He did not go gentle into that good night. The funeral of the Ayatullah Ruhollah Khomeini ignited an emotional outpouring from his fanatical followers that Westerners found as bizarre, frightening -- and ultimately incomprehensible -- as the passions he stirred during ten turbulent years as leader of Iran. Even after his burial, Khomeini excoriated his enemies in the outside world, raging in his will against "the atheist East" and "the infidel West," branding Jordan's King Hussein a "criminal tramp," accusing the leaders of Egypt and Morocco of "treason," and denouncing the U.S. as an "inborn terrorist" organization.
While the Ayatullah's body lay in state inside a refrigerated glass box, the crowd of mourners in Tehran became so thick that eight were reportedly crushed to death. The next day, as a helicopter brought the open wooden coffin containing Khomeini's remains to the city's Behesht-e Zahra cemetery, nearly a million mourners thrust forward in the blistering heat and choking dust, many wailing and pounding their heads as they groped to touch the body and snatch a piece of the linen burial shroud.
Some managed to surge past a force of Revolutionary Guards, clambering into the casket to plant kisses on the Imam's face. The corpse spilled to the ground, bare feet protruding from beneath the white shroud. As the Guards beat back the crowds, firing shots in the air and spraying fire hoses, other soldiers shoved the body and coffin back into the chopper. It lifted off with the casket hanging precariously out the door.
Some five hours passed before there was another, successful attempt to deliver the body to its final resting place, this time encased in a metal coffin. Again arms flailed and chants of "Death to America!" filled the air as the helicopter touched down. Although barricades held most of the crowd at bay, the Guards were forced to make a frantic push past the outstretched hands to deliver the coffin to the grave site. At the last instant, the metal lid of the casket was ripped off, and the body was rolled into the grave, in keeping with an Islamic tradition that requires that the dead be interred in only a shroud. The grave was quickly covered with concrete slabs and a large freight container to prevent delirious mourners from exhuming the corpse. By the end of the ceremony, more than 440 people had been hospitalized and an additional 10,800 had been treated for injuries.
That frenzied send-off seemed a fitting coda for a man who returned a decade ago from exile in Paris to an equally hysterical welcome. But it gave little indication of what will follow. Khomeini was the glue that held together Iran's political radicals and religious extremists. Many Iranians fear that their country will now be torn asunder by bitter factional struggles. "All the people say things will be worse now," warned a 23-year-old student. "We were united when Khomeini was alive."
One potential source of conflict is outside interference from such groups as the Iraq-based People's Mujahedin of Iran. There is also the danger of a new burst of Iran-sponsored international terrorism as rival organizations contend for power. "As the factionalism builds up, there will be more free-lance terrorism and less control from the center," warns Gary Sick, who monitored Iran for the National Security Council under the Carter Administration.