Memoirs of Akbar Hashemi – October 16, 1994

Before breakfast I read the reports. In the headlines of Iran's newspapers, the news of the decrease in the price of a number of basic goods after the government's action is noteworthy.

We went to visit the Hassanal Bolkiah Mosque, which was built at the Sultan's expense and in his name. With high-quality imported materials—for example, granite stones from Italy—and chandeliers and carpets and everything has been built very luxuriously. In the library, they have placed about twenty thousand volumes of books, but it was not organized and the librarian could not tell; for example, I saw Bihar al-Anwar placed in several shelves without any order. The engineer executing the project refused to say the cost of the mosque. He said only the Sultan knows; because it was built with his own money and he endowed it and does not want to say the expense.

Then we went to see Brunei. It is something like our Arvand Rud that connects to the sea, and from the Brunei Gulf, ships come from the sea to this river. It has several branches and is navigable from the depths of Brunei. With a small pleasure boat, we toured a part of it. On both sides of the river, many houses have been built inside the water and people live there. This has been a custom since ancient times; apparently they live there for fishing and using the waterway and escaping the dangers of the forest and its problems. Still about thirty thousand people live in these same houses. In dozens of separate or connected villages, schools and other facilities have also been built there. We docked beside a village and saw several houses. The people of the village had gathered and displayed handicrafts. A cultural program of anthem recitation and prayer and Quran was performed by girls and boys. They treated us very kindly. They tried to reach their hands to my aba or my hand. We also sat in a house. They served us with fesenjan and a type of rice dolma. We took pictures with the village headman and several children and I wrote a note.

They said on dry land they are building houses for these people and gradually moving them. Some resist. The Minister of Religious Affairs, who is accompanying me, said he himself used to live here and has now moved to dry land. The houses go up and down with the tide of the river water, and the river does not have a fast current. A heavy rain came, and we returned to the residence.

We sat by the pool for a while and watched the heavy rain. Last night too we had snow and rain and a terrible thunderstorm. After the noon prayer, we flew by helicopter for an hour in the air and around Brunei. To see the city and the port and the surroundings, the Sultan's special furnished American helicopter came to take us. Mehdi also came. The oil regions, from the air, look very beautiful as a peninsula. Abundant rivers and short wooded hills and beautiful and lively buildings and small islands around; it is strange that everywhere is green and in the salty sea, wherever a hill has raised its head from the water, it is green and fresh; there is not even ungreen soil, except where trees and plants have been deliberately and with effort destroyed for buildings or facilities or roads.

The buildings and settlements are scattered in the south and southeast. From the air, the government and military areas caught attention and the area of the housing project for transferring the residents on the water. I said to arrange a program to see the housing project.

Mr. Haj Hassan, my companion, answers all my questions well and without caution and provides information. He has found Islamic trust and is influenced by our revolution. He said we have closed the parliament and parties, and the Sultan himself goes by car or helicopter, without prior notice, to mosques and gatherings and gives public audiences to the people. Once he said they do not allow buildings to be higher than the mosque's minaret or muezzin's tower; six floors, but we saw many exceptions.

In the afternoon we went to visit the National Museum. They have collected many ancient artifacts from other countries and a little from their own, and they present most of it as the Sultan's collection. We visited the noble grave of Ali, their twenty-seventh ancestor. They buried him beside the river, the same place where he lived. The gravestone was in Persian and Arabic letters and in the Malay language. It seems to be from the sixth century AH. They said he came from Taif. They have made a genealogy that traces the Sultan's lineage through Imam Sadiq (AS) and Imam Hasan (AS) to the Prophet (PBUH).

Then I went to the site of the housing project for transferring people from the water to dry land. It is a good area and they are building good houses. The houses are 88 meters and 162 meters and they hand them over to the people on a thirty-year [lease]. They said each meter of building costs five hundred Brunei dollars; it is very expensive.

We returned to the palace. I wrote the memoirs and prayed the evening and night prayers. Mehdi came from the oil region. He said they have an orderly situation, with Shell company management, and they export 5.5 million tons of liquefied gas and have independent resources. The Sultan and his brother thought gas was associated. They are very uninformed about their country's situation and statistics and figures; for example, they do not know whether the power plant is hydroelectric or gas or diesel.

At night we were the guests of our own embassy for dinner. All the companions were there. They had brought the servants from the palace and the cook from China, from the staff of our embassy in Beijing; the embassy is newly established in a rented and newly built place. The electricity was cut several times. The foods were all Iranian and delicious. After dinner Mr. Javad Ansari, our ambassador, gave a welcome speech and I too spoke a little about the usefulness of developing cooperation with the country of Brunei. Then I asked after the families of the embassy staff.

I returned to the palace. I took a bath and slept. Effat and the children had gone to a park after the embassy dinner. They said a lot about the beauty and order of the palace; especially the royal section.