He Said: 'May the Father of the Revolution Burn'

Another page from the memories of Vahid al-Azma, the standard-bearer of the Supreme Leader. Permission to enter, come in and close the door. The Leader was sitting in his quiet room in front of the mirror, secretly smoking a pipe. Once or twice a year, he reminisces about the past. He said, 'Where are you, young man, may your memory be blessed.' Then he took a deep puff from the pipe and exhaled the smoke like a sigh into the mirror and said, 'May your father burn, Revolution!' I comforted the Leader a bit. He asked, 'What's the news?' I replied, 'Health.' He said, 'Has someone pushed the head of Social Security into the pool?' I replied, 'No, a tanker truck hit him on the way to the north.' He asked, 'Is the tanker okay?' I said, 'They say he was clean-handed.' He said, 'But he was giving trouble to others.' Then he said, 'The situation has worsened. We must be very careful. Set a meeting with these rogue elements so I can talk to them a bit more.' I said, 'By the way, it's the anniversary of the chain murders.' He sighed with smoke and said, 'Yes, it's been twenty years, but what good does it do?' Then he asked for public reports. I mentioned that there are some rumors regarding the execution of the Sultan of Coins. Some say how could one year, two years, ten years, and twenty years of imprisonment not suffice, and suddenly a straight execution? The Leader bitterly replied, 'Explain to them that this sentence was calculated. It means, with precise accounting of the number of coins multiplied by the articles of the economic corruption law divided by the number of inflation cases... Mojtaba knows the exact details... the death sentence came out. If he had bought seven or eight fewer coins, he would have received life imprisonment.' Then he said, 'Now, if we had shown mercy and didn't execute him, but imprisoned him, he would write letters from prison asking for his coins. He wanted his coins. Some people abroad would take this against us. We killed him, and his voice didn't come out. Some people won't become human until we execute them.' While he was gathering the pipe and tobacco bag and other items, he said, 'The enemy won't rest easy. If you ignore an economic corruptor, you will find yourself being sold in the market. America is behind it. Of course, America can't do anything, but just think, Vahid, Mr. Trump speaks, and the dollar rate goes up, I give a Friday sermon, and the price of cottonseed goes down! ... for what? That the Leader has said twice, 'A camel dreams of cottonseed.' Now, if I had an effect on the camel rate, I wouldn't care. You can't even tell the people a proverb anymore.' I comforted the Leader again. I said, 'You should use proverbs that don't create misunderstandings.' He said, 'You can't do anything with an ignorant nation and a bunch of sycophants. Last time, I don't know what the talk was that I said the neighbor's chicken is a goose, they went and imported chickens from Afghanistan here and sold them to the people instead of geese. The crowd rushed to buy, now there's a black market.' At that moment, they announced that the commander of the armed forces of the Islamic Republic had come to serve, the Leader said, 'Go outside and keep him busy while I put on my pants and come.' With greetings and wishes for success for you and your dentist, you are aware of the strike protests of the Haft Tappeh sugarcane workers who do not demand a Porsche or Benz car or a trip to the southern beaches of France and Florida, and do not want to go to London Clinic and Paris Hospital for treatment. They only want plain bread to take home and have the strength to provide cars for your children and recreational and medical facilities for you, otherwise they will walk and sit by the stream and survive with herbal tea and sugar. If they have pain somewhere, they will rub it themselves. Moreover, since it has been observed that some workers bring their hungry children to the protests, the government has sent the special anti-riot unit to scare the children, wearing black helmets and carrying long weapons and riding terrifying vehicles, pretending that when necessary, 'the pot will eat' the children. You know and are well aware that these measures have not worked and have not prevented the hungry workers from protesting and striking, and imprisoning all their representatives has not yielded results, and imprisoning that female journalist has not stopped the news from reaching us. Just for your amusement, I should mention that one of the detained workers is named 'Hope Freedom'! Sometimes humor cannot be spoken or written, but it happens. It has happened elsewhere: this story is not from Chekhov that at a press conference, when the discussion of press freedom did not reach a conclusion, the head of the special clergy court picked up a sugar bowl and threw it at the press representative and then, to maintain the rhyme, attacked him with his teeth and bit him. You remember that, right? You executed this humor. I say, how about you go and bite the striking workers now? Early in the morning, hide in a corner at the strike site, and when the first worker comes, jump out and bite him because he is the earliest riser. If he protests, say, 'I also bit Isa the Early Riser, I really like to bite early risers! If I don't bite an early riser, I will die.' Your honesty that has killed everyone causes no worker to dare to go to the protests early. So, gradually, the workers will be late, the strike will falter, and you will tell the fleeing CEO to 'pour the rest into your account.' During this time, you have repeatedly poured clean water on the workers' hands that 'the CEO of the company is not imprisoned and is fleeing,' and surely the workers have no right to say that a government whose leader is so majestic and whose judiciary is so powerful and whose judiciary has such a bold deputy and a spokesperson who is so loquacious - who even whistles in interviews - to hell with it that one of its CEOs is fleeing, give the workers their rights. Dear Mr. Ejei! You know that among the representatives of the workers whom you have arrested, one of them is the most resilient! 'Ismail Bakshi' has said, 'If I die, no one has the right to bury my corpse. He said, 'Take my dead body and place it in the square; my corpse will also shout protests!' Oh, how delightful it would be for a corpse to be in the square, and you suddenly, like a fierce lion, come to the square and take a hearty bite from the deceased! What a photo it would be, what a photo! Foreign media would publish it and write in various languages underneath, 'The spokesperson of the judiciary, Jim-Alef, opened his mouth again!' No more to say. May your heart be happy, your head be light, and your teeth be sharp. Send my regards to your dentist. Hadi Khorsandi Hadi Khorsandi is a prominent Iranian writer, poet, and satirist residing in London. He has been sharing his writings with Iranian audiences and Persian speakers for years, presenting satirical pieces in the form of weekly letters to the audience of Radio Farda.