Ayatollah Salehi Najafabadi narrates exile to Mahabad

Translated by: M.B. Khoshnevisan

2025-4-21

A few days after being summoned to the Tuyserkan police station and threatened by its chief, they handed us a letter from Qom. The letter was from a commission that had originally signed the exile orders for 26 people. It stated that we should pack our belongings and go from Tuyserkan to Mahabad to continue our exile. It was mid-summer, 1354 (late August 1975) when we had to move. This transfer coincided with Mr. Montazeri’s transfer from Khalkhal to Saqqez. He had been exiled to Tabas, a warm region, and then to cold regions like Khalkhal and Saqqez. When the letter came instructing us to go to Mahabad, I asked if I had the right to protest. They said no.

A few days later, two gendarmerie officers put us in a car and we drove towards Mahabad via Kermanshah. When we arrived in Kermanshah, we were supposed to stop for an hour for the noon and evening prayers. I asked the officers to let me go into the city and pray in a mosque, and they agreed. By chance, I met Hajj Agha Mojtaba Akhund, who was one of our friends. After praying, we left and arrived in Mahabad with the gendarmes. Unlike other places where they handed us over to the police, they took us to the governor. The governor of Mahabad was a retired army officer. Because the Shah's government was afraid of the Kurds and because of the sensitivity of the Kurdistan region, he had appointed a military man as governor. The gendarmes handed us over and took receipts. The governor said, "Now in this city of freedom, you can go wherever you want!" I went and rented a room in an inn. My daily routine was to walk the streets to rent a house and bring my family from Tuyserkan to Mahabad. This was my daily routine for almost a week. But because I was a stranger there, no one would let us into the house. The only person who got to know us and befriended us was the prayer leader of the Shiite mosque, Ashiq Abbas Azarm, from Khoy. Gradually, when he saw a Shia cleric come here, he came to us and showed us kindness. Such kindness is truly valuable in isolation and loneliness. Mr. Haj Mohammad Sarvaruddin, who was from Tabriz, had a carpet shop there with his son. He and his son were on the board of trustees of the mosque. The books "Tebb al-Mofid" and "Tebb al-Kabir" were written by this same Haj Mohammad Sarvaruddin. We became friends with them, and his son worked very hard to find us a house from a Sunni named Haj Salehi, who had two rooms. Thus, after several days of hard work, we were able to rent a house with two rooms.

Source: Showkaran-e Andisheh: Memories and Thoughts of Ayatollah Salehi, edited by Mojtaba Lotfi, Tehran, Kavir, 1395 (2016), pp. 179-180.