Haleh, whom Naser had a crush on when we were kids. She had the same hairstyle and a similar smile. Naser had always been so casual about romance; it was amazing to see him looking at this woman with such devotion. I felt so happy that Naser was with someone who made him feel this way. I allowed myself to believe that maybe love could conquer ideology after all, and I wished at that moment for Kazem to find romance, too.
The party was joyous. Naser’s father, Davood, as he had on so many occasions, sang for us and led us in dance. Naser and Azadeh danced together the entire night. For those hours, life was as simple and untroubled as it had been when we were children.
But the outside world would never allow this peaceful satisfaction to continue. The last hopes of shah loyalists had already been extinguished when Mohammad Reza Shah Pahlavi died of cancer in Egypt in July 1980. An imperial tradition that had begun in 500 BC with Cyrus the Great was now fully at its end.
“Allaho Akbar!”
some people cried in the streets. “God is great!”
Agha Joon denounced this celebration of Khomeini followers. “Shame on this nation,” he said, “to have the last king of kings die in exile like a gypsy.”
And then on September 22, 1980, just two weeks after my wedding to Somaya, Iraq attacked Iran, raining bombs on several targets, including our city. I was at work with Kazem when several explosions shook the walls. Concerned that the ceiling would fall on us,we ran into the courtyard, confused. Soon, our commanders told us that Iraqi planes had attacked several Iranian airports to disable the air force’s ability to launch. The bombs did minimal damage, however.
Soon after the invasion, Imam Khomeini appeared on television to announce,
“Etefaghi nayoftadah, dozdi amadah va sangi andakhte”:
“Nothing important has happened.” It was just a thief throwing stones. The country breathed a communal sigh of relief. However, the next day Kazem informed me that Saddam had attacked with six army divisions on three fronts. These divisions were, at that very moment, moving quickly into Iranian territory.
This news chilled me, though I could not have realized at the time that this would mark the beginning of an eight-year-long war. Or that half a million Iranians would die in the conflict before it was over.
The violent rivalry between Arabs and Persians was centuries old, stemming from the Muslim conquest of Persia, where Arabs defeated the Sassanid Empire, ending the dynasty of Sassanid and the practice of the Zoroastrian religion in Persia. Saddam seized upon our moment of vulnerability to launch his attack. Our government, having just executed all of the leading military commanders who served under the shah, had no trained generals, and it was using revolutionaries instead. In addition, we ousted not only the shah but his superpower ally with him. The American hostage crisis isolated Iran from the rest of the civilized world and the Mujahedin seemed determined to hurl our country into a guerrilla war. In the uproar and chaos, Saddam saw his chance to become the dominant oil power in the Middle East and to seize the oil fields near his border with our country.
Like all aggressors, Saddam claimed he was preemptively attacking in defense. His Sunni regime worried that the Islamic Revolution was spreading like an infection to the oppressed Shiite majority in his own country. In fact, an Iraqi version of Khomeini had emerged among the emboldened Shiites, a mullah named Muhammad Baqiral-Sadr, who preached the Islamic religion in a style similar to Khomeini’s. Saddam executed him as soon as al-Sadr’s voice rose above the crowd. When the U.S. passed satellite intelligence to Saddam that suggested that Iranian forces would collapse quickly if attacked, Saddam launched his offensive.
The September 22 attack was our Pearl Harbor. Imam Khomeini asked every male Muslim who could walk to volunteer to defend God’s government.
The party was joyous. Naser’s father, Davood, as he had on so many occasions, sang for us and led us in dance. Naser and Azadeh danced together the entire night. For those hours, life was as simple and untroubled as it had been when we were children.
But the outside world would never allow this peaceful satisfaction to continue. The last hopes of shah loyalists had already been extinguished when Mohammad Reza Shah Pahlavi died of cancer in Egypt in July 1980. An imperial tradition that had begun in 500 BC with Cyrus the Great was now fully at its end.
“Allaho Akbar!”
some people cried in the streets. “God is great!”
Agha Joon denounced this celebration of Khomeini followers. “Shame on this nation,” he said, “to have the last king of kings die in exile like a gypsy.”
And then on September 22, 1980, just two weeks after my wedding to Somaya, Iraq attacked Iran, raining bombs on several targets, including our city. I was at work with Kazem when several explosions shook the walls. Concerned that the ceiling would fall on us,we ran into the courtyard, confused. Soon, our commanders told us that Iraqi planes had attacked several Iranian airports to disable the air force’s ability to launch. The bombs did minimal damage, however.
Soon after the invasion, Imam Khomeini appeared on television to announce,
“Etefaghi nayoftadah, dozdi amadah va sangi andakhte”:
“Nothing important has happened.” It was just a thief throwing stones. The country breathed a communal sigh of relief. However, the next day Kazem informed me that Saddam had attacked with six army divisions on three fronts. These divisions were, at that very moment, moving quickly into Iranian territory.
This news chilled me, though I could not have realized at the time that this would mark the beginning of an eight-year-long war. Or that half a million Iranians would die in the conflict before it was over.
The violent rivalry between Arabs and Persians was centuries old, stemming from the Muslim conquest of Persia, where Arabs defeated the Sassanid Empire, ending the dynasty of Sassanid and the practice of the Zoroastrian religion in Persia. Saddam seized upon our moment of vulnerability to launch his attack. Our government, having just executed all of the leading military commanders who served under the shah, had no trained generals, and it was using revolutionaries instead. In addition, we ousted not only the shah but his superpower ally with him. The American hostage crisis isolated Iran from the rest of the civilized world and the Mujahedin seemed determined to hurl our country into a guerrilla war. In the uproar and chaos, Saddam saw his chance to become the dominant oil power in the Middle East and to seize the oil fields near his border with our country.
Like all aggressors, Saddam claimed he was preemptively attacking in defense. His Sunni regime worried that the Islamic Revolution was spreading like an infection to the oppressed Shiite majority in his own country. In fact, an Iraqi version of Khomeini had emerged among the emboldened Shiites, a mullah named Muhammad Baqiral-Sadr, who preached the Islamic religion in a style similar to Khomeini’s. Saddam executed him as soon as al-Sadr’s voice rose above the crowd. When the U.S. passed satellite intelligence to Saddam that suggested that Iranian forces would collapse quickly if attacked, Saddam launched his offensive.
The September 22 attack was our Pearl Harbor. Imam Khomeini asked every male Muslim who could walk to volunteer to defend God’s government.
Similar Books
