Ahar is a small town in the Iranian ostan, or state, called East Azarbaijan. In 1966 it had perhaps ten thousand residents, mostly people of Turkish descent who spoke a dialect of Turkish. Distant from the main parts of the country, Ahar was isolated, backward, and struggling. It acted as a support center for an agricultural area that produced sheep, fruit, and other garden vegetables. The winters in Ahar were cold, the summers mild, and the springs and falls could be wet.
Subsistence shop keepers made up most of Ahar's residents. A small intelligentsia either worked for the government or served as professional people such as a doctors, lawyers, or teachers. Some of these were locals who had managed to get some college education in Tabriz, the largest city in northwestern Iran. Others were assigned to Ahar by the central government, either because they had no influence through friends or relatives that would afford them a better station, or because they were political nuisances but not bad enough to be sent to an exile city like Meshkin. Those who had been assigned to Ahar wanted only to get transferred out, mostly back to Tabriz. Native Ahar professionals liked it there, and they did not generally want to leave. For them life in Tabriz would have been difficult and Tehran even more impossible. Their distinctive local accent identified them as country people, looked down on in the city, and openly ridiculed in the Persian speaking parts of the country.
The teachers and administrators who worked in Ahar's schools were a mix of locals and out-of-towners. Mr. Moqtadar was the city's stout, swarthy-skinned Chief of Education. When Dennis Yates and I met him early the morning after our arrival in Ahar, he greeted us in his office. He ordered a small man, who scampered about the place in a shuffle, to bring everyone tea. We talked about the weather, and the condition of the road to Meshkin, and Mr. Moqtadar smiled at us over his large hooked nose. Touches of gray at his temples gave him a look of distinction and everyone around addressed him in terms of obsequious politeness in deference to his authority.
After perhaps half an hour of small talk Mr. Hashemi, the principal of Pahlavi High School, joined us. Hashemi had a wrinkled face and eyes that tended to squint giving evidence of his cautious nature. He spoke a broken, but adequate English although at times he strained to reach for words just beyond his grasp. He thanked Dennis or me whenever we helped him with a missing verb or an elusive noun. He had a tendency to stutter in whatever language he spoke. And he carefully saw to it that Mr. Moqtadar, who did not speak any English, got a translation of anything anyone said.
The next man to join the meeting was Usef Charchi. Usef had been Tom Morgan's best friend, Hashemi explained. Morgan spent two satisfactory years in Ahar and Hashemi wished me the same. Usef demonstrated an impressive command of English, sometimes complete with idiomatic and slang expressions rather than the bookish terms more common among Iranians. Like most Turkish men, he was tall and thin. He usually accented his speech with hand gestures, and he became boyishly eager whenever he got excited. He stared intently over wire rimmed glasses, smiled at me, sat down in an empty chair, and asked how I liked Ahar so far, where I came form in the States, and among other things, if I liked to go for long walks.
All of us waited for the principals of Ahar's other two boy's high schools to arrive. Mr. Moqtadar, aggravated at the delay twice ordered his assistants to telephone the schools and urge their headmasters to hurry along. When the men finally came into the office, Moqtadar greeted them with warm smiles, everyone introduced himself to everyone else, and we all had yet another cup of tea.
Mr. Reza Shaigon was a short balding man with a broad smile and crackley voice who spoke in clippy sentences. He exhausted his entire English vocabulary when he said to Dennis and me, "Hello, how are you?" Mr. Akbar Arbabi, on the other hand, spoke no English at all. With a nose that matched Mr. Moqtadar's, a long angular face, a perpetual frown, and a streak of silver running through his black hair, Arbabi looked like an unforgiving medieval schoolmaster. The two men were about as different in appearance as two men in the same profession could be. Once everyone had finished his tea, we got down to business.
In Iranian society, prestige and the relative position that it brought established the relationship between individuals. For example, the higher ones job, the more education he had, the more closely he was related to someone important, or the more money he could exhibit all combined to determine who had to kowtow to whom. Showing deference to someone involved a complicated ritual called 'taróff,' or 'super-politeness.' At times Byzantine in its ceremony, the playing out of taróff often involved one in higher station trying to be polite to someone in a lower position, but in the end, after exaggerated gestures and maneuvering just short of a ballet, finally giving way and accepting the honor he knew he should get in the first place. In Iran, any negotiation involved reëstablishment of the pecking order. It meant endless talk, prolonged gesturing, careful maneuvering so as not to be embarrassed by finding ones-self better situated than ones position allowed based on the positions of the others involved, and at the same time, not getting the dirty end of the stick if it should go to someone else. The amazing reality was that all of the players knew before things started just about how any given debate would be resolved.
As our discussion in Ahar's Office of Education unfolded, Usef translated for me. It soon became clear that each of the three principals wanted me to do some teaching in his school. Having the American on his staff would bring an additional bit of prestige as the relative positions of the principals depended on their seniority and on the number and caliber of the men under them. Each argued that he did not have an adequate staff, and the shortage was clearly more than one new teacher could remedy. But if I spent any time at Pahlavi High School with Mr. Hashemi I would be displacing Usef, the full time English teacher there, who then would have to travel between the three schools, something he did not want to do. No matter what, my arrival would force changes in the schedules of all of the English teachers in town. Further complicating things was Peace Corps which had set a ceiling on the number of hours a volunteer could teach. Dennis spent most of his time reminding the principals that they were exceeding the limits.
Then Usef and the principals switched from Persian to Turkish, and the conversation became increasingly animated. Since Dennis spoke no Turkish, he lost track of the negotiations entirely. Usef stopped translating because he had to concentrate on defending his position with whomever would listen to him, which was usually none of the other four. Finally Dennis stood, and in a loud voice demanded that things slow down, switch back to Persian, and that my class load, which had by then climbed beyond reason, be brought back to allowable limits. Mr. Moqtadar ordered more tea.
In all, the meeting lasted about another hour, and three more cups of tea. When we had finished, Usef received the worst position, which he had anticipated since he had the least amount of clout. He took on most of the traveling between schools, and a heavy teaching schedule. I was to spend most of my time at Pahlavi High School since Mr. Hashemi was the senior principal in town. I would go to Reza Shah High school for Mr. Shaigon once a week to teach pronunciation, and the same, but for fewer hours, to Himmat High school for Mr. Arbabi, as he had the least amount of prestige in the group except for Usef.
They agreed that I should observe Usef for a week in order to familiarize myself with the routine of the schools, and then begin teaching. Everyone seemed happy, except Usef, who became quiet and said nothing more. Mr. Moqtadar ordered a final cup of tea in order to end the meeting on a happy note. Then Mr. Hashemi took Dennis and me to Pahlavi High School and showed us where I would live.
Iranian cities hosting Peace Corps volunteers agreed to provide for their housing. Some did and some said that they would as soon as possible but never did. In Ahar, the resident Peace Corps volunteer found a comfortable although somewhat primitive house ready and waiting. A few years after Mr. Hashemi had become principal of Pahlavi High school, he decided that a janitor living on the grounds would help protect the property. He ordered workers to build a small two room house against the back or north wall that surrounded the school yard. When Tom Morgan arrived in Ahar, he lived briefly with Hashemi and his family. Hashemi evicted the janitor, and had the house remodeled. Workers plastered and painted the interior walls, built a kitchen of sorts with running water (unusual in the houses in Ahar) at one end of one of the rooms, and a bathroom with an indoor toilet (almost unheard of in Ahar) at one end of the other room. The front door entered the house from the school yard and a back door exited through the wall into the street behind the school.
The back door to the house opened and closed with
a key. The front door was secured from the inside and could not be
opened from the outside. Unfortunately, when Tom Dawson left on his
ill-fated trip, he took all of the keys with him. Mr. Hashemi
resisted the idea of breaking down the door because it was government
property. He suggested that I live with him while Peace Corps wrote
letters to Dawson asking him to return the keys, but Dennis pointed
out that this might take months, and that there was no guarantee that
Dawson even had the keys any more after his experience in Baku. We
stood at the front door debating the point and getting nowhere. Then
Dennis leaned and then pushed against the door itself, and it swung
open having been secured with a small safety pin. My house as seen from the school, inside
the school wall The back door to my house, a muddy
street
Inside everything remained as Dawson had left it; clothes scattered about, food spoiled and rotting in the kitchen, and a liberal coat of dust everywhere. A house made essentially of mud is hard to keep clean on a daily basis, but a house made of mud and left alone for three months shows signs of neglect almost immediately.
Dennis left for Tabriz, and Mr. Hashemi said he had business in the school. I cleaned house and packed Dawson's things. Boys in the school yard gathered and watched intently, growing increasingly braver, finally actually coming through the open door and into the room where I worked. More and more boys pressed into the house, and although I tried to ask them to go away or at least stay outside, they laughed, and called to others who came running. I was getting worried at the unwelcome attention when Mr. Hashemi appeared at the door, stood quietly and said nothing. But the boys immediately scattered into the school yard, and disappeared.
Hashemi had hired men who came to the house a few minutes later. They took away the dirty rugs from the floor and replaced them with clean ones. We swept the place out, put new linen on the bed, and threw away everything in the kitchen. That night Usef and I went to Ahar's only restaurant for dinner.
Over the next few weeks I fell into a daily routine that I maintained throughout most of the two years that I lived in Ahar. Six days a week, when school was in session, a gentle thumping woke me each morning. As boys arrived at the school, they stood around the periphery of the yard, open books in hand, reading their lessons and marking the cadences by pounding an upraised foot against the wall, or, in this case, against the side of my house.
Except for Friday, the weekly holiday and Islamic holy day, government offices and schools in Iran functioned daily. In the mornings during the fall and spring three class periods each morning ran from 8:30 until Noon. During the three winter months, when mornings remained dark longer, school started at 9:00. Lunch ran from Noon until 2:00 followed by three more classes that lasted until 5:00 on Saturdays, Mondays and Wednesdays. Sundays and Tuesdays had only two afternoon classes and school closed at 4:00. The Office of Education opened at 8:00 every working day, and closed at Noon, usually not opening again until the next day. That was typical of government offices throughout the country except in big cities.
Although students arrived at the school as early as seven, teachers showed up only ten minutes or so before classes began. They assembled in the faculty room for a cup of tea provided by the school custodian, Mr. Hotami. At around 8:30, the vice principal rang the bell that he carried with him, and the boys lined up on the walkway in front of the school building. On the vice principal's signal, they marched off to their classrooms. When he was sure that each group had found its place, the vice principal walked into the faculty room, smiled and said, "Salaam, alay-kum," which literally meant 'Peace unto you," but really signified that it was time for the teachers to go to their first station.
On the wall of the faculty room, a large rack held all of the attendance books; one for each class. In American schools, the students move from teacher to teacher, usually changing groupings during each class period. In Iran, each of the boys received an assignment to his class at the start of each school year. Once established, a class of boys always remained together throughout that year in their appointed room. The teachers moved from room to room. Each teacher selected the appropriate attendance book, trudged down the hall, entered his class, and handed the attendance book to a student designated as the secretary who took roll, and recorded it. It was above the prestige of a teacher to do such a menial task.
Morning classes ran about forty-five minutes to an hour or perhaps a little longer at the whim of the vice principal. The teachers liked long breaks between classes, which shortened the class periods, but the vice principal had to oversee the entire student body, so he liked short breaks. This led to occasional debates in the faculty room between the teachers and the vice principal about how he should keep the students outside longer and work with them on their discipline so that the classes would be less unruly. When the vice principal did finally ring his bell, signifying the end of a class period, first the teachers left their classrooms, marched down the hall and into the faculty room where they camped drinking tea until the next class period started. The boys stood until the vice principal saw that the teachers were safely out of the way, and then he rang his bell a second time. The building shook under the impact of an hour's released energy running for the door. Safe in the faculty room we heard shouting, laughing, and the general commotion as the students escaped.
The boys studied Persian literature, Persian grammar, hand writing (calligraphy), history, health, physical education, chemistry, mathematics, religion, Arabic (so that they could read the Koran), and English. The law required that they pass a percentage of the subjects offered each year in order to advance to the next grade level. As long as a boy achieved satisfactory marks in the required number of classes, he passed, no matter how badly he did in the others. If the boys disliked English, they concentrated on everything else, and moved through school without problems. If they failed too many subjects, no matter how they did in the ones they passed, they had to repeat the entire year. Boys could stay in school as long as they did not fail any grade more than twice; hence they had three chances at each of the six high school grades, or 'forms' as the Iranians called them after the British model.
If a boy decided he did not want to serve in the Iranian military, he deliberately failed each grade at least once then taking twelve or more years to get through high school. At that time he was over twenty-four and too old for the army. Some of the boys in the twelfth grade at Himmat High School, which took the older students around town, were older than I was.
In such cases, the young men presented problems because they had studied English for so long that they knew the books and all of the answers by heart This did not mean that they understood much English. They had simply memorized all of the sounds. I once heard a young man recite a complicated story in English that went on for over fifteen minutes. For him it was nothing more than an exercise in memorizing nonsense syllables. Others cared little about the lessons at all. They rode roughshod over the younger boys, consequently the separation from school to school, and some intimidated their teachers both in and out of school. Pahlavi, which had the greatest prestige, drew the younger and brightest boys from throughout the city. Reza Shah had the "middle track," while Himmat held the older and less tractable set.
In September, at the start of each school year, the boys from each high school lined up with the class that they would attend that year. Each line arranged itself by height. Then the boys marched off to their new class with the shortest boy in the lead. He sat in the front, on the right, and the rest fell into place so that the tallest boy in the class sat in the last row on the left.
Each class had a letter designation based on the Arabic alphabet. For example, there was Seventh Grade Alef, Seventh Grade Beh, Seventh Grade Dahl, and so on. Next came Eighth Grade Alef, and then the Ninth grades, up to the twelfth. The third class of each level had the oldest boys attending at that level. The seventh grade boys at Reza Shah were about as old as the eighth or ninth grade boys at Pahlavi. The Twelfth grade at Himmat was tantamount to adult education.
Schools throughout Iran started teaching
English in the seventh grade. Until the early 1960s, the
foreign language requirement had been French, but the Shah
changed it, thinking that English might be more useful both
in world trade and scientifically. In Azarbaijan, where
everyone spoke Turkish (Azarbaijani dialect) as their first
language, the boys started studying Persian when the entered
first grade. In third grade they added Arabic, and then came
English in the seventh grade. In the twelfth grade, the boys
read a Shakespeare play and the story of Gulliver's Travels.
Since Iranian schools stressed memorization, the lessons
amounted to the teacher translating things into Turkish
(which they also did in most of the other classes), and then
letting the boys memorize the sounds of the English words
which they repeated back during the examinations. Some of
the boys could rattle off lengthy recitations amounting to
entire text books. The faculty of Pahlavi High School. Mr. Hashemi is second
from the left, front row. Next to him is Mr. Fakhim. Second
from the right is Mr. Koshtinat. Behind Koshtinat and to his
left is Yousef Charchi.
English classes met four times weekly; once each for translation, reading, writing and conversation. At Pahlavi I taught for three hours in each of the seventh grade classes. Mr. Hashemi reasoned that I could handle everything except translation which Usef taught. At Reza Shah I spent my time with each of the seventh and eighth grade classes teaching them conversation. At Himmat I did conversation with whatever class Mr. Arbabi assigned me when I arrived. For them I usually did a simple seventh grade introductory lesson which even the twelfth grade boys found too difficult.
In time I found that Ahar had a fourth high school. They called it "Na-mooze," which means "Chastity," in English. Girls attended Na-mooze High School. Five to six hundred boys attended each of their three high schools. About four hundred girls attended Na-mooze. Girls received instruction in some of the same subjects as the boys, but in addition they learned skills that the men said they needed: cooking, sewing, homemaking and weaving. If they chose, the girls could take the national examinations at the end of the twelfth grade. This determined whether or not a student received a diploma. Since the girls had not studied many of the subjects covered on the test, few, if any, ever passed, proving to the men that they were not capable in the first place.
Ahar's male teachers nick-named Na-mooze High School "Paradise." A few of the men taught there, when no woman in town could handle one of the subjects. The Office of Education provided a separate faculty room for the men, and an adult woman sat in any class taught by a man. All of the officials agreed that I should not teach at Na-mooze. Since I was unmarried, Iranian society considered me still a boy, despite my age (I was twenty-five when I arrived in Iran).
"Maybe," Usef suggested once hopefully, "if you do a good job now, they will let you teach a class in Paradise next year."
They never did, and only once did I ever set foot inside the place. (An incident I will cover in a later chapter.)
Some of the boys in my first seventh grade class at
Pahlavi High I enjoyed my classes at Pahlavi High
School. For the boys I presented a diversion as I taught
differently from the other teachers. Most of the men, as I
have said, simply translated the lessons in the books from
Persian into Turkish so that the boys could understand them.
The English teachers translated from English into Turkish.
They put most of their emphasis on having the boys memorize
the text and the rules of grammar. Conversation, and hence
comprehension, meant little to them as they reasoned that if
a student could recite, he could understand. In the seventh grade classes where I
taught everything but translation, I did not even start
reading or writing until well after the beginning of the
year. I emphasized verbal skills, teaching the boys sentence
pattern drills, not asking them to translate, but testing to
see if they understood the sense of what I and they were
saying.
The pattern drills caused some friction with the other teachers. Many complained that forty to fifty or more voices in the next room made a sound that penetrated the walls even though they were mud and plaster three feet thick! I persisted, and finally they consoled each other by deciding that it was permissible for the American to do such things, but that Iranians had to be Iranian and teach in the customary manner. This rationalization stifled change in Iran and it haunted me and other volunteers around the country.
Among the favorite pattern drills, the boys liked simple and multiple substitution sets. For example, I would begin, "That is a book."
"That is a book," everyone repeated, pointing to a book held either by me or by a neighbor.
"Pencil," I said, holding up a pencil.
"That is a pencil," they shouted.
"Shoe," I coached.
"That is a shoe," they responded, pointing to someone's shoe.
Sometimes I let the boys throw a book, or a pencil, or a lemon, or just about anything else, around the room while they changed the various appropriate lines. In this manner they learned vocabulary, through repetition, and at the same time, the rhythm of English sentences. But in the multiple substitution drill, the teacher can change other elements of the sentence besides the noun. Until they comprehended the parts of the sentence, and the appropriate responses, the boys could reduce the technique to rubble with what struck me as amusing results.
"This is a pencil," I started.
"This is a pencil."
"Blackboard."
"This is a blackboard."
"Hat."
"This is a hat."
"That," I would emphasize, looking for the right substitution.
More times than not, however, they sang back, "This is a that."