How to win a revolution, at a very high toll
From Ryszard Kapuscinski, Shah of Shahs:
thanx,
Tiassa
From Ryszard Kapuscinski, Shah of Shahs:
The method of jihad might depend on the occasion.The anniversary of the Shah's departure andthe fall of the monarchy was approaching. To mark the occasion, the television showed dozens of films about the revolution. In many ways, they were all alike. The enormous procession always made up Act One. It's difficult to convey the dimensions of such a procession. It is a human river, broad and boiling, flowing endlessly, rolling through the main street from dawn till dusk. A flood, a violent flood that in a moment will engulf and drown everything. A forest of upraised, rhythmically menacing fists, portentous forest. A clamoring throng chanting, Death to the Shah! Very few close-ups of faces. The cameramen are fascinated by the sight of this incipient avalanche; they are stricken by the dimensions of what they see, as if they found themselves at the foot of Mount Everest. Over the last months of the revolution these surging millions marched through the streets of every city. They carried no weapons; their strength lay in their numbers and their ardent, unshakeable determination.
Act Two is the most dramatic. The cameramen stand on the roofs of buildings, filming the unfolding scene from above, a bird's-eye view. First they show us what's happening in the street. Two tanks and two armored ars are parked there. Soldiers in helmets and bulletproof vests have already taken up firing positions on the sidewalks and road. They wait. Now the cameramen show the approaching demonstration. First it appears in the distant perspective of the street, but soon we'll see it close up. Yes, there's the head of the procession. Men are marching, and women and children, too. They're wearing white, symbolizing readiness to die. The cameramen show us their faces, still alive. Their eyes. THe children, already tired but calm, want to see what's going to happen. The crowd, marching directly toward the tanks, never slowing down or stopping--a hypnotized crowd? spellbound? moonstruck?--marches as if it sees nothing, as if wandering across an uninhabited earth, a crowd that at this moment has already begun to enter heaven. Now the picture trembles because the cameramen are trembling. A thump, shooting, the whizz of bullets, screams coming from the television. Close-up of a tank turret, pivoting from left to right. Close-up of an officer, comic relief, his helmet has fallen over his eyes. Close-up of the pavement, and then th image flies violently up tthe wall of the house across the street, over the roof and the chimney into blank space with only the edge of a cloud visible, and then an empty frame and blackness ....
The last act is the postmortem. The dead are lying here and there, a wounded man is dragging himself toward a gate, ambulances speed past, people are running, a woman is crying, holding out her hands, a thickset, sweaty man is trying to lift someone's body. The crowd has retreated, dispersed, ebbed in chaos, down small side streets. A helicopter skims low over the roofs. The usual traffic has already begun a few blocks away, the everyday life of the city.
I remember one such scene: Demonstrators are marching. As they pass a hospital, they fall silent. The marchers do not want to disturb the patients. Or another sight: Boys trail at the end of the procession, picking up litter and throwing it into trashcans. The road that the demonstrators walked on must be clean. A fragment of a film: Children are returning home from school. They hear shooting and run toward the bullets, to where soldiers are firing on demonstrators. The children tear sheets from their notebooks and dip them in the fresh blood on the sidewalks and then, holding the bloody pages aloft, run through the streets displaying them to passers-by, as a warning--Watch out! There's shooting over there! The film from Isfahan was shown several times. A demonstration, a sea o fheads,is crossing a vast square. Suddenly the army opens fire from all sides. The crowd rushes to escape amid cries, tumult, disorderly flight, and in the end the square empties. Just at the moment when the last surviviors flee out of sight, leaving the naked surface of the enormous square, we notice that a legless invalid in a wheelchair has been left at the very center. He too wants to get away, but one wheel is stuck (the film does not show why). He instinctively hides his head between his arms as bullets are flying all around. Then he desperately works the wheels, but instead of moving, he turns around and around in one spot. It's such a shocking spectacle, the soldiers stop firing for a momeent, as if awaiting special orders. Silence. We see a broad empty vista, deep in the center of which, barely perceptible from this distance, looking like a maimed, dying insect, the crooked figure of a solitary human being is still struggling, as the net tightens and closes. They shoot again, with only one target left. Soon motionless for good, he remaind (according to the film's narrator) at the center of the square for an hour or two, like a public monument. (123-126)
thanx,
Tiassa