At the end of a volunteer's first year of service, Peace Corps allowed thirty days for international travel. The restrictions required that we stay in countries either bordering on Iran or with a similar culture. We could travel east to India and Pakistan, or any Moslem countries as far west as Egypt. Then the Six Day War upset the region and most Arab nations closed their borders to Americans. To compensate, Peace Corps added Greece and Cyprus to our list. When Alex and I left for Istanbul we had no idea exactly where we would go.
Our bus pulled out of Tabriz at exactly five in the morning, right on time. About three hours later we arrived in Bazargan, a small village on the Iran-Turkish frontier. The customs-immigration building straddled the line that separated the two countries. Its Turkish half had a red tile roof which ended where Iran's aluminum roof started. Inside a small fence divided a large reception room. Along with all of the passengers on our bus, Alex and I sat at one end of the room under a huge picture of the Shah, looking across the room into Turkey and a equally large photograph of Kemal Atatürk. In the middle of the room our suitcases sat on tables lined up on our side of the dividing line fence. Iranian officials huddled together in their little office drinking tea and talking. We waited patiently for over four hours.
The authorities inspected the bus. They checked over our health booklets. They inspected our Iranian exit visas and our passports. But most of the time they just stood around drinking tea and talking.
People sat on the other side of the room waiting to enter Iran. The Turks moved as deliberately as the Iranians. A man we met earlier at the Iranian Tourist Agency in Tabriz told us that people coming form the West found the border delays intolerable and they complained bitterly about the snail's pace that characterized such crossings. Those who had lived in Iran or Afghanistan or India took the flow of events more philosophically. Having been farther into the Asian subcontinent, they found the Turks and Iranians relatively efficient.
One at a time the officials called each of us up to a counter near their office. They handed us our passports, had us collect our suitcases, made a chalk mark on the side of each bag, and allowed us to pass across the line into the Turkish side. There the officials repeated the process in reverse. We ended up sitting in the chairs at the other end of the room, under the photograph of Atatürk, looking back at the Shah. Finally we left the building and walked out into the bright sunshine past a large sign that said Türkiye Cümhuriyeti (The Republic of Turkey). In the distance towered Mt. Ararat where the remains of Noah's ark are said to rest. At its base, just in front of us, we saw small villages where the people lived about the same way they must have in the days of the Biblical flood.
Back on the bus we started our three day trip across Turkey. Alex and I spent a few days in Istanbul, then we went on to Izmir and the ruins of Ephesis. We flew to Athens, and spent some days touring Greece. Alex stayed in Athens, but I took a boat across the Mediterranean to Cyprus, and from there flew to Tel Aviv. Since the war had ended, both Israel and Lebanon quickly reopened their borders to tourists who brought much needed dollars to help their damaged economies. I spent three days in Jerusalem, then back to Cyprus and into Beirut for a few days. From there I flew back to Teheran. By then I felt ready to return to Ahar for some rest.
It struck me as strange that I came to think of Ahar as home. I felt anxious to get back, to see Usef, Kashavarz, and my other friends. Azarbaijan seemed cool, green and peaceful after Israel and Lebanon. When the bus drove around the last curve I saw the Sheikh in the distance and smiled.
I went directly to the Office of Education where the Mashadi greeted me with a wave and a grin. From a back room he produced a pile of letters about four inches high. I took them home and sorted through the stack. On the bottom, almost the first that had come after I left, I found a letter from the Selective Service System in Portland. It said that I had been drafted.
I ran down the street to the Post Office and placed an emergency telephone call to the American Consul in Tabriz. About an hour later I had him on the line. He agreed to notify Peace Corps in Teheran and he advised me to pack.
"Are all Americans going to be fighting in Vietnam?" asked Mr. Hashemi when I went to his house and told him what had happened.
"I don't know," I said. "I just don't know."
"You should be staying with us in Ahar," he advised. "I am thinking that this place is better for you than Vietnam."
All of my friends in Ahar said the same thing. They said over and over that it was foolish for Americans to die in a war. They counseled me to stay and ignore the draft. In retrospect it seems strange that these same people just over a decade later willingly and with considerable fervor sent their sons into an equally futile war with Iraq. It is easier for a people to see the foolish things that other countries do.
Since nearly a month had passed since the draft notice arrived, I had only a few days left before I had to appear in Portland. I packed what I could, leaving the rest with the hope that someone would send it all after me as I had done for Tom Dawson. I said good-bye to Mr. Haddadpor, Mr. Kashavarz, Usef and the others. With my suitcase and my handbag I got on the bus and left Ahar.
The next day I flew to Teheran. Peace Corps officials had already purchased my ticket to Portland, routing me through Paris and New York.
"You'll arrive in Portland at around four-thirty in the morning," said Dennis Yates. "You'll have two hours to get to the induction center. I hope you make it."
That night I had dinner with a group of volunteers stationed in Teheran. We ate at the American Embassy Restaurant, inside the embassy compound, just behind the main buildings. That area often appeared in the news through 1980 and early 1981, during the hostage crisis. It was so peaceful and orderly then.
Early the next morning I took a taxi to the airport. A small tip (actually a bribe) and I passed quickly through immigration. My passport was in order, but this speeded things along. They marked over my entry and exit visas that I had left. A second tip and my slightly overweight bag made it through customs and onto the plane. After a few minutes, I boarded the van that drove us to the plane. I climbed aboard, sat in my seat, and watched men put suitcases in the hatch below me.
A man in a blue uniform walked through the plane calling my name.
"I'm here." "You are to get off of the plane," he said and he handed me a note.
The note said that someone from Peace Corps had called Pan American Airlines with a message that I should stay in Teheran and not leave Iran.
I left the plane and they guided me go into the luggage compartment where I picked out my suitcase. As they closed up the hatch and the plane made ready to leave, I walked back into the terminal building.
At the immigration desk a clerk stopped me.
"Your passport please."
I handed it to him.
"You do not have an entry visa for Iran."
"I know. The visa expired a few days ago. But I never actually left Iran today. I just went out to the plane and then I came back. So really I never left."
"But this says that you have left, and now you need an entry visa in order to reënter."
"Where can I get a visa?"
"At any Iranian embassy."
"Nowhere here at the airport?"
"No."
"Oh."
"I think I must see your chief," I asked, not knowing what else to do.
"Sit there," he said.
And so I sat and I waited. I waited over an hour. Then a balding, stocky man dressed in a clean sharp looking uniform showed up. Everyone treated him with considerable respect, so I assumed that he held high rank.
"What is the problem?" he asked me in clear English.
I explained what had happened.
"So you see, I never really left the country. The next time I leave, I'll get a new entry visa. But right now, I actually don't need one. This is all something of a mistake."
"Give me your passport," he said dryly.
"It says here that you have left Iran. You must go somewhere and get an entry visa. Then there will be no problem."
He handed me my passport.
I argued, and another official joined us. The two men argued. They took my passport and looked at it again and again. Finally a third man arrived.
"I am told that there is some difficulty," he said to me. "Give me your passport."
As he looked at it, I explained again what had happened. We talked. He asked me what I was doing in Iran and where I lived.
"Oh, Ahar," he said. "It is a very primitive place. Are you liking it there?"
We talked about Ahar's shortcomings, and the man said that he had a brother living in Tabriz working there for the Iranian National Tourist Agency.
"I know a man there," I said, and I vaguely described a young man who Alex and I had met at the Kennedy Library who worked at the same place.
"Yes," smiled the official. "He is my brother. Is he a good student?"
"Yes," I said, not knowing whether the man I described really was his brother or not or if we were even talking about the same person or not, "he is an excellent student."
Then he smiled and opened the bottom drawer of the desk in the office behind the immigration booth. He took out a small rubber stamp and used it a few times in my passport. He handed me the passport and smiled again.
"I think this will solve the problem."
In English and Persian the stamp read, "Canceled," and he had marked it over the indications that I had left Iran.
"Bah, bah, bah," said the other men.
In Iran, family and friends of family are important. The interrelationships between families and individuals can enhance status and they always provide support. I doubt that I knew the man's brother. But the coincidence of meeting a relative of someone I knew was not impossible. Whole families tended to work for the government or together in other occupations. They took care of each other. It was their custom and it was their duty.
I left the airport and went to the Peace Corps Office.
"We got a cable this morning from Washington," said one of the clerks. "It said to hold you in Teheran. We don't know why yet."
I stayed in Teheran for about a week. Then another cable came from Washington. Mr. Glenn Fishback, the director of the Iran program, read it to me.
"The Oregon draft board was again divided in their vote to draft Pitzer. This entitles him to an appeal at the national level. Pending this appeal, Pitzer to remain in Iran."
So they sent me back to Ahar.