Читать книгу The Tragedy of Islam - Imam Mohammad Tawhidi - Страница 14

In October 2010, Ali Khamenei visited the Iranian Holy City of Qum for the first time in ten years. At the time, I was studying at Al-Mahdi Institute. I was infatuated with Khamenei and his “aura”; I was a follower of his teachings and loved his existence. I was approached by the dean of students at the time, and was asked to meet with a cleric in the Imam Khomeini University, located in front of the main “Jihad Roundabout” in Bajak, the Holy City of Qum. I attended the university and met with the cleric who was the main motivational speaker of the Iranian Sepah, also known as the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps. He invited me to attend a gathering in the Holy Shrine of Qum, where the supreme leader Ali Khamenei would be delivering a speech to scholars and students of the Islamic seminary. The plan was to take a student from every country, and I was chosen to represent the students from Australia.

I attended the event, with around 500 other people from Iran and abroad. The Quran was recited as we all waited patiently for Khamenei to deliver his short speech. When refreshments were served, I was seated exactly thirty-three seats away from Khamenei himself. I counted the seats as I was enamored by his character and personality. When the event had finished, I inquired how I would be able to get in touch with Khamenei himself. My former Iranian-American friend, Mr. Bagheri, assisted me in writing a letter to Khamenei, as I had not yet mastered the Farsi language. The lines of my letter were filled with praise and respect towards him and his status as leader. I took the opportunity to introduce myself and my humble projects and activities. At the bottom of the letter, I included my contact details and the names of eminent ayatollahs who could verify the content of the letter. I handed the sealed letter to the brother of the late Ayatollah Ahmadi Faqih, and requested that he hand it to Khamenei in the upcoming Friday prayers, as they travelled from Qum to Tehran to attend the Friday sermon each week.

A month later, I received a call from Khamenei’s office in Qum. The caller greeted me and requested that I visited the office located in Safa’iyeh Street, and that it was with regards to the letter that I had written. After my classes had ended for the day, I raced to the office of Khamenei to see what the response was. Eagerly waiting, I was sent to an office located in the underground level, where I saw a humble and elderly man waiting for me in his office. I introduced myself, and he opened the safe and reached for an envelope. He told me to take the envelope to the Islamic bank located on the same street, in front of the office of Ayatollah Makarem. Although I did not request money in my letter, I accepted it as a blessing from my then “spiritual leader”. When I reached the Islamic bank, I handed the document that was in the envelope over to the female bank teller. Noticing that I was a foreigner, she asked me if I had come with a vehicle. I answered no, I came on foot. She advised me to hire a taxi as I should not be carrying this amount of money on my person in public. I did not know how much the amount was, but I began to feel that Khamenei, or his office, wanted to gift me a large amount of cash. The bank teller took a cloth bag and began to fill it with stacks of money. After the transaction was completed, Khamenei’s office had gifted me an amount equal to $10,000 USD.

It was the first time I had received such a large amount of money. I purchased comfortable sleeping mattresses for myself and eight of my friends in the dorm. I gifted $2000 to a struggling teacher of mine who was getting married the following week, and purchased myself a rather large library of Islamic books which I have today. I kept around $5000 in my bank account for security, and used the remainder of the money to receive heart check-ups, as I was born with ventricular septal defect (VSD), a hole in the septum between my heart’s two lower chambers, and dental treatment as I was coping with painkillers because visiting a dentist is quite expensive in Iran. Down the track, the Iranian intelligence services froze my bank account at Tejarat Bank and took the remaining $5000 – another matter to be mentioned in the coming pages.