WRITEALOT: '... moving on to the rest of the world...'

In the light of this weekend’s terrible atrocities committed in Paris, I was drawn to some research I conducted a few years back.

When I was studying Iran for my thriller The Tehran Text, I was conscious of the time-frame in which the story would be set – 1978: the lead up to the Islamic Revolution from a British psychic spy’s perspective.

James Clavell wrote two interesting fast reads about that period – Whirlwind (1986) and its parallel love story novel Escape (1994). There were many other books I referenced, and one of them was Christopher de Bellaigue’s In the Rose Garden of the Martyrs (2004). Bellaigue was the Economist’s man in Tehran at the time of writing, and speaks fluent Farsi. He now lives in London with his wife Bita Ghezelayagh, who is an Iranian architect.

Like people the world over, Iranian men, women and children merely want to get on with their lives and are not particularly interested in the dogma of imams or religious leaders. However, one observation of a person in Bellaigue’s book tends to emphasize what most of us should know and fear: ‘The (Islamic) Revolution would start in Iran, before moving on to the rest of the world. Muslim countries would be first…’

These revolutionaries can bide their time, but that is their goal.

No dialogue, no compromise.

***

The Tehran Text published as an e-book by Crooked Cat Publications