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MALAYSIAN DIPLOMATS: OUR STORIES

Tehran, where armed groups of revolutionaries, unidentif ed gunmen, ex-
communists, former pro-Shah army regulars on the run, plain anarchists
and armed criminals still roamed freely following the Shah’s overthrow, to
perform the diplomatic duty. However, given the fact that the Malaysian
mission was without a head following the last ambassador’s return to Kuala
Lumpur after completing his term and that I was of cially the charge
d’af aires a.i., duty had to be done. As Malaysia is a friend of Afghanistan
and a member of the Organisation of Islamic Cooperation, my visit there
that morning was to fulf ll this diplomatic obligation.

T e Afghanistan mission was located in a very narrow street several
kilometers away from the Malaysian Embassy on Avenue Bucharest.
T e Malaysian mission was a stone’s throw away from the locations that
witnessed, before the return of the Imam Khomeini to Iran in early 1979,
daily scenes of bloody clashes between anti-Shah demonstrators and the
Shah’s feared military machine. I recalled that on my f rst day of work as a
young inexperienced “greenhorn” on his f rst overseas posting at the mission
in May 1978, I was in fact greeted by a stray bullet which fell onto the of ce
carpet of my upstairs room through the open window. T e experience was
indeed unnerving. Since then, there followed numerous encounters with
almost daily street demonstrations around the city until the f nal fall of the
Shah in February 1979. T e bullet, a f eeing soldier’s bayonet and a limited-
edition Swiss watch with the image of Imam Khomeini embossed on its face
are still with me as personal mementos from that historic period.

Two streets away from the Afghanistan mission, our car passed through
roads still strewn with signs of these earlier clashes. Crowds of people were
milling around on both sides of the streets looking agitated and restless.
Small groups of armed revolutionary guards or pasdaran stared menacingly
at us as our DC-plated embassy car sped past these sad reminders of the
revolution.

My earlier calm quickly dissipated as the embassy car turned a corner and
eased into the last narrow street leading to the Afghanistan embassy. From
about f fty feet away I could see a huge crowd of people mulling outside
the Afghanistan mission. My heart almost stopped when I saw the crowd
turned its attention towards our approaching car. I asked Ahmad, the driver,

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