Before the assassination of Gen. Zandipour, MKO informed me via Iraj that I had to rent a shop for my job to make covering for my activities.
After a short search, I found a shop in the second floor of Kavir mall in Cheragh-Bargh Street and rented it for 200 Tomans a month. That shop was about 15 square meters. By Iraj’s advice I divided it in two parts. The front section was for my job and the back section for my personal and organizational affairs. Then I bought some secondhand chairs. I also gathered some iron tools and goods catalogues by the help of Haj Pour-Ostad to show that shop was for iron goods. However, the main usage of this shop was a cover for my organizational activities.
Kavir mall had two main gates; one in Sirous Street and the other in Chergh-Bargh Street. Beside my shop, there were some other shops including a tailor’s. I went there several times and some shopkeepers knew me including the tailor. However, they did not show that they knew me. They knew me as Ahmad Akbari there. Sometime after the assassination of Zandipour and before the killing of American advisers, Iraj came to me and took the keys of that shop and told me there was no need for me to go there anymore.
Something that happened after giving the shop keys deserves hesitating. Iraj gave the keys to Taqi Shahram. A young girl and he would come to that shop at nights. The arcade’s gatekeeper would say that each evening a girl would enter the arcade from Sirous Street and go in Akbari’s shop. At nights while all the other shops were closed, they (Taqi Shahram and the young girl) would not leave there. The gate keeper would say that he had been suspicious about them and checked the shop from outside several times and seen the locked door with a light on inside. The next day when he would ask the shopkeeper (Taqi Shahram) the reason for, he would answer that the light had possibly remained on from evening. But the truth was something else. Taqi Shahram and that girl would stay there at nights and Shahram had been writing the booklet of “Ideology Change” for MKO; a handwritten booklet that any who had been familiar with Shahram’s handwriting would understand that it was his. That shop had become a calm safe room for Taqi Shahram to write that booklet freely and having everything needed.
Anyway, day by day the gatekeeper became more suspicious and finally one night after the leave of all the shopkeepers he would go there and find the shop’s door unlocked. He would open the door and enter. He would see Taqi Shahram and that girl there and begin shouting and saying: “What the hell are you doing here…? Is it whorehouse or shop? ...Shame on you…!” Shahram who had been a strong man would hit him in the mouth with hard fist. The old gatekeeper would leave there to complain about them at the police station. He would forget to lock the arcade or call someone to watch there. When the police come they would see the shop with an open door and an untidy situation inside. They would see some papers and had written booklets with MKO coat of arms and inform SAVAK.
Thus, SAVAK is the first center that is informed of ideology change in MKO. So SAVAK would begin a vast propaganda against MKO and many groups who were not aware of this change would not accept what they hear and consider it as an unfair hoax by SAVAK. The tailor there later narrated after that event nobody went there for a long time.[1]
One week after the assassination of American advisers in June 1975, Iraj arranged an urgent meeting in our team-house. After a short introduction he said: “The main reason that we have omitted the Koranic verse from the top of MKO coat of arms is “Ideology Change”.” I stood up and angrily said: “What?!” He said: “Yes, we have changed our ideology and accepted Marxism as our new superior ideology. The path behind and previous methods proved that we have had great mistakes and after long studies we have concluded Islam cannot answer our needs and Marxism which the knowledge of struggle and …”
Iraj was telling these sentences like machine gun and each word of him would hit my heart painfully. I sweated coldly. My face was changing color. My body was cold and my teeth were shivering. I would not see or hear; everything was in ambiguity. I felt that I was falling in a dark endless well. I thought that I was losing my life and afterlife together. Suddenly I reviewed my life, struggles and tortures in prison.
Not saying prayers by them, their rootlessness, the coat of arms without Koranic verse, and … all were marching in front of my eyes. I was walking in corner. I was deeply angry and upset. I felt everything was over. I felt that I had reached to the end of a deep valley and end of the world. After walking fast for some minutes, I could manage to control turmoil in my thoughts and returned to the team. Iraj did not expect to see such a reaction from me got frightened a bit and moved in his seat. I saw Khosrow, Parviz and Shapourzadeh were all silent either. I angrily told Iraj: “Why? Do you think that you are allowed to?!” Iraj who was surprised to see my reaction cautiously answered: “Shapour! Be patient for some time. The order is from high ranks in MKO and …” I got angry again and suddenly decided to defend Islam and its honor. I sat and said: “Useless! What patient?! What order?! Our order is the order of Islam! ... You hoaxed us, betrayed us. You are traitors. You reached us here by hoax. You have misused the Muslim facilities and possibilities and then betrayed them. Even right now you can continue your struggle just by the help of Muslim Bazaaris. How could you dare to do such an action? Few inexperienced youths have decided to change the ideology; Bull shit! Who the hell are you to decide on behalf of others? …”
I had been in prisons and clearly knew what did the “Ideology Change” mean? So, watching everything being finished, I began trying to do something among all those new thoughts breathlessly. Iraj being surprised of my hard and harsh reaction said: “Shapour! You are angry now; discussing with you is useless and I cannot talk with you. I inform the higher ranks about your objections.”
He distributed the “ideology Change” booklet among the individuals there and left the house fast. Khosrow and Parviz were upset like me but Shapourzadeh was silent and would not show any position. This would increase my sadness and I was asking myself what had happened? Why Fatimah was silent?...
I was afraid of thinking if she had known the matter and accepted that. An hour passed. I took the book and started reading it. Nothing was harder than this for me. I had struggled for God and Islam and then I had to leave them all just because of these people and become a Marxist. I was watching everything being lost. I told myself: “Ahmad! What happened to all those days in prison …to the martyrdom of Mohammad Mofidi and Bagher Abbassi? What happened to all those tortures and misery? What happened to all those exiles, mischief and exile? What happened to all those great wishes that you were following? What happened…?”
[1] After the Islamic Revolution the tailor who was a friend of Mr. Ahmad became the person who made the arrest of Shahram possible in 1979. Ahmad narrates in part of his memories: “… this young tall tailor was a friend of mine and had heard that he had killed my wife. He would see Shahram along with two women in Tohid Square. He would go forward and say: “You are Taqi Shahram!” Shahram would get surprised and say: “No!” But my tailor friend would take his hand and not let him escape. Shahram and the other two women would begin shouting and objecting and saying that he had been mistaking him with somebody else and ask him to let them go. But the tailor would say: “No! I am not wrong.” People gather around them and tell him: “Sir! Why are you teasing them, you are making a mistake, let him go?” Right then the two women who were actually Shahram’s guards would run away. My tailor friend would say: “Hey! I am not going to bother him. I just take him to the local Islamic Revolutionary Committee.
Taqi Shahram would say: “I am not Taqi Shahram. Let me be free, asshole!” My friend would say: “I’d take him to the Committee if he wasn’t Shahram I kiss his feet and apologize! And if he was him, they would arrest him. He has killed the wife of a friend of mine.”
Right at this moment some relatives of him come and help him to take Shahram to the Islamic Revolutionary Committee of that district. They would keep him in the third floor. Then they would call the central commanding office and inform them that they have had arrested somebody whose name is Taqi Shahram and give his characteristics. The central office would tell them: “Run and take him! He may jump from the third floor and commit suicide. You should not have taken him there. Take care of him; we are coming.”
leave your comments