Prisoner of Tehran: A Memoir (No Series) (11 page)

W
E ALL WAITED
for Arash to come home although we knew he wouldn’t.

The shah replaced one prime minister with another, trying to gain control of the country; he gave speeches and told the people that he had heard their cry for justice and was going to make changes. But this was all useless. There were more and more anti-shah gatherings and protests every day, and as the school year of 1978–79 continued, everyone felt worried and uncertain about the future. The world in which I had grown up and the rules by which I had lived and which I had believed to be set in stone were falling apart. I hated the revolution. It had caused violence and bloodshed, and I was sure that this was just the beginning. Soon came the military curfew, and soldiers and military trucks appeared at every corner. I was a stranger in my own life.

One day, our apartment trembled with a deep roaring sound that became louder and louder, penetrating my bones. I looked out the window and saw a tank moving down the street. It terrified me; I never knew that tanks were so loud and monstrous: When it was gone, I noticed that its wheels had left deep marks on the pavement.

Weeks passed and fear grew. Many of those who held important government or military positions left the country. Finally, schools were shut down in late fall of 1978. It was a cold winter, and due to strikes at oil refineries and political and economic uncertainty, there was a shortage of fuel for cars and for heating, so we were only able to keep one room warm. At gas stations, lines continued for miles, and people had to spend the night in their cars, waiting their turn to fill up. I was left at home with nothing to do all day but to shiver, stare out the window, and worry. Our street, Shah Avenue, which was usually congested with traffic, was now deserted most of the time. Sidewalks, which used to be full of people strolling, window-shopping, or bargaining with vendors, were empty. Even the beggars were gone. Every once in a while, groups of ten to twenty men appeared, set tires on fire, and wrote “Death to the Shah” and “Long Live Khomeini” on walls, leaving the air thick with smoke and the stench of burning rubber. A few times, the street filled with angry demonstrators; men led the way and women wearing black chadors followed them. With their fists in the air, they screamed slogans against the shah and the United States and carried banners with pictures of Ayatollah Khomeini.

Once a week, I went to visit Aram and his family. Keeping close to buildings for safety—stray bullets had injured and killed many people—I walked along the street as fast as I could, careful not to run into any protesters or soldiers. Once on the bus, I tried to sit in a safe corner. Aram was paranoid about my being on the streets; he hardly ever stepped out of his house and had begged me to stay home, but I had explained to him that the boredom of confinement would probably kill me before anything else. He asked me to at least call him right before I left my house.

“What’s the point of my calling you before leaving?” I asked him.

“So that if you don’t show up on time, I can do something.”

“Do what?”

He stared at me with a bewildered look on his face.

“Then I’ll come and look for you.”

“Where?”

His eyes filled with hurt, and I realized how cruel I had been. He was worried for me and didn’t want history to repeat itself.

I took his hand in mine.

“Aram, I’m sorry! Forgive me! I don’t know what’s wrong with me. I’m so stupid! I don’t know what I was thinking. I’ll call; I promise.”

He smiled an uncertain smile.

Just to keep her busy, I asked Irena to teach me how to knit. When I visited, we all sat in the living room, drank tea, and, since the domestic TV and radio stations were censored, listened to BBC Radio to find out what was happening to our country. Sometimes, we heard guns fire in the distance, and the thundering sound made us pause and listen. Irena was very fragile, and Aram’s mother seemed thinner every week. His father, who was forty-six, looked years older. His hair had turned gray, and there were deep wrinkles on his forehead.

Sarah and I talked on the phone almost every day, and I sometimes went to her house or she came to mine. Unlike my parents, hers were in favor of the revolution and had attended a few rallies but had never taken Sarah and Sirus along. Sarah said her mother wore a black chador when she went to demonstrations. It was very difficult for me to imagine her mother in a chador; she was one of the best-dressed women I had ever known. Sarah told me that Sirus was planning to sneak out of the house one day to go to a rally, and she had asked him to take her along, but he had refused, saying she was too young and that it was dangerous. I begged Sarah not to go, reminding her of Arash’s disappearance, but she said people had to stop being afraid, and they had to fight the shah who had used our country’s oil money to increase his personal wealth, building palaces, giving lavish parties, and putting enormous amounts of money into his personal accounts in foreign countries. And he had imprisoned and tortured the ones who had criticized him.

“You have to come, too,” Sarah told me. “For Arash. The shah is a thief and a murderer, and we have to get rid of him.”

One day, a group of people screaming “Down with the shah” broke into the small restaurant below our apartment. They smashed all its windows, took all the beer cans and other alcoholic beverages they could find, put them in the middle of the intersection, and set them on fire. The beer cans exploded, rattling our windows. I knew the owners of the restaurant very well; they were an Armenian family, and we had been neighbors for years. They weren’t hurt during the incident but they were very scared.

Gradually, the presence of the military became less visible on the streets. Everyone said this was because the shah had finally realized that the use of extreme force would only fuel the revolution. People also believed that many soldiers had begun to refuse orders to open fire on protestors. Now, although military trucks sometimes went by, I never saw soldiers pointing their guns at demonstrating crowds.

My parents didn’t seem to be too concerned about what was happening in the country. They had not taken the Islamic movement too seriously and believed that this was only a period of unrest and not a revolution and that the shah was too powerful to be overcome by a bunch of mullahs and clergymen. So, although my mother always warned me to be careful when I left the house, she said the dark clouds would soon pass.

The shah was forced into exile and left Iran on January 16, 1979. Political prisoners were released. There were celebrations on every street. I watched from my window as people danced and cars honked. Then, after his own long exile in Turkey, Iraq, and France, Khomeini returned to the country on February 1. As his plane neared Tehran, a reporter asked him how he felt about his return. His answer was that he felt nothing. His words repelled me. Many had lost their lives to pave the way for his return in the hope of making Iran a better place, and he felt nothing? It seemed as if instead of warm blood, cold water flowed in his veins.

Just after Khomeini’s return, I heard that the army was still loyal to the shah. There were still tanks and military trucks on the streets. For about a month, the future of the country was completely uncertain. Emergency military governments had taken over most cities and military curfews were still in effect. Ayatollah Khomeini asked the people to go to their rooftops at nine o’clock every night and yell
Allaho akbar
continuously for half an hour to show their support of the revolution. My parents and I never took part in the
Allaho akbar
sessions, but most people did, even the ones who had not strongly supported the revolution. The sentiment of solidarity had overtaken the country. People had hopes for a better future and for democracy.

On February 10, 1979, the army surrendered to the will of the people of Iran, and on February 11, Ayatollah Khomeini declared a provisional government with Mehdi Bazargan as its prime minister.

Soon armed revolutionary guards and members of Islamic committees were everywhere, looking suspiciously at everyone, and hundreds of people were arrested, accused of having been members of SAVAK, the shah’s secret police. They were imprisoned and their belongings were seized; some were executed, beginning with the top-ranking officials of the old regime who had not left the country. Horrendous pictures of their battered, bloody bodies were published in newspapers. During those days, I learned to look down as I walked by newspaper stands.

Not too long after the revolution, dancing was declared evil and illegal, and my father lost his job at the Ministry of Arts and Culture. Later, he began working as a translator and an office clerk at Uncle Partef’s stainless steel factory. My father worked long hours and came home tired and unhappy. As usual, I rarely saw him, maybe even less now, and when he was home, with a serious, do not-disturb-me expression on his face, he read the paper and watched television. We hardly ever spoke.

Schools reopened, and we returned to class. Our principal, an accomplished woman who had been very close to the last minister of education during the time of the shah, was gone. We heard she had been executed. She had skillfully managed the school for many years, and her absence was felt in every way. There were rumors that most of our teachers were soon going to be replaced by supporters of the government. To make matters worse, our new principal, Khanoom Mahmoodi, was a nineteen-year-old revolutionary guard, a fanatic young woman wearing the complete Islamic
hejab.
Wearing the
hejab
wasn’t yet mandatory, but it seemed as if rules were about to change.
Hejab
is an Arabic word that means the proper cover for a woman’s body. It can have different forms, one of which is the chador. After the
hejab
became mandatory, in big cities, especially Tehran, instead of wearing the chador, most women wore loose, long robes called the Islamic manteau and covered their hair with large scarves; if worn properly, this was also an acceptable form of
hejab.

For a few months after the revolution, there was still some freedom of speech. At school, various political groups sold their newspapers freely and during recess political discussions could be heard throughout the schoolyard. I had never met any Marxists before, and now they were everywhere. There was also the Mojahedin-e Khalgh Organization, which means “God’s Fighters for the People.” All these political groups had been illegal at the time of the shah but had existed underground for many years. I didn’t know anything about the Mojahedin, and there seemed to be a great deal to learn about them. A Marxist friend of mine told me that the Mojahedin were Marxists who had gone astray and believed in God and Islam. They were Muslim socialists who believed Islam could lead Iran to social justice and free it from Westernization. They had become organized and armed in the sixties and had fought to overthrow the shah. However, they were not Khomeini’s followers; years before Ayatollah Khomeini became well known, they had already led many protests against the shah, and their members, who were mostly university students, were tortured and executed in Evin. The fact that they were an Islamic group was reason enough for me to decide I could not belong with them.

Aram attended an all-boys high school named Alborz, which was next to my school. One afternoon, about a week after school resumed, I was on my way home when I heard him call my name. My heart almost stopped; I thought he had news from his brother, but he said he just wanted to see me and offered to walk me home. I sighed with relief. Although I was sure Arash was dead, I dreaded hearing it.

He asked me about my school, and I told him that our new principal was a revolutionary guard and that I wouldn’t have been surprised to hear she carried a gun in her pocket.

“You aren’t getting involved with any political groups, are you?” he asked. Since his brother’s disappearance, Aram had matured in a sad, depressing way. Before the revolution, he only thought of basketball and partying, but now he worried about everything and gave me advice all the time. “My father says these are dangerous times,” he said. “He thinks the new government is allowing all political groups to do and say whatever they want, so that the revolutionary guards can see who their friends and enemies are. Then, sooner or later, they’ll arrest anyone who’s done anything against the government.”

Aunt Zenia had called me a few days earlier and told me the exact same thing. She had warned me to be careful. But I was very curious about different ideologies. Every day during recess, I attended reading and discussion meetings organized by eleventh-or twelfth-grade students who worked with different political groups.

Aside from the fact that they didn’t believe in God, Marx’s and Lenin’s ideas were very attractive. They wanted justice for everyone and a society where riches were divided equally, but their ways had proven flawed in the real world. I knew very well what had happened in the Soviet Union and other communist countries. Communism didn’t work. On the other hand, I was now looking at what an Islamic society was like. I believed that the mixture of religion and politics was dangerous. Anyone who criticized the Islamic government was said to be criticizing Islam and therefore taking a stand against God. In Islam, as I understood it, people like that didn’t deserve to live if they didn’t change their ways.

Before the revolution, at least in my lifetime, people’s beliefs and faith had never been an issue. We had girls of different religions in my school, but we had been expected to concentrate on our education, to be polite and respectful of one another and our teachers, and to behave in a ladylike manner. But now the world seemed to have divided itself into four raging streams: fundamentalist Islam, communism, leftist Islam, and monarchism, and I didn’t agree with any of them. Almost everyone belonged to a group, and I didn’t, and this left me feeling lost and lonely.