Persian Girls: A Memoir (17 page)

 

 

 

 

 

In 1962-1963 the Shah launched his White Revolution. The White Revolution (“white” as opposed to the “black” revolution of the religious conservatives, or the “red” revolution of Marxism) consisted of a package that included land reform, profit-sharing for industrial workers in private-sector enterprises, nationalization of forests and pastureland, sale of government factories to finance land reform, and establishment of a “literacy corps” made up of high school graduates sent to teach in villages instead of serving in the army. In addition to these reforms the Shah also announced that he was extending the right to vote to women.

“Father, do you like all the changes the Shah is making?” I asked him at breakfast.

“None of it should concern you.”

“Women can vote now,” I said.

“Girls wouldn’t know whom to vote for,” he said scornfully. “It’s better if they didn’t.”

Criticism of the White Revolution leaked out in spite of widespread censorship. Almost everyone had a family member or a friend in a country with a free press; then there were newspapers and radio stations that reported such news before they were forced to shut down.

Some newspapers and stations criticized the Shah and said his White Revolution wasn’t doing much—that most of the oil money was still going into the pockets of the royal family and the “One Thousand” (families connected to the Shah) while the majority of Iranians were poor. That the Shah had his suits made by the best tailors abroad and that they cost six thousand dollars each, millions in
tooman
s. His office and his palaces were decorated with solid gold and jewel-studded panoramic mirrors and rugs woven with gold threads. He owned luxury homes in European countries. His assets totaled more than a billion dollars, which were valued as trillions in
tooman
s. His court was described as lavish and, worse, depraved. He and Shahbanoo Farah, his third wife, took a private plane to Italy and France each week to dine in the most expensive restaurants, get a haircut, shop, or go to St. Moritz to ski.

One article maintained that while on the surface the White Revolution seemed as if it would be beneficial to people, it came with traditional colonial trappings. Thousands of American technicians, support staff, and military men flooded Iran. Furthermore the U.S. army personnel and their staff and family members had been given diplomatic immunity in Iran. In the Majlis (parliament), which was usually tame, one outspoken deputy had asked why an American refrigerator repairman should have the same legal immunity as Iran’s ambassadors abroad.

Another article complained that the Shah allowed companies to pay Americans and the English several times more than Iranians employed in the same jobs. They bitterly condemned the brutality of SAVAK, which hadn’t changed since the White Revolution, as well as the United States for helping the Shah to form the police force and keep it going. Now SAVAK directly controlled all facets of political life in Iran. Its main task was to suppress opposition to the Shah’s government and to keep people’s political and social knowledge as minimal as possible. SAVAK had become a law unto itself, having legal authority to arrest, detain, interrogate, and torture suspects. SAVAK operated its own prisons in Tehran, the notorious Evin prison among them. Many of these activities were carried out without any institutional checks.

Jalal carried in his bookstore an underground newspaper,
Bidar Sho
(
Wake Up
). It came out weekly and I read it cover to cover and then discarded it before Father could find it. One week the issue was full of articles that debated the pros and cons of the Shah’s White Revolution.

One article said the White Revolution had lifted Khomeini, an ayatollah (the title, meaning “sign of God,” was given to major Shiite clerics), to national prominence. He had taken a leading role in opposing the Shah. He said that the Shah’s reforms were there only to satisfy his American allies. He criticized the Shah’s catering to American values—allowing liquor to be sold in stores and consumed in public, allowing women to walk around without being covered. He also criticized the Shah for giving immunity from prosecution to Americans living in Iran.

In his sermons Khomeini said, ominously, “If the Shah should run over an American dog, he would be called to account. But if an American cook should run over the Shah, no one would have any claim over him. If the men of religion had any influence, it would be impossible for the nation to be at one moment the prisoner of England, the next of America.”

In 1963 Khomeini issued a fatwa against the Shah’s reforms. In response, the government-owned radio station began a campaign designed to ridicule the clergy. On the radio the Shah announced that his reforms would take Iran into the “jet age,” whereas the mullahs wanted to remain in the “donkey age.” This comment led to demonstrations by theology students and clergy. The Shah cracked down on the dissent.

Then, in the holy city of Qom, theology students who were demonstrating against the scheduled opening of liquor stores there were attacked by the Shah’s paratroopers and SAVAK. The violence only led to more demonstrations, not just in Qom but in Tabriz, as well. Government forces killed hundreds of people. Khomeini publicly attacked the Shah’s rule, calling it tyrannical. He called the Shah “Yazid,” who, according to Shiites, was a dissolute leader who had ordered the assassination of Hussein. Yazid was condemned and ridiculed in the passion plays Maryam used to take me to.

 

 

 

 

 

“What do you think of Khomeini?” I asked Jalal in his bookstore.

“I don’t want the clergy to take over, but Khomeini does have a point about the Shah catering to America,” Jalal said vehemently. “The Shah’s reforms are superficial. Look how we live. It’s no better than a jail cell.”

I was confused. I hated the Shah’s tyranny and all the power he allowed the SAVAK. But I liked his modernization ideas. The same was true of my feelings about America—I didn’t like their having helped create the SAVAK, but I yearned for the personal freedom I would be allowed in that country.

At school Mrs. Soleimani told us that the Shah’s recent amendment to the voting laws, allowing women the right to vote, wasn’t really enforced, since men told their wives, daughters, and sisters not to vote, or dictated to them whom to vote for. Anyway, she continued passionately, how could anyone vote meaningfully, since so much about the candidates was hidden from us?

The class fell into silence. These weren’t issues anyone talked about in public. But I was stirred up by what she said and nodded my approval. Indeed, news of the new law had barely reached girls. No one I knew talked about it or acted on it.

 

 

 

 

 

At school a few days later I spotted Mahvash talking with two other girls. Their heads were bent together, their voices hushed. I joined them.

“Mrs. Soleimani has been given warnings by the principal,” Soroor said. “I overheard a conversation between them.”

“What kind of warnings?” I asked, my heart sinking.

“A SAVAK agent told the principal that Mrs. Soleimani was brainwashing the young girls.”

Tooran joined us. She was a nervous girl who kept to herself most of the time and I was surprised that she approached us. She had arrived in the middle of the year because her father, who worked at the Educational Ministry in Isfahan, had been transferred to Ahvaz.

Suddenly she started to cry. She said that police had come to their house, searched all their books and every document and paper, and arrested her father. She had no idea where they had taken him. This was her last day at school. She and her mother were going to Tehran to see if they could do something to track his whereabouts. He could be in Evin Prison.

The bell rang and everyone scattered to classes but Tooran said good-bye and left the school.

On my way home that afternoon, I came across a demonstration in Pahlavi Square. A crowd, all men, were holding banners demanding improvement in their lives: “Workers Break Your Chains,” “Fight for Equality,” “Americans and British Are Stealing Our Oil.”

As I walked past them, I could hear their voices over a loudspeaker. Government employees demanded higher salaries. Others protested rising prices, which were controlled by the government. Some wanted subsidized housing. They were zealous, desperate, risking arrest.

At home the radio in the salon was on and Father was sitting next to it, concentrating on every word. As soon as he saw me he gestured to me to come to him.

“Nahid, I’m telling you now very firmly, you have got to watch what you say, what you read. Do you understand?”

I nodded and went to my room, the sound of the radio broadcast fading away.

O
ne day Mrs. Soleimani was gone. She had been forced to resign and no one knew where she was. The school’s atmosphere was more somber than ever and I mourned her absence.

Then there was the day, not long after Mrs. Soleimani disappeared, when I went to Tabatabai Bookstore to talk to Jalal and find new material to read. It was a dusty October day with no breeze blowing and no sign of rain, which hadn’t come yet that year. The air smelled of petroleum. I gave a start at the sight of the bookstore. One window was boarded up and another window-pane was shattered, its pieces on the ground. Though the pane was broken, there was no way to see inside the store because thick cardboard covered the break. I felt personally assaulted. I sat on the step of an old abandoned house across from the store and wept uncontrollably. I could only imagine what had happened to Jalal. Most likely he had suffered the same fate as his father. I didn’t know his last name or where he lived, even though we had had so many conversations. I had no way of even inquiring about him.

What was happening in Ahvaz was only a fragment of what was happening across the country. Then Khomeini was arrested. After being imprisoned for two months, he was put under house arrest in an isolated suburb of Tehran.

At lunchtime Father was waiting for me outside my school. “Come with me, I need to talk to you,” he commanded.

My heart began to pound. He led me to the restaurant in Melli Park. After he ordered he said suddenly, “I’m going to let you go to college in America. Parviz advised me to do that.”

I stared at him, incredulous. So Parviz had been influenced by all the letters I wrote to him and was coming to my aid.

“He knows a women’s college not far from his medical school in St. Louis,” Father said. “They offer a few scholarships each year to foreign students. You’ve performed well at school, so you have a chance.” As if my going to the college was already finalized, he went on to say, “You must promise you won’t try to imitate American girls, their ways. And under no circumstances should you get ideas in your head about American men. You’ll come back. There are men here who like educated women.”

As I walked back to school, I tried to understand what was happening. Father was afraid of the kind of books I read, the stories I wrote, of the fact that I broke rules. He knew I would put up a bigger fight than Pari if he tried to marry me to someone he and Mohtaram selected.

Soon after that talk he gave me application forms. As I filled them out, I was confident I would get into the college and with a scholarship. But my situation had changed so suddenly that I couldn’t quite trust it. I was excited one moment and despairing the next that Father might change his mind about sending me there. My future shone in colors that changed continually as if refracting light through a prism.

A few months after I mailed the applications Father came into my room and handed me two letters. I read both of them quickly. The first letter from Lindengrove College said:

The second one said:

I looked up at Father and noticed a faint smile on his face. Perhaps in spite of everything he was secretly proud of my being a good student. He went on to outline the steps I would take. He was getting the necessary papers together for me and by the end of the summer they would be ready and I would then leave for America.

Mahvash was my only friend who understood my desire to go to America. She herself was going to Tehran to study at the university and then maybe also find a way to pursue her interest in ballet. She would live with her older married brother and attend classes.

I had had no contact with anyone who spoke English. Oddly, foreign languages weren’t a part of the curriculum in the high school. Except for some words I had absorbed watching American movies, I had no knowledge of the English language. I started taking the English course offered after the regular class hours at my school. I bought a Farsi-English dictionary and looked up words.

 

 

 

 

 

Soon Maryam and Aziz came to visit. Maryam had finally returned from Karbala to take care of some affairs connected to her house and to see her family.

“I have a suitor; he’s young and well educated. I don’t know what he wants from a widow like me,” Maryam said as she sat with Aziz, Mohtaram, and me in the salon.

“Some men like widows, value them for being experienced,” Mohtaram said to her sister. “Can he afford to take care of you?”

“I don’t need his money,” Maryam said.

“You’re a widow, in a vulnerable position,” Aziz said to her. “It’s good to have someone to look after you.”

“There was no joy in my life when Fatollah was alive,” Maryam said.

“Still, it’s better to be married. All your sisters are married,” Aziz said. Turning to Mohtaram she added, “Your brother Ahmad knows Rahbar well enough and praised him highly.”