Whirlwind

  McIver reached over and snapped it off. “Bloody hell, the whole world’s falling apart and the BBC gives us pigs.”

  Genny laughed. “What would you do without the BBC, the telly, and the football pools? Gales and floods.” She picked up the phone on the off chance. It was dead as usual. “Hope the kids are all right,” They had a son and a daughter, Hamish and Sarah, both married now and on their own and two grandchildren, one from each. “Little Karen catches cold so badly and Sarah! Even at twenty-three she needs reminding to dress properly! Will that child never grow up?”

  Pettikin said, “It’s rotten not being able to phone when you want.”

  “Yes. Anyway, it’s time to eat. The market was almost empty today for the third straight day. So it was a choice of roast ancient mutton again with rice, or a special. I chose the special and used the last two cans. I’ve corned beef pie, cauliflower au gratin, and treacle tart, and a surprise hors d’oeuvre.” She took a candle and went off to the kitchen and shut the door behind her.

  “Wonder why we always get cauliflower au gratin?” McIver watched the candlelight flickering on the kitchen door. “Hate the bloody stuff! I’ve told her fifty times…” The nightscape suddenly caught his attention. He walked over to the window. The city was empty of light because of the power cut. But southeastward now a red glow lit up the sky. “Jaleh, again,” he said simply.

  On September 8, five months ago, tens of thousands of people had taken to the streets of Tehran to protest the Shah’s imposition of martial law. There was widespread destruction, particularly in Jaleh—a poor, densely populated suburb—where bonfires were lit and barricades of burning tires set up. When the security forces arrived, the raging, milling crowd shouting “Death to the Shah” refused to disperse. The clash was violent. Tear gas didn’t work. Guns did. Estimates of the death toll ranged from an official 97 to 250 according to some witnesses, to 2,000 to 3,000 by the militant opposition groups.

  In the following crackdown to that “Bloody Friday,” a vast number of opposition politicians, dissidents, and hostiles were arrested and detained—later the government admitted 1,106—along with two ayatollahs, which further inflamed the multitudes.

  McIver felt very sad, watching the glow. If it weren’t for the ayatollahs, he thought, particularly Khomeini, none of it would have happened.

  Years ago when McIver had first come to Iran he had asked a friend in the British embassy what ayatollah meant. “It’s an Arabic word, ayat’Allah, and means ‘Reflection of God.’”

  “He’s a priest?”

  “Not at all, there are no priests in Islam, the name of their religion—that’s another Arabic word, it means ‘submission,’ submission to the Will of God.”

  “What?”

  “Well,” his friend had said with a laugh, “I’ll explain but you’ve got to be a little patient. First, Iranians are not Arabs but Aryans, and the vast majority are Shi’ite Muslims, a volatile sometimes mystical breakaway sect. Arabs are mostly orthodox Sunni—they make up most of the world’s billion Muslims—and the sects are somewhat like our Protestants and Catholics and they’ve fought each other just as viciously. But all share the same overarching belief, that there is one God, Allah—the Arabic word for God—that Mohammed, a man of Mecca who lived from A.D. 570 to 632 was His Prophet, and the words of the Koran proclaimed by him and written down by others over many years after his death came directly from God and contain all instruction that is necessary for an individual or society to live by.”

  “Everything? That’s not possible.”

  “For Muslims it is, Mac, today, tomorrow, forever. But ‘ayatollah’ is a title peculiar to Shi’ites and granted by consensus and popular acclaim by the congregation of a mosque—another Arabic word meaning ‘meeting place,’ which is all it is, a meeting place, absolutely not a church—to a mullah who exhibits those characteristics most sought after and admired amongst the Shi’ites: piety, poverty, learning—but only the Holy Books, the Koran and the Sunna—and leadership, with a big emphasis on leadership. In Islam there’s no separation between religion and politics, there can be none, and the Shi’ite mullahs of Iran, since the beginning, have been fanatic guardians of the Koran and Sunna, fanatic leaders and whenever necessary fighting revolutionaries.”

  “If an ayatollah or mullah’s not a priest, what is he?”

  “Mullah means ‘leader,’ he who leads prayers in a mosque. Anyone can be a mullah, providing he’s a man, and Muslim. Anyone. There’s no clergy in Islam, none, no one between you and God, that’s one of the beauties of it, but not to Shi’ites. Shi’ites believe that, after the Prophet, the earth should be ruled by a charismatic, semidivine infallible leader, the Imam, who acts as an intermediary between the human and the divine—and that’s where the great split came about between Sunni and Shi’ite, and their wars were just as bloody as the Plantagenets. Where Sunnis believe in consensus, Shi’ites would accept the Imam’s authority if he were to exist.”

  “Then who chooses the man to be Imam?”

  “That was the whole problem. When Mohammed died—by the way he never claimed to be anything other than mortal although last of the Prophets—he left neither sons nor a chosen successor, a Caliph. Shi’ites believed leadership should remain with the Prophet’s family and the Caliph could only be Ali, his cousin and son-in-law who had married Fatima, his favorite daughter. But the orthodox Sunnis, following historic tribal custom which applies even today, believed a leader should only be chosen by consensus. They proved to be stronger, so the first three Caliphs were voted in—two were murdered by other Sunnis—then, at long last for the Shi’ites, Ali became Caliph, in their fervent belief the first Imam.”

  “They claimed he was semidivine?”

  “Divinely guided, Mac. Ali lasted five years, then he was murdered—Shi’ites say martyred. His eldest son became Imam, then was thrust aside by a usurping Sunni. His second son, the revered, twenty-five-year-old Hussain, raised an army against the usurper but was slaughtered—martyred—with all his people, including his brother’s two young sons, his own five-year-old son, and suckling babe. That happened on the tenth day of Muharram. in A.D. 650 by our counting, 61 by theirs, and they still celebrate Hussain’s martyrdom as their most holy day.”

  “That’s the day they have the processions and whip themselves, stick hooks into themselves, mortify themselves?”

  “Yes, mad from our point of view. Reza Shah outlawed the custom but Shi’ism is a passionate religion, needing outward expressions of penitence and mourning. Martyrdom is deeply embedded in Shi’ites, and in Iran venerated. Also rebellion against usurpers.”

  “So the battle is joined, the Faithful against the Shah?”

  “Oh, yes. Fanatically on both sides. For the Shi’ites, the mullah is the sole interpreting medium which therefore gives him enormous power. He is interpreter, lawgiver, judge, and leader. And the greatest of mullahs are ayatollahs.”

  And Khomeini is the Grand Ayatollah, McIver was thinking, staring at the bloody nightscape over Jaleh. He’s it, and like it or not, all the killing, all the bloodshed and suffering and madness, have to be laid at his doorstep, justified or not…

  “Mac!”

  “Oh, sorry, Charlie,” he said, coming back to himself. “I was miles away. What?” He glanced at the kitchen door. It was still closed.

  “Don’t you think you should get Genny out of Iran?” Pettikin asked quietly. “It’s getting pretty smelly indeed.”

  “She won’t bloody go. I’ve told her fifty times, asked her fifty times, but she’s as obstinate as a bloody mule—like your Claire,” McIver replied as quietly. “She just bloody smiles and says: ‘When you go, I go.’” He finished his whisky, glanced at the door, and hastily poured himself another. Stronger. “Charlie, you talk to her. She’ll listen to y—”

  “The hell she will.”

  “You’re right. Bloody women. Bloody obstinate. They’re all the bloody same.” They laughed.

  After a pause,
Pettikin said, “How’s Sharazad?”

  McIver thought a moment. “Tom Lochart’s a lucky man.”

  “Why didn’t she go back with him on leave and stay in England until Iran settles down?”

  “There’s no reason for her to go—she has no family or friends there. She wanted him to see his kids, Christmas and all that. She said she felt she’d stir things up and be in the way if she went along. Deirdre Lochart’s still very pissed off with the divorce, and anyway Sharazad’s family’s here and you know how strong Iranians are on family. She won’t leave until Tom goes and even then I don’t know. And as for Tom, if I tried to post him I think he’d quit. He’ll stay forever. Like you.” He smiled. “Why do you stay?”

  “Best posting I’ve ever had, when it was normal. Can fly all I want, ski winters, sail summers… But let’s face it, Mac, Claire always hated it here. For years she spent more time in England than here so she could be near Jason and Beatrice, her own family, and our grandchild. At least the parting of the ways was friendly. Chopper pilots shouldn’t be married anyway, have to move about too much. I’m born expatriate, I’ll die one. Don’t want to go back to Cape Town—hardly know that place anyway—and can’t stand those bloody English winters.” He sipped his beer in the semidarkness. “Insha’Allah,” he said with finality. In God’s hands. The thought pleased him.

  Unexpectedly the telephone jangled, startling them. For months now the phone system had been unreliable—for the last few weeks impossible and almost nonexistent, with perpetually crossed lines, wrong numbers, and no dial tones that miraculously cleared for no apparent reason for a day or an hour, to fall back like a shroud again, equally for no reason.

  “Five pounds it’s a bill collector,” Pettikin said, smiling at Genny who came out of the kitchen, equally startled at hearing the bell.

  “That’s no bet, Charlie!” Banks had been on strike and closed for two months in response to Khomeini’s call for a general strike, so no one—individuals, companies, or even the government—had been able to get any cash out and most Iranians used cash and not checks.

  McIver picked up the phone not knowing what to expect. Or who. “Hello.”

  “Good God, the bloody thing’s working,” the voice said. “Duncan, can you hear me?”

  “Yes, yes, I can. Just. Who’s this?”

  “Talbot, George Talbot at the British embassy. Sorry, old boy, but the stuff is hitting the fan. Khomeini’s named Mehdi Bazargan prime minister and called for Bakhtiar’s resignation or else. About a million people are in the streets of Tehran right now looking for trouble. We’ve just heard there’s a revolt of airmen at Doshan Tappeh—and Bakhtiar’s said if they don’t quit he’ll order in the Immortals.” The Immortals were crack units of the fanatically pro-Shah Imperial Guards. “Her Majesty’s Government, along with the U.S., Canadian, et al., are advising all nonessential nationals to leave the country at once…”

  McIver tried to keep the shock out of his face and mouthed to the others, “Talbot at the embassy.”

  “…Yesterday an American of ExTex Oil and an Iranian oil official were ambushed and killed by ‘unidentified gunmen’ in the southwest, near Ahwaz”—McIver’s heart skipped another beat—“…you’re operating down there still, aren’t you?”

  “Near there, at Bandar Delam on the coast,” McIver said, no change in his voice.

  “How many British nationals do you have here, excluding dependents?”

  McIver thought for a moment. “Forty-five, out of our present complement of sixty-seven, that’s twenty-six pilots, thirty-six mechanic/engineers, five admin, which’s pretty basic for us.”

  “Who’re the others?”

  “Four Americans, three German, two French, and one Finn—all pilots. Two American mechanics. But we’ll treat them all as British if necessary.”

  “Dependents?”

  “Four, all wives, no children. We got the rest out three weeks ago. Genny’s still here, one American at Kowiss and two Iranians.”

  “You’d better get both the Iranian wives into their embassies tomorrow—with their marriage certificates. They’re in Tehran?”

  “One is, one’s in Tabriz.”

  “You’d better get them new passports as fast as possible.”

  By Iranian law all Iranian nationals coming back into the country had to surrender their passports to Immigration at the point of entry, to be held until they wished to leave again. To leave they had to apply in person to the correct government office for an exit permit for which they needed a valid identity card, a satisfactory reason for wanting to go abroad, and, if by air, a valid prepaid ticket for a specific flight. To get this exit permit might take days or weeks. Normally.

  “Thank God we don’t have that problem,” McIver said.

  “We can thank God we’re British,” Talbot went on. “Fortunately we don’t have any squabbles with the Ayatollah, Bakhtiar, or the generals. Still, any foreigners are liable for a lot of flak so we’re formally advising you to send dependents off, lickety-split, and cut the others down to basic—for the time being. The airport’s going to be a mess from tomorrow on—we estimate there are still about five thousand expats, most of them American—but we’ve asked British Airways to cooperate and increase flights for us and our nationals. The bugger of it is that all civilian air traffic controllers are still totally out on strike. Bakhtiar’s ordered in the military controllers and they’re even more punctilious if that’s possible. We’re sure it’s going to be the exodus over again.”

  “Oh, God!”

  A few weeks ago, after months of escalating threats against foreigners—mostly against Americans because of Khomeini’s constant attacks on American materialism as “the Great Satan”—a rampaging mob went berserk in the industrial city of Isfahan, with its enormous steel complex, petrochemical refinery, ordnance and helicopter factories, and where a large proportion of the fifty thousand-odd American expats and their dependents worked and lived. The mobs burned banks—the Koran forbade lending money for profit—liquor stores—the Koran forbade the drinking of alcohol—and two movie houses—places of “pornography and Western propaganda,” always particular targets for the fundamentalists—then attacked factory installations, peppered the four-story Grumman Aircraft HQ with Molotov cocktails, and burned it to the ground. That precipitated the “exodus.”

  Thousands converged on Tehran Airport, mostly dependents, clogging it as would-be passengers scrambled for the few available seats, turning the airport and its lobbies into a disaster area with men, women, and children camping there, afraid to lose their places, barely enough room to stand, patiently waiting, sleeping, pushing, demanding, whining, shouting, or just stoic. No schedules, no priorities, each airplane overbooked twenty times, no computer ticketing, just slowly handwritten by a few sullen officials—most of whom were openly hostile and non-English-speaking. Quickly the airport became foul and the mood ugly.

  In desperation some companies chartered their own airplanes to pull out their own people. United States Air Force transports came to take out the military dependents while all embassies tried to play down the extent of the evacuation, not wanting to further embarrass the Shah, their stalwart ally of twenty years. Adding to the chaos were thousands of Iranians, all hoping to flee while there was still time to flee. The unscrupulous and the wealthy jumped the lines. Many an official became rich and then more greedy and richer still. Then the air traffic controllers struck, shutting down the airport completely.

  For two days no flights came in or left. The crowds streamed away or stayed. Then some of the controllers went back to work and it began again. Rumors of incoming flights. Rushing to the airport with the kids and the luggage of years, or with no luggage, for a guaranteed seat that never was, back to Tehran again, half a thousand waiting in the taxi rank ahead of you, most taxis on strike—back to the hotel at length, your hotel room long since sold to another, all banks closed so no money to grease the ever-open hands.

  At length most fo
reigners who wanted to leave left. Those who stayed to keep the businesses running, the oil fields serviced, airplanes flying, nuclear plants abuilding, chemical plants working, tankers moving—and to protect their gigantic investments—kept a lower profile, particularly if they were American. Khomeini had said, “If the foreigner wants to leave, let him leave; it is American materialism that is the Great Satan…”

  McIver held the phone closer to his ear as the volume slipped a fraction, afraid that the connection would vanish. “Yes, George, you were saying?”

  Talbot continued: “I was just saying, Duncan, we’re quite sure everything’s going to work out eventually. There’s no way in the world the pot will completely blow up. An unofficial source says a deal’s already in place for the Shah to abdicate in favor of his son Reza—the compromise HM Government advocates. The transition to constitutional government may be a bit wobbly but nothing to worry about. Sorry, got to dash—let me know what you decide.”

  The phone went dead.

  McIver cursed, jiggled the connectors to no avail, and told Genny and Charlie what Talbot had said. Genny smiled sweetly. “Don’t look at me, the answer’s no. I agr—”

  “But, Gen, Tal—”

  “I agree the others should go but this one’s staying. Food’s almost ready.” She went back to the kitchen and closed the door, cutting off further argument.

  “Well she’s bloody going and that’s it,” McIver said.

  “My year’s salary says she won’t—until you leave. Why don’t you go for God’s sake? I can look after everything.”

  “No. Thanks, but no.” Then McIver beamed in the semidarkness. “Actually it’s like being back in the war, isn’t it? Back in the bloody blackout. Nothing to worry about except get with it and look after the troops and obey orders.” McIver frowned at his glass. “Talbot was right about one thing: we’re bloody lucky to be British. Tough on the Yanks. Not fair.”