The Outsider in the Life and Work of Jalal al-e Ahmad

British Society for Middle Eastern Studies

The Outsider in the Life and Work of Jalal al-e AhmadAuthor(s): Robert WellsSource: Bulletin (British Society for Middle Eastern Studies), Vol. 8, No. 2 (1981), pp. 108-114Published by: Taylor & Francis, Ltd.Stable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/194541 .

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THE OUTSIDER IN TE: LIFE AND WORK OF JALAL AL-E AMAD

Robert Wells

Editor's Note: This paper was read at the Society's Eighth Annual

Conference. See my note on the special topic prefacing F.Moussa-

Mahmoud's paper on p.99.

i

'This man has, I repeat, no place in a community whose basic

principles he flouts without compunction'' So speaks the

Prosecutor at the trial of Meursault in Camus's Outsider.

Condemned for displaying none of the accepted emotional responses, Meursault is equally found guilty of being a poor white in a

colonial country; a stranger to both French colonial culture and

indigenous Arab culture.

Jalal Al-e Ahmad, whose translation of Camus's Outsider was

first published'in 19492 was a Farsi-speaking, Tehran-based

intellectual, one of a group of radicals who, through consistent

opposition to the Iranian Government in the years following the

abdication of Reza Shah, were in danger of becoming as alienated from their environment as Meursault was from the propriety of the

French 'colon',on the one hand, and the vividness of Arab culture

on the other.

The system to which Al-e Albmad was opposed was, he felt, one

of wholesale, indiscriminate Westernization, accompanied by

dictatorship, corruption and political repression, supported by international capital and the Western imperialist governments. The West founded and supported the Pahlavi dynasty, he argued, in

order to exploit Iran economically, and encouraged both Shahs in

their efforts to centralize and Westernize. Neither of the Pahlavi

Shahs, then, as middlemen on behalf of the West in the economic

exploitation of Iran, acted in the interests of the Iranian people.

Thus, the measures of Westernization, whether in education, the

judiciary, the development of a state capitalist economy, industrial development or agricultural reform, were to be opposed --

not by virtue of an inherent antagonism to progress, but because

these measures were not in the first instance introduced for the

benefit of the people, but for the purpose of strengthening and

facilitating the alliance of the imperialist West and the Pahlavi

Shahs in the exploitation of Iranian resources and the Iranian

people.

The direction of the modernization of Iran under the Pahlavis was, then, felt by Al-e Ahmad to be superficial, socially and economically

disruptive and politically corrupt. He considered that the regire

ignored the environment in which the technology of Westernization was

placed, and the social and economic background against which it had

to operate. Westernization was imposed upon Iran, Iranian

institutions and the Iranian people. Existing institutions, economic

and social relations and cultural traditions were held to be backward,

and the standard of measure of success was held to be quantitatively

108



measured progress, and control.

However, although Al-e Ahmad, like many of his contemporaries, was opposed to the system, and was thus an outsider by choice, he was also a product of the very system he sought to oppose. Educated within the Westernized school system, he rejected his

religious family background, attended the University of Tehran,

and,between 1944 and 1953, was involved in the Tudeh Party and the socialist Toilers Party and the Third Force. Although rejecting political party activity in 1953, he still considered his views influenced fundamentally by Marx and Lenin and refined by other

European socialists such as Antonio Gramschi. His literary influences were equally rooted in Europe -- in Celine, Sartre, Camus, Gide and Malraux. Accordingly, he was, by reason of his education and influences, cut off from the ordinary people of Iran, the bulk of whom had not benefited from such an education, and was cut off from his roots.

Al-e Ahmad's position as an opposition writer in Pahlavi Iran was unenviable: the government was pursuing a course to which he was opposed; it had educated him away from his traditional roots;

through censorship and political repression it controlled his means of expression; and the high rate of illiteracy served only to confirm his feelings of isolation. By choice he had no role within the system. By force of circumstances he had no role without it.

Writing in the mid-1960s, Al-e Ahmad observed:

'The Iranian intellectual in such an environment is helpless. He is alone. Neither does the government accept his words, nor do the people read him... The religious authorities have also excommunicated him because he professes to be

irreligious... our true intellectual is one who is cut off in his relations with the people.'3

Al-e Alhmad was, however, a reluctant outsider. He believed in

opposition, activity and commitment. Taking his model from Sartre's engagee literature, he sought in his writings to question, oppose,awaken and liberate.

ii The Headmaster (Modir-e madrase), published in 1958, reflects the

predicament of the Iranian opposition intellectual in relation to the system. It shows how and why he was outside it. The book is a fictionalized account of part of his two years as the headmaster of an elementary school in Tajrish, north Tehran. It starts with the narrator -- the Headmaster -- obtaining a job at the school and ends with his resignation. The chapters in between deal

chronologically with a series of incidents which occur at, or are connected with, the school and revolve around teachers, parents and administrative and bureaucratic difficulties. In the course of the

book, the narrator's position changes from his being outside the course of events, to his being drawn in by his concern for the children and teachers, to his resigning in anger and protest against a system which does not function in the interests of the people and

109



is corrupt. His resignation represents his condemnation of the

system.

On taking the job, the Headmaster hopes to find a quiet niche where he can remain an outsider. He wants an easy option, an

escape from an educational system with which he is already disillusioned. He does not want to teach; he wants to lock himself

away, and let the world out there get on with itself.. He writes:

'I'll go and close the door behind me and get on with my own work, free from the headache of running a class. The usher or somebody else will look after things, and there is a system which doesn't need my interference.'4

However, his humanitarian concern for the welfare of the children results in his involvement in the life of the school. He

intervenes, for example, to prevent the usher from beating the

children; he obtains winter clothing for them from a local

committee; he arranged health checks for them; and he is involved in the formation of a parent-teacher association.

Although he holds a cynical and denigrating view of the other

teachers, regarding them as followers of Western fashions, and

ignorant, narrow-minded and quiescent, he becomes similarly involved in their welfare. He makes arrangements concerning the interests of one teacher who is involved in a road accident; he assists the usher in arranging for his mother to be treated for

cancer; and he attempts to relieve the position of a teacher who has been arrested for being a communist. But, in the course of such involvement, he is increasingly frustrated by the bureaucratic and administrative difficulties and corruption. Matters such as the school telephone and electricity bills become issues of monumental convolutions. He observes:

'I had taken out and read the school electricity and

telephone statements from the pathetic school records. If you took some trouble, the school electricity and

telephone would be fixed in two or three years. Twice I dropped into the Building Office and renewed the

subject. Once or twice I resorted to friends who

thought at first that I was arranging private work in the school's name. So inevitably I dropped it. That's how far I had to go to perform my duty.'

He experienced similar problems of inefficiency and suspicion in obtaining fuel for the school stoves and in the allocation of an entertainment allowance. His refusal to bribe the officials in either case leads only to his unpopularity with those accustomed to greasing the system and to his own mounting frustration in the face of an all pervading bureaucracy, in order to join which he comments, you need 'half a gross of prepared signatures, each one presenting one personality; then twenty inches of smooth oily tongue with which you extract snakes from

holes, or lick everywhere; and a handful of faces. Not one kind -- twelve kinds. Just like a set of claws. Each one for a different thing.' 6

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The education system does not function for the benefit of the children. The type of education imparted at the school is irrelevant to their real needs. The school itself is an alien imposition, built by a wealthy philanthropist in order to increase the value of his land, built for profit, not to serve the needs of the community. The difficulties of teaching anything to

inadequately clothed children in a poorly heated school with few facilities is matched only by the illogicality of teaching Westernized 'academic' subjects to children who will almost

certainly have little use for them. He castigates the tokenism of the handicraft classes, the overall preoccupation with marks and exams, and he observes that the pressure which the educational

system places upon the children results in a diploma tending to be little else than a piece of paper which confirms that 'the owner of this paper spent twelve or thirteen whole years, and four or ten times a year, under the pressure of fear -- and his motivation is fear, fear, fear.'7 This is the system against which Al-e Ahmed protests. This is the system from which, rather than compromise his beliefs, he resigns.

The incident which leads to his resignation is insignificant. Two boys are caught having a homosexual relationship. The Headmaster, however, caricatures the system's expectations by administering an excessive beating on the seducer. As a result, he is summoned to appear in court. He looks on this as an opportunity to protest publicly and to criticize, and to make known all the

things which contributed to making life at the school impossible and intolerable. He hopes to use the court appearance as a chance to protest against the system. He attends court at the appointed time. However, rather than a trial, the issue is smoothed over. He is offered a chair, a cup of tea, and a bland comment that no action will be taken. It is the ultimate whitewash. He is not even allowed to protest against the system at his own trial -- because there will simply be no trial. His only alternative is resignation. His resignation is a final gesture of defiance against the system. There is no other avenue open. He cannot stay within, because he is not prepared to compromise, nor to stay silent. He cannot

protest because,rather than let his voice be heard,they will overlook the fact that he almost killed a child. He can only resign -- step once more outside the system.

iii

The novel The Cursing of the Land (Nefrin-e zamin), published in

1967, is perhaps the rural continuation of The Headmaster. The narrator is the new schoolmaster in a village undergoing a process of change at the time of the implementation of the first two stages of the Land Reform Law of 1962. The novel, describing the conflicts and disruptions occurring in the village as a result of Westernization and modernization, is an indictment not of the measures in themselves, but of the way in which they were

implemented, with insufficient consideration for already existing practices and conditions. And if The Headmaster reflects how a

111



committed opposition intellectual found it impossible to remain within a system with which he did not agree, The Cursing of the

Land reflects the extent to which the same intellectual was cut off from ordinary people -- in this case the villagers.

The teacher, employed in a school recently built on a disused

cemetery, is again an outsider, cut off from the inhabitants of the village. He enters the closed village community as an alien -- a man from the town, a representative of the government, whose

duty is to impart a 'Western' education, the likely result of which will be to encourage the children to leave the land and go to the town. He is seen as a potentially interfering and destructive force and is treated with great suspicion. On his arrival at the village, he describes the feeling of being watched: even the knots on the tree trunks are examining him like the many pairs of eyes behind the cracks of the doors as he walks down the

village street -- the newly arrived teacher, the representative from the town. He observes:

'Curse the person who started this new education with

desks, benches and such superficialities' I am a

stranger who blinds the eyes of the village.'8

He is cut off from the villagers, and cut off from the village life. He contrasts his position with that of the village dervish, who has at least a traditional function to fulfil in village life. He writes:

'And I saw that he was in his own place, and it was I who was superfluous. He sleeps in a mosque, and I sleep in a disused cemetery. It is true that the mosque is

deserted, but tomorrow is Ramadan, and the day after is Moharram and [his] place will come alive.... yes, indeed it was I who was superfluous.'9

He continues:

'I came to this village in a lorry. I came from the town -- from a town where they continually compare themselves with Europe. Not with this village... I

have no place on this earth.'10

What, after all, is his connection with village life?:

'...what is it to me? I have neither water, nor land, and neither do I earn my living from the land.'11

Again, however, he is a reluctant outsider. Although from the

point of view of the villagers he is an alien representative of the government, from his own point of view he is a sympathetic intellectual, cut off from his roots by his urban, Westernized education and concerned to communicate with the villagers on their own level. To that end, he quickly abandons his town clothes, he

stops shaving,he temporarily marries a local woman and takes

responsibility for her children. He involves himself in village affairs wherever he sees that he can be of use. He organizes the construction of a mortuary, the cleaning out of the Hammam ditch,

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the search for a boy attacked by a wolf on the way to school from a neighbouring village. He involves himself in the village disputes and sees himself -- and eventually is seen as -- mediator in the internal village conflicts, and between, for example, the Land Reform officials and the villagers, the town and the village.

The Cursing of the Land is, however, fiction. Al-e Ahmad's ideal was that modernization should be based firmly upon existing practices and should complement existing communities, be built

upon them. A man such as himself should have a useful function in

implementing such changes. The reality of Westernization, however, for Al-e Ahmad was that of an alien imposition forced upon village life; He describes it as 'something added to the villages. With

separate standards, and a distinct life for itself -- like a

parasite at the foot of the tree.'12 And he, the teacher, in

reality, was an equally alien representative of it.

iv

Thus Al-e Ahmad, as a Westernized opposition intellectual,was outside the system by choice, and equally cut off from the people by circumstance. In order to resolve the conflicts between the Western and the traditional, the modern and the old, the town and the village, the outsider and the member of the community, he turned to emphasizing the need to preserve Iranian cultural values in the face of the disruptions caused by Pahlavi Westernization. Religion played a fundamental role in his vision. On the one hand, he saw that Shi'ism, through its mere toleration of secular government and its potentiality for rejection of oppressive and unjust government, was a possible source of opposition to the Pahlavi regime. Shi'ism could help to break the system he was outside of. In 1964, writing with some prescience, he commented:

'If the religious authorities knew that, with the belief in the "absence of the need to obey temporal authority", a

precious jewel was held in the hearts of the people like a seed for every uprising in the face of the government of the oppressors and corrupt people... 13

And he suggested that intellectuals should recognize the fact that the religious authorities were a resistant force against oppressive government and colonial exploitation, and should be prepared to work with them in order to bring about just government. He himself is reputed to have at least formally accepted the leadership of Ayatollah Khomeini as early as 1963.

On the other hand, religion, for Al-e Ahmad, could act to preserve the cultural traditions he felt were being destroyed by the Pahlavi Westernization, and it could perhaps provide him with an identity he could hold in comrmon with other Iranians. Through religion, he could rediscover his roots, his cultural traditions; he could reforge the broken links with his religious past and build himself a sense of identity to bridge the gulf between his Westernized, intellectual background and ordinary people14

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In the spring of 1964, Al-e Ahmad went on the pilgrimage to Mecca. His diary, first published in 196615 reflects well this search in religion for an identity. He describes praying for the first time in years and notes that he did not pray hypocritically, nor with belief, but saw prayer as a way of mingling with lhe crowd, of identifying with the common object of the Hajj. He states that he went on the Hajj for the experience, to visit his brother's grave in Mecca, and to witness a tradition accomplished every year by a million Muslims. He concludes:

'On this journey, I was more in search of my brother, and all my other brothers, than in search of God.'17

Camus's outsider, in his cell of condemnation, searched

desperately for a loophole in the system which was inevitably going to execute him. But entirely bound up in the present, he rejected even the prison chaplain as security for the unknown future, and acknowledged only life and death. Al-e Ahmad, in his cell of isolation, equally searched for a loophole in the system. Optimistic for the future, he hoped, through religion, to join with the people in opposition to the government -- to come in from the cold and to find his brothers. His premature death in 1969 at the age of 46, however, pre-empted the attainment of his ideals, and he died, as he had lived, an outsider.

NOTES

1. A.Camus, The Outsider (Penguin, 1969), p.102. 2. Translated by Al-e Ahmad and A.A.Khobrezade. 3. Al-e Ahmad, Dar khedmat va khianat-e rowshanfekran

(Entesharat-e Khvarazmi, 1979), ii, 121. 4. Modir-e madrase, 4th ed. (Amirkabir, 1350), p.16. 5. Ibid., p.38. 6. Ibid., p.119. 7. Ibid., p.117. 8. Nefrln-e zamin, 2nd edn. (Ravaq, 1357), p.57. 9. Ibid., pp.56 f.

10. Ibid., p.64. 11. Ibid., p.45. 12. Ibid., pp.260 f. 13. Al-e Akmad, Gharb zadegi, 2nd rev.edn. (Ravaq, 1979(?)), p.82. 14. Op.cit. in n.3 above, ii, 32 f., 52 ff. 15. With the title Khasi dar mlqat. 16. Khasi dar mlqat, p.10. 17. Ibid . p.183.

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The Outsider in the Life and Work of Jalal al-e Ahmad

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