CHAPTER VIII

MARCH, 1967

Status and its maintenance filled the lives of Iranians. Everyone knew who he was, and where he fit in the society. He showed deference to those above him and expected it from those lower in rank. A complicated system of rules, called 'taroff' governed day-to-day relations. It involved such things as where people sat in relation to each other in a room, who greeted whom first, and who went first through the door when entering or leaving any building or house. Clothes gave some indication of status. The teachers who had attended college wore ties; those like Usef with only a normal school education went without. Mr. Hashemi had a four year degree from the university in Tabriz. Some of the teachers had gone to school only two or three years. Wealthy Iranians sent their children to Europe or the United States, often to insignificant colleges where time and money guaranteed them a diploma that brought status back in Iran.

Although no caste system existed as such, a person's family did much to establish his or her place in society. Occupation, wealth, and family relationships expanded and complicated the system. Once in place, Iranians found it almost impossible to change their position. A man's situation did improve, however, if someone of equal or higher rank went down.

In the faculty room at His Imperial Majesty, Mohammad Reza Shah, Shah 'n Shah Ariyahmehr, High School I saw the teachers deal with each other daily. For them I presented an enigma. A permanent guest, better educated than any of them, and with an American education which itself held prestige, I assumed high status. But they did not know exactly where to put me in relation to themselves, and they spent some time and effort dealing with me. Some of them attempted to diminish my status. This led to some sparring with traps I seldom foresaw.

Often I innocently said the wrong thing.

"How much does a donkey cost," I asked Usef one day in the faculty room.

Mr. Hashemi walked across the room and sat down next to me. "The little donkeys cost about forty toman [ roughly $30]. Why are you asking?" "Well," I said, "I wondered about buying one so that I could ride it across town to Reza Shah High School." Usef laughed, and before Mr. Hashemi could stop him, he translated the conversation for one of the other teachers. Hashemi grabbed my hand and said very sternly, "You must not do such a thing." I never seriously considered buying a donkey. I had enough trouble taking care of myself without having an animal to look after, and I knew nothing about livestock. To me it was nothing more than a whim to consider and forget. "Why shouldn't I get a donkey?" I asked Hashemi and Usef. "It would be fun to ride it through the bazaar like the villagers do." But I had gone too far. The teachers listened asked Usef to translate more, although Hashemi told him to stop. Hashemi said emphatically, "You must not do such a thing. You must not say such a thing. It is terrible. Teachers never do such things. Do not talk about a donkey again."

I did actually get to ride a donkeyonce, with Usef holding it, his brother watching, out in the countryside away from anyone who might object to such un-teacher-like behavior.

Mr. Hashemi walked across the room and sat down next to me.

"The little donkeys cost about forty toman [ roughly $30]. Why are you asking?"

"Well," I said, "I wondered about buying one so that I could ride it across town to Reza Shah High School."

Usef laughed, and before Mr. Hashemi could stop him, he translated the conversation for one of the other teachers. Hashemi grabbed my hand and said very sternly, "You must not do such a thing."

I never seriously considered buying a donkey. I had enough trouble taking care of myself without having an animal to look after, and I knew nothing about livestock. To me it was nothing more than a whim to consider and forget.

"Why shouldn't I get a donkey?" I asked Hashemi and Usef. "It would be fun to ride it through the bazaar like the villagers do."

But I had gone too far. The teachers listened asked Usef to translate more, although Hashemi told him to stop. Hashemi said emphatically, "You must not do such a thing. You must not say such a thing. It is terrible. Teachers never do such things. Do not talk about a donkey again."

"Okay," I said finally realizing that I had again stepped on the prestige of the teachers.

As I learned from Mr. Haddadpor, Mr. Kashavarz and Usef, villagers, who had donkeys, held a position in Iranian society significantly lower than that of teachers. Therefore, for a teacher to wear clothes like theirs, or to in any way act like them brought discredit to the entire teaching profession.

But despite Hashemi's attempt to contain the story, the teachers at both Himmat and Reza Shah high schools heard about the donkey. The joke became almost as real as if it had happened. A few of the teachers used the incident to prove that Americans thought like villagers. In the eyes of those who disliked Americans, either through envy, fear, or simple prejudice, I had significantly diminished my prestige.

With hindsight, it is easy to see the ill feeling between many Iranians and Americans. At the time we ignored it or shrugged it off as insignificant. But in their eyes we seemed to have everything and they hated us for that. They saw us dominating their country with a large military presence that backed the Shah whom many of them, especially the intellectuals and the religious conservatives, disliked. They watched American films, clothes, television, freeways, large corporations, novel products, and most importantly, values new and little understood inundate their society. These resulted in rapid changes that threatened their deepest beliefs about themselves and the world.

None of this seemed obvious at the time. Like other Americans, I ignored or failed to understand the signs. When verbally attacked (it was almost never physical) by an Iranian, we dismissed it as a cultural quirk. Misunderstandings and animosities festered from World War II, when Americans first went to Iran in large numbers, through the end of the 1970s when they finally erupted. In the late 1960s, when I lived there, increasing numbers of Iranians, both the intelligentsia and the religious conservatives, openly showed growing hostility toward Americans.

Because of this, some of the men in Ahar, even some of the teachers with whom I worked, disliked me. They never knew me personally, but they distrusted and rejected what I stood for. To them I became an example of the United States trying to change and control them. They fought me by looking for ways to diminish my prestige. With incidents like my suggestion that I buy a donkey, I aided them. On other occasions, they used my ignorance of their values to embarrass me, at least in their eyes.

"He is asking you if you are reading books," translated Usef between sips of tea.

I looked at the man who taught penmanship and said to Usef, "Tell him that I read books all the time."

As Usef translated, many of the teachers in the faculty room laughed which surprised me.

"Now he is asking if you have received a degree from a university."

"Tell him that I have a degree, and that I am working on a second degree."

The teachers laughed again and clicked their tongues, which I knew showed disapproval.

"I am embarrassed," said Usef who understood the penmanship teacher's purpose. "Now he asks if you can explain a rule of English grammar."

"Maybe," I said. "I don't know."

"He asks you to explain the nature of something called a 'comma splice.'"

"I can't," I confessed.

"Do not tell him this," suggested Usef. "Tell him something."

"I'm sorry, but I can't think of anything."

Usef translated. They all laughed again.

"Now," said Usef slowly, "he is telling the teachers that when he went to school, he has learned all of the lessons enough well that he is not needing to read books. He has received only one degree. He has told them what is a comma splice, and that you are not knowing what is such a simple thing."

The teachers laughed, and most looked away from me. Usef blushed, and said that he felt sorry that the man had done such a thing. Apparently the penmanship teacher continued, pointing to my bag with a few books, and the props that I used to teach the boys new English words. In Ahar, the teachers never carried books in public. In the classrooms, if they needed a book, they took one from a student.

"He is telling them," continued Usef, "that it has been fifteen years since he has been needing to read a book."

Actually, I knew that many of the teachers read and studied a great deal. Two or three even quietly asked me for books. But they never advertised the fact. Others were complacent about or even reveled in their ignorance, and a few were just lazy. Since the boys in the school spoke Turkish, these men simply spent their class time translating the Persian texts into Turkish and left it to the boys to absorb as best they could. Iranian law dictated that examinations had to deal with nothing more than the contents of the text books which were approved by the government, so these teachers saw no need to do anything more.

"I write a letter in English today," said one of the teachers at Reza Shah High School one day. He used his best broken English since none of the town's English teachers were there to translate. "I want say that my son is ill. Is another English word to mean 'ill?'"

"Yes," I said slowly. "Sick."

The teachers all laughed. They slapped their legs and howled.

I told Usef what had happened later that day, and he blushed. "'Sick' is a very bad word in our Turkish language," he explained. "They have found a way to make you say this word. They are doing this to embarrass you."

The next time someone tried the gambit, I played along but said "inconvenienced," and everyone in the room looked disappointed. I felt bad spoiling the fun.

Saving face, and maintaining prestige caused the teachers to do things I considered unusual. Early in March some of the older students and a few of the teachers from around town put on a program in Pahlavi's auditorium. It included dramatic readings, monologues, musical pieces and a few comic skits. No teachers appeared in skits with the students, however. One by one the students from the different grade and high schools walked to Pahlavi and saw the program. Whenever a teacher in one of the comic skit's own students attended, he withdrew for that performance.

"It is not good," Usef explained, "for the boys to see their own teachers doing such a thing. It will cause that man discipline problems in his classes."

"Surely some people in Ahar must read books," I said to Usef one day. I knew that they did, but wanted to see what he would say.

"They do," he said.

"Is there some place where they can get books besides the small shops?"

"Ahar is having two libraries."

"Where?" "You are looking at one every day. It is in the faculty room at Pahlavi High School."

"That's a library?"

"There are many books," said Usef.

"But nobody uses them except Mr. Hashemi."

"That is true."

Pahlavi's small library had just over one hundred books, including an encyclopedia, all locked in two glass-front cases in the faculty room. On rare occasions Mr. Hashemi would open one of the doors and allow a teacher to look at one of the books, but he had to return it promptly. Whenever the father of one of the boys visited the school, Hashemi or Koshtinat proudly showed him the cases with books kept safely under lock and key. The books apparently represented the knowledge held by the teachers. As such, they were to be seen but seldom used.

"What about the other library. Where is it?"

"Do you want to see it?"

"Sure."

"It is not far," said Usef. "It is just on the main street near Na Mous High School."

We walked together past the bank and beyond the traffic circle, to a nondescript little building.

"This is the library," said Usef.

"Let's go in."

"Why? Are you needing some book."

"No, I just want to see the library."

Inside we found a small room with six tables in the center and books around the perimeter. One boy, whom I recognized as a student at Pahlavi sat at one of the tables looking at a large book. A wizened man under five feet tall wearing black clothes and the half-an-inch long stubble of a beard typically worn by religious men, came up to us.

"This is the man who is keeping the books," Usef said by way of introduction.

"Do many people ever use the library?"

Usef translated the question and the answer. "Yes, he is saying that there are one or two boys perhaps every one or two days."

"Where's the card catalogue?"

Usef asked me, "What is a card catalogue?"

"It's a place where the names of the books and the names of the people who wrote them are kept in some order so that people can find what they want."

"I have never seen such a thing in Ahar."

"Then how do people know how to find the books they might want?"

"They are asking this man. It is his job."

"He knows the name and the contents of every book here?"

"For sure," said Usef with a smile. "He has put the books on the shelves so that he is finding each one without trouble."

"Then how are the books arranged?"

As Usef asked the question, I saw the answer before it came. The librarian had sorted the books by color and size. Starting near the door he put the red books with the tallest first down to the shortest. Next came the blue books, the yellow books, the green books, and so on around the room running from right to left.

After Usef told me what I had already seen, I asked, "What if something happens to him?"

"They will be putting another person here, and he will learn about the books," Usef answered.

I looked around, and then we left the library. I never went there again.

One of Ahar's main streets

Iranian understanding of Western institutions left something to be desired. For centuries autocrats in one form or another ruled the country. Despite a veneer of modernization and democratization. Iranians still responded to authoritarian control.

The central government divided the nation into districts or states called 'ostans.' They further divided each ostan into 'farmandars,' much like counties. Ahar, in the Ostan of East Azarbaijan served as the seat of the local farmandar. The governor of the farmandar had offices in a two story building located near the central square. No one in Ahar thought much of the governor. He seldom came to town. People bowed and paid him the respects due his office whenever he officiated at some function but the consensus was that he had bought his position.

When election day arrived, the schools, government offices, and supposedly all shops and stores closed. The law required that everyone vote. Being a foreigner, I decided to sleep in.

I heard noise in the street behind my house and shouting off in the distance. A few minutes later a friend arrived, pounding on my back door, puffing and out of breath.

"You must dress, warmly," he said quickly. "We must be walking outside of Ahar in the country."

I put on my heavy clothes and we walked west, out of the city, toward the orchards that lined the river.

"What's going on?" I finally managed to ask.

"I am told," he said slowly, "that in the morning the Governor has gone to the front of Pahlavi High School and he is looking to see if everything is ready for the voting. When he is seeing that the gate is shut and locked, he has become angry. There is a janitor named Salahee. You know him. He moves very slowly and he drags his feet when he is walking. He is bent over."

"I know who you mean."

"He has gone to the gate to see what the Governor is wanting. The Governor has shouted at him and called him a lazy man."

"He is lazy," I said.

"That is true, but still the Governor is angry. Finally the janitor has told the Governor to go away because the voting will be ready at the time for starting, and that he will win the election even if there is nobody voting."

"I'll bet the Governor didn't like that."

"He has become very angry," the man said. "With his foot he has kicked the janitor in the stomach. Salahee has fallen on the stones at the front of the school, and the Governor has kicked him on his head."

"Is he okay?"

"No. Old Hotami and the other janitors have been watching. When the Governor goes away, they are coming out and seeing that Salahee is dead."

"Oh."

"So, now the city is very angry. As you are saying, Salahee is a very lazy man. But he is a good man with many children, and he is having many friends, and they are not liking the Governor. My father and I are thinking that you must leave the city. When people are very angry, they are doing bad things. Many think that Americans keep such men in our government, and they may blame you for what the Governor has done."

"What's going to happen now?"

"We will be seeing. Perhaps nothing."

We walked along the river, through the orchards, looking at the bare branches of the old fruit trees. The hills around the city stood clean and white. Mt. Savalon towered in the distance, a bright cone shining in the winter sunshine. After about two hours, I complained about the cold, so we returned. I stayed in my house while the friend who some unknown person sent to look after me went out to see what had happened.

"A truck full with soldiers has come from Tabriz," he reported when he returned. They are at the gendarmerie just near the office of the Governor. Some men from the city are standing near the circle on the main street and they are asking the soldiers to arrest the Governor. But when the soldiers have told the men to go home, they have left."

"Will they arrest the Governor?"

"Perhaps. But I think they will not. The janitor Salahee often became ill. I think that they will discover that he has died from some medical problems. They will say that everything has been an accident."

The front gate of Pahlavi High School stood open all day so that people could come and vote. From my front window, I saw only a few men standing near the school; mostly government officials. Otherwise the place remained empty. Two days later someone at the Farmandaree posted two announcements on the wall in front of the building. The first said that the Office of National Health had found that the janitor had died from a heart attack. The second announcement declared all of the incumbents reelected and that almost everyone eligible to vote had cast a ballot.

Salahee's memorial services included angry shouting from some of the men. They served as an occasion for protest as much as or more than as a funeral for the dead janitor. But soldiers stood around and nothing more happened. About a year after I left Ahar, Mr. Kashavarz wrote in one of his letters that the Governor had been arrested for selling drugs and nobody in Ahar saw him again. Thinking back on the incident, and remembering politics in Chicago, Texas and elsewhere in my own country's history, perhaps in some ways the Iranians understood democracy better than I imagined.

Technical things proved a problem for me. Raised in a technical society, I found adjusting to one far less sophisticated a challenge, and I usually failed each test before I caught on.

"My jacket has gotten dirty," I said to Usef one day. "What do you do when your suit or jacket is dirty."

"I am taking it to the cleaner."

"Where?"

"In the shop across the street from the Office of Education."

Plumes of steam puffed out of a pipe along the side of the building. Inside I saw a man using a steam iron working on a pair of pants. I went in with my sport coat over my arm.

"It is very dirty," I apologized.

"We will wash it."

"Then it will need that machine," I said pointing to the iron and not knowing how to describe it in Persian.

"We will do that job also," he said.

"When will it be clean?"

"Three days."

Three days later I found the same man standing in the same place with an iron in his hand.

He had not given me a receipt of any kind, and so I assumed that he would know which coat belonged to me.

"I am here for my coat."

He put down the iron and walked into the back of the shop. In a minute he returned with my coat and put it on the counter. It was about two-thirds its original size except for the lining which hung out the sleeves and below the bottom of the jacket.

"What did you do to it?" I asked.

"We have washed it using much hot water and soap. Then we have dried it, and then we ironed it, just as you asked."

"Oh."

When the man had used the word for 'washed' the first time, I assumed he meant 'dry cleaning,' but in fact he had meant washing.

"What is 'dry cleaning,'" asked Usef when I showed him my jacket.

"The material cannot be washed in water or it shrinks - becomes smaller. So they have a special process for cleaning that does not use water."

"I have never seen such a thing," said Usef. "In Ahar a man is going to the bazaar and buying material for his clothes. Then he is going to a tailor. The tailor will measure him, and then wash the material and when it is drying, he will be making the clothes. When the clothes are dirty, we will be washing them. Has your tailor forgotten to wash your coat when he was making it?"

I gave the coat to Usef who said that his father would give it to a family friend. They were poor and they had a son who could wear it, after his mother fixed the lining which had not shrunk.

At about that same time I decided to buy another set of sheets for my bed. When I moved in I found only one set and I had trouble washing them and getting them dry in one day, especially in the winter.

"Sheets?" asked Usef.

"Like these," I said showing them the ones on my bed.

"We do not use such things."

"Where did these come from?

"I do not know. Perhaps Tabriz or Teheran."

"What do you sleep on?"

"Blankets and quilts," he answered. "Some people are taking special cloth and sewing it to their quilts."

I had seen that in the hotels along the Caspian Sea. But I wanted sheets, and as I already had two, I reasoned that they must be available somewhere. Usef and I went to the bazaar. Finally, one of the shopkeepers suggested that I make sheets as the first American had done. I bought eight meters of cloth that seemed coarse, but was the best available. At home I took scissors, needle, and thread, cut the roll into four lengths, and sewed them together using a cross stitch that seemed to work.

That night I slept on my new sheets, and woke up with the stitch marks running down the side of my face. When I washed the new sheets, they shrank more than I had anticipated, and after that they fit the bed from end to end, but not across its width. The ends unraveled and made a mess whenever I used them. I finally found sheets in the shops along the main street of Tabriz.

Ahar's cobblestone streets and rough walkways quickly wore out the heels and soles of my shoes. On Ahar's main street near the bakery an old man repaired shoes. I took mine to him and asked him to fix them. I pointed to the run-down heels and the hole in one of the soles.

A week later I retrieved my shoes for 150 rials or about two dollars. The shoemaker had mended the shoes, but in a way I found quite unorthodox. He removed the heels and then nailed on full soles over the existing material. The thickness of the new leather exceeded one-half inch, and the man had used a hundred or more nails to do the job. A few poked through to the inside of the shoes. Then he replaced the old heels and put new heels, also quite thick, on top of them. The slick bottoms made walking impossible, never mind the nails. The leather refused to bend, and the effect resembled walking in ski boots. Long before they became fashionable I had a pair of platform shoes. I set them aside and hoped my others would see me through the rest of my time in Iran.

Starting in January Ahar's weather turned cold. At night the temperature dropped well below freezing and during the day it stayed near that mark. A light snow fell and it laid on the ground unmelted for days. The teachers warned me to beware or my water pipes would freeze.

I left the tap in the kitchen open so that a dribble of water fell into the floor-level sink. And I did the same to the tap in the bathroom next to the Iranian-style toilet. Water puddled on the floor and ran down into the toilet. It seemed the best solution to the problem.

When I woke up one morning, I noticed frost on the windows. I felt cold, noted that the fire in the kerosene stove had gone out, and that the dripping faucet in the kitchen had an accumulation of ice under it. I dressed, built a fire, and headed for the bathroom. The door refused to open.

I pushed and shoved without success. I boiled water, and poured it around the door until it started to move, a few inches at first, and then more so that I could squeeze inside. Two inches or more of ice covered the floor. On one side of the room a tall stalagmite climbed up to the flowing tap which had become partly clogged with ice. Water sputtered out of the restricted opening splashing on the walls around the room. The toilet sat under a flow of ice inches deep. The walls hung with ice in ornate patterns where the water had spattered onto it through the night. My aftobeh, the pitcher used for cleaning after using the toilet, sat encased in ice.

Usef laughed when he saw my ice palace. "Most of the people are taking their aftobehs into their warm rooms because they are not liking to put cold water on themselves, but it is too late for you."

My Iranian toilet with the aftobeh next to it.

The ice stayed about a week, and I reverted to using toilet paper in the interim. The river that flowed through the city also froze over. That made Mr. Shaigon, Reza Shah's principal, happy. Shaigon enjoyed driving his black Volkswagen on Ahar's two paved streets. Whenever he saw me he honked the horn and waved. On his drive to school, he had to ford the river and he hated the muddy water that daily splashed onto his car. With the river frozen, he sped across the ice, bounding along over the bumps and ridges.

I walked across the foot bridge one day and in the distance I saw something unusual. In the middle of one of the ice lakes I saw Shaigon's black Volkswagen sitting in slushy water just up over its wheels.

"I'm going to joke with Mr. Shaigon about his car," I told Usef later.

"Do not do such a thing," he warned.

"Why?"

"Because he will not be liking it. Mr. Shaigon does this thing every year, and he is not happy if people are making jokes about his car."

As always, Usef was right. Almost nobody mentioned the black car in the river, especially around Mr. Shaigon. The next day a crew of porters lifted the car out of the water and back onto dry land.

"There is one good thing," said Mr. Hashemi when we visited at my house some days later. "When Mr. Shaigon and his car fall into the river, the people are knowing that soon it will be spring."

But the weather got colder. Where it had thawed the river refroze and more snow fell. Mr. Hashemi had the custodians light the kerosene heaters in the classrooms for a few hours each morning. Nevertheless, at times my fingers seemed stiff from the cold, and I complained to Usef.

"The classrooms are bad enough in the mornings, but in the afternoons the stoves are off and there is no heat at all."

"There are forty little heaters in each room," Usef said stoically. "Hashemi is thinking that more is not needed."

In my house I kept the fire going night and day. My thermometer, which registered in centigrade, hovered around eighteen degrees, which provided no solace. When the wind blew outside, the curtains fluttered and waved and I shivered in the cold draughts. I spent time weather-stripping the doors and windows with burlap cloth that I bought in the bazaar from a shivering merchant. I stuffed newspapers in the larger holes. It helped a little.

Then about six inches of snow fell.

"I am sending a man to be fixing your roof," said Hashemi that morning.

"What's wrong with my roof?"

"There is snow on your roof," said Hashemi rather matter-of-factly. "It must be taken away."

When it snowed, the first duty was to shovel the roof.

The mud and straw mixture that coated the sides and tops of the houses shed rain after a fashion, but if snow sat on the roof and melted it seeped through and dripped down inside. Nobody in Ahar shoveled sidewalks or roadways, but everybody got out and shoveled the roofs. That made the sidewalks unsafe because one never knew when a load of snow would cascade down from the shovel of some worker above. So everyone walked down the middle of the streets.

"I'll shovel the roof," I volunteered, thinking of saving the school some money.

"No," said Mr. Hashemi. "This is not the work for a teacher."

I always forgot. My ethic pushed me to work. Theirs pushed me to hire someone of lower station.

"How do you keep warm at home?" I asked Usef.

"I wear clothes," he answered simply.

"No, I mean what do you wear specifically?"

"We are having these pajamas made in the bazaar. In cold weather I am wearing them under my pants."

So we went to the bazaar, and I ordered a pair of gray flannel pajamas. In their homes the Iranian men took off their good clothes, and wore pajamas in order to save wear and tear on the more expensive garments, which might be their only set. The pajamas helped and I did stay warmer.

The Middle East must be the origin of the shopping mall. There is nothing in the West that compares to its large bazaars; labyrinths of covered streets and alleys passing shops where merchants sell just about anything one might imagine.

The genesis of the bazaar is linked to the Islamic injunction that a believer must pray five times daily. This is done in the early morning, at noon, early in the afternoon, in the evening and at bed time. To remind the faithful, muezzins wail out their calls from the minarets by the mosques. Today loud speakers propel the call across the cities and towns adding to the sounds that make Middle Eastern cities unique.

The Ahar rug bazaar	A samovar shop and its owner
A street leading to the Ahar bazaar	Unloading mellons in the fall at a bazaar shop.

A Moslem, one who submits to God, is not required to pray at a mosque, but they go to one whenever possible or convenient. Consequently two or three times daily men walk along the streets that lead to the mosques, gathering there, washing and praying, facing the holy city of Mecca.

Nearly every city has one central mosque, in Iran called the Jomay or Friday Mosque. Wise merchants, knowing that the faithful will regularly pass through the streets leading to the mosques, built their shops along those routes. In time they covered the twisting alleys with vaulted roofs, arched over the roadways, creating a series of interwoven arcades lined with stores. This became the bazaar; a center of both commercial and religious activity.

Located between two of the new streets, Ahar's small bazaar ran southwest to northeast ending near the river. I spent hours wandering through the arcades taking in the exotic sounds and smells. Fabric merchants hung out samples and those with hard goods like pots and pans piled them high inside and outside their shops. When in full operation, the bazaar resembled a colorful tunnel filled with pushing women, pensive men carrying worry beads, porters bent under heavy boxes, and tea house waiters scurrying from one shop to the next.

In Iran, tea houses provided social gathering places. Men sat in them talking, smoking water pipes, playing backgammon, and conducting business. In the shops, bargaining often took hours, especially for expensive items like carpets. Merchants or customers could order tea from nearby tea houses. Runners wearing green aprons and carrying brass trays loaded with glasses, sugar cubes, or water pipes ran back and forth supplying whatever they required. Among the other noises, I constantly heard the soft gurgling sound of smoke bubbles in the many water pipes or hookahs. Rent on a hookah ran around two rials and the men who used them carried their own small mouthpieces. I tried a water pipe once. Pulling the smoke through the long tubes, through the burning charcoal and the pot of water at the bottom required lungs stronger than mine.

Charcoal burners heated the shops during cold weather and at meal times the men cooked liver or kidneys, sugar beets or tomatoes on top of them. Piles of spices like pepper and saffron sat in front of some stores adding to the smells. Large bundles of fresh wool rich in lanolin and the dirt floor of the bazaar itself added to the odors that assaulted my nose and occasionally tugged at my stomach.

Small glass-covered sky lights located in each of the bazaar's domes lit its interior. On sunny days shafts of light dropped into the bazaar. They appeared to undulate as people pushed past each other, and they gave the bazaar an ethereal oriental look as dust from so many feet drifted and shimmered in their path. In hot weather the arcades seemed cool and dark. When the weather became dry, the shop owners sprinkled water in front of their stores forming a thin mud paste that kept down some of the dust.

The year before I arrived in Ahar, city officials collected a tax from each bazaar merchant. They used the money to repair the crumbling brick roof of the arches and domes over the bazaar's dirt and cobblestone streets. In reality, the workers put a thin layer of chalk-like paste over the bricks, and then painted that surface so that it looked like new bricks. The illusion made the bazaar appear strong and safe. But the underpinnings continued to crumble and in the two years that I spent in Ahar parts continued to fall in now and then. I always hoped that I would never be near the place in case of an earthquake.

Nevertheless, the bazaar remained one of my favorite places in Ahar. One day I bought a hat made of sheepskin, the wool side turned out, much like that of a Russian Cossack.

"How much are you paying for this?" asked Mr. Kashavarz when he saw it in my house. I had kept the hat under cover because I had finally learned better than to think of wearing such a thing in public.

"One hundred twenty rials," I answered.

"You have been cheated," cried Mohammad Kashavarz. "They have cheated you badly."

No matter what I bought, my Iranian friends always told me that I had been cheated. I came to expect it. So I tended to ignore Mohammad but he went on and on about the thing.

"It is a great shame for us. They not only cheat us, but they cheat you - and you are our guest. It is not good that those men lie and cheat guests in our city. It is necessary that we are doing something about this."

Mohammad put on his shoes and told me to get my coat.

"We are going to the bazaar."

Kashavarz had me show him where I bought the hat. Inside the shop the owner's son said that his father was ill and could not be bothered. Mohammad began shouting in Turkish, none of which I understood, and a crowd gathered around the small shop. Mohammad carried on wonderfully, his little mustache twitched, he waved his arms, pointed to me, held up the hat, and shouted so the people in the back could hear. The whole bazaar heard him. I wanted to crawl under something and hide.

After about ten minutes of this the man who had sold me the hat came out of the shop's back room and started talking to Kashavarz. Not sick, he hid when he saw us coming through the bazaar. The crowd enjoyed every second of the shouting; both men got red in the face. Finally the merchant went to his money box, took out some coins, threw them on the ground, shouted some insults at me and Kashavarz, grabbed his son and returned to the back room.

Kashavarz smiled. "Take the money. We have won."

Embarrassed, I picked up a few of the coins and we left, pushing through the crowd.

Whenever I returned to the bazaar, that particular shopkeeper glowered at me with sour looks. In fact, as I learned in time, Kashavarz had broken one of the commandments of bargaining. Before striking a deal, all is fair in the negotiations. But once one has struck a deal, he must fulfill it even if it subsequently becomes obvious that the deal was poor, one sided or even fraudulent. A bargain made is sacrosanct and must not be abrogated. And above all, caveat emptor ruled the bazaar. If you are fool enough to be cheated, it is your fault. Despite the hat incident, most of the shop owners in the bazaar remained friendly and welcomed me to their stores with a cheerful "Hello, Mister."

In Iran the philosophy that governed business would seem illogical to Western entrepreneurs. Each man knew about how much money he expected to make daily. If he had good business, prices fell toward the end of the day. If the dealer liked a particular customer, he might sell things cheaply, or, on rare occasions and if business had been particularly good, even at a loss. Make enough money, but not too much was the overriding principle. On the other hand, on slow days careful and prolonged bargaining accompanied each sale as the merchant held out for top price, trying to make his prescribed profit. All of this resulted in an effect opposite of that in the West where sales and low prices accompany low sales and where high prices come with increased demand.

The Eastern philosophy made knowing the merchant all the more important. Every sale involved pleasantries and considerable 'taroff,' or ceremonial politeness. Large deals required two or three cups of tea and when buying something like a carpet, the buyer often returned to the bazaar shop two or three times or more over a period of a few days to a week. If the seller came to dislike the buyer, he would sometimes harden his position or even refuse to sell at any price.

New things, especially plastics, enchanted Iranians. Modern seemed better, no matter whether it really was or not. As fast as they could they threw out things which Europeans and Americans saw as antiques and heirlooms. In their places they put cheap, showy, often downright gaudy, replacements. I bought brass samovars from Russia for ten and fifteen dollars. For two pre-revolutionary hurricane lamps with crystal shades made in Russia I paid seventy-five cents each.

Slowly, however, tourists taught the merchants the value of things. Buyers from Teheran toured the country gathering up bowls, tea pots, hand-hammered plates, samovars, miniature paintings, and so on. These found their way to shops in Teheran where Americans, Germans, and Frenchmen bought them and sent them abroad. Consequently, while I lived in Iran, the price of antiques rose and at the end of my two years I could hardly afford things that had been cheap when I first arrived.

No matter what I bought at the bazaar or in any of the shops around Ahar, the merchant never had the right change. If the item cost eighty rials, and if I handed the man a one hundred rial note, he would be unable to find twenty rials, and would have to run around among his neighbors putting together a few coins in order to settle the deal. Once in a while I had to return the next day to get my change.

Once I went to the bank and asked them to cash my monthly check from Peace Corps and give me all of the money in twenty rial notes (each then worth about twenty-five cents). They told me to return the next day, and when I did, they handed me a pile of bills about eight inches high. I had just as much trouble getting change, and I found the small bills too easy to spend, so I only did that once.

When the men in the bazaar saw me they liked to point out items of interest. They knew I liked old things, and so everything became old - more often they used the Persian word for 'ancient.' The more ancient the item, the higher the price for the American. One man showed me a brass electric light fixture and told me that it was extremely ancient. Anything made in Russia they described with the word "Nickolai," after Tsar Nicholas.

"This is a very old bowl," said one man as I looked at the object he handed me.

"Are you sure?"

"Oh, yes, it is very old, it is ancient. It is very rare. And it is foreign. It is Nickolai."

"Where is it from?"

"I do not know for sure. I think Russia. But it is ancient and foreign. It is very valuable. I think you will want to buy it."

I looked at the brass bowl. We had started the routine. The seller pointed out the virtues, the buyer indicated the flaws. But when I turned over the bowl, I found clearly stamped in English on the bottom, "Made in Iran -1962."

Whenever I bought something one or more of my friends inevitably asked what I had paid for it. I learned to ask first how much they thought I should have paid. After they stated a price, I told them that I had obtained the item for a figure a little lower than theirs. I always received a chorus of 'bah, bah, bahs' and praise for my ability to shop and bargain. This saved me from more incidents like my trip to the hat merchant with Mr. Kashavarz. Now and then, however, my friend got in the last word. He would look more carefully at the item and say, "Oh yes, I see that it is of poor quality. You have been paying too much after all."

In addition to the government doctor at the Red Lion and Sun Society, two other doctors lived in Ahar. Dr. Adjami, a special friend of Mr. Kashavarz, owned a house near the telephone office. He had studied medicine in France, and he spoke some English. Ahar's small intelligentsia gathered around him and he enjoyed having them to dinner.

He invited me the first time early that March. I arrived appropriately late, but still first. When the rest had gathered, the doctor passed around tangerines. One of the men collected the peelings, leaving us with the inner meat. I watched the others and decided that they must have swallowed the seeds as well. I carefully transferred mine into my hand and then into my jacket pocket.

Around midnight the doctor ushered us into his dining room. A huge, golden-brown turkey sat in the center of the table flanked by heaping platters of rice, meat patties, vegetables, and smaller plates with other warm and cold dishes. The table had everything except chairs. The doctor did bring in one chair for a frail and rather palsied man who could hardly stand. The rest of us stood and began with soup which I managed to spill on my shirt and coat. The rice fell on my shoes and into my cuffs and I even managed to scatter a few vegetables around.

Back in the main room in better light I saw the full extent of the damage I had done to my clothes. I sat self-consciously listening to Kashavarz or the doctor whenever one of them thought to translate something. Finally, I made excuses about having to teach early the next morning and left. A few days later in one of my classes, I absent-mindedly reached into my coat pocket and felt something strange. As one of the boys read his lesson, I pulled out my hand and scattered dry tangerine seeds onto the floor. The wide-eyed boys must have wondered why the strange "Mister" carried something like that around with him.

I must not have made a terrible impression because Dr. Adjami invited me back occasionally over the next year or so. His invitations always came suddenly and without warning. I would find a note pinned to my door. "The doctor is asking you to his house for dinner." Usually Mr. Kashavarz came for me around 9:30 or 10:00 and we walked there together.

One evening when Kashavarz arrived he had his wife with him in his car. At the doctor's house, four other women sat drinking tea and chatting with the men. I met Mrs. Mohiempoor, the principal at Na Mous. She sat with her husband whom I recognized as a teacher at Reza Shah High School. Dr. Adjami sat with Mr. Shayaste, an important, wealthy member of the community. He owned some villages around Ahar, collected rents from their peasant tenants and he also owned much of the land in Ahar itself.

Mr. Shayaste's daughter Mehri, about twenty years old, sat with Mrs. Kashavarz. She taught at Na Mous but I never learned what subject. Mehri Shayaste had beautiful dark eyes and she wore unusually fashionable clothes. She greeted me in halting English, and while I wanted to talk to her, Mr. Kashavarz maneuvered me around to another side of the room. Although this group considered itself liberated and modern, it had clear limits. Unmarried, they considered me a boy, and my invitation to a gathering that included the women itself broke traditional barriers. Undoubtedly Mr. Shayaste had long before selected a husband for his daughter. Kashavarz told me that the gatherings which included the women would not be understood by most of the people in Ahar, and that I should not mention such events, even to Usef or Mr. Hashemi.

Dr. Teherani and his wife arrived last. He was very different from Dr. Adjami. He and his wife practiced the religion of Bahai, a movement that developed in Iran during the nineteenth century. Bahai is to Islam what Mormonism is to Christianity; that is, an off-shoot started by a modern prophet of sorts. And like Mormons in the last century, the Bahai experience considerable intolerance at the hands of conservative Moslems. The Iranian military stationed Dr. Teherani in Ahar where he worked with the soldiers at the gendarmerie. He wanted only to finish his term of service and go to Tehran where he hoped to get a job with an American pharmaceutical company. To do that he needed to polish his English and so he went to some trouble to become my friend.

After meeting at the Adjami's, Dr. Teherani and his wife invited me to their house twice weekly. In return for dinner, I talked to the doctor and his wife. She taught English at the girl's high school. Both appreciated the conversation. I taught them new words, idioms, and corrected pronunciation. They learned quickly, enjoyed talking about almost anything and proved to be comfortable hosts.

"We are modern," said the doctor. "We do not hide our women from the world like these people in Ahar."

And so when I went to the Teherani house, I sat with the doctor, his wife and their three-year-old daughter. Mrs. Teherani explained that they had debated about exposing me to Iranian family life, but finally decided that I must meet everyone and see them and the way they lived. But they cautioned me not to mention this to anyone in Ahar because its conservative residents would not understand such unusual openness. Their religion gave them enough problems and they did not need more trouble.

"Tonight I have made something special for you," said Mrs. Teherani before our meal. "I think you will like this special meat."

I ate at the gray-whitish mound on my plate, and disliked its taste and texture. I managed to get down a respectable amount, but then quit.

As I left, Mrs. Teherani smiled and said, "The new thing which you have eaten is the brain of the sheep. We think that it is very good. Did you like it?"

"It was unusual," I said. "I think I'll have to get used to it.

I knew it was my culture that made the brain hard for me to stomach. As I walked home, I told myself that there was nothing wrong. People eat the brains and other organs of various animals and even enjoy them. But in the end, I lost that night's dinner. Whenever Mrs. Teherani offered me brain again, I politely refused. Just as the Iranians were products and prisoners of their culture, so mine governed me and like them, I could not escape it.