Praying, the Last Reply

One day, Iraj had made an appointment for me to visit Habib and give him The Ideology Change pamphlets. I accepted to go there to visit him. After greetings I asked him: “Habib! What happened to all those struggles, escapes and challenges? What has happened to you? You were with us; we all were Muslims; we would say our prayers together. Now, they say you are a Marxist too!” He said: “Shapour! I was Marxist from the beginning.” I said: “But you would pray with us, interpret Koran and Nahj-ul-Balagheh!” He said: “My praying was a political one. I was a Marxist since 1973.” Hearing these sentences would smash me harder and harder. I felt sorry for my wife and myself and all the ones who their steps in this path frankly; the ones who fell apart from their home and family and drowned in MKO’s whirlpool of hoax and trickery.

They did not stop trying to change my mind by different tricks. The visit and discussion with Shahram, Habib and Iraj had no effect on me and it was hard for them. They began stigmatizing. They wanted to trigger me.  Shahram would say: “You are a right-winged opportunist who pretends to be leftist.” When Iraj could not convince me, he would say: “You are a dogmatic zealous reactionary religious man who is blind by religion. You can see and understand the truth just when you put away this dogmatism.” He believed my praying was a sign of this dogmatism. One day he said: “As a test, stop praying for five days and then let’s begin discussing; then you will see Marxism is the only way to victory. If you accept what we say after these five days, that’s ok; and if you could not, you have not lost anything; say your prayers again and remain benighted.”

Iraj’s temptations affected me. One day, when all the others were present, I decided to do what he said. I, the one who would always say his prayers on time, decided not to pray for some time. The moments were passing by; we were reaching to the noon’s call for prayers. I was drowned in thoughts. The call finished; despite having ablutions I did not stood up to pray; moments by moment my nervousness would increase. After an hour I was fed up with worry and nervousness. The hands of the clock would move fast. I felt that I was falling in hell. My worries were more and more serious. I asked myself how I could tolerate not saying my prayers for day when I cannot handle this worry and nervousness of an hour!? My nervousness reached to climax. I felt that I was losing my child. My body was burning.

Team-members became worried about me. They were watching me astoundingly. They did not know what to do. I was disturbed. I would walk the room’s width and length by fast steps. My face was sweating. It was a strange feeling. I reviewed all my political life in those hours and brought all the scenes of being tortured, imprisoned, and exiled from my family to my mind. The hands of the clock speed would seem deadly to me. I wished them to be stopped. My feeling in those hours is indescribable.

It was after 5 o’clock. I became a lunatic. My heart was burning and my eyes were thundering. Like a dove in cage, I was hitting to iron walls around. Maybe all these were just because of my ablutions. I watched the clock; there was not much time left to pray the noon prayers. Suddenly the hands of the clock stopped. I put away all my delusive thoughts and began praying while weeping; “Allahu Akbar…!” I thought not only the house but all the earth and time were trembling. I was weeping and praying: “…It is “You” we worship…, Guide us to the straight path…, not of those against whom there is anger, nor of those who are misguided…”[1]