IRAN'S MESSAGE FROM THE MORGUE

Amit Roy reports

from the land hungry for martyrs

Teheran `THE Teheran morgue is a busy place,' said the gatekeeper, as two trucks arrived at midnight straight from the airport a few days ago. They unloaded 37 rough wooden coffins. These contained the latest batch from the 300 or so Iranian pilgrims killed in Mecca, Islam's holiest shrine, in a clash with Saudi police.

Revolutionary guards whipped off the Iranian flags covering the coffins, gathered in the gladioli that had been put on top and placed them in a large pitcher of water. Perhaps they could be used again. One of the attendants pulled on a pair of yellow washing-up gloves of the type sold at Sainsbury's, as the guards began prising open the coffin lids.

It might be a cliché to observe that death has become a way of life in Iran. But certainly the celebration of violent death, when it comes in the pursuit of an approved cause, is an integral part of the new revolutionary culture. There are worse places to start trying to understand Ayatollah Khomeini's philosophy or how Teheran might behave in the current Gulf crisis, for example, than the morgue at midnight.

In a way, the arrivals at the Teheran morgue tell the story of post-revolutionary Iran. General Nassiri, head of Savak, the Shah's secret police, was brought here after he was summarily executed within hours of the revolution. A photograph of him lying in a half-opened morgue drawer was wired round the world. 'This is just the start of the executions,' pledged the re- volutionary courts, and they were as good as their word.

The regime knew it would meet violent opposition. Teheran's equivalent of the Brighton bomb demolished the headquar- ters of the Islamic Republican party. The bodies of Ayatollah Beheshti, arguably Iran's most influential clergyman at the time, after Khomeini, and 70 of the coun- try's most senior politicians were dug out from the rubble under the glare of televi- sion lights. 'They were all brought here,' added the gatekeeper, with the pride of a man whose clientele reads like a Who's Who. Inside the morgue, the man with the yellow gloves was unwrapping the latest arrivals, which resembled wax figures from the London Dungeon. There were two foreign journalists present, myself and a man from the New York Times. The intention was to demonstrate to us that some of the victims had died, not as a result of being trampled in a mass stam- pede — as Riyadh had claimed — but after being shot by Saudi police.

Two of the men had small holes in the chest; another in the back; and an elderly man a big gap where his right ear should have been. What caused the holes and when they got there are judgments better left to doctors or forensic experts. But even the untrained eye could scarcely fail to notice the clawing fingers of death frozen in the moment of maximum agony. The attendant poked a yellow-gloved finger into one wound to drive home his point. `Sandia,' an Iranian bystander swore.

The long-term consequences of the Mec- ca massacre are likely be profound. It is not going to make it any easier for Khomeini to export his Islamic revolution to the Muslim world and unite it under Iran's leadership. He is extremely con- cerned that his post-Mecca differences with Arab leaders are being represented as a sectarian split along Shia-Sunni lines. The theological rift which already exists be- tween Shias and Sunnis — Persians are mainly Shias while much of the Arab world is Sunni — has widened after Mecca.

Khomeini's vision is pan-Islamic, not nationalistic. He has sought to export the ideology of the Islamic revolution by invit- ing Muslim students from all over the world to the theological school in the holy city of Qom, south of Teheran. The long war against Iraq, which has produced about half a million Iranian dead and injured, is fought more in the name of Islam than Iran. The Saudis, who belong to the ultra-conservative Wahabbi sect, have been attacked by Teheran for being `American Muslims who take their orders from Washington, not from Allah'.

It was Khomeini who urged Iranian pilgrims to demonstrate when they got to Mecca. 'Down with America, down with Israel' were among the slogans they chanted. Khomeini believes that in Islam there should be no separation of religion and politics. Friday prayers in Teheran, for example, are regularly used by the author- ities to make statements of policy. Last week, for example, the Speaker of the Iranian parliament, Hojetoleslam Rafsan- jani, the country's most significant figure today after Khomeini, used it to talk mainly of the prospect of war with the United States.

All Muslims are agreed on the oneness of God, on Mohammed being his Prophet, on the Koran (written in Arabic) being a book of revelations, and believe in the concept of Doomsday. But there are differ- ences between the sects. Sunnis have four Imams or teachers; the Shias have 12. There are also differences in ritual and form. Some Sunnis pray with folded hands, while Shias generally have theirs unfolded.

In Iran, the authorities respect the right of individuals to private property. Left- wing clergymen, who want to push through land reform, find themselves frustrated by the Right. One of the distinctive features of Shia Islam, which Khomeini has empha- sised, is the belief that it is honourable and indeed desirable to seek martydom. Many of the arrivals at Teheran morgue had enthusiastically embraced this philosophy.

The Iranian middle and upper classes are resentful of Khomeini but among the working classes and in the provinces out- side Teheran he retains his support. A new generation has grown up since the Shah's overthrow. Iran's population has shot up in the last eight years from 36 million to 50 million. The clergy exhort people to marry young, war widows to remarry, husbands to take a second wife and couples to have as many children as possible. It is the bottom sections of society that have sacri- ficed their sons in the war against Iraq. Still, there is no shortage of volunteers.

Last week in the Teheran bazaar, I found a businessman, Ali Asghar Farschi, raising funds for 'our boys at the front'. No one is going to tell him the young men died in vain. He threw a party to celebrate the martyrdom of his 23-year-old son, Sayed. `There were no tears,' he assured me.

If the American battle fleet ultimately decides to launch a military strike at Iran and this can by no means be ruled out — it must be prepared to face the naval equiva- lent of the human wave deployed so effectively against Iraq. There exists a plan for revolutionary guards in small boats packed with explosives to mounth a suicide attack on an American Warship.

Back in the Teheran morgue, the gatekeeper appeared unperturbed at the prospect. 'We are prepared to receive more martyrs,' he said casually. His friend added: 'The nation would like that.' The message of the morgue is simple: the revolution shows no signs of running out of steam. Khomeini has turned Iran into a nation fit only for martyrs.