After
morning exercises, we go to the large mess hall where hundreds of combatants
are having breakfast. We take our trays and join one middle-aged and two
younger combatants. I ask the older one how he came to join the NLA. He
replies that he is 47-years old and used to own a shop in the northeastern
city of Mashad. Three months ago, he left his wife and five children behind
to join the NLA: I've come to fight Khomeini. I could not sit idly by and
watch everything destroyed. You know, he betrayed us, all of us Iranians.
Isn't it difficult for a person his age to live in a place like this? A smile appears on his wrinkled face which looks older than his years. He shakes his head and says: `No, no! Oh sure, I can't run like some of these kids, but I'm ready to arm-wrestle with any of them." With this, he thumps the back of the young man sitting next to him and laughs out heartily.
During the several days of my visit to the NLA's headquarters base, I encounter other middle-aged soldiers and in one case a 60-year-old man who also left his family in Iran to join the NLA. But, on the average, NLA combatants range in age from 20 to 35 and commanders are generally over 30.
Go to next page. Go to previous page.
