women who had toted submachine guns in the streets of
Teheran, calling themselves “the commandos of
Zaynab,” were quickly assigned to more traditional
duties. Many of Shariati’s teachings were soon declared
un-Islamic, and his image, once featured alongside
Khomeini on everything from posters to postage stamps,
disappeared from view.
The Karbala story was still used, though in a far more
deliberately manipulative way. In the Iran-Iraq War of
the 1980s, thousands of Iranian boys were given
headbands inscribed with the word “Karbala,” then sent
oʃ to become human minesweepers. Wave after wave of
them ran headlong into Iraqi mineɹelds to be blown up
to clear the way for Iranian troops, each of them in the
desperate faith that he was heading for a martyr’s
paradise. Frontline troops were inspired to sacriɹce by
visits from singers and chanters of Karbala
lamentations, the most famed of whom was known as
“Khomeini’s Nightingale.” Khomeini had swept into
power with the help of the Karbala factor, then taken
control of it, taming it into the docility and obedience
Shariati had warned of.
But the newly proven power of Karbala was not to be
so easily controlled in the country of its birth, Iraq,
where it was soon to bind together not only the past and
the present, but also the future.