Joel Rosenberg: The Twelfth Imam

“You-you’re an American!” the student screamed in Farsi.

Heads turned. Charlie felt himself suddenly surrounded. He noticed the kid’s right hand balling up into a fist. He saw into the kid’s vacant eyes, and for the first time, Charlie Harper feared for his life.

“Vous êtes fou. Je suis de Marseille!” he screamed back in flawless French, calling the kid crazy and claiming to be from France’s largest commercial seaport.

The vehemence of Charlie’s response and the fact that he wasn’t speaking English caught the student off guard. The kid went blank for a moment. He obviously didn’t speak French and for a split second seemed unsure how to proceed.

Charlie’s mind raced. He suddenly realized how quickly he’d be a dead man if these radicals discovered he was an American. He was tempted to kick the kid in the groin and dash off into the crowd. But there were now at least six or seven others just as large and every bit as angry.

One of them began to move against him, but just then a pickup truck filled with other young men-masked and screaming-hopped a curb and came barreling through the crowd. The driver laid on the horn and people went diving for cover. The truck screeched to a halt just to Charlie’s right. The young men in the back began firing machine guns in the air, and then, as the crowd finally cleared a direct path, the driver gunned the engine and drove headlong into Roosevelt Gate. The wrought-iron barricade crumpled in a twisted heap, and thousands of enraged students cheered and screamed and poured onto the embassy grounds as if they’d been shot from a cannon.

As quickly as he’d been grabbed, Charlie now found himself set free as his would-be attackers abandoned him and followed the crowd through the hole in the gates. His heart racing, adrenaline coursing through his veins, Charlie realized he’d been given an opportunity to escape. He seized the moment and began moving in the opposite direction, away from the main gate and toward a side street. He was still having trouble maneuvering through the rampaging mob, but moments later, he rounded the corner and caught a glimpse of the entrance to the consulate.

It was shut tight. He hesitated for a moment. Should he head there still? Should he try to get inside and help whoever was trapped there? The staff inside was mostly comprised of women who handled visa issues eight hours a day, day after day, year after year. They weren’t trained to handle revolutions. They had to be terrified. But could he really help them, or would he more likely be caught and brutalized instead?

Just then, he saw two consular employees quickly exit a side door. Elated, he was about to call out to them when a group of masked students armed with rifles came racing around the corner and surrounded the two young women. They jumped on them and began beating them mercilessly.

Charlie’s anger boiled. But there was nothing he could do. He was alone. He was unarmed. And again he thought of Claire back in their apartment-alone, terrified, and three and a half months pregnant.

The twenty-minute journey home took two hours.

Cautiously working his way through the clogged streets-and purposefully taking a circuitous route, checking constantly to see if anyone was following him-Charlie eventually made it back to apartment 902 in the upscale high-rise with the spectacular views of the Tehran skyline. He burst through the door, quickly locked it behind him, and hearing the AM radio still on in the bedroom, headed there to find his wife.

“Charlie, are you okay?” Claire said breathlessly, jumping up to embrace him.

“Yes,” he whispered, holding her close. “But what about you?”

“I’ve been terrified about you,” she whispered back, beginning to cry. “I thought I’d never see you again.”

“Sweetheart, I’m sorry,” he said as quietly and lovingly as he could. “But I’m fine. Don’t worry. I’m all right, just a little shaken up.”

It was a lie. He wasn’t fine. He was scared and unsure what to do next. But as guilty as he felt about lying to the woman he loved, he worried for her and the precious life growing within her.

“Are you still bleeding?” he asked.

“A little,” she said. “But I’ll be fine.”

It was Claire’s first pregnancy, and it hadn’t been easy. She’d suffered with violent morning sickness for the first couple of months and had lost nearly twenty pounds from an already-slight frame. More stress wasn’t exactly what the doctor had ordered for her or the baby.

Claire took a few deep breaths and tried to steady herself. Then pressed harder against him and spoke into his ear. “They’re saying a firefight has erupted outside the compound; they’re saying several people are dead and that dozens more are wounded. Is that true?”

“I don’t know,” Charlie said. “Everything’s so chaotic. I wouldn’t know what to believe at this point.”

No sooner had the words left his lips than came a special bulletin over Radio Tehran.

“We have a woman on the line who claims to have important news on the student uprising downtown,” the announcer said. “Okay, you’re on the air. What is your name?”

“I am one of the Muslim Student Followers of the Imam’s Line.”

“Yes, I understand, but what’s your name?”

“That doesn’t matter. What matters is our movement.”

“Fine,” the announcer said. “Where exactly are you calling from, and what is it that you want to say?”

“I am calling you from inside the American Embassy.”

There was a long, uncomfortable pause. The announcer seemed flustered. “What? Inside the… That doesn’t make any… Repeat what you just said. Is this a joke?”

“It is not a joke. We have occupied the American Embassy, the den of espionage. We have occupied every building. Every floor. I am presently standing behind the desk of the ambassador.”

“Come now,” the announcer said, incredulous. “We know the students have penetrated the outer walls and are protesting on the grounds of the compound. We’ve been reporting this for several hours. But we have no reports of any students getting inside one of the buildings.”

“Now you do.”

“But you cannot be in the ambassador’s office. You must be kidding.”

“I am not.”

“I don’t believe you.”

“I can prove it.”

“How?”

“Look in the telephone directory and find the embassy number,” the woman directed. “Then dial extension 8209 for the ambassador’s office.”

There was a long pause. Charlie turned to Claire to see how she was doing. But she didn’t return his gaze. She was fixated on the radio, almost as if in a trance. A moment later, the radio announcer could be heard flipping through a directory, then dialing the phone. It rang. And then…

“You have reached the United States Embassy in Tehran,” a woman’s voice said, first in English, then in Farsi. “The embassy is presently closed. Our office hours are from 9:00 a.m. to 5:00 p.m., Sunday through Thursday. The consulate is open for visa requests from 9:00 a.m. to 4:00 p.m., Sunday through Thursday. If you know the number of the person you are trying to reach…”

A moment later, the announcer had dialed through to the ambassador’s office and got the same woman back on the line.

“So it is true,” he said, astonished.

“So it is.”

“This is serious news. Okay, what is your message?”

“I have a communiqué,” the young woman said calmly.

“Very well, proceed. Let us hear it.”

“Communiqué Number One: In the name of God, the merciful, the compassionate…”

She then quoted from a statement Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini-the leader of the Islamic Revolution in Iran-had said just the day before. “… it is incumbent upon students to forcefully expand their attacks against America and Israel, so that America will be forced to return the criminal, deposed Shah.”