The managers of Ayatollah Babak’s “stage show” were groups formed to visit the Imam every day in Darivsh. Groups gathered at the Sepehr Theology School and Babak reciprocated by giving these devotees fresh lectures daily. This tactic was effective because it gave Babak’s party sympathizers and supporters which he needed immediately after the recent violent events of the “revolution”. The planners of the televised display showed busloads of peasants and villagers brought to Darivsh to show their wild enthusiasm for their new leader Ayatollah Babak. The “shows” were an astounding success. Babak enlightened and entertained his audiences day after day. Sometimes, he had marvelous audiences that were already fired up. He often didn’t have to work very hard personally to overwhelm the audience with his cordial diplomacy. They cheered when he addressed them—they didn’t need a neon sign that said “APPLAUSE”, they were sincerely inspired. These meetings became symbiotic wherein the speaker, Babak and the audiences fed each other’s enthusiasm. Authorities that viewed the Ayatollah from their homes on television sets would jest that Babak had great potential as an entertainer or better yet, a stand-up-sit-down comedian in Sargon.
As the bearer of good tidings, Babak declared he would institute a program to build houses for the deprived people of Baug. He opened a checking account for himself and let the whole country join in enlarging it. The account number was 100. His followers donated thousands of dollars while merchants and landowners gave the Imam sufficient acreage to make housing for the poor feasible. Babak was not satisfied by the country’s gifts at the outset and demanded more from his countrymen. Being a powerful Imam, he expected parents to gladly sacrifice their very children before his feet if he so desired it. To further manipulate the citizens’ minds, a new television program was devised by the “stage directors” of the televised “Babak Show”. They persuaded illiterate women to visit the Imam in droves to offer their gold, silver and jewels. The scene, as depicted on the television screen, was very touching, stimulating donations from all quarters to account 100. The propagandized Babak and the Peasant’s Hour was an effective tool in unifying the nation to support the poor—it also gave Babak more revenue to work with to bolster his fledgling administration. When donations had reached the appropriate peak, Babak gave a speech of appreciation to the people in which he heaped praise on those generously donating for the welfare of the poor in Baug. During the speech, sacks full of the jewels and precious metals that had been collected during the donation drive were presented on camera and shown being transported to Ayatollah Babak’s house.
A NEW SHOW BEGINS—SALES TAXES
Although Baug was currently selling crude oil, it took more than two months for them to get revenue from its sale. The time lapse between the sale and revenue receipts incentivized clerics in charge of accounts receivable to use revenues sparingly in the trust for Ayatollah Babak. When sufficient revenue from the sale of Baugi crude oil flowed in to the clerics, they were able to pass some of it to Babak-controlled coffers and/or to an earmarked account to meet the appropriate financial needs of Baugi Islamic Republic. Both students and the employed were compelled to donate a certain percentage or pre-determined quota fee to account 100. The money was purportedly used to strengthen the new regime and to increase its ability to resist a counter-coup against Babak. The students who donated money as a sign of gratitude for being able to enjoy an education in the Islamic Republic got most of the money they donated to account 100 from their parents, who also donated money in thanksgiving for their position of status in the new society. The merchants, for their part, paid an exorbitant tax because they had the most cash flow to be used by the clergymen. The laborers and other employees were asked for approximately half-a-week’s wage per month. In Baug, there was no income tax, only tariffs on the sales of merchandise, so the offering was not an overwhelming burden as long as one did not need to buy or sell products or use taxable services. When some party or individual paid less than he or she was expected to donate as often happened, the giver was accused of being a counter-revolutionary or working underground with Amir’s associates in some undisclosed manner.
THE REVENUES TO CLERGY ACCOUNTS: #100; #200
The first publicly released accounting from Babak’s ‘treasury’ office reported total accumulated deposits to Account #100 amounted to approximately two hundred million dollars. Success breeds success, so Babak opened Account #200—exclusively to alleviate suffering of the poor by building homes and infrastructure for their use.”
“I wonder if this was designed as a Transit Oriented District like Karlsruhe, Germany?” I asked.
“Doubt it Khalid,” said Jahan.
“The ‘housing project’ was meant to furnish poor people with a place to live. When Ayatollah Babak came to power, his officers seized apartment complexes and houses which had been in development under the Amir’s Administration but remained unfinished because the construction companies involved in the macro-project fled the country. Babak and his collaborators reserved the unfinished construction project as an ideal ploy to coerce the public into donating their money into Account #200. Babak’s group of collaborators eventually kept the money for their own administration probably after they decided they would not “put good money after bad”. The Islamic Republic changed the financing so that the government’s treasury would pay for Amir’s ‘lamed’ building project not the donations to Account #200 as was initially disclosed. When this happened, it put additional stress on the government’s budget and the completed dwellings were later sold to only those who could afford them or some of Babak’s Guard.
After one year, Babak had not dispensed any of Account #200 funds to the poor. He declared the Housing Foundation officially closed in that it had not been effective ‘in alleviating the housing problem for the poor.’ When asked by the press where the funds of Account #200 were allocated (or located), the Ayatollah Babak could not reply.
The scene depicted the way Babak and his collaborators succeeded in gleaning money from the public’s hands. The disguised methods of extortion in almost every sector associated within Babak’s regime or the greater ambit of government jurisdiction and authority was deceptive. The failings of the new programs proposed by the Imam caused disappointment among many of the Baugi peoples. Still, most did not think Babak was trying to deceive them, but had their best interests in his heart.
Some groups of discontented people tried to make the distinction between Babak and other clergymen. Instead of accusing the Ayatollah with the ‘failure’ of particular ‘programs’, Babak supporters said that other clergymen working under the Imam were responsible for the foul-ups and miscalculations. Babak often commended his supporters’ fundraising and even embezzling ‘for a good cause’ or for their Party. The collaborators claimed it was not possible for Babak to keep tabs on all of the priests [tutors] who may be neglecting their duties of worship and public service.
Organized political caucuses at this time argued that establishing an Islamic Republic was not orthodox may even be contrary to the nature of Baugi principles. Yet, Babak resolved that Baug should have an Islamic Republic rather than a democracy. Babak’s decision brought unsettling attitudes among the people from the outlying provinces of Bahadur, Baugistan and Armee to the north as well as to the Sunni-majority regions in the southern reaches of Baug.
For the past fourteen centuries, there had been a dispute between the Shiet and Sunni sects of Islam. In the 7th Century A.D., Baug was generally far more technologically advanced than Samisekt, but not in the art of war. The Samisekt had skilled warriors that overcame the people of the Tahmour region, of which Baug was a part. For the next two hundred years, Baugis buckled down and used their knowledge and expertise to manipulate and frustrate the purposes of their occupiers. Skilled and knowledgeable Tahmoureesi were very often promoted by their occupiers to be leaders and final arbiters in education, administration and accounting. Finally, the tipping point came and the Tahmoureese were able to overcome the Samisekt, driving them out of Baug.
SHIET AND SUNNI SECTS OF ISLAM
The major fissure in Islam took place in Tahmour when Baugi’s (Shiets) refused to accept Hassan and the Samisekt Sunni saints and Caliphs as closely related descendants of the prophet Mohammed as they were. The Shiets chose Ali instead, who was both the cousin and son-in-law of Mohammed, as their Imam (Caliph). The main reason for the different Caliphs in the Shiet and Sunni denominations of Islam was that Ali’s son Hossein chose the former emperor of Baug’s daughter as his wife, as she also chose him. [At the time of the Samisekt invasion, Sami based Sunnis took Baugi men, women and children to sell in the medinas [open markets] as slaves to be used in Samisekt. When they were going to sell the Baugi emperor’s daughter, Ali displayed wisdom by asking that the princess of the former monarchy not be sold but allowed to marry among the young Samisekt. As it happened, the princess chose Hossein, Ali’s son, who was next in succession to the place of Imam after Ali’s brother Hassan. The two realms united in this marriage: the old Samisekt Empire (the Sunnis) and the Baugi side of the new Islamic heritage, the Shiets of Tahmour.
The descendants of the princess and Hossein therefore, were half of Samisekt, half of Baugi royal ancestry. The descendents of the princess and Hossein were informally chosen as the future Imams of the Baugi people. The official Caliphs were taken from Ali’s cousin Omanid [which we’ll call Zartosht hereinafter for the fictional device to protect the innocent throughout history]. Zartosht’s offspring started the line of royal succession in Tahmour because the Shiets did not have the clout of their conquerors, the Sunnis.
Baugis resisted the Sunni culture by claiming Hossein’s descendants and not Zartosht’s would be the sovereign Imams ruling over them as Tahmoureese-Baugi Shiet-Moslems. The proponents of Shiet-based leadership pointed out Hossein’s children were half Tahmoureesi and more exposed to Baug’s culture than Zartosht’s offspring. Despite the grounds argued for a Shiet ‘supreme leader’ of Baug, the Baugi people were not allowed to have a an insular political leader of their own while serving under Sunni authority and domination. To maneuver within a greater Sunni regional jurisdiction [hereinafter referred to as SRJ], Baugi Shiets came up with a religious angle to comply with Sunni-imposed laws, enabling them to comply with the law, yet have some ethnic identity separate and apart from the Sunnis. Baugis felt a distinction should be made between religious and political leaders which would diversify the political leadership in 8th and 9th Century Baugi government. Baugis claimed Zartosht’s Caliphs were essentially vassals of extortion procuring alms through coercion and intimidation. Further, Baugis claimed God had appointed Ali and his offspring as the true Imam, not the royal ancestral line of the Sunnis: Hassan, Yazid and Zartosht. Since there was no royal figure of the SRJ whom they wanted as their leader, most Baugis followed Ali and his descendants as their primary religious leaders. In doing so, they gained a voice of self-determination in negotiations and transactions with the Sunnis.
Eventually, the severing of the Shiets and their Imams from the Caliphs of the Sunni denomination of Islam caused chronic political upheaval. The turmoil derives from a longing for self-determination on the side of Baug against what the Sunnis believed was their inherent right to rule as victors of the throne left by Mohammed, his daughter, her two sons and their cousin Yazid. In other words, on the one hand the Shiets believed heredity and blood should determine a leader of the people [as in a monarchy] whereas the Sunnis believed if the acting supreme leader was imbued with significant credentials [ Yazid was a cousin and acting leader], he was entitled to keep the throne until such time as he was challenged and defeated. Since Hossein challenged Yazid for Caliph claiming as his right the throne of Baug among the Shia after his brother Hassan’s death, it may have somehow been fate or the will of God that Hossein perished at the order of Yazid. In Baug, the Shiet denomination is by far the majority and best represents the ideology of Baugi culture throughout the ages. Gradually, the Shiets would directly or indirectly force the Sunnis to obey them in the jurisdictions of Baug as the Sunnis were outnumbered demographically in the territories foreign to their own. Sunnis feared that if Shiet clerics were given political as well as the ecclesiastical power they already possessed as Imams, they might disregard their civil rights of Sunnis. In the post-revolutionary months of 1978- et seq., the Sunnis based their grievances against the Ayatollah Babak, a Shiet, ruling over them as a form of “co-mingling of politics and religion” [Compare “unlawful discrimination” in Sargon from the 13th and 14th Amendments to its Constitution ratified in the 19th Century to the ancillary case law and defined Federal and State Statutes “on the books” to date as well as scriptures, “It was written in the book”; “It is written”; “the word of the Lord is tried”].

KOUROS:
Kouros is one of the thirty one provinces bordering Kaveh and Dilshad in the southern region of Baug whose residents are primarily Sunni. In Kouros, the situation was quite different than in other Sunni provinces in Baugi territory. Kouros is the center of all oil production in Baug. The population is a mesh between two types: 1) The first group is primarily of Baugi ancestry and 2) the second a genotype of Samisekts who migrated to Baug after the indigenous Baugis, but who now speak both Farsi, a Baugi tongue, and Arabic. The latter group of “naturalized” citizens of Samisekt origins asked Khomeini, as a Shiet Imam, if Kouros could become a province insulated somewhat from Baugi jurisdiction. These Baugi citizens of Sunni ancestry organized a new political party they called The Center of Culture and Politics for Samisekt Peoples [CCPSP]. The proposal that each province should have some duties of self-determination and self or inter-dependent government within a Shiet nucleus was generally accepted amongst Baug’s educated elites. The peasants however, did not understand the detailed implications that such a change would bring to the government.
“I guess one always runs that risk when one is resigned to being blind sheep,” I said.
“Be attentive and curious sheep,” added Jahan sarcastically.
“What’s the difference between a Judas Goat and a ‘Fisher of Men’?” I asked them.
“One’s into growth while the other is into sacrifice,” Jaleh ventured.
“How big is your room?” I asked.
“The same size as Jahan’s, but I’m almost never there,” she related.
“At the hospital?”
“Mostly, yes.”
‘At the hospital’ I thought to myself.
AYATOLLAH BABAK’S TIMELY RESPONSE TO BAUG REGARDING KOUROS
Babak took advantage of the public’s ignorance and declared that Kouros wanted to separate itself from Baug, one of the wealthier regions of the country, and become “allies of the Sargon and Flint!” He ordered his Revolutionary Guard to keep up the pressure on Kouros and topple their opposition party poised against the Babak regime.
Kouros’ leader, Ayatollah Shayan, was exiled to Darivsh one night in the custody of Babak’s Guard. In response to the disgraceful exile of their Ayatollah, Kourosians fought against Babak’s Revolutionary Guard. Babak appointed General Pahlbod in response to the Kourosian disruptors and gave him authority to silence the people by force if he had to. General Pahlbod was the defense minister [Governor-General] in Babak’s regime as well as Commander-in-Chief of the Navy. Pahlbod was responsible for the stability and security of Kouros which was a strategic area situated off the Tahmour Gulf, on the border with Dishad. As Governor-General of Kouros and Commander-In-Chief of the Navy, Pahlbod wore two hats and had the clout to overcome uprisings in the southern province without many of the parliamentary delays otherwise associated with the use of force.
Shankam, a religious judge, traveled to Zand in the center of the Kouros province and convened the trial of eight youths that fought against the Babak regime. Within the space of one hour, Shankam heard the testimony of the eight youths accused of various acts of rebellion against the Islamic State of Baug and sentenced them all to summary execution. Pahlbod approved of the decision of the religious court. His totalitarian methods were designed to intimidate residents so they would not get swept up in the opposition’s endeavor to disrupt and retaliate against the Babak regime. Many more youths were sentenced to death and a great number thrown in jail. In one instance, a seventeen year-old girl and an eighteen year-old man were handing out tracts criticizing the effectiveness of the newly formed government under Babak. Once captured, the young man was sentenced to death, and the woman to life imprisonment. The sentences were primarily meant to frighten others, and instill chill on the wealthy Kourosians who were riding Babak’s coattails to a revolution misaligned with the Islamic Revolution of Baug won by Babak’s Shiet collaborators.
SUNNI-BAUG REACTION TO PAHLBOD’S RULE IN KOUROS
The Center of Culture and Politics for the Samisekt Peoples [CCPSP] changed their method of diplomacy from one of calm to one of violence. Babak’s denial of their semi-independence and the installation of Pahlbod as their Governor-General infuriated the people of Kouros and their residents decided to blow up petroleum pipelines which disrupted heating oil distribution during the winter months. During the Baugi winter of 1978-1979 many customers could be seen waiting in line for a ration of heating oil for up to six full days. Simultaneously in Sargon, gasoline rationing was taking place for the general public and motorists would wait in long lines for gasoline that was not readily available.”
“So the Baugi’s had to wait longer in line for heating oil than Sargonians had to wait in line for gasoline?” I surmised.
“That seems to have been the case,” replied Jahan.
“’Mother, I know not seems.” Jaleh said, quoting Shakespeare’s Hamlet.
“Cousin, if I tell you Baugi’s had to wait six days in line, they had to wait six days in line,” affirmed Jahan.
“Fuck you,” I said jokingly.
“Fuck you!” Jaleh joined in.
“Fuck you both!!” topped Jahan.
“Go fuck your masculine selves. That didn’t sound right,” added Jaleh.
We laugh a fucking laugh.
The next day, we met again to discuss:
THE UNDERGROUND DEMOCRATIC PARTY IN KOUROS, BAHADUR AND ARMEE
“Ever been to an Underground?” Jahan asked me.

“Underground what?” I replied.

“Like the Magic Theatre in Hermann Hesse’s Steppenwolf. Not entirely legit but not without a value you can find nowhere else in that time and space, hence, one must go underground.”

“I went to an after-hours club once—they had gambling. The cops broke it up and the dealer stole all the money in the pot when he grabbed the table cloth full of chips when someone yelled ‘It’s a bust!’ up the staircase,” I recounted.

“Once upon a time there was a preacher and a “demon-possessed man” in the city square. The poverty-stricken man cried out, almost touching his groin, but then not, writhing in virtual agony. Above him was a preacher quoting scripture portending the end times. Are they a team, or opposing forces demonstrating each against the other, either knowingly or subconsciously? Then, one might suggest the preacher seemed authentic, but the demon-possessed man seemed to be acting-out his sexual frustrations and desperation setting up his own healing—or is it all a con? Part of the human condition to earn one’s keep. Telling a story just to get by another day, another hour, another agonizing moment of an impoverished existence?”

“I didn’t know you got so downright philosophical Jahan,” not wanting to continue the conversation. “I thought you were an action-Jackson type.”

“Well, you’ve got to admit Sunni, Tealandir street performers can be entertaining if not educational. I learned how to juggle on the streets. Nothing better to do to pass the time if one isn’t preaching or getting drunk like the ‘demon-possessed’,” defended Jahan. I guess I hurt him.

“Yeah Shia, no law against juggling yet,” said I, countering him.

“Both the preacher and the madman were boldly authentic in a street performer sort of way. It often goes well beyond a script. Sometimes it’s downright sublime performance art or even a religious awakening or realization of some sychronicity.”

“Jaleh!” I called to the kitchen, where Jaleh was preparing tea and hummus cakes for us to eat.
BAHADUR PROVINCE—NORTHERN BAUG
During the thirty years of Amir’s regime, the Baugi Democratic Party [BDP] in Kouros, Bahadur and Armee was forced to be active only in secret. In February of 1979, when the most violent events of the Baugi revolution transpired, people from all over the country merged toward Federal military garrisons. In Bahadur, the BDP pilfered weapons and ammunition from the installations and obtained 17 tanks for deployment. They became a powerful force to be reckoned with once they had access to the tanks. They needed conventional arms to fulfill their provocative mission to destabilize, albeit illegally, the Islamic Republic emerging from the ashes of the Revolution.
Babak was fearful of any rivals to his supreme command and authority in Baug. He ordered the Revolutionary Guard to bring the people of Bahadur under control. The Guard ransacked homes, seized alcoholic beverages and broke liquor bottles against the walls and floors belonging to the home-owners to frighten and disrupt their daily activities (restoration and clean up might take priority over demonstrations in the plaza). Roughly 30,000 inhabitants of one small Bahadur town began to get angry at the Revolutionary Guard’s terror tactics and left the town to live on the plains in tents. Baugi citizens from other parts of the country were concerned about the Bahadurian refugees and carried food and medicine to them.
In a sign of protest, the people tolerated the bitter cold of the plains to guilt the clergy for sending the Guard to Bahadur. The clergymen were not about to repent of their former acts of government and heightened the scrutiny on the uncooperative province. The clerics in charge of domestic security acted quickly to stifle any political opposition to the Islamic Republic of Baug. In northern Baug, Babak’s Revolutionary Guard opened fire on a Bahadur Democratic Party (BDP) meeting and a fierce conflict broke out between the two sides. The battle, which lasted three days, was meant to show the rest of the country that the Islamic Republic clergymen were in stronger than the efforts of any one provincial government. The fighting left many immigrants and refugees with little or nothing to live on. They had been taught a hard, sad lesson by Babak and his army. During the aftermath of the Baugi Revolution, Babak tried to persuade the Bahaduri peoples to follow his dictates, like the winner of a fight might patronize the fans of the weaker opponent whom he has dominated. However, the fallen, self-exiled Bahaduri refugees were experienced in techniques of survival and political confrontation. Their stance in the desert was a symbol of their independence. An abject refusal to heed the Ayatollah’s demands,‘What more harm could he do us?’ they thought to themselves.
THE REVOLUTIONARY GUARD IN ARMEE
Armee is a province located on the east shore of the Hastee Sea which stretches north to the then Soviet border. The clergymen planned to attack the region whose residents which included eight thousand members of the Sunni denomination of Islam. The Sunnis in the region wanted to establish a party called the ‘Center of Culture and Politics of Armee Peoples’ [CCPAP] . During a large meeting of the CCPAP, Babak ordered his Guard to open fire on the gathering. Firing into assemblies of rival Parties became one of Babak’s standard methods of demonstration dispersal. Babak’s objective in the blitz was to scatter the people of Armee and dissolve their power to retaliate. The Sunnis got machine guns and answered the Guard’s gunfire with bullets of their own. A heavy battle ensued and the Revolutionary Guard could not overcome them. Babak was determined to punish the remnant, so he ordered militia from all over Baug to reinforce the troops at Armee. Babak’s army and the Revolutionary Guard had many new volunteers who had not yet been adequately trained to fight in a police action of so large a scale. As a result, hundreds of young men fighting for Ayatollah Babak and his regime were killed in the week-long battle.
Babak believed that the communist Saiar Khalq Party was behind the mobilization of the Armee People and decided that he would do away with the interfering party at his first opportunity. Saiars in each town had a headquarters filled with armed youths. They had been fighting against Amir’s regime previous to the Revolution through the use of terror tactics against both Baugi and Sargonian officers in Tealandir. Whenever Babak sent his Revolutionary Guard to a province, he always told them that a conspiracy between Sargon and the Zionists was in the making and it was their Islamic duty to circumvent their efforts.
The Revolutionary Guard can be separated into two root groups. In one group, the minority, were dedicated patriots who fought for their beliefs and received no salary for their efforts to overcome Amir’s regime. These men refused to continue fighting for the Revolutionary Guard once they witnessed their own friends with whom they had fought against Amir shot down by fanatic guards pretending to be ‘cleaning their guns’. Trustworthy soldiers of the Revolution were being systematically shot if they did not strictly adhere to the Ayatollah Babak’s doctrines. The ranks of the Revolutionary Guard decreased in quality as more of the good soldiers were shot or abandoned the Service. The majority of Babak’s Guard which remained after the purges were opportunistic idlers, illiterates and ruffians before the Revolution who now had purpose and profit in their lives as Revolutionary Guardsmen. To them, being a ‘good’ guard for the Ayatollah Babak meant corralling people’s faith to the nationwide Islamic Republic through means of corrective and manipulative actions. One example of the Guard’s corrective action included plundering goods from people’s homes, especially the wealthy whom they extorted by threats of Babak-ordered retribution. They grifted and made illegitimate deals with influential members of society as a formal government had not yet been established in Baug. Local police forces were beginning to get organized and the Guards guided and collaborated with them as they both reformed under their police direction. The local police did not dare to work independently from the Guard lest they should offend their superseding authority. The Guard was an extension of the Supreme Leader’s law enforcement authority which was being defined by informal albeit sometimes harsh police action on a case-by-case basis.”
“Case-by-case basis? What if all the men who wanted to fight had lovers they wanted to make hard babies with?” I asked them.
“Hard babies?” Jaleh queried.
“Well, you’ve heard of hard money, hard babies…real live bouncing babies in a dangerous place. You wouldn’t want them growing up in a controlled environment with filtered protections?” I said facetiously.
“Like in Sargon?” Jahan said.
“Yeah, funny how the most babies are born in the most dangerous places sometimes,” I guessed.
“Make up for the shortfall,” Jahan replied.
“Litter of babies.”
“Now who’s gonna clean up when the parents are unavailable?”
“Ship ‘em out,” Jahan said.
“To high-risk abodes thereby stemming a population explosion,” I said, completing the thought.
“Nothing ventured, nothing gained,” Jaleh said, acknowledging the conversation, but not endorsing it, like an RT on twitter.
BABAK’S GUARD AND THE BARBAD LIBERATION ORGANIZATION [BLO]
Babak’s Guard was primarily comprised of illiterate fanatics who considered the Ayatollah as their mentor. They loyally obeyed his commands with unwavering respect due to an elite special forces soldier. The Guard was trained by members of the Barbad Liberation Organization, hereinafter referred to as the BLO. The Guard’s budget was well-funded in order to arm, train and maintain combat readiness.
Babak warned that uprisings like those in Armee and Bahadur would continue in the future and told his Guard to be vigilant and prepared for containment operations. Babak put a great deal of trust and confidence in his Guard, but they were still a fledgling organization, not streamlined enough to enforce laws domestically and protect the country from foreign invaders. To maintain a secure Islamic Republic of Baug, Babak knew he needed to establish a formal standing army. He employed terrorized officers who turned compliant after witnessing hundreds of executions carried out after summary trials and conviction by the Revolutionary Council. The time was ripe for the formation of a new, powerful army to take shape that was to be entirely at the disposal of the Imam, Ayatollah Babak.
The Commander-in-Chief of the Baugi Army was replaced by sly General Azin and two generals, Farid and Farrokhz, formerly closely associated with Amir. These three began to organize new military forces in secret and began to strategize a plan to vanquish the Bahaduri population.
STABILIZATION OF THE ISLAMIC REPUBLIC UNDER THE AYATOLLAH BABAK “The End Justifies the Means.”
Babak wanted to stabilize his regime so he followed Amir’s method of neutralizing the opposition. Babak decided to silence the Bahaduri people and suppress their activity against the new regime. Whenever an underprivileged class of people felt oppressed by the government or the upper classes in Baug, they would utter slogans and chants demanding liberty, equality and justice for all people. They emphasized the people’s suffering and claimed the injustices of society prevented everyone from living in a ‘Utopic’ society.
Whenever a new regime overthrows a pre-existing government, they usually become more fierce and brutal than the former one in order to maintain control of the nation’s citizenry. State leadership can put on a façade for the public, using rhetoric that offer hope and prosperity for the future. However, their speeches are often filled with deceit because they attempt to justify their actions and totalitarianistic cruelty with exhortations of hope reminiscent of the Neri slogan, Work and Be Free. If the clergymen could vindicate the actions of their government with sweetened words, it could pacify any lingering public doubt of capacity to instill domestic civil and military stability trending toward longevity.
“Test case?”
“Test case Mamasita.”
“Mamasita!” she said blushing, putting her right hand to her face.
“You hear about the Senate Report?”
“Yeah, you got a copy?”
“Yeah,” I replied and shoved a hard copy in front of Jahan. “It was a review of a Senate Report I got off the internet this morning. Fairideh is pissed off and almost glowing with gloatfulness.”
“Glowing with gloatfulness?” Jaleh commented, “Where’d you get that one?” she asked.
“Fairideh,” I responded, proud of myself for getting out of that one.
You Tell ‘Em Fairideh! Re: Flawed Legal Logic Found: Senate Report on CIA Activities
@SenFairideh: “REWRITE THE WRONGS!”
“All political groups and parties in Baug knew that Babak’s regime would reorganize the army for deployment as the Ayatollah’s private strong-arm for ‘justice’. The political groups demanded that the military be dissolved and that a National Armed Forces be organized to replace Amir’s old army. Each group wanted equal representation in the new army. Former specialists needed to be shuffled around to prevent a concentration of biased officers and special forces coming under Babak’s ‘containment’ and control. Despite objections from the various parties and stakeholders, the army suffered the loss of several experienced personnel to the Islamic Republic of Baug’s newly formed command. Although the political parties lost the argument with Babak over how specialists would put flesh to the new political skeleton emerging in the Islamic Republic of Baug, their voices would resonate whenever the supreme leader and the clerics decided on discretionary issues to be settled by a plurality ‘vote’, like the reorganization of businesses, monetary policy or entire industries.
In order to keep the current experienced personnel in the new armed forces, Babak’s regime gathered all the police officers in a stadium while the Ayatollah Bahman read a prayer of repentance to them. The officers repeated the prayers as an act of repentance to absolve them of the sins they committed while in the service of Amir. After the ceremony, the clergy announced that the officers seeking forgiveness were ‘reborn’, ‘innocent’ and completely washed clean of any past crimes. Many modern Baugis however did not accept the Ayatollah’s absolution ceremony as a sufficient form of accountability. ‘Absolution’ was an ancient religious ritual which allowed a priest to mediate between people and God for the forgiveness of their sins. The plurality of Baugis were not accustomed to such ancient rituals being used in recent history and did not consider them appropriate. Although the government officers repented, and the Ayatollah considered them forgiven by God, the clerics soon had some of the ‘innocent’ officers executed anyway which created a credibility issue. The execution of repentant individuals was against Islamic law and made the clerics look perverse to many professionals who followed and closely scrutinized the Ayatollahs’ edicts. The Ayatollah’s were caught in a ‘catch-22’ ; ‘old wine in new skins’.”
ISLAMIC DOCTRINES VERSUS BAUGI TRADITIONS: DISSONANCE
Babak’s regime wanted to replace secular Baugi traditions such as Zoroastrianism with Islamic religious practices and incorporate Islam into Baug’s statutory laws. The clergy urged people to participate in Islamic ceremonies and rites as part of a daily practice to gain salvation. Most Baugi’s however preferred the quasi-secular celebrations and holidays to the Islamic rituals, much to the dismay of the clerics. Most Baugis may describe themselves as Moslem, but many would not disavow their national heritage either.
In Baug, there are two contrasting feelings: one is primarily religious, which most are bound to and the other is a reverence for the national traditions derived from Baugi religions before Islam was introduced (i.e. Zoroastrian). Z oroastria (see also Zoroaster and Zaraostria) was a Baugi prophet who lived in the 11th Century B.C. Baugi culture and religion revolved around the life of this prophet until the Samisekt invasions of the 7th Century A.D. In the fourteen centuries which have elapsed since the Samisekt conquest, there have been dissonant strains and conflicts between Zoroastrian-based and Islamic based traditions and belief. At times, these dissonant strains and conflicts have been complicated further by the separation of Sunni-Samisekt Moslems with Shiet Baugi Moslems all living within the borders currently known as Baug, part of the former Tahmoureese Empire.
In their abhorrence of the Baugi Zoroastrian culture, the Islamic clerics proposed to destroy Pareevash and Zarrin in 1979. Pareevash and Zarrin were two Zoroastrian capitols which had existed since Zoroastrians first practices there between 1000 and 500 B.C. The clerics believed the two capitols of ancient Zoroastrianism were a distraction to Baugis and an insult to Islam. The capitols reminded people of days gone by including life under Amir and the golden ages of Darius the King and other Emperors who had ruled their land for millennia. As far as the clerics were concerned, these eras and empires were long passed in history, but Islam was on the rise.
TROUBLE WITH BADHADUR
Ayatollah Babak ordered General Farrokhz to launch an air attack on Bahadur with fighter jets and other air ships two months following the revolution. The Bahaduris begged the Bahaduri local Ayatollah Bahman to implore Babak to stop the air raids on their province. Bahman went to the city of Kaveh to negotiate possible solutions to the Babak-Bahadur conflict. With Babak’s authorization, Bahman met with Sheikh Abtin Afshar, a Bahaduri religious and political leader and Dr. Simak, the current General Secretary of the Bahaduri Democratic Party in Kaveh. At the Kaveh meeting, the Bahaduri leaders demanded that the city be controlled by a select council who would have no interference from the Revolutionary Guard. The leaders also proposed that in addition to a council, the province could have a governor which would represent Bahadur albeit under the Imam’s control as ‘supreme leader’. This step, however small, was the first one recognizing their voice in the new regime.
When Bahman and the ministers of the interior met at an outdoor venue to discuss the possible establishment of an independent democracy in Bahadur, Phantom jets flew above the 50,000 attendees to the negotiations, sending a cautionary message to the crowd. In response, Bahman and the Bahaduri council members sent a telegram to General Farrokhz warning him to stop the provocations against the Bahaduris. General Farrokhz answered that although he respected Bahman and the ministers, he followed orders from Babak alone as he was the new Imam. It was Babak, the General said, that wanted to frighten Bahaduris.
After the Bahadur negotiations, Bahman received permission from the Imam to give Bahaduris the right to manage Kaveh democratically, on an experimental basis. Bahman also was able to have General Farrokhz discharged from his position as Commander-In-Chief of the Army to ease the tense relations between the people of Bahadur and Babak’s regime. Bahaduris were then able to live in temporarily in a democratic Kaveh for the first time in eons. A Bahaduri civil council elected by the people handled the domestic affairs of the province in association with the Governor-General who was appointed by members of Babak’s regime to rule Bahadur.
Several weeks passed, and as General Farrokhz was awaiting an appointment to another post in the Babak’s new regime, he was assassinated by two members of the Forooshar Party. It was rumored the assassination was spear-headed by a sociologist who believed Islam had metamorphosed over the ages by the clergymen into a ‘false religion’. The sociologist interpreted the Qoran in a way that the ideal society was based upon socialism, though still respecting Islamic religious doctrine. In its propaganda tracts, the Forooshar group claimed that Babak’s regime was aberrant to the ideology expressed in the Holy Qoran, and actually acted against Islam. They accused Babak’s Administration of replacing the former aristocrats and cruel monarchs who ruled Baug before them by the co-option of religious fanatics and dogmatists that were even worse elements of a government than before the revolution. The Forooshar group claimed that though the faces changed, the corruption in government was still ever present. The hierarchical political structure of Baug had remained although now, clergymen held the seats once held by former Baugi monarchs.
Ayatollah Behrang, a very close companion of Babak’s and president of the Imam’s Revolutionary Council, was killed by the Forooshar group due to their dismay over the lack of representation they were receiving in the new government formed by Ayatollah Babak. Both Babak’s constituents and those of the Forooshar Party began to plot attacks against each other in the wake of the assassination of Behrang. Babak’s regime took advantage of Behrang’s death by creating a diversionary spectacle for the larger operations it undergone such as the Sargonian hostage-taking and blaming a Baugi earthquake on Sargonian nuclear weapons testing. It was hoped the spectacles would attract public interest and promote anti-Sargonian sentiment, thereby helping assemble enthusiastic demonstrations supporting the Ayatollahs and denigrating the continued Sargonian surveillance and influence in their country.”
“Energy?” I asked, as a Sunni born Muslim.
“What about energy?” Jahan demanded.
“Surveillance of energy?” I questioned Jahan.
“Not just energy, synergies, control and containment of energies,” Jahan responded.
“Good and evil?”
“Shiet and Sunni” Jaleh, a Shiet, responded.
“Oh.” I felt chagrined but at the same time, was proud of my Sunni heritage. “Fake it ‘till you make it,” I added half-heartedly, since I did not identify with the cliché.
“Casey should have lost his security clearance before he went to bat. Thank you for your time and exploitation.” Jahan was going into his cynical and facetious stand-up routine. Hadn’t seen that in a while.
“Get a better flight to get a better light,” I said.
“No nukes?” Jaleh joined in. She had a tremor in her voice like a frightened alcoholic just before her relapse led to that first drink…but she didn’t drink. Reminded me of how some Firuzi women gasp in the middle of a sentence to accentuate the gravity of what I would have considered an offhand conversation but for the gasp.
“Didn’t you used to work for the Forooshar Jahan?” I ventured while fearing an answer.
Jahan looked at me for about ten seconds before answering, “Those clowns. ‘Thank you for your time and exploitation’. I lost my level 2 license because of those power plant assholes. Now there are so many guns, assassinations come cheap.”
My stomach started to get that ill feeling. Like the book I read about the human “will” the fascist Neri Party of Gaspar held dear leading up to their defeat in the last Great War. Reminded me of my own heritage as a Sunni who followed Yazid, but I do not consider myself a fascist, although perhaps, because of where I come from, I understand them.
SURVEY SAYS: RULES TEND TO FAVOR THE EXECUTIVE [until there are none left].
“Rules or Executives?”
“You tell me.”
Jaleh downloaded an app and her documentation of the Revolution continued on screen, “At this time, Giv, a popular newspaper for the knowledgeable people in Baug, established a research focus group to survey the various opinions about the assassinated General Farrokhz and the Ayatollah Behrang. The newspaper encouraged respondents to write their opinions about the slayings and to submit them to the research group for publication. When the first round of survey responses were collected and published, what conclusions could be drawn by the newspaper and its readers was an embarrassment to the Imam. Some of the published opinions in the newspaper article highlighted the rivalry between Forooshar and Babak’s regime. The article set forth a hypothesis based on the survey responses collected and other hard evidence collected by the newspaper, that the major causes of the terrorism and injustice in Baug could be traced to the struggle among Babak’s cronies for power and domination of the country. The Imam’s associates persuaded him to deliver a declaration chastising Giv. In his declaration against the newspaper, Babak contended that Giv was a counter-revolutionary newspaper associated with the State of Flint, an entity founded upon principles of Judaism. He contended such a counter-revolutionary newspaper at odds with the Islamic Republic of Baug ought not to exist and should be abolished.
The newspaper was closed for a time immediately following the Imam’s remarks, but not without some push-back. The publisher, as well as Giv reporters, were afraid of the possible repercussions they might face if they published more of their opinions about Babak’s regime. They were also afraid to say anything positive about Babak because of reprisals from the terrorist group Forooshar. In answer to the Ayatollah’s accusations, Giv journalists brought to light the fact that its writers had been persecuted and imprisoned under Amir, and it was therefore irrational to believe they were conspiring with Flint emissaries against him. In a special one-page publication, Giv mildly refuted some of Babak’s allegations against the newspaper and of their loyalty to Baug by editorializing that the newspaper had rallied for freedom from Amir’s dictatorial regime, but that their rallying cries were not intended to then merely lead them to silence when confronted by an ultra-conservative religious right to replace him.”
[Dream Sequence] Jahan wakes up from pre-sunrise dream of his incarceration as a trainee for the Transeckta Nuclear Power Facility in Tealandir back in the day. The investigator assigned to his case: “Some [personal injury lawyers] do it a lot better than you.” And the Judge in his case in the elevator lobby, “You going up or down?” she asked. “Down” I said, falling into her trap as she laughs in tepid derision.
Continued attacks on the Giv publication transpired. The clergymen arranged fanatic groups to assemble in front of Giv’s offices and demanded they profess their allegiance to the Islamic Republic. The implication of the demand was that Babak’s religious zealots gave the newspaper an ultimatum: either obey the Ayatollah Babak or be considered counter-revolutionaries and executed as such. The newspaper continually expressed its belief that it could not simply ‘do what it was ordered to do’, after all, it was a newspaper. The journalists claimed that democracy required freedom of the press and the right to print opposing political views. The Imam’s search committees sequestered copies of the Giv Azadi and hinder sales of the Baugi-Nationale-Azadi (a BNF-funded newsletter), the Noushin Azadi, and the magazines Tealandir Messavar and Omaniri Messavar. These publications printed the “facts” of a story with a spin, angle or slant which displeased Babak.
Nevertheless, the more pressure the Ayatollah Babak’s regime put on the creation, production and distribution of the publications, the more the students sought to distribute them. One newspaper in particular, Paigaimani-Simin , bitterly defamed Babak’s regime by implying Babak might turn into a fascist dictator worse than Amir. The fact that Babak was suppressing and/or chilling free speech and freedom of the press was prime evidence the Paigaimani-Simin journalists made a point of in their publication.
THE AYATOLLAH BABAK INFRINGES ON THE FREEDOM OF ASSEMBLY: THE CHILL OF RAHMAT’S GHOST

[“Did the #Peacock directly or indirectly call the play?” C also #CharlesMansonFamily “They knew what I wanted.” #CharlesManson #massmedia].
Jahan…dream[s] of his incarceration as a trainee for the Transeckta Nuclear Power Facility in Tealandir back in the day…[J]udge…laughs. He sees a tweet he saw yesterday: “Ernest Hemingway once wrote, ‘For sale: Baby shoes. Never worn.’” I’ll strike a tune for the Gipper, Fur Auld Lang Syne: “Mr. Romanev, tear down this wall!”
Waking up, I put on the hot water and listened to the CD with Jaleh’s voice, “Mahim Afshin was Rahmat’s nephew, and a prominent lawyer who had once served as a Vice President of the Lawyer’s Institute. A few weeks before the closure of Giv, Dr. Mahim Afshin summoned all people to attend the annual anniversary of Rahmat’s death at the former prime minister’s tomb. Though Rahmat’s tomb is about 100 miles from Tealandir, people who respected the deceased leader converged from many parts to visit the tomb which lay along a semi-paved road.
The Ayatollah Babak tried to prevent people from paying homage to Rahmat on that day and to persuade them to honor the Imam instead. The Imam himself, Babak, was obliged to gather special groups in the streets and urge them to carry placards bearing his image. The people going to Rahmat’s tomb did not heed Babak’s warnings and more than one million people gathered at Rahmat’s grave.
Ayatollah Bahman, in his speech at the tomb, beseeched those assembled to avoid internal discord in the country. Commenting on the strained relations between Babak and Rahmat, Bahman implied that clergymen are often over-anxious to rule because they think they are wise in all matters simply because they may be wise in one. He commented further that the people should have the privilege, indeed the right, to choose their own leaders and government. Self-determination of the sovereign nation of Baug belongs to its citizens as well as to the clerics. The clergymen should only intervene in the self-determination rights of Baugi citizens if the democracy they have chosen fails.”
“The most secret, clandestine peps will waive their privacy rights to be followed around by a drone to verify their clandestine secrets.”
Sam.Kia ‏@Sam1Kia
@raftofwater @CIA what did he say?
“The keynote speech which highlighted the day’s assembly belonged to Dr. Mahim Afshin. In his speech, Afshin described the movement of the Baugi National Front away from both the traditional platform established by his uncle, Dr. Rahmat, and the blundering, but not capsized, Babak regime by outlining significant differences between the politicians in the BNF and the clergymen coordinating Babak’s administration of the Islamic Republic. In order to remedy the waywardness of the BNF, Afshin promoted a new party, the Baugi Democratic Front (hereinafter BDF), which would emphasize the separation of church and state in a constitutional Baugi government. The political and governmental duties of government would be administered by politician, and the Baugi leaders would have the duty of fulfilling religious obligations. The duties of the two groups were not to be intertwined but rather, work along separate parallels of leadership, one line of political, another of religious authority.
Most socially and politically active constituents were in favor of establishing the BDF but were concerned the new party would take most of their members from the BNF and thereby weaken it permanently. One activist group within the Baugi National Front wanted to change the policies of the BNF, but not splinter it into newly formed political parties. This group demanded that their leaders become more assertive when negotiating with the clergymen in political affairs.
The General Secretary of the Baugi National Front, Dr. Javed, was the foreign minister in Ferdows Fargang ’s cabinet. Javed tried to resign from his position earlier, but Prime Minister Farhang wanted to keep a token member of the BNF on his cabinet, and refused to accept the resignation. Javed felt as if his hands were tied in Babak’s regime, and his resignation bring the Imam recriminations from a less resilient and influential BNF speaking their minds in the administration of the formative Islamic Republic.
Javed publicized his disappointment with Shayan Teymour, a mover and a shaker, Dr. Ibrahim Gulzar’s son-in-law, who was representing Baug for Babak in the Sargonian Capitol at the time. Shayan had replaced Dr. Saleh Roshan, the former Baugi ambassador to the United States at Babak’s request, and refused to take orders from Javed. Javed alleged that Teymour, a student in the Sargonian Capitol, sent a telegram informing him that certain documents in the Baugi embassy revealed that Roshan had paid large sums of money to several Sargonian senators . When Javed heard this, he requested that Teymour return the documents to Baug. After a conference with his father-in-law Gulzar about the documents, Teymour refused to send Javed the documents, and without leave from Foreign Minister Javed, met privately with Cyrus Greystone, Secretary of State of Sargon. If Teymour was to act independently of his authority, Dr. Javed said there was no reason for him to continue as the foreign minister in Babak’s Administration, and abruptly resigned. After the Javed resignation, the BNF scrutinized the Babak’s regime more closely as they no longer had an ‘inside’ representative in the Administration.
“So now there was no ‘insider’ no infiltration?” I asked.
“Yes, they were like howling wolves on the outside,” Jaleh said, licking her bottom lip.
“Cannibals,” declared Jahan. “No justice anywhere. Not even in the press.”
“No peace, no justice.”
“No Khalid, no justice, no peace,” Jaleh corrected.
“Know justice, know peace,” I muttered.
“What?” asked Jahan quizzically.
“Know whirled peas,” I said.
“Oh,” responded Jahan, satisfied after it sunk in.
Jaleh continued,“Six hundred people: university students, employees, teachers and other educated groups implored the writers of the Giv Daily to begin rolling out newspapers promoting a ‘free press’ again. The clergy instigated three hundred vagrants to attack people at ‘freedom of the press’ assembly. The vigilantes were paid to hit demonstrators with clubs and stones until they relented and the assembly disbanded. However, those assembled for the ‘freedom of the press’ rally did not scatter when attacked, but shouted, ‘Down with Reactionaries’ in their native language(s). The assembly crowded along both sides of the streets shouting protests against their attackers in front of them. Men held each others’ hands and made a wall around the women and children at the confrontation with the mercenary vigilantes. Despite repeated attempts to protect the women at the demonstration, some young girls suffered from knife wounds inflicted by the paid attackers. One of Babak’s fanatics stabbed a pregnant woman, infuriating the by-standers watching the two factions clash.
The demonstration was a great success for the liberal front in that it carried home to each who attended the importance of freedom of speech, assembly and of the press in Baug. It also focused attention on the Giv Daily, and free press supporters repeated their pleas to start the presses rolling again. The Ayatollah Babak however, became very angry at the temporary victory of the free speech organizers, and like a wounded snake, was waiting for the opportunity to eradicate all reformers who opposed him or his government. Mainstream public resistance to the Babak regime was beginning to take root in directions away from the Imam, but the government was at least stabilizing as the demonstrations were getting less bloody and more infrequent.
To draw people’s attention elsewhere, Babak convened a national dialogue on the question of the future of Baug, and what form of government it should adopt, an Islamic Republic, or ‘a regime like Amir’s?’. The clerics threatened to ex-communicate anyone who did not vote for an Islamic Republic. Babak and most if not all of the clerics favored an Islamic Republic and made the statement that anyone who did not vote for an Islamic Republic would not be considered a Moslem. For their part, the educated population of Baug demanded a Republic that was not necessarily intertwined with Islam, but that there be a separation of church and state.
Babak’s statement threatening Moslem identity over one’s political affiliation created a de facto controversy under Islamic doctrine and the Giv Daily was only too happy to point this out to the masses who would read or listen. A free-lance writer’s article appeared in the Giv quoting the Prophet Mohammed, that anyone who uttered the sentence ‘I acknowledge that God is unique and Mohammed is his messenger’ would be known as a Moslem and ‘no one could deny him that fellowship’ (emphasis added). The layman questioned Babak’s authority in the article by asking ‘Do you add anything to what the Prophet Mohammed has said?’ The writer went on to question the basis of Babak’s divine authority to innovate on traditional holy doctrines as religions were supposedly based upon a constant absolute ‘truth’. To add or change what Mohammed had determined as the method by which one becomes identified as a Moslem, or changing scripture in any other way was a great sin to be avoided according to the commentator, and Babak had not avoided it. He intimated Babak perhaps should not be followed as Imam if he is so cavalier as to promote Islamic doctrines contrary to its founder Mohammed.
Babak did not answer the question posed in the Giv article but revealed in his silence a chagrin that he lacked a comprehensive knowledge of Islam that could put to rest the journalist’s argument(s) once and for all. Babak had been caught in his verbal bloopers before and now that political power was his, he did not want to be exhausted by yet another debate he could not definitively win, and why gamble when he was tired of fighting over scriptural interpretations. One of Babak’s most serious bloopers was his call for a holy war (jihad) against Amir’s regime. According to Islamic doctrine, Islamic leaders in any position do not have the right to urge Moslems to jihad. In the Shiet sect, declaring war is the sole right of the Absent Imam (the 12th Imam), who, according to Shiet belief, would emerge someday to bring all nations under the Islamic flag. In the Ninth Century, the twelfth Imam, a five year-old child, hid himself in the cellars of his father’s house while marauding soldiers attacked the home. No one saw the boy thereafter, and it was told that God ordered the Imam to live in secret. Alms were a way ‘messages’ could be brought back and forth from the deputy of the Moslem people to the 12th Imam.
Babak said that anyone who wants to pay his khoms (1/5 of one’s income), or his Zakat (1/10 of the income of the wealthy Moslems) should deliver them to his deputy, who would in turn deliver them to the missing child Imam. He also said the deputies would deliver any questions about religious rites to the five year-old Imam. Through the knowledge the deputies acquired from their correspondence with the 12th Imam, they would be able to answer any questions people had about jihad or anything else. This traditional belief has been carried on throughout the ages: while the young Imam remains unseen, no Ayatollah can declare a holy war.