Memoirs of Akbar Hashemi – September 1, 1982

We had a public session. The Ministry of Health and Medical Treatment bill was under discussion. During the recess, I spoke about the families of the martyrs of Kuhdasht and the five hundred teachers who were heading to Kurdistan. At noon, a group of representatives came to see me. In the afternoon, the Presidium held a meeting and discussed suspending Parliament in light of the Imam's statements, in which he had forbidden the recommended Hajj pilgrimage and had questioned the closure of Parliament. We concluded that because of the obligatory Hajj, more than eighty representatives would be making the pilgrimage, and we had no choice but to suspend it. It was decided that we would have a three-week recess. Messrs. Namazi and Hosseini, commanders of the regional forces and the Isfahan Revolutionary Guard, came and complained about [Jalal al-Din Taheri], the Friday Prayer Imam, and those around him.

Mr. [Baha al-Din] Alam al-Hoda [representative of Ardabil] came and brought the emblem of the Sikhs of India, which was not unlike the emblem of the Islamic Republic, and he was worried that people would say they were connected to the Sikhs. I told him there were many differences as well. I eased his concern, and he was upset that it had been said that the points in his impeachment effort against the Minister of Agriculture had been taken from Engineer Gholizadeh's critical pamphlet. We met with Iran's ambassadors and chargés d'affaires in Europe and America, who reported the results of their seminar, and I spoke to them. At night, I stayed at Parliament.

Studying reports and catching up on unfinished work took up my time. We had no important news.