A Review of the Book from the Palace Garden to the Palace of Dreams: Memoirs of a Former Tudeh Party Member

I Was Not but the Small Beer

“In the Tudeh Party, I was not but the small beer”, writes a former member of the Tudeh Party in his autobiography regarding his activities in the said political party many years later. However, Abdolmajid Majid-Fayyāz was a known figure not only because of his membership in the Tudeh Party but also due to his position as the managing director of the magazine of Hirmand of Khorāsān and an attorney in the city of Mashhad. His manuscripts retelling his life story have been posthumously published under the title of From the Palace Garden to the Palace of Dreams just a few years after his death. His autobiography, published in two volumes, chronicles his political activities in the Tudeh Party and the events of the 1950s. The author reveals frankly in the very beginning pages of the book: “I was not but the small beer in the Tudeh Party. I was but one of those bewitched by the beautiful words of Anvar Khame`i and his cohorts who were wise enough to forsook the party once it headed in the direction that meant truncheon from left, right and centre; imprisonment; or execution”.

Majid-Fayyāz wrote his book in exile in London, for he was forced to defect to England after the Islamic Revolution in 1979, which resulted in his imprisonment and confiscation of his possessions. But, who was he really and what had he committed that he was condemned to such a fate? He himself explains in his autobiography: “On Bahman 22nd, 1357(1979); the date of the victory of the Revolution; my wife and I were in London, having traveled there to check on our four daughters' educational status. It was due to our absence during thepost-revolutionary hurly-burly that individuals who even had no revolutionary identity used our absence and proximity of our house to the buildings of the Intelligence and Security Organization of Mashhad as a pretext to confiscate our house. Following their foray into our home, the Islamic Revolutionary Court published a warrant for my prosecution on the mass media”. Majid-Fayyāz, nevertheless, returns to Iran, is imprisoned for a while, lays his signature upon the confiscation papers, and joins his
family back in London.

Abdolmajid Majid-Fayyāz was the owner of Hirmand of Khorāsān, which published between the year 1958 and 1965 was the newspaper of the politically dissent intellectuals. It was perhaps his journalism background, attorney job, and his activities in the Tudeh party that brought upon him the negative scrutiny of SAVAK. His maternal and paternal grandfathers were popular figures in Mashhad and two custodians of Astān Quds. He was born in the Qasr (Palace) Garden, a famous garden in Torqabeh (small town near Mashad) whose name he later borrowed metaphorically for his naming of his autobiography. His deep desire to pursue political activities, his status as a graduate of Tehran University School of Law, and his Marxist tendencies during his education rendered him all susceptible to embrace a political life; however, he never did so, for according to his autobiography, his Marxist tendencies were more or less intellectual, and his knowledge of Marxism remained superficial with him having no desire to delve further. Moreover, his literary passion combined with his knowledge of the French language and his translating French poems and literary works led him to make the acquaintance of Sadeq Hedāyat and Jalāl Al-e-Ahmad.
Fayyāz's autobiography is literally rich and well-structured, and his political chronicles, and in particular the accounts of the events during his childhood and adolescence, indicate a style similar to that of a novel; notwithstanding this, his book may serve as a source to better know the social ambiance of the then Mashhad. The first volume describes Majid-Fayyāz's childhood until the Coup d’état of the 28th of Mordād (August, 18th) with the events of August, 1941, when the Red Army entered Mashhad, and people`s reaction being the main fociof the author.

The second volume recounts the years during which Hirmand was published and the foreign travels of the author. The Tudeh Party is indeed a leitmotif of the book with the author struggling to back the Tudeh party in all periods of history and justify its actions to the degree that he ardently condemns Khalil Maleki and Jalāl Al-e-Ahmad's breaking off from the Tudeh Party as wrong. Majid-Fayyāz's sympathy for the Tudeh Party is all too obviousin his autobiography to spare the National Front of Iran and Dr. Mohammad Mosaddeq. Nonetheless, this book entails interesting accounts of the Bombardment of Goharshād Mosque and the unveiling of women by Rezā Khān's orders, as well as the repercussions of these two major events in Mashhad.

Maryam Shabāni
Translated by: Katayoun Davallou

Source: The Supplement of the Monthly Magazine of Mehr-Nāmeh, 9, Esfand 1389 (March, 2011), p. 12