The Kashavarz Family
December brought the start of my night classes for adults, Ramadan, and Christmas. Peace Corps suggested the night classes. It urged volunteers to become involved in a project in addition to their regular teaching duties. Some volunteers worked to build a school in their town or in a nearby village. Others spent time working with the Iranian Red Cross, then called the Red Lion and Sun Society and today called the Red Crescent Society. Others took on some civic project deemed necessary in their community. I decided to offer English lessons to adults, and I told the English teachers to inform anyone who might be interested.
I turned the second large room in my house into a classroom with cheap rugs on the floor, a stove, and a few chairs that I borrowed from the high school. In addition, I added a large padded chair that Tom Dawson had left. Usef told me that a few men showed interest in the lessons, and that they would attend. On Tuesday evening, they arrived on time.
Four men stood together at the door. When I asked them to come in, they started a ritual that they repeated every time they came to the class. Each gestured for the other to enter first, and then stepped back into the street. They kept this up until they had moved three or four yards away from the door. In the Iranian game of politeness and prestige, a player lost points if he failed to observe ritual or if he could be maneuvered into doing something before someone of higher standing. Finally, after considerable pushing and haggling, one man, obviously the eldest, entered. The other three repeated the gesturing, and then a second came in followed by the last two. No matter how long it took them to work through the formalities, they always came into the house in the same order.
From there we moved through the hall into the classroom. In this case, I had to go first because I was the teacher. The men jostled with each other in the hall and finally followed in the same order in which they had come into the house. I sat in one of the school chairs, and waited.
The four men began an animated discussion none of which I understood at first. After a few minutes, I realized that they argued about who would sit in the comfortable chair, obviously to them the place of honor. Finally, the older man gave in and sat in the chair as the others insisted. After that night, I took the chair apart and stored it in a box out of sight.
To start things off I asked each man to introduce himself. Taymour Avestan taught mathematics. The senior member of the group, he had thinning gray hair neatly combed, a pleasant quiet smile, and black eyes that sparkled whenever he was happy. In every class he struggled the hardest with new words, but he always eventually grasp their meanings. He sat patiently, listening, watching, and working to comprehend. Whenever he finally understood something, he would smile and say, "Oh, yes!" The others would laugh, and Mr. Avestan would blush as his round face turned bright red.
Mr. Mahmoodian looked like an enormous happy basset hound. A heavy man, he had sad drooping eyes but a broad smile that often emerged from the folds of his face. Whenever amused, he threw back his head and laughed in a shattering roar. His open mouth exposed an impressive number of gold teeth, themselves status symbols in Iran. (Gold teeth demonstrated affluence.) Of the four, Mahmoodian had the most difficult time with English. Words acted as his enemies, and he lost most of his battles with them, especially pronunciation. He butchered the simplest sounds and never acquired much English.
Mr. Edjlalay presented a dour continence. He sometimes laughed, but quietly, and usually he looked sad. He had a near gray mustache, a gray crew cut, and he always wore a gray suit. Edjlalay methodically attached English, absorbed new words quickly, and easily mastered syntax and grammar. Of the four, he was the best student. Unfortunately, he also quit the class after a few weeks and from then on he avoided me. Usef explained that Edjlalay was embarrassed because he had stopped coming and he felt it cost him prestige in my eyes.
Mr. Beglarlay came irregularly from the start. A thin dark man with jet black hair and a loud voice, he had been engaged for about a year and was scheduled to marry near the end of the month. They invited me to the wedding, and Usef helped me buy a cone of hard sugar which he said served as a traditional gift. It wished the bride and groom a sweet marriage.
In addition to the four regulars, often two or three other men attended the class. They seldom had much interest in English, but were curious about what went on, or had nothing else to do that night. The constant introduction of new students made it difficult to plan lessons. I had to start fresh almost every session in order to accommodate someone new, only to have him disappear. But the men seemed to enjoy the diversion, and that made the experience enjoyable.
Although Mr. Avestan ranked as the eldest and senior member of the group, he was the butt of most jokes. Since he tried the hardest, and since he found language difficult, he provided ample opportunity for the others.
During one of the first lessons we worked on patterns involving 'sitting,' and 'standing.' The men had to figure out the difference between, "I am sitting now," "I am standing now," "I sit every day," and "I stand every day." The trick was for me to convey the meanings without translation, through actions and repetition.
"Oh yes," smiled Mr. Avestan after he had watched intently for a few minutes. He stood. "I am sitting," he declared.
"No," corrected Mr. Edjlalay. "You are standing."
Mr. Mahmoodian held his sides and roared until tears rolled across the folds of his cheeks.
Mr. Avestan sat down, looked sheepishly around and said quietly, "Now I am sitting."
"Yes," agreed Mr. Edjlalay. "Now you are sitting."
Later that same night, Mr. Edjlalay became unusually quiet. Finally he said in Persian that something was wrong. All of the men turned serious, and Mr. Edjlalay sat intently trying to decide what bothered him. He began sniffing, and said, "There is a fire."
Hardly, I thought. The mud buildings or Ahar offered so little to burn. But then I smelled it too. Suddenly I remembered my dinner. I had left it cooking on the little gas stove in the other room. I walked through the hallway and opened the door to the kitchen. Like a slow waterfall, white smoke stood for an instant, then tumbled out into the larger room. Inside I rescued the pot with its charred remains.
All four of my students followed me, and they stood there watching me pour water over the remnants of dinner. They tried to appear sympathetic but the effort was beyond them. First Mr. Mahmoodian, and then the others laughed. They howled, holding their sides. For some reason it struck them as one of the funniest things they had seen.
Whenever the men left the house they repeated the entrance ritual, arguing now about who would go out first. One by one they coaxed each other until each, in the proper order, they finally went through the doorway and into the street. During the cold winter weather this presented a problem as keeping the house warm was difficult anyway. With the door open while the men jockeyed for position it became impossible.
The next day, Mr. Hashemi sat next to me in the faculty room.
"I have heard that you have been having an accident in your house last night," he said slowly, searching for each word.
"There was a little problem I guess," I admitted.
"They tell me that you have burned your dinner."
"I guess that's right."
Hashemi turned away and laughed. He translated for the other teachers, and all of them laughed too. Burning my dinner became the talk of the teachers for a week or so. When I went to each of the other high schools, someone inevitably asked me about the incident. The story provided considerable merriment for everyone who heard it. At the next scheduled adult class an unusually large group attended. I suppose all of them hoped that I would repeat the performance, and I must have disappointed them when I failed to burn anything.
I never liked the hard chairs that I borrowed from the school, and so I decided to build a more comfortable seat. Since only four to six men attended the class, I looked into having a carpenter in town build a kind of bench that I could appoint with cushions. Usef showed me where I could hire such a carpenter, and the man there said that he would build whatever I designed, but that I would have to draw plans as he had never heard of such a thing. I did my best, conjuring up something that looked like a park bench with a wide seat.
A few days later three men delivered the finished bench to my house. In the bazaar I found a shop that sold cushions stuffed with foam rubber, and I bought six, three for the seat and three for the back. When the students arrived, I indicated that they should all sit on the new bench.
Unfortunately it became quickly apparent that I had made a mistake. When I laid out measurements for the bench I used myself as a model. I am about a foot taller than most Iranians, and so the bench seat was too high off the ground. When the men sat on the thing, their feet dangled one or two inches above the floor. They sat there swinging their legs and giggling. No one paid much attention to the English lesson that night. After they left, I sawed four inches off each of the legs, and I still think the thing would have worked reasonably well except for one problem. Unfortunately I cut the legs unevenly so that the bench rocked a bit. At the next lesson, Mr. Mahmoodian amused himself by wiggling the bench, reducing the class to tears.
In the faculty room at Pahlavi, Mr. Hashemi sat next to me and said, "The men tell me that you have a new thing in your house that is for sitting."
Like the burned dinner, the rocking bench became the talk of Ahar's teachers for a few days. I put the chairs back and no one sat on the bench again.
As Christmas approached I got a little homesick. The short-wave radio brought me snippets of seasonal music, but otherwise I felt quite cut off in an alien world. And the sound of "Silent Night" distorted by short wave transmission made me miserable. I thought of going to Tabriz, but unlike Thanksgiving, nobody seemed to be planning anything, and so I decided to remain in Ahar. My parents sent me a few cardboard cut-outs that I stuck up around the house. They gave the room a Christmas atmosphere, but the tape that held them pulled away from the chalk walls and at night I occasionally woke up to the sound of decorations coming loose and falling to the floor.
On Christmas Eve, I lay on my bed listening to the radio, reading a book. Late in the evening I heard a knock on the door, and when I opened it, I found all of the members of my might class, most of the English teachers from around town, and a few strangers. Fifteen in all, they had come to help me celebrate Christmas!
The men marched into the house. I scrambled for every chair I could find and assembled them in the classroom. Usef helped me make tea, Mr. Kashavarz set out cookies that he had brought, Mr. Avestan added candy and Mr. Haddadpor put out slices of halva (sesame cake sometimes called Turkish sweet meat) on a plate. Others of the men had brought oranges and other fruit. When we assembled it together on the table, it looked impressive, and everyone seemed pleased.
The Kashavarz Family
As we sat around the crowded classroom, each man in turn handed me a Christmas card, carefully signed with his name in Persian, and (in some cases painfully) in English. Usef explained that they had gotten together and sent Mr. Fakhim into Tabriz where they bought the cards through a Christian Armenian bookseller. All had oriental designs depicting scenes from Persian miniature paintings, and they made the most unique collection of Christmas cards I ever received.
None of the men knew much about Christmas, although they assured me that they knew about Jesus who is mentioned in the Koran. (In fact, the Koran relates the story of Christ's birth and acknowledges that it was to the Virgin Mary.) They asked questions about how Americans celebrate the holiday.
One of the cut-outs from home had a copy of "A Visit from St. Nicholas," and while Usef translated, I read the poem. They nodded and laughed politely, and said that it was very interesting for them.
Then Mr. Haddadpor announced that he had read about Christmas in one of his books. He explained that in Europe and America, the event is celebrated with special songs that the people love to sing. Consequently, he decided that the party would be incomplete without at least one festive song. He also decided that I would not like Iranian music as he knew that most Westerners did not have an ear for its discordant tones.
To solve the problem, Haddadpor had searched through the Tabriz bazaar and had finally found an old American record in one of the shops. He bought it, took it home, and played it on his record player until he had memorized the words and the tune. With some fanfare and considerable throat clearing, Haddadpor stood, threw back his head, and sang an obscure western ballad titled "Giddy-up to the Home Corral." From his rendering, I could only assume that the record was warped or that the hole in it was off center. But I appreciated the gesture, thanked him, and hold his solo as the most memorable Christmas carol I have ever heard.
After a couple of hours we had eaten the food and let the remaining tea get cold. The men put on their coats and left. As each went through the back door, he wished me a happy Christmas. Because of their thoughtfulness, it was a warm Christmas brightened by the sensitivity and concern of Ahar's school teachers. From my two years in Iran, it remains one of my happiest memories.
Shortly after Christmas Mr. Edjlalay stopped coming to the night class. Not long after that Mr. Beglarlay got married and disappeared from the group. The others chuckled and said that he was busy with 'other things.'
Mr. Mahmoodian struggled with the lessons a few weeks longer. A worker from the Iranian National Bank joined us, and another teacher from Reza Shah High School came briefly. But one evening when I opened the back door, I found only Mr. Avestan standing there.
"You have been a good teacher," he said sadly. "But there are too many things for everyone to do, and completing the lessons is difficult. I want to come, but I cannot come alone."
I told him that I would continue teaching him, but he declined.
"It would not be fair," he explained. "We enjoyed the class. We laughed much. But now it must end. I am sorry."
As he turned away, he cried. Iranian men find it easier to express their emotions than do Americans. When they feel deeply about something they weep openly. Public crying, especially at funerals, is accepted and even expected. Mr. Avestan felt sad that something he enjoyed had run its course. No matter how I tried, I never succeeded in restarting the classes for adults.
Ramadan, called Ramadan in Iran, complicated the night class because it disrupted everyone's normal routine. The annual religious event is the month of fasting. The Prophet Mohammad instructed the people to fast during daylight hours for one month each year. The idea was to acquaint them with hunger so that they would feel sympathy for the poor and be more generous in their alms-giving. Mohammad told the rich to give the poor the money they would have spent for food.
Because the Moslem world follows a lunar calendar, its year is ten days shorter than that of the Gregorian calendar. Each year Ramadan arrives ten days earlier, and every thirty-six years, it completes its cycle. Fortunately for me, I lived in Iran when Ramadan came in the winter, when the days were shortest and the nights longest. Usef told me that Ramadan during the summer months was nothing anyone happily anticipated.
Over the centuries, some of the intent of Ramadan became lost. Its practice acquired ritual and dogma which might have startled the Prophet. For example, conservatives took the order not to introduce substances into the body literally. They forbade medicine, and sex was proscribed day or night. This made the men irritable. Ramadan also brought special rituals for cleanliness, so it was often impossible for me to get into the hammum, even into the room with the tub.
In most Iranian cities, one of the Mullahs fired a cannon at sundown and at sunrise, signaling the end of the day when the fast could be broken, or the start of the day when fasting should begin. They determined the exact moment as the instant when the eye could or could no longer distinguish between a white and black thread held at arm's length. Ahar had no cannon but only Mullahs who walked through the streets singing out that the sun had set, or risen. In the evening everyone settled down to a large meal which dragged on through the night. Shops opened and people conducted the business usually done during the day. The night ended with another meal just before dawn.
During the day Ahar remained quiet as most of the adult population slept. Only those who worked for the government had to function on a normal schedule regardless of the religious ritual. But most of the students in the school came from religious families. Up all night, they came to school sleepy and hungry. Afternoon classes were the worst. Now and then a boy fainted, falling out of his desk onto the floor or toppling over as he stood up to recite a lesson. Some vomited because they tried to eat too much in the early morning. Few had their minds on school, let alone English lessons.
The teachers found the ordeal as difficult as the students. Some failed to return for afternoon classes, and others stayed home for two or three days at a time. Mr. Hashemi had to scramble to rearrange the schedule, often combining classes, trying to guide the school through the month. Knowing that I was not a Moslem and hence not fasting, he frequently called on me and asked me to cover for someone. During Ramadan, the same as during Lent for Christians, everyone was supposed to give up something they enjoyed. I gave up sleeping in and going to the hammum.
Despite Ramadan, life went on. I had my own problems to solve, and I worked at them while trying to maintain a low profile, especially since I did not fast, and did not want to call attention to the fact. When I moved into the house behind the school, I found an old Royal typewriter on the table. Usef told me that Tom Morgan, the city's first volunteer, bought the thing in a bazaar shop somewhere and brought it to the house where he used it to write letters. Unfortunately its black ribbon had long since dried out, and overuse had filled it with holes. Despite my efforts, I had not been able to find any shop in Ahar that had any kind of typewriter ribbon.
The main entrance to the Ahar Bazaar
The main avenue of the Ahar bazaar Another view of the main avenue of the Ahar
bazaar A small side street leading to the main bazaar in Ahar. I
walked through this area and the one on the right whenever I went to
Reza Shah High School.
Another small side street leading to the Ahar bazaar. Note the porter on the right.
One afternoon during Ramadan as I walked home from Reza Shah High School with Mr. Haddadpor, he stopped in a shop I had not visited before and which was open. After Haddadpor bought some colored paper, I asked him to see if the shop keeper knew anything about typewriter ribbons.
"The man says that there is one such ribbon, and that it is blue."
"May I see it?"
From deep under a pile of boxes in the back of the shop, the owner produced a small brown box. Inside I found a ribbon far too wide for my typewriter, but I bought it anyway. At home, I used a piece of the old ribbon as a template and spent the next hour carefully cutting about an eighth of an inch from one side of the heavily inked new ribbon. I had just finished the job and was winding the new ribbon onto the old spool when someone knocked on the back door. When I opened it, I found Hashemi's son standing there.
"We are waiting for you," he said simply.
In the excitement of finding a ribbon, and seeing if I could make it work, I had forgotten about Hashemi's dinner invitation for that night. He had told me about it that morning and he had been specific. "My son will be coming for you at exactly 6:30."
I hurried into my wash room, and looked in the mirror. Blue smears covered my hands, my face, and my clothes. The heavy ink resisted soap and cold water, and although I worked at it, I failed remove much of it. Hashemi's son stood impatiently at the door, urging me to hurry. I put on my coat and we left.
Hashemi's boy almost ran as we crossed town toward his house. In the streets I heard the Mullahs announcing that the day's fast had ended. When we arrived, they quickly ushered me into a small room where six men sat waiting. I took my place, and the meal began. As they had not eaten all day, the delay must have been agonizing.
No one spoke a word until they finished eating and we moved next door into the larger room. The guests talked quietly among themselves, and I sat uncomfortably, somewhat isolated. Even Hashemi kept his distance, which was unusual. No one asked why I was covered with blue ink. Hashemi never mentioned the incident. And no one, including Mr. Hashemi, ever invited me to his house during Ramadan again.