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After that
Kaveh Left…
(Tribute
To Kaveh Golestan)
By M.Behnoud
BBC Persian
In the autumn of 1978 and at the culmination of events that led
to Islamic Revolution, a group of Time journalists came to Tehran
under the supervision of Burnett. They had already chosen Kaveh
to work with them before coming to Tehran. During the week they
spent in Iran, I came to know young Kaveh, who showed an incredible
interest in journalism and camera was an excuse for him to be present
and broadcast exact professional information without letting his
personal interests and tastes to interfere.
All through the revolution Kaveh was everywhere with his camera
producing unforgettable pictures such as those of a young man sitting
where his brother's blood was shed, hitting his head with a flower,
of funerals, of soldiers fighting with people in the once called
24 Esfand and now called Revolution square, of Behesht Zahra graveyard
that had turned to Tehran Hyde Park corner during the last months
of Shah's military government.
With his camera, Kaveh Golestan achieved what thousand articles
and reports could accomplish, until the day when we received a card
that was in fact an entrance permit into the leadership camp of
the Revolution. On the following day, Ayatollah Khomeini was returning
to Tehran and Kaveh nearly fell from the street light post and if
it were not for children of the revolution grabbing him he would
have lost his life. Kaveh's pictures witnessed the revolution and
found their way into highly esteemed news agencies abroad and in
Iran they were published in the weekly magazine Tehran Mosavar.
After the victory of the revolution and establishment of Islamic
republic, Kaveh Golestan appeared on the scenes of civil wars waged
in Kurdistan, Turkmen Sahra, Ahvaz and Abadan with exceptional enthusiasm
and later of Iran-Iraq war fronts. And each time he returned with
hundreds stories and helped the reporters to write their reports
on the scenes that not many people dared to approach. In his profession,
he was unfamiliar with such emotions as fear.
During the last month of Shah's regime, he lost his camera once
and that was when we were summoned to Baghshah for an interrogation
by an officer who told us that there was going to be a military
coup on the next day and we were all going to be killed. With a
kind of sincerity originating from his professionalism, Kaveh Golestan
asked whether he could take pictures of the coming event.
Such incidents often happened during the last nine years that we
worked for BBC as freelance journalists, and he lost his camera
twice again and his films were exposed to light many times, so much
so that he gradually got used to such treatments and constant interrogations.
Kaveh's power of discernment seemed sometimes incredible. Like a
day in 1995 when he was filming three young girls brought to the
office of Islamic News Agency for an interview with journalists
on the charge of killing three Christian priests. While looking
through his camera, Kaveh had everyone under his eyes. He showed
me a man and whispered in my ears, 'He is the boss; I wish he would
let us take a few pictures of him.' A few years later when all the
media were looking for a picture of Said Emami, the ex-deputy of
the Ministry of Information arrested on the charge of plotting the
murder of Parvaneh and Darius Frouhar, Mohammad Mokhtari, Mohammad
Jafar Pouyandeh, I remembered that day and thought if Kaveh had
succeeded in taking those pictures on that day, how useful they
could be now.
When he made the documentary film, "Recording the Truth,"
on the subject of censorship in Iran (with the script written by
Enayat Fani) shown in British channel four TV in 19991, he proved
that he could be a competent documentary film producer too.
It was following the production of this film that together with
one of the people interviewed, we were once again summoned for an
interrogation. All through that night of interrogation, Kaveh's
eyes were constantly looking for rare angles that the light and
the empty room and the iron table and chair produced.
In a country where there is usually a great misunderstanding on
behalf of the regime in regard to information, journalism can have
many unforeseeable dangers, such as one's office door being broken
repeatedly and one's house searched secretly every now and then.
Each time that we were interrogated, we had to explain the distinction
between information and counter-information and secret information
so much so that it became like a routine for us, even though there
were always individuals who finally realized the meaning of impartiality
and neutrality in reflecting events. Kaveh's incredible honesty
and simplicity and candidness made the officials think more realistically,
even though his ID card as a journalist was confiscated and invalidated
three times.
Once the incredible picture that he took from Ayatollah Khomeini's
funeral found its way abroad despite the will of authorities and
was published anonymously in Paris Match, a sad event as he couldn't
record his brilliant work under his name in the world of photojournalism.
The last time that he got into a serious trouble was when he produced
a shocking documentary film on disabled children. It was easy to
foresee that it would definitely provoke the harsh reaction of those
who did not like such scenes to be revealed and considered it as
an act against the regime.
What made him to seriously consider a change of career and living
place was the students he trained. Five years ago, he exhibited
their works in Farabi University and everybody saw how he had assiduously
and patiently made such good photographers out of those enthusiastic
young people with some of them not even possessing a professional
camera. It seemed that he had perfectly taught them how to hunt
events and become a part of them as he himself always did.
Last year during and after the war in Afghanistan he brought brilliant
incredible photos that I was sure could win him an esteemed prize
in the world of photo-journalism, such as Politzier that he had
already won four years earlier.
Although he was always full of excitement and enthusiasm, never
losing hope in resuming work, I saw him thrice in tears. The first
time was in 1978 when Shahr Now (Tehran's prostitutes' corner) was
put on fire. The year before that, he had taken photos of the women
living and working there that he then compiled in an album and published
some of them in Tehran Mosavar.
For taking those pictures, he had spent many days and nights in
that district listening to the stories of the inhabitants of that
forbidden land and suffering their suffering. He knew most of those
women – some did not even have a real first and second name
-and had given them a copy of their photos as he had promised which
they had hung in their rooms.
The second time I saw him crying was when he brought his pictures
of chemical bombardment of Halabcheh. Pictures of dead women holding
their children in their arms, of a dead man staring at the sky as
though waiting for a miracle and salvation to happen, of the street
extending on both sides of dead people in different position and
postures.
While showing his slides in a darkened room, he talked about each
with tears in his eyes and at the end he started to cry quite fiercely.
He had a humane presence on the scenes that he photographed and
filmed, as though he was hidden behind each one of them with his
signature being his humane look at events.
The last time I saw his tears was in the winter of 2000 when I was
taken to the court from the prison. Together with Jim Mior, he was
standing by the courtroom from early morning. It was as though he
could not imagine his old colleague in prison uniform. I saw him
sticking the camera to his face, with an eye looking into the camera
and another eye crying. On that scandalous day, he brought his head
near me and asked me sadly in a whispering voice, 'were you hurt
a lot?'
Last week, together with a short note, he sent the pictures he took
that day in the courtroom to the Persian department of BBC. He then
left for Kurdistan together with Jim Moor and I did not have the
chance to reply him. Now in my imagination I have to ask him, "did
it hurt a lot?' Or I should ask Jim Moor who had been standing near
him when the whole thing happened. Although I know what Kaveh's
response could be: a smile and the sentence he always used to say:
"This is our work, isn't it?"
An hour after the incredible death of Kaveh Golestan, John Simpson,
BBC correspondent in north of Iraq talked about Kaveh's passionate
enthusiasm for his profession in BBC news. He also mentioned the
name of four other British journalists and photographers killed
in Iraq war during the past two weeks.
For Iranians who do not possess many people like Kaveh Golestan,
his death is more painful and tragic. Unless among his students
that he was deprived to teach for a time, arises one who like Kaveh
would look at the world and its rare scenes humanely and idealistically
through his camera and press the button at exactly the right moment.
Moments like the one on that Wednesday morning near Soleimanieh
where a mine exploded under his feet and after that Kaveh left us
for good.
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