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1974: Khosrow Golsorkhi and Keramat Daneshian, Iranian revolutionaries

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Death is our most modest gift to the people. Each death is a small window closing on nihilism. And each death is a panel of mystery closing on lies, corruption, poverty, and hunger. Thus, a window will open that lets in the light of life. Let us sacrifice our life for this light — this light.

[Signed,]
People’s Fadaee, Keramat Daneshian
February 8, 1974

Khosrow Gol(e)sorkhi* and Keramat Daneshian, poets and revolutionaries, were shot on this date in 1974 by the Shah of Iran.

Stock of a provincial family with ties to the Communist Tudeh party, Golsorkhi — much the more famous of the two — became a noted writer of radical prose and poetry in the 1960s and 1970s.

Their defiance — Golsorkhi’s especially — of a military court trying them on a trumped-up charge of attempting to kidnap Shah Mohammad Reza Pahlavi‘s son made them Che Guevara-like figures for young Iranian leftists of the time.**

Badly misreading the direction of the wind, the Shah televised their prosecution as a show trial — and the poets used the platform to completely upstage not only their judges but the rotting monarchy they were there to uphold. Farsi speakers can enjoy Golsorkhi on video —

— while this version has English subtitles:

“Equality”
by Khosrow Golsorkhi
(translated by Sherry Laici)

The teacher was shouting at the board.
He flushed angrily
and his hands were covered with chalk dust.
The students in the last row of seats were eating fruits and making noises;
on the other side of the class a student was flipping through a magazine.
None of the students were paying attention
because the teacher was shouting and pointing to the algebraic equations.

The teacher wrote on the blackboard, which reminded us of darkness and cruelty,
1=1
one is equal to one.

One of the students rose
(always one must rise)
and said softly,
“The equation is a blunder.”

The teacher was shocked
and the student asked,
“If one human being was one unit
Does one equal one, still?”
It was a difficult question and the students were silent.
The teacher shouted,
“Yes, it is equal!”

The student laughed,
“If one human being was one unit,
the one who had power and money would be greater than the poor one
who had nothing but a kind heart.
If one human being was one unit,
the one who was white would be greater than the one who was black.
If one human being was one unit,
equality would be ruined.
If one were equal to one
how would it be possible for the rich to get richer?
Or who would build China’s wall?
If one were equal to one,
who would die of poverty?
or who would die of lashing?
If one were equal to one,
who would imprison the liberals?”

The teacher cried:
“Please write in your notebooks
one is not equal to one.”

Abdy Javadzadeh notes in Iranian Irony: Marxists Becoming Muslim that Golsorkhi’s lyrical self-vindication — one could hardly call it a “defense” addressed to the parameters of a court that he openly scorned — “spoke volumes on how Marxism developed within the Iranian opposition,” marrying the language of revolution with that of Islam.

“Life is nothing but a struggle for your belief.”

I will begin my talk with a quotation from Hussein, the great martyr of the people of the Middle East. I, a Marxist-Leninist, have found, for the first time, social justice in the school of Islam and then reached socialism. In this court, I am not bargaining for my life or even my life span. I am but a drop in the great struggle of the Iranian people … I am not bargaining for my life, because I am the child of a fighting people.

The real Islam in Iran has always played its part in liberation movements … When Marx says, in a class society, wealth is accumulated on one side and poverty, hunger, and misery on the other, whilst the producer of wealth is the poor, and Ali says, a castle will not be built unless thousands become poor, we cannot deny that there are great similarities. This is the juncture of history in which we can claim Ali to be the world’s first socialist … and we too approve of such Islam, the Islam of Hussein.

Golsorkhi also scored points by dunking on the military brass sitting in judgment — shooting back at the chief judge when admonished to stay on topic, “Don’t you give me any orders. Go and order your corporals and squadron leaders.”

The more you attack me the more I pride myself, for the further I am from you the closer I am to the people. The more your hatred for my beliefs, the stronger the kindness and support of the people. Even if you bury me — and you certainly will — people will make flags and songs from my corpse.

For his part, Daneshian kept to a more straightforward secular-revolutionary tone.

Millions of people in the armed forces, without having an active role in society or production, are busy in a useless game … such force has no other purpose than the suppression of people’s voice of liberation. The shootings of farmers, peasants, and people’s fighters are their principle duty … Liberated people, social movements on their way to liberation, reverberates the news of shedding poverty, corruption and injustice in the world.

Three others condemned with them were not so eager as our principals to embrace revolutionary martyrdom, and bent the knee to the Shah in exchange for their lives.

* The name “Golsorkhi” means “rose bush”. According to Iranian cleric Mohammad-Ali Abtahi — popularly known as the “blogging mullah” — the censors at the time proceeded to suppress a forthcoming children’s book with the entirely coincidental title We Wake the Rose Bush as potentially Golsorkhi-sympathetic. “In a country where a colonel is running the cultural section, how can you answer such reasoning?”

** The Che analogy was drawn by Hooman Majd in The Ayatollah Begs To Differ: The Paradox of Modern Iran, noting that “his bravery … only served to make him a hero and a symbol of the Shah’s merciless dictatorship.”

On this day..