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By Root 347 0

audiocassettes, manipulating people’s grievances against the shah and his relationship with the United States—claiming, in particular, that the shah and the States were working together to eradicate people’s religious beliefs. Khomeini promised to bring justice, independence, and prosperity to Iran. As more Iranians supported Khomeini, the shah became more desperate and insecure. In January 1978, the shah’s army opened fire on a gathering of Khomeini adherents, which succeeded only in bringing about greater public support for the Islamic movement. After a year of demonstrations and violent protests, the shah was overthrown, and on February 11, 1979, the Islamic Republic of Iran was established. Khomeini returned to Iran and was named the supreme leader—the spiritual leader of the country and the man with the final say in all affairs of the state.

It was not only religious Iranians who had supported Khomeini. Many secular Iranians who believed in the separation of mosque and state had also been in favor of Khomeini’s revolution. They simply had had enough of the shah’s despotism and kowtowing to the West, and they craved the democratic government and freedom of expression Khomeini promised. Even my father, who had come to hate the idea of a violent revolution and believed that the shah’s regime could be reformed from within, was happy about the shah’s downfall and the abolishment of American military and intelligence bases in Iran. “I’m not sure what will happen next,” my father used to say with tears in his eyes. “But I can never forgive the shah and his American patrons for killing dozens of my friends.”

My father and many other Iranians who’d supported Khomeini’s revolution without knowing what would happen next paid a heavy price. Within a short time after coming to power, Khomeini set out to establish a fundamentalist government more repressive than the shah’s. The Islamic government began its systemic repression by summarily trying and executing many leaders of the shah’s army on the rooftop of Khomeini’s residence. Some days, while the revolutionaries were inside, having lunch or dinner with Khomeini, dozens of the shah’s security and military personnel would be murdered on the roof. Deciding that a new military organization was necessary to defend the newly established Islamic government against its enemies, Khomeini established the Revolutionary Guards. With their help, he began to crush opposition groups one by one—members of the shah’s former regime, ethnic minorities, and political dissidents. Many of the very people who’d helped bring Khomeini to power perished during his purges.

The revolution’s violent aftermath disrupted many lives and deeply affected my family; it utterly destroyed others. My father was immediately fired from his job and replaced by a young revolutionary with very little experience. Unable to find a job for years, he eventually had to retire and live on a small pension. That humiliation and shock affected my father far more than the torture he had had to endure in prison. He became a bitter and broken man, exasperated and easily agitated. He started to hate Khomeini and everything he stood for.

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The second member of my family to be imprisoned was my sister, Maryam. In April 1983, when Maryam was twenty-six and I sixteen, my parents received a phone call saying that Maryam had been arrested in the southern city of Ahvaz. Maryam had supported the Islamic Revolution from the beginning. She’d believed in Khomeini’s promise that the end of the shah’s reign would usher in an era of greater democratic values and freedoms. Maryam would quickly discover how wrong she had been.

It never surprised me that Maryam so vigorously supported the revolution. Like our father, she put everything she had into her beliefs. She was passionate about people, and wanted to help them. She was also very passionate about the arts. She took ballet lessons and loved to draw and paint. Maryam and I were two different people: she was compassionate and expressive, whereas I have always been reserved. Still, she