Ahar in the distance with the Sheikh on the right, and the white building on the left is the Red Lion and Sun building. The road in the foreground is the road to Tabriz. In the far distance you can faintly see Mt. Savalon.
Every day I learned more about Iranian society. At the same time, my Iranian hosts found out things about me and about American culture. At times the meeting strained both sides.
"He is wanting to know about your jacket," explained Usef.
One of the teachers in the Pahlavi faculty room expressed interested in my sports coat; a light one that I started wearing when the weather warmed.
"What's wrong with it?" I asked.
Usef blushed. "It is made of a material that only village women are wearing. It has these patches on the arms. No teacher would wear such a thing."
"Tell him that it's fashionable. Elbow patches such coats are popular in America."
The men clicked their tongues and dropped the subject. I seldom wore the coat after that because it always upset the other teachers. Sometimes I put on a sweater over my shirt and tie, and that also bothered them. They always wore their suits, white shirts, and vests, even in the hottest weather.
They did find the synthetic fabrics of wash-and-wear clothes fascinating. They asked to look at my shoes and when I told them that one pair would last for two years and probably much longer, they appeared incredulous. But they found my neck tie the most amazing.
"Did you put the knot in that tie?" one teacher asked.
"Of course."
They carefully inspected the double-Windsor knot that I used with a four-in-hand necktie.
"He is asking," translated Usef pointing to the writing teacher, "if the knot will be gone if you pull it apart."
I loosened and pulled out the knot which quickly unraveled.
"Bah, bah, bah," choired all of the teachers.
Then I retied the tie.
"Bah, bah, bah," again.
"What's so wonderful about that?" I asked Usef.
"They cannot do such things. When they are buying a tie in the shop, they have the shopkeeper make the knot. They never remove the knot because they are not knowing how to put it there again. If one of them is trying, he is not able to make a knot which will come apart in the way that yours is doing. And the knot from the shopkeepers is small, and is not looking as good."
For a week or more I stood in the faculty room during recess and gave lessons on how to tie knots in neckties. Some of them learned and some never got the hang of it.
"We are going to 'gardesh,'" said Usef.
"Which means?" I asked.
"It means that we are going to walk together and enjoy the company of each other. When the weather is good the men are liking to walk in the evening, before going home for dinner. It is a good thing to do and you must come with us."
The ice and snow disappeared and the hillsides around Ahar turned green. The fruit trees bloomed and friendly breezes blew their perfumed scent in the warmed air that gusted through the city. Around 5:30 each evening Ahar's men filled the sidewalks. They stopped here and there chatting with each other. Most played with a set of worry beads, running the individual pieces through their fingers as if counting a rosary, or tossing the whole string and catching it in some repetitive pattern. Following the custom of the Middle East they often held hands as they strolled. Sometimes one man held only one finger of his companion. If flowers bloomed, the men picked the blossoms and smelled them as they walked along. Near Ahar's city hall I once passed two policemen 'gardeshing' together and holding hands, each with a flower held up to his nose. This was the social hour, and as such it filled an important niche in the life of the city.
Women never participated in the evening walks inside the city. Families occasionally walked together in the country, along the river, among the orchards that surrounded Ahar. Others left them along. A man and his family were not to be intruded upon. But for the most part the 'gardesh' was men's business. The women stayed home, took care of the children and cooked dinner so that it waited when the men returned.
On Friday, or on religious occasions, groups of older women gathered at the grave yard west of Ahar near the Tabriz road. Headstones marked some graves but only rectangles of little rocks or bricks level with the ground indicated most of them. Placed without pattern or organization, the graves appeared bleak on the barren hillside. The women sat on the ground tapping the stone markers with little pebbles to tell the dead that they had not been forgotten.
Just after New Year the Red Lion and Sun Society assigned Dr. Nassaree to Ahar. Typical of too many intelligent young Iranians, he wanted to finish his service with the government and go to the United States. Frustrated by the backwardness and problems of his country, he thought that immigrating would make him happy, successful, and rich. Most Iranians loved their country. But the dream of a better life in the West tempted many; too often the better educated - those who might have helped alleviate Iran's poverty and illiteracy.
When he heard that an American lived in Ahar, Dr. Nassaree invited me to dinner. I joined him in his rooms on the second floor of the Red Lion and Sun building. He spoke English almost as well as Usef. And he collected and almost worshipped anything that came from the United States; especially from its popular youth culture.
Ahar in the distance with the Sheikh on the right, and the white building on the left is the Red Lion and Sun building. The road in the foreground is the road to Tabriz. In the far distance you can faintly see Mt. Savalon.
"Are you liking to dance the twist?"
"No."
"Are you having many Elvis Presley records in your collection?"
"I don't have any Elvis records."
"I am having many Elvis Presley records here. If you would like we can listen and I am playing them."
"Oh, that's okay," I said, "I'm not really an Elvis fan."
"Can you teach me the Twist and the Frug?"
"I'm sorry, but they're new dances, and I don't know how to do them."
"Is New York the best city in America?"
"I've never been there," I admitted. "New York is one of the biggest cities and a lot of people think it's the best. I live on the west coast, a long way from New York. I live near California."
"Ah! California!" shouted the doctor. "Such a wonderful place."
"Well, I don't actually live in California. I live in Oregon."
"I think that California is the best place in your country," he said. "I am having a brother in California."
He showed me a stack of letters sent by his brother.
"Soon I am going to California and living with my brother."
The doctor decorated his room to show off his accumulation of Americana. He had records, posters, post cards, and a large picture of Elvis Presley. He borrowed my books and magazines so that he could practice his English. After a few dinners Dr. Nassaree apparently concluded that he knew more about America than I did. Disappointed in my inability to dance the twist and my indifference toward Elvis, he invited me less often, and then not at all. For some Iranians I was too American, and for others, not American enough.
At first, the boys in my seventh grade English classes all looked about the same to me. In time they emerged as individuals with distinct personalities. Although I had between forty and fifty in each group, I did learn the names and a little about a few of the boys I saw regularly at Pahlavi.
Mohammadbegar Schurezaree always sat in the front row where he carefully copied lessons out of his dog-eared book. Maghsud Tsabbari never successfully found a clean sheet of paper in his folder and always had to borrow from a neighbor. Meerhasan Hosseini always cheated on quizzes. During the lessons, he watched Old Hotami or the other custodians working outside in the garden. Farzan Saroushee received a new coat from his parents during New Year. Wealthier than most of the other boys, he also studied harder and often worked one or two assignments ahead.
The boys studied from books printed by the government. While they cost only a few rials, families passed them down from one brother to the next, or to neighbors, until they finally wore out. Each boy had to provide his own books. Some dilapidated copies had two or three of the first chapters missing.
The school charged each student a small tuition fee at the beginning of the year. The size of the fee depended on the wealth of the boy's family. Very poor families paid no fees at all. Under the Shah, the government set the goal of universal education. Each school employed a record keeper who assessed and collected the fees, tended to the grade books, and recorded the final marks on the official forms.
I concentrated on staying one step ahead of the boys, planing lessons for my regular classes at Pahlavi, and attempting to adapt as the other two principals shifted me around from group to group. In the unfamiliar surroundings of Ahar's schools where language and cultural barriers separated me from my students the most innocent thing could suddenly become a disruptive calamity. For example, one day Vallee Sartagalou's ball-point pen stopped working. He scribbled circles on his paper but the cheap pen refused to write. He hit the pen against the side of the desk without success. He removed the ink tube from the pen and blew into the open end trying to force ink toward the reluctant point. Nothing worked. Then, before I could stop him, he took a book of matches out of his pocket, lit one, and held it under the writing end. I had seen students perform this last-resort-trick before and it often worked. But I disapproved of lighting matches in the classroom and I moved toward the boy intending to loan him my pen so that he would put his away. I moved too slowly. He held the match in place too long, the overheated ink boiled and shot out the end landing in blobs on desks, books, neighbors, and their clothes. Little gobs of heavy blue ink speckled Sartagalou and most of his neighbors.
Some of the geraniums that were once at my house sat in
the window of this Pahlavi High School
classroom.
"Mister," shouted Ahhad Khoshkhou, wiping one hand across his forehead, further smearing the blue ink, and pointing to the mess with the other one. I picked out the five bluest boys, tried not to touch them, and sent them outside to the water faucet in the school yard. There they managed to scrape off some of the ink and distribute the rest more evenly. From moment to moment I never knew what would happen next.
The schools of Ahar had no sets of books, no sinks either in the classrooms or elsewhere, no colored paper, no overhead projectors, no drinking fountains, no scotch tape dispensers, and almost none of the niceties that American teachers require and take for granted. The school had no indoor plumbing for that matter. The boys used ill-smelling privies built against the school wall, next to the physical education building. Each classroom had a blackboard (a board painted black or green), a metal table and a chair for the teacher, a picture of the Shah, and a few pieces of thick crumbling chalk made by the janitors.
Whenever I needed to write anything on the board I asked the boys for chalk. Most of them carried pieces which they picked up after a teacher left the room. The shops around town sold good chalk that came from the People's Republic of China as did most of the school supplies bought by the boys. They had "Great Wall" pencils, "Friendship" tablets and "Comradeship" erasers.
On cloudy days the classrooms seemed dark despite the windows. In each room an empty electrical socket hung from the center of the ceiling.
"Do they ever put light bulbs in the sockets?" I asked Mr. Hashemi.
"Some boys who are being very poor will take such things," he answered. "I think it is better not to put lights in the rooms. They are very expensive."
"Would you mind if I brought my own bulb?"
Hashemi laughed. "Why would you do this?"
"When the boys write they need to see what they are doing." "You are able to bring your own light if you wish. The boys will think it very unusual."
After that I carried a bulb in my bag together with my books and other props. On dark days, I stood on one of the desks, held the bare metal socket in one hand and screwed the bulb in place. The boys laughed at my doing such an un-teacher-like thing, but after a few times, they even volunteered to help. They fearlessly grabbed the wires and the socket, unafraid of the 220 volts that might jolt them if the switch had accidentally been left in the on position.
One afternoon I sat drinking tea and talking to Mr. Haddadpor when I remembered that I had forgotten to retrieve my light bulb at the end of the previous class.
"What is wrong?" asked Haddadpor.
"I left my light bulb in the classroom," I explained. "I need to go and get it."
"I think that you are throwing away your time," he said. "It will not be there now."
I walked down the hall and into the empty classroom. The empty socket still swung gently from side to side. One of the boys had taken the bulb. Back in the faculty room I sat on my chair next to Haddadpor who never looked up.
"I told you it would not be there," he said quietly.
Opening the windows seemed harmless enough. The fresh air replaced the stuffy stale feeling that accumulated in the closed classrooms all winter. Then one day a bee flew in. The boys started screaming, running toward the door, and even crying. I told them to sit down, but nobody listened. I picked up my grade book, rolled it into a tube, and walked to the back of the room where the bee landed on a desk. I smashed it with one quick blow.
"Bah, bah, bah," said the boys. "Oh! Mister!" Jamshed Fatahee whispered with considerable respect. Every time a bee flew into one of my classes the boys panicked. I discovered that none of the other teachers ever opened the windows.
Pahlavi High School, and the other high schools, did have telephones, of sorts.
"Mr. Shaigon is having some teachers who are ill," said Mr. Hashemi one day during recess. "He is asking you to come and teach today in the afternoon. Will you be going?"
"Tell him I'll be there," I agreed.
Hashemi went to the bulky black telephone that sat on the bookkeeper's desk. He turned the crank on its side three or four times, then picked up the receiver.
"Hello, Hello," he shouted.
Finally the operator at the central office of the phone company answered. From each telephone in the city an individual line ran to the telephone office. Near its location south of the bazaar the overhead poles carried a nightmare tangle of wires that would have impressed any spider. Two or three men served as operators, but late at night or on Friday when none of them worked the city's telephone service shut down.
Hashemi told the operator that he wanted to talk to someone at Reza Shah High School. Then he put his receiver back in its cradle, waited about five seconds, and then turned the crank on the side of the phone three or four times. Then he waited. Presumably the operator had connected the Pahlavi phone to the Reza Shah phone, and in turning the crank, Hashemi had caused the Reza Shah phone to ring. If someone there heard it, he then went to their phone and turned its crank making the phone at Pahlavi ring. This happened, and it signaled Hashemi to pick up his receiver as did the person at the other end.
Before getting down to business, both men went through a litany of greetings and pleasantries. Finally Mr. Hashemi told Mr. Shaigon that I would be willing to help him that afternoon. When finished, after saying good-bye, which also involved considerable ritual, both men hung up. And both turned the cranks on their phones, signaling the operator that he could disconnect the call.
"Mr. Shaigon has changed his thinking. He is telling the boys to go outside and study their lessons. He is not wanting you to teach today."
The boys attended classes for a few weeks after New Year. Then they began to study for their final examinations. The teachers urged the principals to start the study period as early as possible arguing that the boys needed all the time they could get to prepare. The principals tried to keep the teachers in class as long as possible because once the studying started, the teachers left, and the principals and vice principals had to govern the boys who showed up and who wandered around the school yard, books in hand, memorizing lessons.
With his mustache, his black curly hair and his dark horn-rimmed glasses, Mr. Haddadpor looked a little like Groucho Marx. But there the resemblance ended. Haddadpor's formal manner, his dignity, and his proud bearing made him anything but a clown. He spoke softly, and he always wore a hat. In the past Mr. Haddadpor, who had a first name that I never learned, had been a Mullah. For some reason, which he kept secret and which created an air of mystery about him, he had left the clergy to become an English teacher.
Haddadpor told me that he had married at seventeen. His wife, whom I never saw, had been fifteen at the time. Soon they had a son, and a year later a second. Then, he said, they decided that two children was enough. With a twinkle in his eye he told me that he had found a book, in English, in the bazaar that told about birth control. He read it carefully.
"I learned about counting the days," he said looking proud. "The system is a good one."
Everyone who knew Haddadpor knew about his system. And they also knew that at least once he and his wife had lost count because his two sons, by then married, acquired a sister. The little girl was Haddadpor's pride and joy.
Mr. Haddadpor had three loves: his family, his painting, and his singing. When we walked home from Reza Shah together, we often stopped by a shop owned by one of his friends. Six or seven of his oil paintings hung on the wall.
"They look familiar," I said.
"Yes," he said slowly. "They are all famous designs."
Then he showed me how he cut pictures of classic paintings out of magazines and overlaid a grid pattern on them. Using this he transferred the design to his canvas, then he filled in the colors. For the most part, he copied European masters of the last few centuries.
"Are they not beautiful?" he asked.
"They're very nice," I said. "Buy why don't you paint some pictures of your own? Why not paint some of the interesting things here in Ahar?"
"Who would want such things?"
"A lot of people. I would like pictures of Ahar. It's an interesting place."
About a month later Mr. Haddadpor gave me a painting of a street scene showing an area near my house. In the background the Sheikh stood against the brown and white hills. A farmer and his donkey walked next to the school wall. He only painted one picture like it. The other teachers laughed at him and told him that he wasted his time doing such common things. They failed to recognize any value in their own surroundings. So Haddadpor returned to copying out of magazines.
Whenever anyone had a party or gathering, they always asked Mr. Haddadpor to sing. His voice never appealed to me, and I sometimes wondered if they asked him out of sincerity or politeness. When he sat in my house one afternoon, I asked him to explain the call to prayer that I so often heard the Mullahs call from the loudspeakers in the mosques.
"I will sing it for you," he offered. "And then I will explain its parts. I have been a muezzin, and I know this very well."
Haddadpor began, putting his head back, starting with the familiar, "Allah Akh-bar! [God is Great]" that initiates the call.
"Something is not good," he said suddenly stopping. "Are you having an egg?"
I found an egg in my kitchen and gave it to him. He cracked it, threw back his head and slowly let the raw white and yoke run down his throat, eventually swallowing it. Then he started again. He sang each word drawing it out, his voice rising and falling, filled with emotion. Then he explained the various phrases which tell the faithful that there is but one God, and that it is time to pray.
Later I borrowed a small tape recorded from Pahlavi High School, bought a tape in one of Ahar's shops, and asked Mr. Haddadpor to repeat his performance. He obliged happily. I keep the recording and when I hear it, I can still see Mr. Haddadpor looking up at the ceiling and letting an egg slither down his throat in order to have just the right quality in his voice. However much I forget about my two years in Iran, I will never forget that.