Mohsen recalls, “That really shocked me. I asked myself, ‘Who persuaded this interrogator that he is an agent of God?’ A person who believes he has a mission from God can easily torture, kill, or do anything.”
That evening one of the interrogators told him that he was going to be released “because your friends have lied to Imam Khomeini, but rest assured you will be back here. We’ll be waiting for you.” He was turned over to a guard who led him outside the building, where he was allowed to remove the blindfold, and suddenly roles seemed to revert to normal. As they waited for a car to the prison gate, the guard said, “Mr. Sazegara, I know you are the head of the automotive industries. I’m trying to buy a van. Can you help me?” Mohsen declined.
The next morning, Mohsen went directly to the office of Minister Nabavi, his friend and patron, to review the previous day’s events. Nabavi told him that he had enlisted the help of Ardebili, the head of the Judicial Authority, and that the two of them had won over Ahmad Khomeini, the usually hard-line son of the Imam, who in turn went to his father and secured an order for Mohsen’s release.
Mohsen told Nabavi of the disturbing things he had seen and heard in Evin. “I have to tell Ayatollah Khomeini what is going on,” he said. Nabavi phoned Ahmad Khomeini and asked if they could come to see his father, and somewhat to their surprise, they were given an appointment for later that morning at the Ayatollah’s home in Jamaran, a northern suburb of Tehran (where he had moved from the holy city of Qom).
They sat on the floor of a small drawing room. Mohsen was not on personal terms with him, but the Ayatollah remembered the devoted young man on his staff in Neauphle-le-Château. Mohsen recited his experience at Evin, stressing the words of the interrogator who acted as if he were God’s deputy. Mohsen felt tense and he thought that Khomeini, who listened carefully, seemed to grow tense, too. Then, as Mohsen reconstructs it, he concluded with a bold albeit respectful appeal: “Imam, I have followed you from Paris. If you agree with what Lajevardi is doing, please tell me. Then I will know that I made a mistake and I will resign my position and ask God to forgive me. And if you do not agree, why don’t you remove Lajevardi?” Khomeini did not respond. . . .
As they left, Mohsen and Nabavi shared their astonishment that Ahmad had gotten them the meeting with his father so promptly, since they believed Ahmad was Lajevardi’s sponsor. Apparently something was in the wind. Ardebili, the head of the Judicial Authority, had grown unhappy with Lajevardi. Ardebili was close to Khomeini, and Mohsen heard later that he had brought some other former prisoners to tell their tales to the Imam. A week or so later, Lajevardi was removed from his post.
This, however, was not enough to make Mohsen feel whole again. After what he had seen in Evin, Mohsen says:
Something was broken inside me, and I was not the same person. Put it this way: You have raised a child and you like him very much. But one day, you see that he is doing something very bad, a crime. Something will break inside you. Still, you love him; this is your son. But you do not like what he is doing. I had such a feeling. I still loved the revolution. I was about 30 years old. I had spent so far 13 years of my life from early morning until late at night on it. And I really loved the movement that we made, that great victory. But now, I did not like that face of the revolution, the face of this new child.
Now, I began to believe many things that I had heard. Before that, I told myself, “No, they are exaggerating.” But now, I believed everything.
Mohsen . . . submitted his resignation, . . . signing on as an adviser to a few companies. Altogether this work required about 25 hours a week, and most of the rest of his hours he spent reading, or rather rereading. He began with the works of Ayatollah Khomeini, at the center of which lay the theory of Velayat-e Faqih, the rule of the religious jurisprudent. Mohsen recalls:
When I read that book the first time, I was 20. I did not notice the main idea of Ayatollah Khomeini. What was wonderful for me was his language against the U.S., the Shah, and Israel. This time, I did not care about the slogans. I was looking for the main ideas. And I said to myself, “Wow, what kind of political philosophy is this? So much authority for one person without any control, and a divine mission. This is despotism.”
It was, moreover, a despotism whose scowl Mohsen realized he had seen with his own eyes on the face of the heartless interrogator who thought he was acting for God when he ordered more lashes.
National Review— The preceding is an excerpt from
The Next Founders: Voices of Democracy in the Middle East, by Joshua Muravchik, just released by Encounter Books.
