ALL QUIET ON THE IRANIAN FRONT

Amit Roy remembers

incidents from eight sad years of war

WHO now remembers Ali Pannandari, an Iranian army major who fell in Korram- shahr in January 1981, three months after the start of the Gulf war? Possibly just his family — and I, who accidentally attended his funeral.

The soft moaning of the women was almost lost in the wind howling down from the Alborz mountains onto the vast, flat expanse of Behest-e-Zahra cemetery on the edges of Teheran. The black chaddors, lifting with each gust, were silhouetted against the distant snows. The occasion had the haunting quality of a Shakes- pearean tragedy.

I had gone to Behest-e-Zahra to see if I could settle a debate by roughly counting the graves of the hundreds — or was it thousands? — of demonstrators shot by the Shah's soldiers in September 1978, in Teheran's Jaleh Square massacre, a turn- ing point in the revolution. I was taken aback to discover that a huge new section was being 'added to the cemetery to accommodate the war dead.

The focus of world attention had been on the 52 American hostages held in Iran, and, once they were released, the carnage on the western front went largely unre- ported. But the Iranians quickly renamed Khorramshahr, where revolutionary guards stalled the Iraqi invasion by first employing the human wave tactic, Khun- ninshahr — the city of blood. Here, in the cemetery, with little ceremony, the flower of Iranian youth was being laid to rest. Ali Mohebbi could not find the grave of his cousin, Sayed. 'I came to his burial last week,' he said, looking lost, 'but there have been so many additions since.'

Mohsen's mother was huddled by the grave of her only son. Mohammad Qasse- mi found solace in the belief that he had delivered his son, Ahmad, 24, `to Islam' a theme that would be repeated through eight years of war. Even as Pannandari's white shroud was lowered into the ground, men with shovels were busy digging hun- dreds of fresh graves. Ayatollah Khomeini's portrait fluttered among the dead, as though promising them new life through martyrdom. Extraordinarily, the rising toll never produced the political backlash that would have occurred in most other countries. A notable incident at Khomeini's home in Jamaran, in the foothills of the mountains in northern Teheran, 20 miles from Behest Zahra, reflected his sure touch, particular- ly with the bereaved. Then, as now, women, clutching pictures of their dead menfolk — a peculiarly Iranian custom would emerge from audience with their Iman, with little to say other than that they felt strangely comforted. A few days after Pannandari's funeral, the village of 2,000 revolutionary guards who cocoon Khomeini allowed me into the inner sanctum with a group of air force officers. The men were 'renewing their pact' with Khomeini, for exactly two years previously the defection of key air force personnel had triggered off the final col- lapse of the government headed by the exiled Shah's nominee, Dr Shahpour Bakhtiar, and ushered in the age of the ayatollahs. The iron door, separating Khomeini's bedroom from the mosque where he re- ceived visitors, opened. A couple of ayatollahs emerged, accompanied by revolutionary guards, followed by Khomeini's son, Ahmad. The peacock blue chair on the balcony remained empty. Finally, Khomeini walked in, unaided, his face unsmiling, hand raised in silent greet- ing. To a man, the air force officers, proud, strong people in immaculate blue uniform and some straight from flying sorties against the Iraqis, wept uncontrollably, overcome by emotion simply at meeting Khomeini. It was again a distinctively Iranian occasion, which explains why Khomeini has been able during the war years to use the force of his personality to recreate the nation in his own image.

He has effected a social revolution, by channelling hundreds of thousands of working-class youths into the revolutionary guards, the elite of the new Iran. Families of martyrs have been given an elevated position in society, along with financial advantages. Women have been urged to marry young and produce as many children as possible, with the result that the popula- tion has shot up to 50 million from 36 million in 1979. Men have been urged to take war widows as brides.

Internal political enemies, including Westernised liberals, have practically all been eliminated and power transferred to the loyal 'party of God' Hizbollah mem- bers.

Iranian television has helped to sus- tain war fervour with dramatic footage shot by some of the bravest and most foolhardy cameramen anywhere in the world. Scores have died in the process, although meriting not even a tiny footnote.

When foreign reporters were taken to the front, they were frequently dropped between the lines. The images and sounds linger: Iraqi Mirages that turned out to be seagulls; mangled corpses in the mud; madness in the eyes of laughing, young men who leapt straight out of the pages of All Quiet on the Western Front; fear of flying on moonlit nights in darkened, coffin-like C130s; tall plumes of water on Fish Lake near Basra thrown up by Iraqi mortar; and the whoosh-whoosh-whoosh of sustained shelling. 'Many incoming, many outgoing,' said an officer once, to those who could not distinguish between the sounds. He grinned as he added, 'The incoming are closer.'

Najumul Hassan, a Reuters correspon- dent, arrived, delighted to get a precious Iranian visa and was killed two days later when shrapnel pierced his head. The Ira- nians could not understand his agency's insistence on flying his body back to his family. `So many others have been mar- tyred,' they said. 'Why worry about one body?' In a way, they had a point. Hardly a family today remains untouched by war; hardly a street or a home unadorned by a black-bordered photograph.

Last year, I found Ali Asghar Farschi, a businessman, raising funds for 'the boys at the front' in the labyrinth of shops in Teheran Bazaar, politically a Khomeini stronghold which you pass on the way to nearby Behest-e-Zahra. Typically, he sub- limated his grief by throwing a party to `celebrate the martyrdom' of his 23-year- old son, Sayed, killed in Dezful and buried in the cemetery.

How many Sayeds have there been? Half a million? A million? No one really seems to know. The abiding memory from Behest-e-Zahra is of a bit of paper with Major Ali Pannandari's name scrawled on it, held down by a small stone to mark his burial spot. By and by, a gust of breeze blew the paper away, and with it, symboli- cally, a whole generation.

For what did they die? The answer suddenly is no longer clear. Khomeini himself has admitted that accepting the ceasefire was 'more deadly than taking poison'. Perhaps he realises that peace, if it really has arrived, could be harder to handle than war.

Amit Roy is a writer on the Sunday Times who regularly visits Iran.