A TIME TO BETRAY (21 page)

3—I will not be here next Friday. Do not relay a message. Start from the Friday after.

4—There is a major offensive planned in the Dezful-Shush area.

5—Should anything happen to me, please find a way to help my wife through my in-laws in London.

Wish me luck,

Wally

It was the duty of every member of the Guards to serve, in either a military or support role, in the battle against Saddam Hussein’s army. Rahim sent Kazem, me, and three others to the Dezful-Shush region to fulfill this duty only a few weeks after my return from my trip out of the country. The war with Iraq had continued to intensify. Having taken advantage of the turmoil in Iran during the revolution, Saddam’s army easily conquered and occupied many of the border areas. The tide was turning, though. More than two hundred thousand Revolutionary Guards, Basijis, and members of our regular
army were cutting through Iraq’s defensive lines, surrounding them and capturing thousands of POWs. The Basijis sacrificed themselves by walking through minefields to clear a path for the Guards or by tying bombs to their bodies and throwing themselves under Iraqi tanks to blow them up. While it took remarkable dedication to do something like this, each also believed that God would reward him for being a
shahid,
a martyr, like Imam Hussein. Each was convinced that heaven and all of its promises were awaiting him.

The mullahs used the legend of Imam Hussein to prepare the teenage Basijis psychologically for their martyrdom before every offensive. Shortly after we arrived on our first night, I witnessed this for myself. I sat on the barracks floor with other Guards, along with many young Basijis and their commanders. A hush came over the room, the lights were dimmed, and, with the sound of
“Ya Allah,”
everybody stood to welcome the speaker.

The mullah told Imam Hussein’s story, climaxing with a retelling of the battle in Karbala, Iraq, where the Imam demonstrated his bravery by becoming a martyr. I’d been hearing this story since I was a child—how he fought for Islam; how he sacrificed his life for his religion; how Hussein and his band of seventy-two fearless warriors fought against an army of thirty thousand and never wavered; and how, just before he died, he exclaimed, “Dignified death is better than humiliating life”—but it still brought me to tears. While it would be nearly impossible for Westerners to understand how this story moved us, it charged us with deep emotional courage. While singing
“Ya Hussein, Ya Hussein,”
we would strike our chests as a display of devotion to Imam Hussein and in remembrance of his suffering.

The night felt incredibly tense to me. My heart was with all these brave young men and boys who deeply believed they were fighting for their country, for their religion, against this unjust war of Saddam’s. Their parents and their families were proud to place their souls in God’s hands. Upon their martyrdom, their leader, Imam Khomeini, would congratulate their families for their dedication to
Islam, reminding them of the promise of heaven’s open gates and the welcome embrace of Hussein, the Lord of Martyrs. However, it was difficult for me to believe that this was the best way for us to utilize our country’s youth.

The next morning before dawn, Kazem tapped me on my shoulder. “Reza, it’s time. We need to do our morning
namaz
and leave.”

Our job today was to help transport the Basijis behind the front lines. We loaded them, laden with their gear, into big trucks, and then convoyed them toward the front with headlights off and only the moonlight as a guide. The sky was clear and full of stars.

In our truck were brothers Mohsen and Madjid, ages thirteen and fourteen and probably no more than a hundred pounds each. We’d met them the night before at the mullah’s sermon. The boys were very quiet now, unlike the night before, when they were full of energy and fooling around like kids their age do. Kazem and I had talked to them for a while after the ceremony. They were from a rural area near the city of Mashhad, and they were the only two boys in a poor family with five kids. They left school for
jebheh,
the war front, after their teacher, a mullah, decreed that it was the duty of every Muslim to go to
jebheh
and become a
shahid.

“I will kill as many Iraqi soldiers as I can,” Mohsen had said last night as he squared his shoulders with a big grin.

Madjid, the older one, wrapped his arm around Mohsen and said, “We will conquer Karbala and have
namaz
at Imam Hussein’s shrine.”

Now I could not take my eyes off them as the truck took us to our destination. Both boys had their heads down, saying a prayer, and both wore a
“Ya Hussein”
red bandana around their shaved heads. My stomach roiled as I watched them.

“Are you okay, Reza?” Kazem said, looking at me in a quizzical way that I, of course, interpreted as suspicion.

“I’m fine. I think it’s just the bumpy road making me nauseous.”

Of course it was the road—the road to an uncertain destiny. What was waiting for Mohsen and Madjid at the end of this road?
Who would come back? Who among all of the teens in this truck would see another day?

“Brothers, get out,” the commander ordered when the truck stopped. The Basijis exited the trucks and lined up in groups, as instructed. Hundreds of children ready to defend our country. I couldn’t help but think about their families, and about how little these boys had seen in their short lives.

“God, please save them!” I whispered.

“Baradar Reza, pray for our forgiveness,” Mohsen sputtered, as he looked at me with his head tilted halfway up. His group’s mission was to blow up a bridge behind the enemy lines.

Once we’d deployed the Basijis, we went back to the base behind the front lines and waited anxiously. For several hours, the violent sounds of gunfire, artillery, mortar shells, explosions, and screams of
“Allaho Akbar”
filled the air. Reports from the battle were slow to come, though, until I heard a commotion throughout the base.

Kazem ran up to me. “Reza, good news! The offensive was successful. We have destroyed fifteen tanks so far and have taken many prisoners.”

“Is there any news of the Imam Hussein Battalion?” I asked desperately. I wanted to know if Mohsen and Madjid’s mission was successful.

He shook his head in disappointment.

I knew that meant that I would not hear the news I wanted to hear. I went outside the bunker to smoke a cigarette, wiping my face before anybody could see my tears.

Just before
maghreb azan
(the evening prayer), Ibrahim, one of the Basijis from the Imam Hussein Battalion, came back to the base. I rushed toward him.

“Baradar Ibrahim, where is everybody else?” I asked.

He looked at me wearily and said, “
Baradar,
they all fought bravely, but …”

“Khaste nabashin, Baradar,”
someone said to him in passing, praising him for a good job.

I regained Ibrahim’s attention. “What about Mohsen and Madjid? Where are they?”

Ibrahim couldn’t hold my gaze. “We could see the bridge. There was one more hill between us as we descended. The Iraqis were waiting for us, hiding at the bottom of the hill. I had fallen behind and I could see bullets flying, the screams and shouting. The bloodshed was everywhere. Our kids fought back so bravely, but Mohsen was the last one standing. Iraqi soldiers surrounded him and they ordered him to drop his weapon and surrender. Instead, he opened fire while shouting,
‘Ash-hadu anna la ilaha illa Allah; ash-hadu anna muhammadan-rasool Allah’
[I testify there is no God but Allah; I testify that Mohammad is Allah’s messenger].”

Mohsen, the youngest brother of five children, along with his brother, Madjid, died that afternoon.

I knew their sacrifice was going to stick with me a long time. I also knew that it was going to cause me to reflect on what I was doing. How did my espionage fit into a world where boys gave their lives to defend a country whose government I’d vowed to undermine?

Because of the efforts of so many like them, the Iraqi army was eventually defeated and chased back into its own territory, where it was now defending against Iranian offensives. The Iraqis left behind horror stories of the crimes they committed, raping women and killing civilians. Rahim told me of one small border town where an Iraqi commander ordered all civilians to gather in the city square, women and children included. Iraqi tanks surrounded them and opened fire, slaughtering every single person. Our military executed many Iraqi POWs in retaliation for those crimes.

At this point, Ali Khamenei was president of Iran. In June of 1981, Khamenei had survived an assassination attempt by the Mujahedin when a bomb concealed in a tape recorder exploded, leaving him paralyzed in his right hand. The Iranian people elected him president in October of that year, after the assassination of President Mohammad-Ali Rajai by the Mujahedin in August.
Someday, of course, Khamenei would succeed Imam Khomeini as the Supreme Leader. I had heard from Kazem and others that Ali Khamenei regularly came to
jebheh
to review the troops, and that he was at least as much of a zealot about raising the flag of Islam across the world as Imam Khomeini. It was during this conflict that we learned that he believed we must continue to wage war until we destroyed all nonbelievers. This included, of course, the destruction of Israel. Ali Khamenei also wanted Jerusalem and the return of one of the most sacred mosques and holiest places to Muslims, the Masjid al-Aqsa.

The regime made it their mission to topple Saddam. The Iraqi leader had offered peace after our forces had pushed him out of our country, but Khomeini roundly rejected this. The mullahs now harbored Ayatollah Mohammed Baqir al-Hakim, an outspoken Iraqi opponent of Saddam, and gave sanctuary to his supporters. The mullahs in Iran and Iraq had a long history of cooperation through their seminaries in Qom, the hotbed of religious activity in Iran, and Najaf in Iraq. They instructed the Revolutionary Guards to help Ayatollah Hakim create the Supreme Council for Islamic Revolution in Iraq (SCIRI). This quickly became one of the most powerful political parties in Iraq and it continues to be so today. Part of the Guards’ role in developing the SCIRI was to send Hakim’s followers back inside Iraq with specific instructions to disrupt Saddam’s army, using covert military operations, infiltrating his operations, and gathering much-needed intelligence.

My learning all of this provided a treasure trove of information for Carol.

[Letter #—]

[Date:———]

Dear Carol:

1—Khomeini issued an order to the Revolutionary Guards to further help Ayatollah Hakim in strengthening the Supreme Council for Islamic Revolution in Iraq in recruiting
and forming military units and performing cross-border operations in conjunction with the Revolutionary Guards.

2—The chief commander, Mohsen Rezaei, has appointed Esmaeil Daghayeghi as the Guards officer to coordinate the recruitment of Iraqi Shiites and sympathizers from the POWs.

3—Esmaeil Daghayeghi is fluent in Arabic and has been working with the POWs. He has successfully recruited other Iraqis trained under the Revolutionary Guards. He has formed the Badr Brigade and is the commanding officer of that brigade. They are being used for intelligence on Iraqi army communications and on cross-border operations. They are routinely sent into Iraq to carry Ayatollah Hakim’s messages, recruiting Shiite volunteers and inciting rebellion by the Shiites in the southern cities of Iraq.

4—The order now is to expand the brigade into a division. Mohsen Rezaei has promoted Esmaeil Daghayeghi to be the commander of the new division.

5—Many of the Iraqis are being trained in the Revolutionary Guards’ bases in Tehran.

Wish me luck!

Wally

The following Persian New Year, with the war pushed back at the borders and peace in the sky of Tehran after a long conflict, Somaya’s doctor gave us the good news we’d been hoping to hear: she was three months pregnant. I desperately wanted to believe that this was a sign that my life was at last aligning with my dreams.

UNFORTUNATELY, MY DREAM
of a more peaceful homeland continued to be nothing more than a dream. The repressive atmosphere in Iran was becoming more and more pervasive. Arrests and executions escalated to the point where it seemed everyone knew someone caught in the nightmare. And the spread of Khomeini’s version of Islam that was affecting every aspect of people’s lives was extending beyond Iran’s borders. Things had never been busier for the Guards, and these days my time was decidedly not my own.

This activity couldn’t have come at a poorer stage in my home life. Somaya was pregnant and I wanted to be with her to share as much of this singular stage in our relationship as possible. Instead, I was spending most of my time at work and attending meetings and gatherings afterward with Kazem, which left me feeling terribly guilty.

For most of her pregnancy, Somaya didn’t utter a word of complaint. In fact, she gave me so little trouble about my long hours that I thought she was fine with it. Until I came home late one night during her third trimester and found her sitting in the living room looking miserable.

“What is wrong, dear?” I asked as I sat next to her.

She immediately burst into uncontrollable tears. For a minute, she couldn’t say anything and I simply held her. Then she pulled back angrily. “What is wrong?
Everything
is wrong. I barely get to see you. I am here all alone with my big belly and no one to talk to. I am tired of this.” She wiped her nose with the end of her
sleeve and I could see that it took a great deal out of her to say what she’d said.

My heart went out to her immediately. The last thing I wanted in the world was to see her upset. “I am sorry that you feel this way, honey. I wish I didn’t have to spend so much time away from you, but I don’t know what I can do. Why don’t you get together with some of your friends and do some fun stuff?”