This is a must-read book for anyone who wishes to see the real face of the Islamic Revolution in Iran, writes SUSHANT SAREEN
AZIZ’s NOTEBOOK
Author: Chowra Makaremi
Publisher: Yoda Press, Rs 250
It isn’t often that one comes across a book that is both unputdownable and at the same time difficult to read in one go, not because it isn’t well written but because it is so disturbing that it becomes excruciatingly painful to read it. Chowra Makaremi, who has put together the notes that her grandfather wrote of the tyranny, tumult and torture that her family went through in the wake of the Iranian Islamic revolution, has brought to life exactly such book. What makes this book even more remarkable is that the author accidentally discovered the notes that her grandfather penned down not just to “bring the beloved beings back to life” but also to explain to his grandchildren “who their mother was and why she was executed”.
Unlike other non-fictional accounts of terrible crimes that visit peoples, this is a first-person account of the horror, brutality and cruelty that was unleashed by the Islamic Revolution. While being deeply disturbing and heart-rending, it is a chronicle of the times, written not from the perspective of the winners or losers but from the perspective of the sufferers. So often tectonic events in history get reduced to just an anodyne recounting of the main developments. Something similar has happened with the Islamic revolution. With passage of time, the turmoil in Iran, starting in the late 1970s and going on for nearly a decade, is explained away either in a couple of sentences or by just highlighting the main political and strategic developments. What the people went through, their trials, travails and tribulations, the daily grind and struggle to survive, is generally glossed over. Worse, the thousands killed during those times are reduced to just a statistic, completely ignoring the pain and suffering of those who lost their loved ones. Makaremi fills this gap by compiling her grandfather’s notes into a book which is a must read for anyone who wants a factual account of how a revolution eats its own children and the death, destruction and dislocation that revolutions, which are so often romanticised, cause.
At one level, Aziz’s Notebook is the outpouring of a helpless old man who watches his two daughters being tortured to death. It is the primal scream of a parent who is unable to do anything to stop the brute injustice of an evil regime. But at another level, it is a devastating critique of the Islamic Revolution. Aziz calls the revolution “one of the greatest scourges of history” and says, “Since its inception... it has progressed like leprosy, devouring the skin, the flesh and the bones of those who founded it and participated in it.” His utter contempt for the ‘revolutionaries’ aside, Aziz gives a graphic description of the horrible injustices and inequities that were heaped on the people by the mullahs. In sheer brutality, the Ayatollahs appear to be clones of the Taliban, who ironically they denounced as savage barbarians after the fall of Kabul in the late 1990s.
Going by Aziz’s description, the Ayatollahs were the Islamic version of the Khmer Rouge and symbolised the essential unity of purpose of radical Islam and radical communism. He quotes a cleric as saying: “As long as there is one person left in this country who can say ‘I am an engineer, or a doctor, or I have a masters degree’, this revolution will not stabilise. This revolutionary society must be purged of the filth of their existence, because all these people are Westernised and incurable.”
Aziz’s Notebookis a terrifying testament of the inquisitions carried out by the mullahs in Iran. Quoting his daughter who was subjected to the worst sort of torture, he describes how forced (but also false) confessions were demanded so that they could be aired on TV, how these were justified by the judges on grounds of taqiya (telling a lie for reasons of self-preservation) and how on refusal the person was battered in torture cells. The bravery of his daughters who refused to indulge in these blatant falsehoods to implicate others (despite knowing that they would be made to suffer enormous mental and physical torture, including being taken before fake firing squads) is truly awe-inspiring. The resolve and call of conscience that his daughters displayed in not repudiating their comrades is extraordinary because it takes a lot character to refuse to harm someone else just to save your own skin. When the mother-in-law of one of his daughters advises her to confess, she refuses by saying that the confessor has to then kill several mujahideen and since she was not willing to kill even a bird, there was no way she could kill an innocent person. Compare this to the long list of Indian civil servants who even today are willing to say the most blatant lies and untruths about their colleagues only for the sake of a post-retirement job.
The bravery of Aziz’s daughters — for instance, one of them despite being arrested spins a yarn to keep the parents from worrying and later nonchalantly informs the father that she has been sentenced to death — and the terrible torment that the family went through shake the very soul of the reader. But more than the tragedy that visits Aziz’s family, the true value of this book lies in exposing the evil that was — and continues to be — inflicted in the name of religion. It is a must-read for anyone who wishes to understand what the truth of the Iranian Islamic Revolution. More importantly, it serves as a wake up call for all those who try and make a case for the Taliban being allowed a second chance in Afghanistan under the pretext that they have reformed. Aziz’s Notebook nails this lie.
The reviewer is a security expert