HISTORY REDUX
Some have asked me when my interest in the Middle East began. That's easy to answer. In 1978, I worked at a hotel in Dallas Texas with an Iranian student named Dareesh (he was attending UTA--University of Texas at Arlington). We became great friends. His father was quite wealthy and his family seemed to be apolitical. But then in the latter part of that year, his father was taken from his home by the Shah's secret police, jailed, and ultimately executed. Dareesh knew, when he found out that his father was dead, that he couldn't go back to Iran--at least not at the moment.
Dareesh was a secular man, but when the Iranian student movement agitated to bring back the Ayatollah Khomeini from exile in Paris, he was an adamant supporter. He told me, and I will never forget this, "We thought that America was our friend, but they brought this tyrant [the Shah] to power, and he killed my father, and he's killed thousands more." He then gave me a pamphlet about the Ayatollah, and told me not to show it to anybody else. He was worried about his mother and brothers in Tehran. I was a teenager at the time, and I didn't understand what this was all about (the Shah? Ayatollah?), but I saw Dareesh become angrier and angrier, and increasingly strident. Granted, I don't think he thought very much about the Shah, or at least he didn't talk about him, until his father was arrested and killed--but he was a teenager too, and more concerned with friends and his studies.
After the Shah sought exile in America, this nearly drove Dareesh mad. "How can America give amnesty to such a man?" he would repeatedly ask me. I, at the time, didn't even really understand what amnesty entailed, or even what it was. I would stand mute while Dareesh would unleash a torrent of anger, hurt and frustration. And then, the U.S. Embassy was taken over and the staff held hostage for over four hundred days. Dareesh, and other students, found the environment in the U.S. increasingly hostile (the Pakistani guys that worked in the kitchen of the hotel made T-shirts that read "I am NOT an Iranian," half as a joke, and half as an answer to the local rednecks who would occasionally throw a beer can from a speeding truck at them as they walked to school). Finally, Dareesh decided to go home. We had a going away party for him, and he seemed elated, so full of hope for Iran. I'm sure he didn't reckon on what would follow. We never heard from him again, and I often wonder if he fought in the Iraq-Iran war (when we were Saddam Hussein's friends), and if he lost his life in this brutal eight-year war.
So here we are in Iraq, our former ally when the Iranians were incoveniently militant. And I wonder whom or what will come to replace Hussein, our former man in Arabia? What form will this once oppressive, like Iran, but secular government take? What great beast, its hour come at last, is slouching toward Baghdad to be born?
Some have asked me when my interest in the Middle East began. That's easy to answer. In 1978, I worked at a hotel in Dallas Texas with an Iranian student named Dareesh (he was attending UTA--University of Texas at Arlington). We became great friends. His father was quite wealthy and his family seemed to be apolitical. But then in the latter part of that year, his father was taken from his home by the Shah's secret police, jailed, and ultimately executed. Dareesh knew, when he found out that his father was dead, that he couldn't go back to Iran--at least not at the moment.
Dareesh was a secular man, but when the Iranian student movement agitated to bring back the Ayatollah Khomeini from exile in Paris, he was an adamant supporter. He told me, and I will never forget this, "We thought that America was our friend, but they brought this tyrant [the Shah] to power, and he killed my father, and he's killed thousands more." He then gave me a pamphlet about the Ayatollah, and told me not to show it to anybody else. He was worried about his mother and brothers in Tehran. I was a teenager at the time, and I didn't understand what this was all about (the Shah? Ayatollah?), but I saw Dareesh become angrier and angrier, and increasingly strident. Granted, I don't think he thought very much about the Shah, or at least he didn't talk about him, until his father was arrested and killed--but he was a teenager too, and more concerned with friends and his studies.
After the Shah sought exile in America, this nearly drove Dareesh mad. "How can America give amnesty to such a man?" he would repeatedly ask me. I, at the time, didn't even really understand what amnesty entailed, or even what it was. I would stand mute while Dareesh would unleash a torrent of anger, hurt and frustration. And then, the U.S. Embassy was taken over and the staff held hostage for over four hundred days. Dareesh, and other students, found the environment in the U.S. increasingly hostile (the Pakistani guys that worked in the kitchen of the hotel made T-shirts that read "I am NOT an Iranian," half as a joke, and half as an answer to the local rednecks who would occasionally throw a beer can from a speeding truck at them as they walked to school). Finally, Dareesh decided to go home. We had a going away party for him, and he seemed elated, so full of hope for Iran. I'm sure he didn't reckon on what would follow. We never heard from him again, and I often wonder if he fought in the Iraq-Iran war (when we were Saddam Hussein's friends), and if he lost his life in this brutal eight-year war.
So here we are in Iraq, our former ally when the Iranians were incoveniently militant. And I wonder whom or what will come to replace Hussein, our former man in Arabia? What form will this once oppressive, like Iran, but secular government take? What great beast, its hour come at last, is slouching toward Baghdad to be born?
posted by mariestaad at 10:54 AM
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