Usef Charchi stood without expression in front the class full of seventh grade boys. I sat at a table off to one side, watching him ask questions in his special 'teacher-voice.' The boys watched him too. They sat almost motionless, each in a tattered jacked from a long ago hopelessly worn out suit, each with his head shaved, and each with his hands folded in front of him. They sat crowded together, three in a desk made for one or two at most.

Usef took a book from one of the boys, looked at the lesson, and called a name. The boy stood, almost at attention. Usef told him to read a sentence. The boy stuttered his way through the English words which he deciphered from his torn, dog-eared, coverless book. His considerable effort failed to satisfy Usef who scolded him and told him to sit down.

When I had been in training for my stint with the Peace Corps, the instructors, mostly volunteers who had already been there, told us that discipline in the Iranian schools was unusually severe. They warned us about the crowding and the poverty. Despite everything they said, we were not prepared for what we found.

Usef was a tall, thin man; a Turk, like most of the people in northwestern Iran. In his late twenties, he taught English, and while I was there, he was my best friend. He was kind in every way, and he was above all loyal to Iran and a very faithful Moslem. As will be seen in later chapters, he taught me much about Islam and to respect it.

"What is your name?" he asked another boy.

The youngster jumped out of his desk, knocked his book onto the floor, and said in almost a shout, "My name is Asgar Abrahiamyan."

"Good morning, how are you?" continued Usef.

"Very well, thank you."

"Please sit down," Usef ordered.

The classroom in Pahlavi High School (on my official record from Peace Corps I had been assigned to Mohammad Reza Shah Pahlavi Shah 'n Shah Ariyamehr High School - that being the full title the Shah had given himself, but on signs in Ahar it was Mohammad Reza Shah Pahlavi High School andnobody ever called it anything except Pahlavi High School) held about fifty boys, just as Iranian classrooms had been described during my training. The short boys sat in the front, the taller boys in the back. They were poorer than I had imagined.

Usef worked his way around the room, asking simple questions and getting pat answers repeated in the same shouted monotones. Finally he called on one of the older boys in the back. He was one who had failed the previous year and so had stayed back to repeat that grade. Sometimes boys who failed sat through the same grade level twice or even three times before they advanced. Usef ordered the boy to read. He struggled with the lesson, but the effort was beyond him.

"Parvis ... is ... ... is ... a ..."

"Boy," Usef coached.

"Boy. Parvin is a ... ... gri...

"Girl."

"Girl. This is a ... a .... a ... a"

He never finished.

Mr. Hashemi, the school principal, opened the door and quickly walked into the room. Instantly the boys stood, some in their desks, some in the crowded aisles. That was the custom. When a teacher or anyone of importance entered the room, all of the students stood. Mr. Hashemi told them to sit down.

Meer Abdullah Hashemi was as kind and thoughtful as the Peace Corps officials in Tehran had pictured him to me. He took good care of the two volunteers who preceded me in the small town of Ahar. He spoke a passable English, which helped us communicate with each other. He was liked by the other teachers, and by the students. But throughout the school and the town people also respected the short graying principal who could, when necessary, make decisions and take firm stands.

Mr. Hashemi and Usef talked quickly and quietly in Turkish, none of which I understood. I was relaxed, only observing how things worked in the schools of Ahar. I had only been there a few days, and I was getting acclimated. Despite the three months of training and preparation, I realized that getting used to Iran was going to take time.

Everything was so different. The boys sat quietly in their wooden desks. A large blackboard, painted green, hung on the wall at the front. The wall opposite the door held four large windows which were closed despite the stuffy room and the nice warm weather outside. A chalk white-wash covered all of the remaining wall space, and it rubbed off if touched. A single empty light socket hung from the ceiling. The room seemed colorless and empty, especially when compared to the well-supplied schools I had left at home.

Mr. Hashemi came over to me and in his slow, thoughtful English, he explained, "There is one teacher who is just today not in the school because of his illness. We are needing Mr. Charchi to be teaching in his class. You can be teaching in this class. I think that it is a good idea that you can begin teaching just now."

"I'm not sure," I hesitated.

"We think that it is a good thing just now," repeated Mr. Hashemi. Then he and Usef walked toward the door, opened it, and disappeared into the hall.

All of the boys stood, which they did, not only when someone entered the room, but also when they left. Hashemi shut the door. The boys all looked at me, and I looked at them, and I realized that I did not have the slightest idea what to do next. At that point, I wished that I could go back to some of those training sessions I had had a few weeks before and get a better handle on strategies and lessons.

In English I told the boys to sit down and they did. A few giggled. It was not the same class that Usef had been teaching. The quiet attentive atmosphere disappeared and the stiff discipline evaporated.

I picked up the book, pointed to a boy in the front row, and told him, in Persian, to read. It was the first time they had heard me say anything in a language they understood. They laughed at my accent and my poor pronunciation. What was left of the control that Usef had maintained vanished. Boys tried to mimic me, and others shouted "Hello, Mister." Some stood and started moving around the room. I remember having an awful sinking feeling. I pointed to the boys who were standing and ordered, in English, "Sit down." They did! Back to the first boy, I told him to read, pointing to the spot where I wanted him to start. He read reasonably well. I corrected his pronunciation. I was stern. They made lots of mistakes. But I felt secure since I at least knew English better then they did. In the back of my mind, I remembered one of our instructors during training admonishing us not to imitate the style of Iranian teachers who stand rigidly in the front of the classroom. Use American techniques, they suggested. Move around. Use groups. Involve the boys in what you are doing. It all sounded so wonderful.

I am teaching in a seventh grade class at Pahlavi High School

After four or five boys in the front had read, I selected a boy near the back of the room, got him started and, as he read, I moved down the aisle in his general direction. Some of the students were noticeably dirty. Some of them smelled; something I got used to after a few days. But on that first day, the odors of bodies seldom washed, dressed in clothes infrequently changed, overpowered me. I turned and attempted a retreat back to the front of the room, in the direction of the windows. It was too late. Not quite to the windows, I threw up.

That was not the way I had pictured my first teaching day in Iran. It was nothing I would have imagined when I considered joining the Peace Corps. Like other volunteers, I started when I took the group of tests given by recruiters at the University of Washington. A few months later, I received an offer to train with a group that would go to Iran and teach English. We assembled at Reed College in Portland, Oregon, which was also my home town, and there we practiced by teaching English to adults who had recently immigrated to the States. We listened to guest speakers talk about Iran, and we studied Persian for six to eight hours daily. A few members of the group decided to drop out, and Peace Corps officials asked two others to leave.

The summer of 1966 was the height of the Vietnam War, and local draft boards found it increasingly difficult to fill their quotas for the various military services. My board was no exception and it refused to grant me permission to enter Peace Corps or leave the country. While some boards in some states considered the Peace Corps an alternative service, Oregon boards did not. A state-wide appeal board for all of Oregon denied my appeal, but one member dissented, allowing me an appeal to a national board, called the Presidential Appeal Board, which met in Washington, D.C. While they deliberated, our training concluded, and my group left for Tehran. Because my status remained unclear, I stayed home and waited.

About a month later, Peace Corps officials obtained permission for me to travel to Iran and begin work until the appeal board reached its decision. I agreed to return willingly should they deny the appeal. On October 14, 1966, I left Portland for New York. There I changed planes, and the next morning we landed in Paris, then Rome, Istanbul, Ankara and finally, late that night, Meerhabad Airport in Tehran.

A representative of the embassy and a driver from Peace Corps met me, and together we waited for my luggage which failed to appear. Exhausted, and upset, I filled out the required lost luggage forms with the help of the embassy man, and then we headed for the door. I had one change of underwear, and a book in my hand luggage. Near the exit, I saw my suitcases on a cart being pulled by a bedraggled, unshaven worker wearing a knitted hat. He had found them in the plane, in the wrong place, he explained, and he protested that he was looking for their owner. When the embassy man gave him some money, he happily handed the bags to me.

After a drive through traffic unlike anything I had ever known, with horns blasting, sudden stops, fast starts and what seemed like endless close calls, we arrived at a small hotel on a main street. In any American city, the Hotel Atlantic would have been earmarked for urban renewal. Cracked plaster walls, peeling paint, and missing floor tiles highlighted its overall decay. The carpet on the steps to the second floor was in better shape than the worn remnants on those going up to the third. Each lift on each step seemed to be of a different height, and some steps were wider than others.

My room opened onto the front of the building, overlooking Takhte Jamshid, a main east-west thoroughfare. A lumpy bed sat in the middle of the badly lighted, but clean room. At one end, double doors opened onto a balcony. A second door at the other end led into the bathroom.

At the far side of the bathroom an oversized free standing tub filled most of the space. A sink and toilet sat next to it. Above the toilet a cistern hung on the wall and a pull chain dangled below it at about eye level. The toilet had no seat. Peace Corps officials had warned us to carry toilet paper, and I had some in my suitcase, but found plenty in the bathroom. It resembled small sheets of thin, waxed paper with one side slicker than the other. I soon learned to hold the more absorbent side up before I used it.

The pull chain activated the toilet's flush mechanism some of the time. When it did work, it began with an overture of gurgling, then an eruption of water that overwhelmed the bowl and sloshed out onto the floor covering a sizable area. A long period of running water and high pitched squeals formed the cadenza as the cistern refilled. When the pull chain failed to work, I stood on the rim of the bowl, reached up into the cistern, fumbled to adjust the reluctant parts and, when finally successful, jumped clear in order to avoid getting my pants soaked. A drain in the corner of the room collected the run-off.

After the long flight I was tired and dirty. I decided to take a quick bath. Moderately warm water slowly ran into the tub and, when it was half full, I undressed, put my clothes on the floor, and got in. It felt wonderful. When I got out a while later I pulled the plug and before I could stop it the water flooded directly out onto the floor and soaked the clothes that I had left there.

Despite its lumps, the bed felt good, but there was no sleeping. Below the balcony horns blended with the gnashing of gears and outside the window a neon sign blinked on and off. The building's plumbing rattled and sighed. Jet-lag compounded the problem. From Portland to Teheran there is a twelve and one-half hour time difference. It was the middle of the night and I was wide awake.

Entrance to the Teheran Bazaar

In the morning, Sunday when Peace Corps and the American Embassy were closed, I walked around looking at the city. As I left the hotel a scruffy unshaven man wearing a tan skull cap, patched jacket, and black baggy pants passed with his gray donkey. He slapped the animal's hind quarter with a heavy stick, and he made a sound through his lips like a whistle crossed with a hiss. The donkey's sharp hooves made hollow sounds on the sidewalk and pedestrians moved aside as the two passed. Near the hotel a blind beggar sat in the dirt with his hand out, looking up at the people walking by with sightless white eyes. Three women dressed in full body veils, called chadores, covering them from head to sidewalk, glided along together laughing and talking. A young boy with a shaved head, wearing shoes so loose that they dragged on the sidewalk passed me. He looked up and said, "Hello, Mister!" In the next block a man bent over under a heavy load on his back walked along shouting "Ya-Allah, Ya-Allah," which translates as "Oh - God, Oh-God!," but actually means "Get out of my way!" Farther along a high mud wall bordered the sidewalk, and next to it two men squatted and relieved themselves. Trails of evaporated urine from previous encounters crossed the sidewalk and ran into the jube - the open sewer - that separated the sidewalk from the street.

The jubes ran along most of Tehran's streets. In some the water moved swiftly and in others it sat stagnant, smelly, and black. Farther along I saw a car which the owner had parked too close to the jube. Its right wheels dangled over the deep gully and a team of eight or nine men struggled to lift it back onto the pavement. They stopped and looked at me as I walked by. Many Iranians stopped and looked at the American.

Along Takhte Jamshid red, double-decked, London-style busses plowed through the heavy traffic. Horns constantly sounded. Orange taxis crowded in and out of non-existent lanes, sometimes even crossing into the right-of-way of oncoming cars. At intersections, drivers jockeyed for position, and when the signal changed, left turning, right turning and U-turning drivers competed with pedestrians to see who would give ground first. The boldest survived. I learned quickly that crossing the street on foot was less dangerous in mid-block than at the corner where a car turning right or left could easily catch a careless pedestrian off guard.

The busses stopped at designated places letting off and taking on passengers. Riders purchased tickets in advance from wizened vendors who sat on corners in dilapidated metal kiosks. Most busses simply ran back and forth along the main streets. Each ride required a new ticket.

Everywhere drivers double-parked their cars making complete the general traffic chaos. Surprisingly, there seemed to be few accidents although many cars and most of the taxi cabs showed evidence of confrontations they had lost. The sidewalks had their own risks. Here and there missing paving stones left sizable holes unmarked by warnings or barricades. Around construction sites, excavations one meter deep or deeper also went unshielded. Walking around in Tehran and remaining unwounded required one to keep his eyes open.

Eventually I found a shop that sold electrical equipment. I had brought with me my electric razor, which converted from one hundred ten volts used at home to two hundred twenty volts used in Iran. But the plug on my razor had two vertical prongs and the wall outlet in the hotel was two round holes. They sold me an adapter. I went back to the hotel, shaved, and slept the rest of the day. That night I sat up wide awake still paying the price for jet-lag.

I spent a week in Tehran waiting for Peace Corps officials to decide where to place me. The volunteers stationed there had a tight-knit community; all of them lived in about the same neighborhood not far from the Peace Corps office. Most of them taught English at Tehran University, and most of them ate lunch together at the American AID Mission which got its food from the American Embassy commissary. Eating out daily proved expensive. Peace Corps based the monthly living allowance for volunteers on a national average which left Teheran residents tightly strapped since prices there always ran much higher than in the rest of the country. Some eventually sold some of their clothes and many requested subsidies from parents or families back home.

Teheran did not represent the rest of Iran. The volunteers there went to American movies, spoke mostly English, and lived in apartments with hot and cold running water which was fit to drink most of the time. They rode busses and taxis to and from work, and they had many fellow Americans with whom to talk and vent their frustrations. Surprisingly, the Teheran volunteers disliked the Iranians the most vehemently, and more of them quit and returned home than any other group. Teheran natives saw the least need for American help and the volunteers there ran most directly into the country's slow moving bureaucracy. They found it hard to make Iranian friends and they saw the fewest results for their labors.

Finally Peace Corps officials decided to place me in a small town in northwestern Iran. Ahar had been the home of two previous volunteers. The first, Thomas Morgan, had completed a two year stay satisfactorily and the town had asked for a replacement. Thomas Dawson filled the vacancy, but only for one summer. In August he traveled from Ahar to Tehran. On the way his bus stopped for lunch in Astra, a small town near the Caspian Sea and right on the border with the Soviet Union. To kill time, Dawson wandered into a small stream on the northern edge of the city to look for colored stones. The stream itself was the border, not the fence some yards away. Russian guards grabbed the luckless volunteer, dragged him off to Baku, and there interrogated him for about two weeks, creating something of an international incident. Just before I arrived in Iran, the Soviets released Dawson, and Peace Corps reassigned him to a station in Micronesia where they felt he would be safe since the island country has no land borders.

The Chief of Education in Ahar signaled Peace Corps in Teheran indicating that they wished a new volunteer, and I got the job. I had just heard the news when two volunteers, a husband and wife team, arrived from Meshkin, a small city a few miles east of Ahar. They had quit the site which they found cold, wet, isolated and flea ridden. The town had electricity only a few hours each evening. Worse yet, the Iranian government used Meshkin as an exile city and sent political trouble-makers there where police kept them under close surveillance. The police assumed that anyone sent to Meshkin must be in some kind of trouble, so the volunteers found themselves being watched most of the time. They left, and vowed to return to the States before going back.

Shaken, I had second thoughts about taking the job in Ahar. But Dennis Yates, a Peace Corps official who became my field officer, assured me that Ahar was nothing like Meshkin, and not to worry. Peace Corps had divided Iran into a number of areas and each had a field officer, a person who traveled around checking on volunteers and helping them solve any problems they might encounter. Field Officers provided a link with Peace Corps in Teheran, and most of them had themselves been volunteers so they knew the country and the language. Dennis counseled calm and pointed out that he himself would take me to Ahar where he would see that the site was satisfactory.

We left the next morning. We headed north, through the mountains that border the edge of Teheran. Once over the pass, we descended toward the Caspian Sea, dropping to about eighty feet below sea level into a wet region where the rainfall exceeds even that in the Pacific Northwest. Eventually we entered Rasht. Residents of the city had decorated the streets for a holiday; the Shah's Birthday. Students marched through the muddy streets in a parade of sorts moving under green, white, and red banners that dripped from the cool rain that seemed welcome after the heat of Teheran. The thick air and heavy humidity made me tired and I wondered how long it took the volunteers to get used to it.

Above left, the hills north of Teheran; Above right, a typical thatched house along the Caspian Sea; Next, Fishermen working the Caspian Sea.

 

We visited one volunteer who had been assigned an apartment only to discover that it shared its bathroom facilities with an adjacent movie theater. He had moved in with the school principal, and more or less became part of the family. Dennis wanted to check to be sure that he was getting along. He seemed happy, and so we left.

Unfortunately, Dennis had parked the Peace Corps landrover along the route of the parade that continued to wind through town. The machine had a fickle streak and never started when it was most needed. Nothing Dennis did helped, and in a matter of minutes a crowd of locals gathered and started giving advice. Over protests from Dennis, one man opened the hood and began tinkering with parts of the engine. Another pushed into the front seat of the landrover and worked the key, the starter, and the foot pedals.

Dennis waved his arms and shouted for them to stop. Trying to be as diplomatic as possible, he worked to convince everyone that the car would work wonderfully if only they would just let it alone and give us a push. But by then the crowd had swelled to include everyone in the parade and most of those who had been watching it. Pushing the landrover would be easy, but finding the room to maneuver it through the crowd would be the challenge. With a fanfare of shouts provided by too many bosses directing too few workers, three straining men got behind the stalled car and shoved it through the crowd which grudgingly gave way. Everyone else stood and watched, wide eyed, and open mouthed. After a few coughs and jolts, the engine started, and Dennis and I drove off, scattering the rest of the crowd and leaving them behind in the muddy street, waving at us, the parade having been forgotten.

We stayed the night at a modest hotel near the edge of town run by a Russian woman. The rooms had ancient iron frame beds with decomposing mattresses that smelled of mold and mildew. Large stitches of heavy string-like thread fastened gray sheets to each of the mattresses. Metal pins secured a second sheet to the heavy quilt that lay on each bed. Dennis explained that the owners of these hotels generally changed the linen every week or so, depending on how much use the room had. Sleeping in a rural hotel helped bring us closer to our Iranian hosts.

Our room had a sink, but the communal toilet sat in a small room at the end of the hall. The fixture was the first eastern-style toilet that I had met face to face. It amounted to two pads on which the user placed his feet while he squatted over a hole recessed in the floor. In place of toilet paper there was an 'aftobeh,' or water pitcher with a long spout, sitting near the toilet, called a 'musterah.' After using the toilet, you held the aftobeh with your right hand, poured water, and used your left hand, considered the sinister or dirty hand in that part of the world, to wash your body. The method took some getting used to. It was, however, effective, although I always felt a bit soggy afterwards until I dried out.

The next morning, we drove north, to Bandar Pahlavi, a port on the Caspian Sea. There we turned west and then northwest, along the Caspian. Most of the time Dennis drove on the sand next to the water because that surface was so much smoother than the adjacent chuck-hole filled highway. We stopped to watch sturgeon fishermen dragging in nets. They posed for pictures and everyone had a good time.

At Astra, we turned inland and wound along switch backs climbing out of the Caspian depression up onto the mountainous plateau of northwestern Iran. Rising from eighty feet below sea level to two thousand feet above, the narrow road turned and twisted along the hillsides often only a few feet away from the Soviet border. Iranian and Russian watchtowers stood along the route. I tried to take pictures, but Iranian guards stopped us and emphasized the illegality of any photography.

Ardebil lay just over the top of the plateau lip. In contrast to Rasht and Bandar Pahlavi, Ardebil appeared dry and brown. The many trees around town looked spindly and thin compared to the lush forests we had just left. We stayed the night there, then left in the morning for Meshkin where we picked up the belongings abandoned by the volunteers. Late that evening we arrived in Ahar.

Unloading a bus, the hotel where I stayed my first night in ahar is in the background.

Ahar seemed drab and colorless from a distance. Getting closer failed to improve on the first impression. We found a hotel near a river that flowed through the eastern part of the town, and decided to stay there for the night. I found sleeping difficult. The room was damp, the bed was damp, the whole place looked damp. And I heard a strange clicking - scuttling sound. It proved to be cockroaches making their way across the dirty stone floor of the room. When I went to the toilet that night, the ubiquitous brown insects made disconcerting crunching sounds whenever I accidentally stopped on one of them. Dennis said that things would be better in the morning. I hoped that he knew what he was talking about but I had misgivings.