foucault-and-the-iranian-revolution-janet-afary

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But a little further away, the artisans and the farmers rebuilt their own town,
in opposition to all these official plans. Under the direction of a cleric, they
collected the funds, built and dug with their own hands, laid out canals and
wells, and constructed a mosque. On the first day they planted a green flag. 6
The new village is called Islamiyeh. Facing the government and against it,
Islam: already ten years old.
Who will rebuild Tabas today? Who will rebuild Iran after the earthquake
of Friday, September 8,7 right under the treads of the tanks? The fragile polit­
ical edifice has not yet fallen to the ground, but it is irreparably cracked from
top to bottom.
In the torrid heat, under the only palm trees still standing, the last survivors
of Tabas work away at the rubble. The dead are still stretching their
arms to hold up walls that no longer exist. Men, their faces turned toward
the ground, curse the shah. The bulldozers have arrived, accompanied by the
empress; she was ill received. However, mullahs rush in from the entire re­
gion; and young people in Tehran go discreetly from one friendly house to
another, collecting funds before leaving for Taba. "Help your brothers, but
nothing through the government, nothing for it, " is the call that Ayatollah
Khomeini has just issued from exile in Iraq.
The earth that shakes and destroys things can also bring men together;
it divides the politicians and demarcates the adversaries more clearly than
ever. The state believes that it is possible to divert the immense anger from
the Black Friday massacre-anger that is now congealed into shock, but not
disarmed-toward this natural disaster. It will not succeed. The dead of Tab as
will lie down next to the victims of Djaleh Square and make demands on the
latter's behalf. A woman posed the question publicly: ''Three days of national
mourning for the earthquake, that's good; but does it mean that the blood
that was shed in Tehran was not Iranian as well?"
In Tehran's hotels, journalists coming back from Tabas the other night
were confused. Evidently, the soldiers stOod by impassively and let civilian
men and women dig up the earth themselves in order to turn up their dead.
Instructions? Incompetence? III will? The enigma of the army, here as everywhere.
On Monday, September 4, the crowd throws gladiolas at the soldiers; they
fraternize and they cry. On Thursday, September 7, the immense demonstration
rolls into the streets of Tehran; a few centimeters away from the machine
guns, pointed at them but silent. On Friday, September 8, machine guns and
perhaps bazookas were fired throughout the day; the troops sometimes had
the methodical coldness of a firing squad.
From the first days of Islam, and especially for the Shi'ites ever since the