Two Oral Histories; "Uprising of the Women of Mashhad on January 7, 1978" and "Shahid Mohammad Reza Shamsabadi"

Mohammad Ali Fatemi
Translated by: Zahra Hosseinian

2019-10-15

According to the Iranian Oral History Website, two more books of ‘Ganj: The Oral History of the Cultural Front of the Islamic Revolution Bureau’ have been published in 2019.

The First March of the New Phase of the Movement

One of these books is Woman's Liberation Day: The Oral History of Uprising of the Women of Mashhad on January 7, 1978, which has been written, and compiled by Somayyeh Zoghi, based on investigation made by her and Malihe Bakhshinejad and Neda Turkmancheh in the Oral History Department of Cultural Front of the Islamic Revolution Bureau, and has been published by Rahyar Publications.

The book, also known as the first work in a collection entitled "Women of the Revolution," has 182 pages and eight chapters as follows: Release from Prison (Mashhad, Women's Prison, January 7, 1978 / Tehran, Teacher Training University, January 8, 1936 / Tehran, Freedom of Hijab, 1944 / No Chador! / Mashhad, Granny's House / Cooks’ Tekyeh / Everyone Comes / Slogan; kill several birds with one stone / Men in charge of security), Uprising Against Taghut (Mashhad, Cooks’ Tekyeh, 08:00 am. on January 7, 1978! / shut up girl!), Dead End Alleys (Mashhad, opposite to Tomb of Nader Shah, around 12:00 pm on January 7, 1978 / Police Station NO.3 / I’m Just a reciter of eulogies! / Don’t Look for Your Daughter / Men in Chador / From Mashhad to Esfahan), Women's Prison (Mashhad, Women Block, Sunset of January 7, 1978), Struggling for Freedom (Mashhad, Mirza Javad Agha Tehrani’s House, January 10, 1978 / Mashhad, Attar Street, January 11, 1978 / Expulsion from University / Prisoner of 5^th block / Court), Women's Echo (Mashhad, Khorasan Women's Organization, January 11, 1978) The World Heard Too / Continuing the Path), Appendices (Appendix I: Introducing People; Appendix II: Visiting Again), Documents and Photos.

Somayyeh Zoghi wrote in the preface: "Every year the Mojasameh Square in Mashhad witnessed the celebration of ‘Kashf-e hijab’. Women and men who were in agreement with this policy, came together on January 7 to commemorate Reza Khan's action and threw flowers at the foot of his statue. In January of 1978, like every year, everything was ready for honoring Reza Khan. The cold and quiet winter had put the regime at ease, unaware that the veiled women of Mashhad were ready to ignite the flame of demonstration on this day that were not extinguished until freedom of Iranian men and women from Pahlavi’s tyranny.

Few people know that after the first demo of revolutionaries and followers of Imam Khomeini in the 1960s and 1970s, the first march of the new phase of the movement took place in Mashhad with presence of women in 1978, just two days before the famous Qom demonstration on January 9, 1978. The symbolic protest of women in Mashhad, along with the request for "releasing Muslim women in prisons", can even be recognized as a bridge between The Goharshad Mosque rebellion against Reza Khan in 1935 and the Islamic Revolution in 1979.

The importance of the women’s march in January 7 at Mashhad, occurred in political and cultural suffocation of Pahlavi era, in addition to concerns about losing the information over time, led to commencing the study of "Uprising of the Women of Mashhad on January 7, 1978" project by Oral History Department of the Cultural Front of the Islamic Revolution Bureau. It began in September 2015 with a study of the movement and initial identification of the participants in the march and continued with interviews and identification of other relevant individuals. Along the way, various questions arose: who formed this movement? Where did it start? What happened during the march? and ... Each interview responded to part of these questions. Concurrent with the interviews, the search for documents began at the Documentation Center of the Islamic Revolution which led to finding about twenty documents. On the other hand, searching in the existed press in the archives of the Astan Quds Razavi Research Foundation. The results of these studies can be seen in the documentation part of book. After this phase, the editing began.

At the research stage, three serious problems slowed the progress. First, there was a lack of sufficient background for research. In fact, there was no other written source than one or two books on the history of the revolution in Mashhad, each dealt with the issue in a single paragraph, as well as a fictional book about the life of Shahid Mehdi Foroudi. What has been published in some research or journalistic articles on sites and cyberspace has also been mixed with the uprising of 16 August and 7 January.

The second problem was the intermingling of information. The women of Mashhad had held a similar uprising on August 16, 1978, which had been incompletely recorded and led to ambiguity. Even some interviewees provided details of the August 16 uprising for January 7th. Unfortunately, this mistake has been befallen scholars of the history of the revolution. As a result of this intermingling of information, the August 16, 1978 uprising has been forgotten in the shadow of the January 7, 1978 uprising. At the Oral History Department of the Cultural Front of the Islamic Revolution Bureau, Of course, the project of recording women's movement on August 16 is also being independently reviewed and completed.

Third, some of the participants in the march did not accept to be interviewed, while interviewing these individuals might provide new dimensions for us. Unfortunately, these people refused to speak for various reasons, including personal issues or disagreements. In addition, there were no bridge of connection with some of the other persons involved.

However, the result of the three-year effort was that the movement had 150 to 200 participants, all women. A number of men also have been in charge of support and security. We had access to seventy names by the time of the book's editing on July 2019, about 50 of them identified and 39 were interviewed. Of the eleven-some remaining, six-some refused to speak and some had forgotten the story. In addition to the main text, the book has several appendices: In the first part, the people whose interview have been used in compiling the book and who have played a central role in this uprising, have been introduced. In the next part, we have published documents collected from the Astan Quds Razavi Documentation and Research Center. In the final part, we have presented a report of the commemoration of January 7th held by the Cultural Front of the Islamic Revolution Bureau in Mashhad in 2016."

In the Path of Oral History of Constructive Jihad

Another book is The Fear of the Last Earthwork: The Biography of Jihadist, Shahid Mohammad Reza Shamsabadi. This 240-page book, written and researched by Mohammad Asgharzadeh, is the first work in ‘Ganj: The Oral History of the Cultural Front of the Islamic Revolution Bureau’ which is about Construction Jihad. The Fear of the Last Earthwork has been published by Rahyar Publications in the Oral History Department of The Oral History of the Cultural Front of the Islamic Revolution Bureau.

The content of book was reads as follows: The Shahid's Day-by-Day Life Story, The Child of the Desert, Khomeini's Children, A Revolution in Development, In Absentia Proposing, War Supporter, Sumar Diaries, Kaviani Nights, In Regret of Earthwork, Rescue Bulldozers, Reyhaneh, Shahid's Will, Pictures, Sources. "In late 2014," Mohammad Asgharzadeh also wrote in the preface of the book, "Javad, son of Shahid Shamsabadi, suggested me to write his father's memoirs. Sabzevar's Construction jihad Office had interviewed with the family and friends of the Shahid for 24 hours. I started by reading this 24 hour interview. It was supposed to write a minimal book about him. The interviews were mostly about the ethics of the Shahid and other issues had been raised from here and there. But the good thing about these interviews was that it gave me a whole picture of Shahid’s life.

He joined to construction jihad due to a dream in June 1981 and was a member of jihad until March 1987. He was trained and developed in construction jihad. As a fresh workforce, he joined Jihad and later became a member of the Central Committee for Construction Jihad in Sabzevar, and commanding the Jawad al-Ameh Martial Engineering Battalion was his last responsibility. The variety of his activities is such that its memoirs actually cover most of the jihad committees and various jihad activities.

All of these were good features but I had to start a new project. The oral history of construction jihad was one of subjects which was considered by the Cultural Front of the Islamic Revolution Bureau in 2015. This concurrence led to introduce this book to the Oral History Department of the Cultural Front of the Islamic Revolution Bureau, and of course it was not supposed the ethical issues of Shahid Shamsabadi to be considered.

I started the interviews in June 2015. I did the first interview with Mohsen Emadipour, who knew Shahid Shamsabadi well and was with him until the last moment. He gave me a complete list of those who worked with him, and the interviews continued until October 2015, until I gathered all the information I wanted about almost every stage of the Shahid’s life. Two parts lacked enough information about the presence of him, one at the Rural Councils Affairs Coordination Center and at Ayatollah Montazeri's Base. I was finally able to complete the first part with a lot of research, but the period of his presence in Ayatollah Montazeri's Base remained incomplete. Until the last days of editing, I was looking to complete it, but in the end it didn't work out and I wrote this part using the Shahid's manuscripts.

The easiest format for editing the book was the single-memoir format, and the most difficult was the combination of first-person and third-person that I chose the harder way. I began editing of nearly 120 hours of interviews in November 2015. In editing the book, I have tried to convey the memories by first-person format in parts where I have first-hand narration, and to use third-person format in parts where information is not enough or incomplete. The whole content of the book has been derived from the information gained by interviews and I tried not to manipulate the narrators' speech and information. Reading the diary of a warrior, the reader is familiar with the spaces. But the most activities of the Shahid in construction jihad is unfamiliar for the reader, because the activities of jihadist in construction jihad have not been dealt with yet. This made writing a little difficult. It was not possible to point to his activities in the Councils Affairs Coordination Center without pre-familiarizing the readers with the activities of the said center. I had almost this problem in writing the whole activities of the Shahid. Although I did my best to incorporate these explanation and reports in the story, but there are some parts in the book that may have been report-like narration. Although I tried to interview with all the people who knew the Shahid, there are still people who have a word about Shahid Shamsabadi. The words I hope to hear them through publishing this book, and to enrich the content in the next edition."