Paying high cost for publishing Imam Khomeini photo

Translated by M. B. Khoshnevisan

2021-12-14

In 1978, one of my friends had bought a house near the newly-established Niroogah area in Towhid Square. The house had also a shop. He told me that you could use the shop for any kind of activity and sent his sons who were very young at that time and now they are among the authorities to help me. There, we established a bookstore called "Nashr-e Imam". Our main activity there was the circulating of the images of the Imam and the distributing of the forbidden books, especially the Treatise of the Imam. At that time, Mr. Hassan Azari, the son of Ayatollah Azari Qomi, printed these and secretly sent them to the door of the house, and we also distributed them in a limited way in that bookstore. Of course, we also used Mr. Arabestani's printing house to print Imam's photo secretly and semi-secretly because there was no sensitiveness on him. We would order as many as we wanted and he would print them. Payam Printing House at Ghaffari Crossroads belonged to Mr. Arabestabi, who printed both the regime's communiques and the photos of the Imam. I saw many times that the documents, photos and communiques of the regime were published there in large numbers. Of course, he printed the Imam's photos secretly, and we bought them in bulk, and he charged them for us really expensive; that is, much more than the amount that was spent. Because we did not trust anyone else, even though others did not trust us, we would give them whatever amount they wanted. I remember it cost 4 Rials for each photo, which was a lot of money in those days; That is, he received four to five times more than the fixed price from us. People came from different cities to buy and take the Imam's photos. Our work had no profit-making aspect. Because of this, I borrowed some money from the Resalat Interest-Free Fund. The bookstore was, firstly, a hangout for religious and revolutionary forces to get to know each other, and secondly, it was a place for distributing the treatise, leaflets and photos of the Imam. The regime forces came several times and inspected it and disturbed Mr. Javadzadeh's son, who worked there as a salesman, but no major incident happened.

Source: Sahebi, Mohammad Javad, In the Struggles of Politics and Culture (Memoirs of Mohammad Javad Sahebi), compiled by Hojatollah Alimohammadi, Tehran, Cultural and Artistic Institute and Publications of the Center for Islamic Revolution Documents, 2014, pp. 107-108.