The pasdar commanding the guard detail at the Ayatollah’s gate scrutinized him, then patted him down perfunctorily. With a jerk of the head, he motioned the gray-bearded mullah through the entrance. Khomeini had his lodgings in Jamaran, a small village in the hills on the outskirts of Tehran. The approaches to the place gave it the appearance of a command center in wartime, with tanks and machine-gun nests bristled along the roads. Heavily armed pasdars scowled at any vehicle that drove into view. This was no small task, for a steady stream of supplicants, sycophants, and functionaries wound up into the hills to court the endorsement of the India-born octogenarian, who had returned from exile in the suburbs of Paris to lead this nation of thirty-five million souls. Upon his arrival from France, the Ayatollah had at first lived in the poor southern precincts of the capital city, but had since moved to an aging villa in Jamaran, the elevated terrain of which made it more comfortable in summer than the crowded, broiling streets of Tehran.
