Border Guards and Border People

Abstract

In September 1986, a ‘middleman’ took me to Iranshahr, a small city in the province of Baluchistan near the border with Pakistan. He was the link to a local human smuggler. We arrived in the afternoon and checked into a small, cheap hotel, the owner of which was the smuggler. What I did not know was that the smuggler was collaborating with the police. He, as we later found out, gave the ‘small fry’ to the police to be allowed to take the ‘big ones’. In the middle of the night I was awakened by the sound of a Nissan Patrol, a four-wheel-drive SUV used by the Revolutionary Guards. The fear was embodied. Like many other young people in Iran, I was vigilant for signs of peril, such as the sound of a Nissan Patrol. My clandestine life was shaped by various ‘somatic modes of attention’ (Willen 2007:17). I looked out the window, without turning on the light. A Nissan Patrol was there, parked in front of the main entrance. The next minute, the Revolutionary Guards were pounding on the door.