The road we took to the Armenian village
December brought both unusually cold weather and Ramadan - the Islamic month of fasting. Mr. Hashemi had the custodians put the school's old kerosene stoves in the classrooms. When they worked, they helped, but more often than not the fire went out after an hour or so or they refused to function at all. Whenever I went to a room where the stove had quit, I sent one of the boys for a custodian. Sometimes Old Hotami came and fixed it, but more often one of the other janitors wandered in and puttered around with the mechanism for a while. They played with its handles and knobs, usually failed to get it working, and acted as if they had never seen such a stove before.
"Sometimes they are not making the most smart men to be the janitor," said Usef when I complained. "Old Hotami is a good man and he can be fixing anything. Some of the others are not so good. Make the boys fix the stoves. They are having these things in their houses and they are knowing how they are working."
I took Usef's advice and discovered that the boys could often get the stoves burning about as quickly as Old Hotami. One day in one of my eighth grade classes I saw my breath turn white and drift across the classroom when I walked in. The boys sat huddled in their desks, wrapped in their coats and shivering. I told Asgar Sabzi, the class disciplinarian, to fix the stove.
Sabzi determined that something clogged the opening into the container that held the kerosene. In order to clear the small hole, he picked up the container itself and held it over his head above his mouth. Then he blew into the opening. At the moment when he had finished exhaling into the container one of the other boys made a joke about it being Ramadan and warning Sabzi not to drink any of the kerosene. He apparently said it very cleverly because all of the boys laughed, including Sabzi who was caught off guard and inhaled before he could get the kerosene away from his face. Some of it got into his mouth and throat. He coughed and spit, spattering me and the boys around his with kerosene, and he dropped the can which splashed more in my pants and shoes. Two students took Sabzi to Mr. Hashemi who sent him home for the day.
Whenever Val or I walked around Ahar we heard people, usually the boys from the schools, shouting, "Hello, Mister." Generally friendly, the greeting occasionally had a dark side. Being foreign, strange, and representing the United States, we drew some of the hostility that Iranians felt toward our country. Against the background of the Vietnam War, the teachers occasionally asked us if Americans loved killing people and ruling their countries. Our country supported the Shah whom many of them hated. Ignoring the long tradition of despotic rule in their past, they reasoned that without the united States, the Shah would fall and a more benign government would replace him. By their standards the people of rural Ahar, and much of Iran for that matter, saw Americans as rich, greedy, and either unconcerned with their problems or the direct cause of them. And we were not Moslems which labeled us as infidels and hence suspicious from the outset.
Much of the shouting aimed at Val and me resulted from adolescent pranks, but some was petty harassment.
"Hello, hello, hello," someone screamed as he ran through the street behind our house.
"Very well, Mister, very well Mister," another boy shouted as I walked to the hammum.
And at least a dozen times each week, boys or men threw rocks at the back door of our house. Day or night they struck with a loud, disconcerting noise.
"It is terrible what these boys and their fathers are doing," said Mr. Kashavarz while we walked home one afternoon.
"I will be talking with all of the boys," said Mr. Hashemi, "and I will be telling the other principals that they must also be talking with the boys about this thing.
One morning as I shopped near the bazaar, I spotted a boy standing in a side alley watching me. Just after I passed I heard him shout, "Hello, hello, very well Mister!"
I dropped my bag and ran around the corner quickly enough to catch the youngster. He fell into a pile of snow and lay there crying and begging me not to hurt him. About twelve, he appeared terrified. A crowd gathered and they watched me walk away.
With two Americans in Ahar, shouting "Hello, Mister," became a game for a month or so that winter and then it lost its popularity. But during the rest of my time in Ahar it never ended.
The room in our house with the toilet had a small window that opened into the school yard. I was in the room one morning when I heard something and looked up in time to see two boys duck out of view.
"Do you know the little window in the room with the toilet?" I asked Mr. Hashemi later that day.
"Yes," he said, "it is needed for getting good air into that room."
"Well, when the boys climb over the school wall they sit there and look into that room. I saw two of them this morning."
Mr. Hashemi sputtered and took a long sip of his tea, then shook his head.
"This is a bad thing. It must be stopping. We are doing some work just today. I am going now to tell a man to be making an end to this problem."
When I walked home across the school yard that afternoon I immediately saw what Hashemi's men did. They nailed a large board over the outside of the window and they built the school wall next to the house a few feet higher. Inside the toilet room already smelled, but we had to pay that price for privacy.
Iranians have a special celebration for children. I learned about it one day when I noticed that Usef looked sleepy.
"Last night my family is having what is called 'Children's Night.' And we are not sleeping almost the whole night. This is the night when the day is the shortest of the year and the night is the longest. On this special night we are honoring our children."
"And your family sat up all night."
"For my little brothers only. I am too old for this thing."
"So, what happened?"
"When it is late in the night we eat special foods. It is always done in the night, but this year is more special because it is also Ramadan and so there is no eating in the day. It is also the ending of the time for melons but each family is saving one for this time. We are also having candy and some games that everyone is knowing."
"It sounds like fun."
"And we are having gifts, but only for the young children. They are getting some small things, and perhaps a toy. At the New Year we are giving clothes, but on this night the children are having some things to enjoy. It is a night special for the young children."
"So you didn't get anything?"
Usef blushed and sipped his tea.
"Then you did get something?"
"I am not being able to stop my mother from this thing. She is saying that I am her child no matter how old I am becoming."
Then he pulled himself up, put on his most dignified expression, and walked out of the room to his next class.
The night for children had its origins in the same ancient practices that lay behind Christmas in December. Pagan civilizations throughout the Mediterranean world and the East celebrated the longest night of the year long before the Roman era. For them it signaled the return of the sun, lengthening days, and the onset of spring and summer.
For Christmas I went to Rezaiyeh, a city west of Tabriz near a large salt lake. The volunteers there invited all of the Peace Corps members in the area to join them for the holiday. I arrived on Christmas Eve joining about fifteen others already there.
On Christmas Day we hired a man and his horse-drawn wagon and had him take us to an Armenian village a few miles outside of town. The Rezaiyeh volunteers had been instrumental in building a school there and they wanted to show it off. The villagers, being Armenian, were Christians and also celebrating the holiday. They prepared a special meal and invited us to join them.
The road we took to the Armenian village
The small but prosperous village contained about twenty mud houses clustered together on a piece of high ground surrounded by fields then covered with snow. The men smiled big, toothy grins as they welcomed us and gave us a tour that highlighted the school - the only brick building around.
Then we went into one of the larger houses and climbed steps to a second floor room where they served the meal. A large plastic table cloth covered the floor with places set around its edge. We sat cross-legged and began with Christmas carols. Then the women, dressed in holiday finery, performed a traditional dance. Their colorful dresses flared as they spun and jumped, executing intricate steps in time to music played by some of the men.
The men brought in pitchers full of a dark purple liquid and from them filled small glasses that sat in front of each place. Together we toasted Christmas. When I drank the stuff it burned all the way down and I wheezed and tried to catch my breath.
"Vodka," one of the local volunteers explained. "They make it here themselves. The Moslems aren't allowed to drink anything with alcohol, but the Armenians are Christian and don't have that hang-up. Good, isn't it?"
Whenever anyone emptied his glass, one of the men refilled it again and again. Meanwhile we started on the mountains of rice that they brought on huge platters and sat on the cloth. Next came meat, potato patties, greens, salads, cakes, candies, and exotic dishes that the women produced in the kitchen below. We ate, we sang, and I fell asleep leaning against the wall behind me.
Late in the afternoon the wagon driver took us back into town. The Rezaiyeh volunteers rented one room of a private club and they bought a pig from one of the Armenian farmers in the village we had visited. The cooks at the club roasted the pig.
"Why a pig?" I asked. "I haven't seen pork since I came to Iran except in Teheran at the Armenian shops."
"That's why. Moslems won't eat pork. So we can leave it here for them to fix and not have to worry because we know that nobody will steal any of it."
We all enjoyed the fatty sweet meat which they served with potatoes, rice, vegetables, boiled eggs, and beer. We sang carols and enjoyed a happy Christmas. The party ended about midnight.
The next morning I returned through Tabriz to Ahar. At the Office of Education the Mashadi had a pile of mail waiting for me. Each of the teachers had bought Christmas cards and signed them. More cards and letters arrived from home. Near the bottom of the pile I found a letter from the Selective Service System. Two weeks before Christmas I turned twenty-six. The Presidential appeal board had held by case in abeyance until that date and then denied my petition. Since the draft precluded anyone twenty-six or older, their delaying action resolved my problem.
Usef grinned when I showed him the letter.
"You are also getting a little gift for your holiday," he said.