The biggest and happiest holiday in Iran is New Year. It comes in the middle of March, usually around the twenty-first, with the vernal equinox. It indicates the start of spring. The traditions that accompany its celebration long antedate modern times and the coming of Islam to Iran. The holiday lasted about two weeks; most government offices and many shops closed for at least one week, and the schools shut down for the full fortnight. Everyone who could traveled during the holiday, and Iran's roads filled with cars and busses going to the major cities and places of interest.

"What are you going to do during New Year?" Dennis Yates asked when he visited me a few days before the holiday started.

"I don't know. Mr. Kashavarz and I planned to go to Isfahan but now he says that he can't go."

"Why not?"

"His wife is having her baby and he thinks he should stay in Ahar to be with her."

"Didn't he know all along that she was having a baby? "Everyone knew it. She's as big as a house. But he figured that the baby would come a few weeks later. If he got out of town, then he would be surprised by the baby when we returned. But she's decided it will come in a few days and she told him to stay home. I think he never intended to go in the first place, and just couldn't say 'no.' He liked the idea of planning, and thinking about traveling."

"So you're going to sit here in Ahar?"

"It looks that way so far."

Traveling during New Year presented problems. Hotels filled and bus reservations were hard to get. I had thought that with Kashavarz, the language barrier would at least be one problem out of the way. Without him I doubted that I would get far by myself.

"You ought to go to Tabriz anyway," suggested Dennis. "And don't forget the Peace Corps conference in Teheran. You have to be there on the last day of the vacation. I've already told Mr. Hashemi that you will be late getting back."

"I've been tired lately," I complained. "Maybe the rest will do me good."

That night Dennis, Reza, and I decided to fix spaghetti. Unable to find spaghetti anywhere in the bazaar, we settled for noodles. Nobody had oregano, so we substituted saffron. Early spring tomatoes had come from the south and we bought onions too. Fresh greens replaced bay leaves and we used lemons because Reza could not find any vinegar. I forced a kilo of beef through my meat grinder, and made a sauce that we simmered for an hour or so. In the place of Parmesan cheese we used yogurt.

"It doesn't look much like spaghetti," said Dennis, "and it doesn't taste much like spaghetti either. But we'll call it spaghetti."

Early the next morning Dennis left, happy that the cold weather kept the roads frozen making his trip smoother and less dusty. Over the next two days I felt worse. Three days before New Year I started to run a fever and got sick to my stomach. By late that night my temperature rose to 103o. I decided that I needed help.

Shivering and wrapped in a blanket, I went outside, intending to walk to Usef's house. The cold wind hit me and I shook so badly that I could hardly move without falling. I decided to try my neighbor, whom I had never met. I pounded on the door into his courtyard but nobody came. I knocked again, then turned to go back home. More wind brought on a chill and I stumbled and fell on a patch of ice.

I next thing I really remember was looking at two unfamiliar but concerned faces.

"Usef," I said in Persian. "Get Usef Charchi. He is a teacher at Pahlavi."

This got me nowhere because the men, who turned out to be my neighbors, understood only Turkish. They took me into my house where I wrote Usef's name on a piece of paper in Persian. One of the men put it in his pocket and left. The other man stayed and worked with my stove to keep the room warm.

About an hour later Dr. Adjami walked in followed by Usef and his father. After examining me, the doctor gave me two shots.

"Now you will sleep." he said.

Usef explained that my neighbors had found me in the street when they finally opened the door. The man who had left took the paper I gave him to the police station and they found Usef who went directly for the doctor. Usef's father stayed with me that night tending the stove, and watching to see that I got no worse.

Early the next morning Mr. Hashemi and Usef came to the house. Mr. Hashemi looked shaken as he sat in a chair next to my bed.

"I am so worried," he said. "This is not a good thing."

Dr. Adjami showed up a few minutes later, and gave me a third shot.

"You are going to the American hospital in Tabriz," Adjami said.

"The ambulance from the Red Lion and Sun Society is parked at your house," said Usef. "I am putting clothes in this bag for you."

Two drivers came in. They picked up my mattress with the bedding and me and carried the entire package out the door and into the back of the ambulance. Most of my neighbors gathered around watching as Usef set my bag beside with me and then they closed the door.

The chuck holes and washboard surface of the frozen road hardly slowed the ambulance driver as he raced toward Tabriz. Whenever he saw anyone on the road ahead he turned on the siren scattering peasants, donkeys, and other pedestrians. We raced up over the switch backs at Payan, down the west side, and through the streets of Tabriz until we reached the American Mission Hospital which sat next to the American Consulate.

We stopped inside the hospital gate, the siren still blaring, and the driver and his assistant shouting people to get out of the way. With so much noise a crowd gathered almost at once.

An attendant from the hospital helped me up the stairs and inside where I sat down. In the large waiting room, I watched while the Ahar driver his assistant argued with Dr. Ashton Stewart who supervised the facility.

"They want to leave all of your bedding here," explained the Dr. Stewart, "but we don't want it. They have decided not to return to Ahar, but to start their New Year holiday a little early, as long as they're here anyway and have the ambulance, and they don't want it either."

"So?" I asked.

"Well, we're not too busy so I'll have them put your stuff in a back room for a while. Did you have to bring the whole bed with you?"

"It wasn't my idea."

"Well," he smiled, "let's see what's wrong with you. You look awful."

The doctor and couple of nurses poked and prodded and then pumped out my stomach which by then had very little in it. The examination made me feel even worse. They put me in large, warm room where I stayed just over a week.

They gave me pills and pumped other things into me. I saw the doctor about twice a day and I slept through most of the New Year holiday. Fern McScott, a nurse-teacher at the hospital, visited me frequently and filled me in on the festivities outside.

"Sorry you missed the fire jumping," she said one afternoon.

"What's that?"

"On the Friday before New Year the Iranians build fires and then jump over them. There are lots of little fires burning around town. The people think that it purifies their souls for the new year. It's an ancient custom that goes back to pre-Islamic days. It probably has its origin in Zoroastrianism since they think that fire cleanses. I got to jump over a fire that some of the nursing students built behind the hospital. It almost burned up my dress."

"Is New Year as exciting here as it is at home?"

"The Iranians celebrate at the exact moment of the equinox. This year it came about ten o'clock last night. But here it's a family holiday and everybody tries to be at home, so the streets are empty and peaceful.

I liked Fern. She dedicated herself to the hospital and had worked there for a long time.

Dr. Stewart ran me through a series of tests and x-rays. Nurses fed me little glasses of milk every few hours night and day, and the rest of the time I slept. My skin seemed to darken a little and the whites of my eyes turned yellowish.

"We suspect hepatitis," said Dr. Stewart. "You can start eating jello and yogurt now and we think you'll be pink again in two or three weeks. It doesn't look like a bad case."

"You look awful," said Dennis Yates when he arrived at the hospital four days after New Year.

I looked up from a James Bond novel and said hello. Dr. Stewart and the preacher from the Tabriz Christian Mission Church both brought me piles of religious books, but the minister's wife smuggled in a stack of mysteries and I worked my way through them.

"It looks like you finally figured out what to do for New Year," Dennis continued.

"Yeah, this is great fun," I mumbled.

"Well, I've talked to the doctor and to Peace Corps in Teheran. They want you there and I have a ticket for you on the plane tomorrow afternoon."

He drove me to a chaotic airport full of New Year travelers. Beggars roamed around with their hands out, baggage littered the reception area, and people argued with the clerks about nonexistent accommodations. I never learned how Dennis managed to secure two tickets on the over-booked flight, and our seats remained in doubt until the last minute. The final three passengers who climbed into the plane sat on folding chairs by the back door. In Teheran Dennis found his luggage first, but my bags never showed up. The next day someone delivered them to the Peace Corps Office.

The Peace Corps doctor examined me and said that I should try to gain weight. I lost over twelve pounds and had been thin to start with. The doctor gave me pills for my liver and had me take a series of tests at the United States Air Force Hospital in north Teheran. They confirmed that I indeed had probably had hepatitis albeit a mild case.

I lived with Dennis in his apartment for a week. The warm Teheran weather contrasted with frigid Azarbaijan, and I appreciated the change. Most of the time I laid around the apartment watching the American armed forces television station.

The mountains North of Teheran

Once in a while I ventured out to the bazaar. Wandering through it and people-watching filled a few hours until I got tired and returned to the apartment. Out-of-date and out-of-style garments from throughout the West must eventually surface in Iran. I saw people wearing oddities like great coats or double breasted suits with unusually wide lapels. The poorer people had patched and repatched everything they wore. In contrast wealthy Iranians displayed the smartest Paris fashions. Young Teheran dandies strutted around in flair pants with white platform shoes. While the poorer women, conservative and religious, hid behind dark heavy body veils, wealthy women wore contemporary dresses under becoming transparent silk covers.

A deep jube full of swiftly running water lined both sides of Pahlavi Street, one of Teheran's widest and busiest. I watched a man urinating into the jube while farther along downstream a vendor dipped water out and splashed it onto vegetables that he sold off of his rickety cart. In the evenings little groups of men sat on the sidewalks around charcoal braziers cooking liver, kidneys, or perhaps roasting large white sugar beets. The smell of burning charcoal mingled with that of diesel fumes from busses, car exhausts, urine splashed on the walls around houses and buildings, unwashed bodies warm under Teheran's spring sun, and things I never recognized. Combined, they gave Teheran a flavor all its own. Despite being a major world city, Teheran had, by Western standards, few large stores. Small shops run by individual proprietors dominated the city, from the horde of them that constituted the bazaar to tiny 'mamma-poppa' grocery and convenience stores found in every neighborhood. Each owner jammed his shop with as much merchandise and with as much variety as possible. I always marveled at the ability of a shopkeeper to find something among the piles, seemingly thrown together without logical system or organization, that overflowed every store.

A samovar shop in the Teheran bazaar

At first Teheran seduces visitors with its Western appearance. Modern shops, small, but well stocked line the reasonably clean sidewalks of the main streets. Large neon signs flash at night advertising familiar brand names in English and Persian. Firestone, Sony, Pan American, American Express, and Coca Cola gave downtown Teheran the look of any up-to-date cosmopolitan center.

But the façade of Westerness wears through quickly. The work day started around eight in the morning and ran until about Noon. Then shops closed until four in the afternoon. Some government offices did not open again until the next day. In the late afternoon, the bazaar and other stores and shops reopened until eight or nine at night. Restaurants really began serving dinner around eight and operated until Midnight.

Nothing opened on Friday, the weekly Islamic holy day. Otherwise the schools, government offices, and merchants functioned the other six days. Americans in Iran took off Sunday too, resulting in a somewhat disjointed week.

Iranian flags with a green stripe on top, white in the middle, and red on the bottom flew on most buildings. The national colors decorated telephone poles, road signs, and walls. Colored lights hung across many streets but officials turned them on only during festive holidays.

Everywhere I looked in Teheran crews of men worked at either tearing down or building something. They constructed the larger multi-story buildings out of steel and bricks, assembled in what seemed to me like a random manner. They wedged bricks in between the steel forms making floors and ceilings. I sometimes found it hard to tell whether a building was being raised or razed. It became readily apparent why so many die in earthquakes in that part of the world. One good shake and the structures fall apart crushing hapless people caught inside.

Late one afternoon I took a taxi to Froush-gah [it means 'shopping place'] Ferdowsi, Teheran's one large department store. Taxis cost twenty rials [25¢] for a ride anywhere in the city [since then the drivers have installed meters and started charging by time and distance]. Thousands of the orange cars added to the mayhem of Teheran traffic. I waved my hand until a driver stopped, I got in and told him my destination.

My driver slowly inched his rusty and battered car into the stream of traffic that appeared near grid-lock. Whenever someone pulled in front of him, he yelled at them. He made an incomplete U-turn across three lanes and got caught behind a bus that refused to give way. We fell in behind the bus edging out a yellow Fiat with a driver who cursed us. We proceeded along Takhte Jamshid toward Fisherabad Street where we turned right from the center lane, cutting in front of two other cars whose drivers slammed to a stop. Teheran's taxi drivers inspired awe in everyone who rode with them. I found it best just to sit back and relax. Sometimes we strayed into the oncoming lane, Drivers sped by pedestrians missing them by inches. The cacophony of horns raised a considerable din, especially near busy intersections. And every intersection in Teheran stayed busy from early in the morning until ate at night. Throughout it all the taxi drivers laughed, complained, waved one or both arms, shouted frequent expletives, and surprisingly seldom caused or became involved in accidents.

Finally we arrived at the department store. It was located near one of the city's large traffic circles and named for the poet Ferdowsi. His statue, with its medieval Persian visage, stood impassively in the middle of the round park, formed by the traffic circle, surrounded by the constant flow of traffic.

The store itself was unique in that inside the prices were fixed. No bargaining. That appealed to Americans, Europeans, and upper class Iranians, most of whom shopped there for the status because everyone knew that the same things sold more cheaply in the bazaar. Inside, the store boasted one of Iran's modern wonders: an escalator. People came just to look at it. They rode it up to the second floor, but then had to walk back down because the store had only the one unit. Still, they claimed with considerable pride that it was the only escalator in the Middle East.

When I went up the escalator, two ladies wrapped in chadores stood a few steps ahead of me. As the rises folded together near the top, the end of one woman's veil caught in the mechanism. Its owner jumped off the moving step, grabbed her rapidly disappearing garment and started screaming. She put on a gallant struggle and ended up with most of it, but lost one corner. Then the escalator started running irregularly and making a strange sound. Somebody shut it off. I learned that the Teheran newspapers had called the thing the "Chadore-Grabber," and that almost daily the store stopped it so that workmen could remove bits of torn material from the works.

Just after the New Year holiday the conference with my training group started. Peace Corps held it in a private school in the hills north of Teheran. We talked about our experiences, our sites, our problems, and generally relaxed and enjoyed seeing each other again. Two days later it ended, the doctor told me to get lots of sleep, but to return to Ahar. I took a bus this time.

"You are looking wonderful," said Usef when I arrived a few days later. "We are being worried about you so much."

"The weather is warmer here too, but not like Teheran," I said.

"And you have returned your bed," said Usef.

"Yes," I grumbled. "They stored it at the Mission Hospital. I picked it up and tried to hire a taxi to take it and me to the bus station but they wouldn't haul the mattress. I had to find a porter with a cart."

"Damn those taxi drivers," swore Usef.

"They put the mattress on the top of the bus, and when I arrived here I hired a porter to carry it to the house."

Of necessity I had finally started learning how to do things in the Iranian way. The illness left me temporarily weak and it took about six weeks to get back to normal.

"Mr. Hashemi is having trouble finding teachers who are working in your classes," said Usef. "He is making me work so many extra hours every day and without more pay. He will be happy that you are back. Do not become ill again."

Usef had to cover some of the classes for a few more weeks until I could get through a day without tiring. But I recovered, and soon enough we returned to the old schedule. And I vowed to do something different during my next New Year in Iran.