The Rex Cinema Fire

We used to watch a lot of movies at cinema Rex, since it was one of the very few cinemas in Abadan, Iran, where I was studying for my engineering degree, which used to exhibit quite a few English movies, along with usual Persian movies. At the end of April, 1978 just a couple of weeks after I had turned twenty one, and a week after nowrouz, the Iranian new year, I became seriously ill, and was evacuated to Pakistan. Even though I was depressed by the fact that my studies had been disturbed so suddenly, and so drastically, and I was facing an uncertain future, in August that year, I thanked my stars, that I was not in Abadan, when I heard that my favourite haunt had been burned down by miscreants, in the middle of a show, and about four hundred and fifty people watching the family movie were burnt or asphyxiated to death.

I heard a lot of theories about who started the fire, but there was no conclusive evidence to prove any of them. The Islamic extremists apparently could not have done it, as suggested by the Shah’s government, since they had no quarrels against the ordinary folks watching the show, nor was it the first controversial film being shown there. Some pointed their finger at the dreaded secret police of the government, SAVAK(Sazmaan –e Etla’at- va- Amaniyat-e KeshWar). However, if it was the government behind the carnage, it was the most imprudent thing to do, since it was a landmark event of the revolution, which completely changed the perception of the silent undecided majority of the Iranian nation, who now started seeing the movement against the Shah, as their own struggle, and became fully committed to the mass movement to overthrow the tyrannical regime, due to the extreme feelings of distrust against the government arising out of the incident.

It is also said that scores of innocent people , including Captain Moner Taheri, whose trial and subsequent execution was widely considered as a sham, lost their lives even after the culmination of the revolution, after being falsely held responsible for the massacre. The burning of the Rex cinema seemed so sensless that some very sensible friends of mine who were more or less neutral in this matter suggested that a third hand was also suspected, a hidden hand which wanted to trigger a popular powerful movement against a regime which had long outlived its utility.

I had found the Iranians, very gentle and polite people, and in my five year stay in Iran, I had rarely seen Iranians indulging in violent physical confrontations, at worst they would preempt a physical fight by verbal harangue and verbal abuse, I could not visualize an Iranian deliberately planning to execute such act of cruelty and callousness. It is said the SAVAK, in order to create a force that could execute its orders without any remorse, picked children from orphanages, and then brainwashed them to raise an army of heartless individuals, who could carry out the orders of their superiors with a callousness which would be difficult to find in normal human beings. It is a lesson which has not been not been lost to the extremists in Pakistan, who find fodder for carrying out their campaign of suicide bombings among the juveniles studying in Madras. Even though the long series of bomb blasts in Pakistan, appear to be different than the Rex cinema incident, the effects they have produced among the masses seem to be the same, that is, producing mistrust for the government, and creating an atmosphere of uncertainty, among the people in which they become susceptible to the wildest suggestions, and the most preposterous rumours, a general mood e similar to the one that prevailed in Iran just after the Cinema Rex fire, after which the Shah’s regime was completely preoccupied with crisis management and nothing else, and never regained its authority over the people of Iran.

The atmosphere in Pakistan seems to be getting ripe for a situation, where, if the government does not regain the full confidence and trust of the people, it would be difficult to stabilize the situation again. In the beginning, it all looked like the uncoordinated incidents of extremists expressing their anger and frustration, but now the high degree of coordination and sophistication involved in recent series of bombings suggest deeper planning and a concerted effort to produce a mass psychosis which would weaken the hold of the establishment over the people. I have been a witness to the post-revolution anarchy that prevailed in Iran, when committees ruled the roost, since the administrative infrastructure that held the Iranian society together, had collapsed, and I sincerely hope that the enemies of Pakistan do not succeed in breaking down the administrative structure of the country, and throw the country into a state of extreme chaos, from which it would be difficult to come back, at least as it exists today.

One can only point out the dangers confronting the country, the solutions can be left to wiser people, and people who can influence the shaping of the destiny of the nation, but common sense suggests accepting changes peacefully, instead of putting the survival of the country at stake, and not only save the ordinary people from an indeterminate period of anarchy, but also keep its own hold on power, albeit to a reduced degree. Shah's regime could not sense the winds of change, before it turned into a hurricane, and nothing could stop it.

Incremental change is a healthy and positive development, and only creates more possibilities and opportunities, while stagnation and moribund attitudes only lead to frustration, and building up of dissent which sooner or later explodes in the form of an anarchic sudden change, and which is usually usually termed as a revolution, and I think in recent past we have seen enough of such internally and externally precipitated revolutions and the confusion that prevailed following them.