Where the Shah Went Alone

Meditations on a life under tyranny

Iraj Isaac Rahmim from the July 2003 issue

(Page 4 of 4)

There was a gift shop at the start of the tour where we were encouraged to buy the guidebook and other paraphernalia and another, much larger shop after the tour where we found jewelry, plates, books, gum, chocolate, pencils, shirts, ties, paperweights, and God knows what else, all embossed, imprinted, engraved, stamped, or carved with the palace logo. On the way out we were led to a point far from the entrance with signs pointing us to the Royal Stables, which could be easily reached and visited for additional money.

As the day wore on, I felt unusually offended by the commercialization, the explanations, the money, and the monarchy itself. The same feelings returned the next day when I attended services at Westminster Abbey to hear the chorus. As in my childhood in Iran, a portion of the service revolved around blessings and prayers for the monarch and associates -- the queen, the royal family, and members of the Order of Bath. Now, so many years later, I could not bring myself to say "amen." Being there, surrounded by signs of aristocracy and royalty and the casual belief in their specialness, I could not accept that any person could be entrusted with power, with a halo, or even with respect simply due to an accident of birth. I repeated this once or twice to Laura, who accused me of being my usual melodramatic Middle Eastern self.

I remembered another trip we had taken, one to Washington, D.C., at the height of the cherry blossom season. The weather was mild, and the public spaces and walkways around the monuments were covered in the pink and white of the petals. We toured the White House, where I was surprised by -- and then warmly proud of -- its relative simplicity and modest size. There was no imprint of a single person or family. The place had a modern air of transience, of a functional building where occupants come to work and then go away. It was a comfortable place to be, full of simple white walls, seemingly adorned as an afterthought.

We also toured the Capitol on that trip. (It was easy to enter; we had not yet been visited by September 11.) We explored long corridors lined with statues and echoing meeting halls, and randomly, almost chaotically, mixed with other camera-toting tourists and formally attired staff and congressmen and women. There were several cafeterias and restaurants inside, frequented by visitors and hurried workers alike. We had lunch in one off a basement hallway next to some offices -- not a particularly memorable lunch, some sandwiches. I remember going, afterward, to the men's room near the smaller-than-expected Senate chamber. As I stood along with others in front of a row of urinals, the man next to me let out a quiet chuckle and turned to me.

"Top john in America," he said with a soft Midwestern accent.

I looked over. He was about 50 and slightly overweight, and wore a buttoned-up polo shirt, blue jeans and sneakers, and a logoed, two-color baseball cap.

"Yeah," I smiled and nodded.

I would like to think that my original construct for worth and self-worth, when applied to institutions, might not be too far off the mark after all. That a simple, functional White House is more valuable than the Marble Palace with its historic Peacock Throne; that America's Top John is worth more than Royal Stables; that a system accepting of its leaders' and citizens' frailties, a system in fact designed to accommodate such frailties, is worth more than a kingdom whose king never needs to use the toilet.

I came to study in the United States in 1978, a few months before the Shah and his family escaped from Iran for the last time. They took with them the remains of Reza Shah, dug up from his mausoleum. Some weeks later, after the success of the Revolution, I sat in front of the small portable television in my San Diego apartment and watched bulldozers destroy the structure under which Reza Shah's body had lain for decades, to be replaced, as a last insult to the final Persian dynasty, with public toilets.