"It's such a mess. I spend so much time thinking of what to do. You wouldn't call this a political activity, but it is. You have to know where you are going. Nothing has changed here since the Shah, you know. The workers and the lower classes are living under the same conditions. Nothing has changed for them. So for the third time in this century the people of Iran have been broken. This is what I think about every day. It prevents me studying sometimes. Seventy years ago we wanted to get rid of the Qajar kings. We got a constitution then. But it was never carried out. That was the first time we were broken. The second time was in 1953, when we wanted to get rid of the Pahlavis who had replaced the Qajars. The American coup d'état broke everything. And now for the third time you see what's happening. A revolution, and then nothing. Khomeini is a petty bourgeois. They are going to start the whole system up again and they're going to call it Islamic. That's all."
-- V.S. Naipaul, "Among The Believers: An Islamic Journey"
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