The Shah-era Gentlemen in Ties and the Elderly Women of Mellat Park: A Struggle Rarely Seen

S. Rouzbeh – Some struggles are never recorded in history. No photograph or film of them survives, and their names do not appear in books. Sometimes all that remains is the memory of someone who happened to be there and saw a scene that took on a different meaning years later.

One such memory takes me back to Tehran’s Mellat Park in the late 1990s.

In those days, following the events at the university dormitories and the different political atmosphere that emerged after 2 Khordad, Tehran felt different. Social media did not yet exist, the internet was not available as it is today, and many of the news reports, analyses and calls to action from opponents of the Islamic Republic reached people through Persian-language radio stations based abroad.

One day, I heard on one of the radio stations that a gathering had been called for in Mellat Park.

More than the call itself, because it had come from royalists, one question occupied my mind:

Would anyone really come, and did the monarchy have supporters in Iran?

I went to Mellat Park to see what would happen.

Friends and acquaintances who frequented the park told me that for some time a group of elderly, well-dressed people had been coming there. They would stand together and talk about politics, Iran’s past and what had happened to the country.

But what I saw was different from my idea of a political gathering.

I came across fresh-faced, determined, clean and well-groomed people; most of the women and men appeared to be over seventy.

Many of the elderly men were dressed very smartly: suits, polished shoes and ties that stood out among the men’s clothing. Elderly women, too, were present beside them, well-groomed and dignified.

They had no large placards in their hands, and there was no sign of an organisation. Their struggle, at least as I saw it, took another form: standing, talking, recalling the past and passing on their experience to the young people who gathered around them.

One spoke about the Pahlavi era, another about the army and his years of military service. A man recalled the Second World War, and the hardships and famine of those days. In his view, the younger generation did not know what Iran had lived through; if the Islamic Republic remained, he said, nothing would be left for future generations but slaughter, poverty and ruin.

The gist of a sentence I heard repeatedly in their conversations was this:

‘You young people did not see those days.’

They wanted to pass on their own account of the past to a generation whose understanding of the Pahlavi era had come largely from school textbooks and the Islamic Republic’s media.

When I think of that scene today, I see that those people’s struggle may have seemed insignificant at first glance. What threat could a few elderly men and women in one corner of a park pose to a government?

But apparently, the government could not even tolerate that.

Some time later, the police and plainclothes officers entered the park. They broke up a gathering where there had been no slogans or placards, just people recounting memories, and arrested many of the elderly women and men, taking them away. What was striking was that they did nothing to the young people or anyone else.

People stood watching.

But I was curious to know what would become of them. I had got to know one of the old men who had been there; I had liked the way he spoke and his experiences. He was arrested, so I went back to the usual meeting place several times, hoping I might see him again.

At last, one day, I saw him.

I asked him, “What happened?”

He told me a story I have never forgotten.

He said, “They just arrested us like that. Some of us had walking sticks. One had prostate problems, another had some other illness … Some couldn’t even stand for long, because some of them were over 85. They took us to the Vanak police station and said we weren’t allowed to move until the intelligence officers arrived.”

Then he laughed and continued: “For us old men, just standing there was torture. One wanted water, another needed the toilet, another’s medication was due. A few of the officers were left dealing with nothing but taking one person to the toilet, fetching water for another and keeping an eye on someone else’s medication. Two people also became unwell, and they had to call an ambulance.”

He said that one of the officers there had gradually become exasperated.

“He said, ‘What on earth have these people done? You’ve brought a bunch of old women and old men here. What am I supposed to do with them?’”

Then, turning to them, he had asked in the same exasperated tone: “Don’t you have lives of your own? Why do you come here?”

The old man said, “I replied, ‘For awareness. For Iran’s freedom, for the next generation.’”

The officer had smirked.

But for me, the story became more interesting from that point on.

The old man said the officer had spoken by phone with a superior and described their situation—their illnesses, their ages, and the fact that he simply did not know what to do with this group. After a while, they were taken to have their details recorded and their photographs, addresses and telephone numbers taken. In the end, they were released after signing an undertaking and having relatives come to the station.

Then he said something that stayed in my mind for years: “I realised they aren’t afraid only of women’s veils; they’re afraid of anything that signals difference. They called us ‘Shah-era types’ because we were clean and well turned out, our shoes were polished and we wore ties.”

Perhaps that was just the old man’s personal interpretation, but to me it took on a deeper meaning.

A government that feels threatened by a few old men in ties and a few elderly women in a corner of a park does not have a problem only with a slogan or a political group; it has a problem with a memory that has survived outside the official narrative.

I asked him, “Then why did you come back? Will you come again?”

He gave an answer that, after all these years, I still remember: “We have more or less lived our lives. Our hearts ache for Iran and for the future of the young. I will continue my own struggle as far as I can. We have a duty to sow our seeds: to acquaint these people and the younger generation with the past. And I believe that, one day, these young people will eventually return to their past.”

After all these years, I understand the meaning of that sentence more fully.

That day, perhaps I thought that struggle meant large crowds, slogans, demonstrations and direct confrontation with the government. But those old men and women showed me another kind of struggle.

Sometimes, struggle can be just this: a seventy-year-old man leaving home in the morning, putting on his jacket, polishing his shoes, straightening his tie and going to a park to tell a young person who has never seen his era: “There is another account, too.”

Perhaps nobody knows the names of many of them.

Perhaps many of them are no longer alive today.

I do not even remember that old man’s name.

But his words are still alive in my mind.

Years later, I too came to believe that Crown Prince Reza Pahlavi could play a pivotal role in the transition from the Islamic Republic. In Dey 1404, when he called on people to turn out in large numbers in the streets and I saw images of those vast crowds, I was involuntarily reminded of that park and the small circle of elderly men and women.

I thought that perhaps the man was no longer among us.

Perhaps many of those women and men who once came to Mellat Park with walking sticks, jackets and ties now lie beneath the earth.

But the seeds they sowed did not necessarily perish.

They passed something on to the young people who stood beside them. Those young people, in turn, told the next generation. Memories were handed down, and the accounts that were meant to be forgotten were not forgotten.

This may be one of history’s small but important lessons: “No struggle should be judged by the size of its crowd alone.”

Sometimes a few old men and women in a corner of a park do something whose consequences are not visible that very day.

They sow seeds.

And the person who sows a seed does not always live to see the tree.

Today, in a time when news of killings, imprisonment and executions can wear down even the most hopeful people, I find myself thinking again of that old man’s reply.

“Then why did you come back?”

And his answer: “Because our hearts ache for Iran, for those who come after us, and for the young.”

Perhaps it is our generation’s turn to ask ourselves the same question: “What can we do, and what is our responsibility towards those who come after us?”

That old man may no longer be alive; but I can testify that one day in Tehran’s Mellat Park, I saw an elderly man who, after arrest, illness, humiliation and being made to sign an undertaking, had returned to that very park.

He had no weapon.

No power.

No media.

He had only a tie, a few memories and great hope for Iran’s future.

I wish I could see him once more. Kiss his hands and say to him, and to people like him:

The seeds you planted did not fail to bear fruit.

You did not live to see everything that happened after you, but today another generation is shouting the same wish for freedom in the streets—a generation chanting, “This is the final battle; the Pahlavis will return.”

Those women and men may not have been numerous, but they had great hope.

And today my question is this:

If they, so few in number, at that age, with illness, walking sticks and medicine, and facing the risk of arrest, still had hope and returned to that same park, how much right do we have to hope today, seeing a new generation and a broader movement?

Perhaps, amid all the wounds, killings, prisons and executions, one of our duties is to continue our struggle for freedom with fervour and enthusiasm. The faith they had was a belief in an unseen future; but today we saw the people’s splendour and greatness on 18 and 19 Dey, and our duty is to keep this hope alive and carry on.

I also felt it was my duty to remember those anonymous women and men, record their memories and pass them on to the next generation.

Because history does not always begin in great squares.

Sometimes history begins on a park bench, with an old man’s walking stick, a neatly knotted tie and a simple sentence:

“For awareness. For Iran’s freedom, for the next generation.”