Today is the anniversary of Nojeh Coup.
On July 11, 1980 The Nojeh Coup was an attempt to overthrow the newly established IRI and the government of Banisadr.
It is hard to speculate the different path history could have taken, but I suspect had they succeeded many of us would be living different lives.
I remember the first time I read about this coup, I had joined the Library of School of African and Oriental studies, (part of London university) and like a kid in a sweet shop I was going through their fantastic Persian books and their archives and periodical section with some of the magazines going back to 1950s.I ordered the Etelaat rolling slides which had all the front page headlines, and I put it on a roll and scanned the images in my mind like watching a B&W film.
I looked at the roll from 1979 to 1981, and the drastic change in the images was like shrapnel of glass piercing my brain.The images of shot service men wrapped in transparent sheets of plastic, smudged with clotted blood were so haunting that sitting at the table in that quiet, large hall, my nose started to bleed. It is a moment that I would not forget.
A coup at that time, with the angry mood of the nation would have been against the will of the people and I suspect would have been met with a violent reaction from the people rioting on the streets, sometimes the line between being a champion of the nation and being a traitor is a thin one.
