‘Welcome’ (in English) to the Ayatollah’s birthplace

Press, 8 January 1980, Page 13

‘Welcome’ (in English) to the Ayatollah’s birthplace

There is a heart-shaped swimming pool, iced over at this time of year, in the garden of the house where the Ayatolloh Khomeiny was born. His family were comfortably off members of the local religious establishment, and on their land stands a 300-year-old watch-tower into which the villagers used to flee, with their belongings at the approach of bands of thieves. The swimming pool is of relatively recent date, as is the villa on top of the original house. The latter consists of four semi-basement rooms made from mud and straw where Khomeiny was born. It is a small, windowless storeroom with a pile of onions in one corner and sacks of flour in another. Virtually no attempt has been made to make the village or the house a centre for pilgrimage. There is a roadside notice which says, in Persian: “The birthplace of the Imam Khomeiny, Iran’s revolutionary leader,” with the word “Welcome” underneath in English. On the front door, “Imam’s house” is written in fresh blue paint. That is all. Hardly any visitors from the outside world come to this remote spot at the junction of four dirt tracks in a mountainous region 198 miles south of Teheran. Foreigners are stared at, journalists unheard of. The few pilgrims are overjoyed when they track down the Khomeiny household. They kiss the ground and a»:k to take away handfuls of the ground where he walked as a child. In a nearby mud house I met one of the few people

still alive who knew Khomeiny in childhood. Hadj Mossayeb, four years younger than the 79-year-old Khomeiny, was a gardener at his house as a boy and was later a cook at the holy city of Qom. Sitting wrapped in a blanket on his bed, with tears streaming down his face, he explained that he might never be able to go to Qom again because he was too ill.

“As a child, the Imam was very kind to other children and participated in all discussions,” Mossayeb said. “When there was a quarrel he was always the one to try to make peace.”

At around the age of five the young Khomeiny went to a small religious school run by a mullah named Sheikh Fazdlolla Rajaie, Mossayeb said. There were 15 boys- in the class, which was only for those whose parents could pay.; (Mossayeb himself remained illiterate). ■ ~

The boys studied “maktabkhaneh” — religious education based on the Koran. .For entertainment they took part in religious enactments of scenes from the Koran known as “tazieh” to the accompaniment of drums. The hours of work were long, and discipline was harsh. The boys were beaten with a stick on the soles of their feet for bad behaviour or for forgetting passages of the Koran. . .

After lessons the children would play a game which involved trying to guess in which pile of soil a seed was hidden.

Khpmeiny was the youngest of six children, five of whom are still alive. His childhood name was Rouhollah Moussavial, and the surname derived from his village was added when he was given his first identity card. He left Khomein at the age of 12 for a religious school at Arak 40 miles away, and acquired his first religious turban at the age of 13.

The house is surrounded by a high wall and inside the compound are apple and pear trees. A clear mountain stream runs through the grounds. Originally the family grew fruit and vegetables to sell in the local marbet. Khomeiny’s father was a mullah and a descendant of a long line of mullahs. When he died the house passed to Khomeiny’s elder brother, who still owns it, though only a caretaker and his family now live there.

The old people of the village deny the commonly believed story that Khomeiny’s hatred for the Shah is based on the fact that his father was murdered by Savak, the Shah’s secret police. They say his father was shot,

when Khomeiny was three:,'! by a man named Jafartj Gholikhan, one of four | major local landowners j with whom Khomeiny’s l father was in frequent dis* j pute, since he sided with; ! the poor peasantry. j Khomeiny’s roots pro-. ’ vide several clues to his character. Khomein is an i isolated place on a bleak I high plateau surrounded by snow-covered moun- j tains. It is frequently cut; : off, and the road by which I I entered the village was I almost blocked by snow j drifts, although the main i winter snows had not yet arrived.

Until the revolution, the

biggest mountain dominating the village was the exclusive hunting domain of the Shah’s brother. Notices still warn of the illegality of hunting and fishing. Its 24,000 inhabitants are known for their taciturnity, and it is uncanny to see them sitting in the two local restaurants staring silently downwards as Khomeiny himself is inclined to do.

They are unexpressive, even about the village’s most famous son, though most can point you to the house, which is up a narrow alley just off the main avenue (whose name has been changed fromPahlavi to Imam Khomeiny). The shop windows contain fewer portraits of Khomeiny than you would expect, and'many are very old, showing him as a middle-aged man with no more than touches of grey in his beard.

On maps of Iran, Khomein’s significance is marked by a sign indicating a petrol pump. There is one hotel, consisting of four rooms round a central vestibule. To cross this to reach your room, you have to take off your shoes, since the owner, Gholamreza Ismail, uses the area for prayer.

There was a cinema but it was gutted in the revolution. There is a small library with Persian translations of .the speeches of Abraham Lincoln and the essays of Bacon, as well as the writings of Khomeiny and Mozzadeq.

In the middle of the village is a roundabout, and at the centre of that is the stump of a toppled statue of the Shah and a temporary structure, decked out with coloured lights and flowers, to mark the recent death of a young village bachelor. The villagers say the Shah deliberately neglected Khomein because of his hatred of Khomeiny. Its hospital was starved of equipment and medicine, and a new textile plant was named after the next village.

lAN MATHER, of the “Observer’’ London, was the first journalist to visit Ayatollah Khomeiny’s birthplace. He found several clues to his character in conversation with the dour villagers.