The back side of the Ahar Sheikh
Every city in Iran appeared to have at least one ancient building, colorful mosque, tomb, or historic site worthy of note. Various guide books noted the country's places of interest and attempted to lift the mystery that surrounded this or that crumbling brick façade or enigmatic edifice. But none of them mentioned the Ahar Sheikh.
The large, reddish, square mosque sat on the south edge of town, backed by the mountains that rose behind it. Square and generally unremarkable, it had three arches along the front, and a squat unadorned dome on top. Inside its courtyard the body of a long forgotten holy man rested in a lichen-encrusted stone sarcophagus. The building, said by locals to be about three hundred years old, had one large room with a mehrab or prayer niche at one end, ostensibly facing Mecca.
During good weather, a caretaker left the small front door open, and men went inside in order to pray. Others walked in the surrounding gardens which generally appeared unkempt. A large alcove dented the east side of the building. Each fall custodians from the schools plastered its walls with white chalk, and during the school year, students went there and wrote things about their teachers. In the evenings the teachers wandered in to see if they had been mentioned. Usef told me that I received some attention, but he would only say that they misspelled my name. Once a high mud wall had surrounded the grounds, but rain and neglect had long ago reduced it to bits and crumbling pieces. Nearby the Office of Education had started a building to house sports events, but the government stopped sending money, and so the building stood half finished and it received no work during the two years that I lived there.
On each of the Sheikh's front corners minarets, surfaced with glazed blue tiles, rose to the level of the top of the building and stopped, obviously incomplete.
"Why are the tops of the minarets broken off?" I asked Mr. Kashavarz when we walked near the Sheikh one evening.
"Because," he answered, when the Americans came here after the war and they have broken them."
The back side of the Ahar Sheikh
"What happened to the rest of the minarets?" I asked Mr. Hashemi one day during tea.
"When the Russians were here in Azarbaijan in ancient times, they have broken off the towers."
"What is wrong with the minarets at the Sheikh?" I asked Mr. Haddadpor when he visited me one evening.
"My father has told me," he said in his most proper manner, "that when he was a boy, the British came to Azarbaijan, and while they were here, they have broken many things. One thing was the Sheikh at Ahar."
I suspected an earthquake because of large cracks that ran throughout the building. Everyone had a theory, and it usually involved whomever he disliked.
In February two men attached to the British Embassy came to Ahar. They showed films and presented an educational program to the students in the high school auditorium. When they finished, I offered to show them around town.
"Wonderful," said the leader. "We should like to see the Ahar Sheikh."
I led them around and through the building, recounting the various stories that I had heard about it.
"So I guess that either we Americans, you British, or the Russians damaged the place."
"Rubbish," said one of my guests.
"Well, then what happened to it?" I asked.
"Like so many things in this part of the world," they explained, "they either changed priorities or just plain ran out of money. The latter is most likely. The truth is that they never built the minarets in the first place."
Ahar had a second large building. It housed the Iranian version of the Red Cross then called then the Red Lion and Sun Society (now called the Red Crescent Society). The government stationed a new doctor there every six months or so. Usually a young man completing his military service, none wanted to stay any longer than required. On the first floor the doctor ran a free clinic for Ahar's poor and for villagers. Every day groups of people sat around the entry rooms waiting patiently for their turn, which sometimes never came.
Most of the fourteen to sixteen rooms inside of the building sat empty. The doctor used one room for examinations, lived in another, and let the waiting people use two or three near the front door. Nevertheless, everyone in town considered it one of Ahar's showplaces. I hated to go near it because inevitably one or another of the workers there would see me, run out, and insist that I tour the place.
"He is saying that you must look inside," said Mr. Fakhim when we had strayed too close on an afternoon walk.
"But I have seen the place four or five times already," I protested.
Mr. Fakhim smiled, and pointed out that refusing would be impolite. The man showed obvious pride in the building, the largest in Ahar, and that pride would be wounded if I rejected his offer. After all, Fakhim went on partly translating, partly adding himself, the money to build the place had come from the International Red Cross, much of it from the United States. I had an obligation to tour the building.
Inside we found that the doctor had left for the day. His assistant proudly pointed to bottles and boxes on the shelves, and stood looking very important. They led me from room to room, stopping so I could inspect each one despite the fact that most of them contained nothing. And, as always, they saved the best for the last. In the middle of one room on the second floor sat a gleaming white porcelain toilet.
"It is the only western toilet in Ahar," translated Mr. Fakhim.
They all looked at it and said "Bah, bah, bah," indicating, in the Iranian idiom, extreme satisfaction. Only the very best warranted a "Bah, bah, bah!" The fact that the toilet had never been connected to any plumbing and that it just sat there, useless and gathering dust, in no way diminished its importance.
At times a number of Iran's cultural peculiarities conspired to make my life difficult. For example, each class in the high schools had its own room except for two classes at Pahlavi called 'floating classes.' Whenever one of the stationary classes went to the chemistry laboratory, or to physical education, the only exceptions in the curriculum which caused students to leave their usual room, one of the floating classes took their place. When teacher illness or something else left no room vacant, then the floating classes used the auditorium and did the best they could under the circumstances.
Now and then I had to work in one of the floating classes, and generally Mr. Koshtinat told me where to find it. I had gone to one of them one day and stood in front of the boys watching Mohammad Reza Pooreyan reading out of his badly torn book. He had just finished when Old Hotami, the custodian, opened the door and spoke to one of the boys near the front. The boy in turn translated Hotami's Turkish into Persian and told me that a messenger had come to my house with a package and that I had to go and sign for it.
I left the boys with instructions to copy the next lesson three times in their notebooks, and to remain seated when I left the room. Then I ran for my house, signed the paper, and ran back into the school, knowing that in my absence bedlam might have erupted. Then I realized that I had forgotten what room I had been in. I looked unsuccessfully for Koshtinat, and checked in the faculty room, but nothing helped. Then I picked the room I thought I had left, and walked in. I chose incorrectly.
The boys instantly stood and their teacher, a sad looking man who taught literature, told them to sit down. I apologized but he misunderstood and thought something serious must have happened. He stood, which again brought the boys to their feet. He told them to sit, and then he walked over to me. I told him I was sorry I had bothered him, explained what had happened, and apologized again. He politely said what amounted to, 'forget it.'
As I left the room, the boys stood again, and the teacher turned and told them to sit down. In the hall once more, I remembered that I still had no idea where to find the floating class. So I opened the door to ask, bringing the boys to their feet. The teacher, on his way back to his chair at the front, told them to sit, and then asked what I wanted, somewhat exasperated.
He thought that I would find them in the next room, but suggested that I ask Mr. Koshtinat. I thanked him and turned to leave, while the boys again stood. The teacher sputtered an order for them to sit. As I closed the door, I saw him go to his chair and as he sat, the boys all stood.
After that the literature teacher avoided me. Whenever I sat in the Pahlavi faculty room, he took a chair as far from me as he could.
Dennis Yates arrived unexpectedly in Ahar during February. I had not seen him since he delivered me to Ahar in October. As field officer for the Azarbaijan area, Dennis tried to get around and visit each volunteer every six weeks or so, but some in outlying areas, like myself, saw him less frequently. Field officer visits provided support for the volunteers, but also served as a way for the organization to check-up on our activities. A few strayed from their posts, sometimes taking unauthorized trips abroad, and one or two did little except sit around and read. For slight infractions of the rules, a volunteer received a letter of reprimand. In rare cases, Peace Corps sent people home.
Since I had last seen him, Dennis had hired a driver named Reza. Chaotic Iranian traffic and laws that assumed a foreigner guilty made driving hazardous for Americans although many attempted it. An Iranian driver helped solve the problem, and provided company as the field officers bounced along over isolated roads going from post to post.
Reza had an easy smile and a happy personality. He spoke clear Persian, not the heavily accented variety of the Azarbaijanies, so I found understanding him easy if he stayed within the limits of my restricted vocabulary. He cooked, repaired the car whenever it broke down, and told amusing jokes and stories.
"But you were driving when you arrived," I said to Dennis.
"Yes, I know."
"But I thought he was your driver."
"He is."
"Well, then why doesn't he drive."
"When I hired him, I forgot to ask if he had a license. It turns out that he can't get one. He can't read, and that's a requirement."
For two years Dennis tried to teach Reza how to read. When I left Iran, Reza still worked for Dennis, still studied Persian, and still failed the test regularly.
We went to Ahar's restaurant for dinner that night. On the oil cloth that covered our table bits of dried rice and unwashed sticky rings from tea cups and Coca Cola bottles remained from previous diners. A drinking glass held pieces of a colorful waxed paper that served as napkins. The smiling owner dropped a large sheet of flat bread on the table, bowed and said, "Hello, Mister."
Outside of Teheran restaurants seldom had menus. We asked the man what he had available, and he told us.
"Rice and lamb kabob or ground lamb kabob. Also greens stew or yellow pea stew."
Small and undependable clientele made a larger selection impossible. We ordered lamb kabob, and the owner disappeared through into the kitchen. Black smoke blotches covered the walls around the kitchen area. A tattered beige curtain smudged with oil stains, finger and hand prints hung between the kitchen and the restaurant's main room. After a few minutes the man returned.
"Mister, there is no lamb kabob."
A picture of Lamb Kabob with chello (rice). It is the most famous meal served in Iran and is seen here with broiled tomatoes in the left.
"Is there ground lamb kabob?"
"No."
"Is there yellow pea stew?"
The man smiled. "Yes."
"Then," said Dennis, "we will have yellow pea stew.
Making an impression, and presenting themselves as better than they are is important to Iranians, Dennis explained. An Iranian might spend a great deal of money on one suit of clothes which he wears in public in order to hide the fact that he is poor. He might also tell you that he has things which in fact he does not own at all. We should have known that the restaurant would not have lamb kabob as it is an expensive meal, and would not keep if no customers came that night. The stew holds for a few days, and is more likely. In order not to embarrass the man, we should have ordered the stew in the first place. Further, Dennis pointed out, an Iranian hates to say 'no,' especially to a guest. Often he says 'yes' when he means 'no.' This is especially true if he is talking to a guest or someone he thinks is important. Figuring out what he really means can be frustrating.
We waited. In the background, we heard the owner banging pots and pans in the kitchen. We ate the bread, tearing off pieces until nothing remained. Finally the owner returned with a plate of hot rice running with butter and oil, sprinkled with bright yellow grains died in saffron. Next he brought bowls of soup.
"There is no yellow pea stew," he muttered sheepishly, looking down at the floor. "I have brought you soup. It is good soup. It is kidney soup." He tried to look cheerful.
"Is there Pepsi Cola or Canada Dry?" I asked.
"There is only Seven-up."
"Three bottles please."
The man returned in a few minutes with one bottle of Bubble-up.
"There is only this."
The rice, and the bottle of Bubble-up, shared three ways, insulated against the soup. We finished eating, paid the man, and left. Dennis and Reza drove on to Tabriz the next morning.
I had not been out of Ahar myself since Thanksgiving. When Mohammad Kashavarz said that he and his family planned a trip to Tabriz and that I could go with them, I welcomed the invitation. Mrs. Kashavarz, now eight months pregnant, sat in the back seat of the family's red Volkswagen, wedged between their two children. I sat in the front with Mohammad as we jolted along the dusty road.
"All of these villagers own dogs," I commented as we passed one small settlement.
"Yes," replied Kashavarz. "It is necessary for protection."
"But nobody in Ahar has a pet dog, and the boys throw rocks and sticks at the few that roam around the town."
"Our religion says that dogs are not clean," Mohammad explained. "If we are touching a dog, we must go to the bathroom at once and make ourselves clean again. When Mohammad said 'bathroom,' he meant the public shower or hammum. I tried to teach him the difference but never succeeded.
In Tabriz we stayed with Mrs. Kashavarz' relatives who lived in a small house in the northern part of the city. They went out of their way to make us comfortable, preparing a large turkey and rice dinner. I found it wonderful after weeks of my own cooking. As the family was more liberal than most, I also met the women, Mrs. Kashavarz' unmarried sister, and her mother, and I could talk to them.
On our second day in Tabriz, Kashavarz and I went to the Cutler home so that I could pick up some papers from the consul. We waited for Mr. Cutler in his living room. Before I realized what had happened, a large red Irish setter galloped into the room, stopped in front of the davenport, took a look around at the two of us, and jumped into Mohammad's lap. With its tail wagging, the big bony animal sat awkwardly licking Mohammad's cheek. Poor Mohammad, his face combined the features of confusion and horror.
I tried to coax the dog back onto the floor when Mr. Cutler came into the room. He ordered the dog off of Kashavarz, and out into an adjoining hall, then apologized saying that the animal tended to be overly friendly.
"I am not ever seeing such an animal," replied Kashavarz trying very hard to be composed and polite.
As we talked, the dog crept back into the room and sat near my chair. I petted his head and scratched around his ears. Kashavarz eyed the dog warily, and the dog sat with its mouth open, panting, seemingly smiling. Then, before either I or Cutler could stop it, the animal jumped into Mohammad's lap again.
Mr. Cutler tried to chase the dog away, but this time Mohammad protested, "No, no, I want it to stay. I think that it is liking me."
A few minutes later, we left. Mohammad and I walked around Tabriz briefly, going to the bazaar, and through the shopping district. Then he made excuses, and left me to wander alone, finding my way back to his family's house later that afternoon. When we drove back to Ahar that evening, I noticed that Mohammad looked freshly scrubbed as if he had taken a bath. I suspect that he spent the afternoon in the hammum, washing off an Irish setter.
In a Moslem country, a man who has made a pilgrimage to Mecca can assume the title "Hadj." A visit to other holy places brings titles of lesser prestige. Mashad, a city in northeastern Iran, holds the Gauhar Shad Mosque, the shrine of a long dead Ayatollah, or religious leader, much revered then and now. It is a holy place for Shi'ia Islam. Time spent praying at his shrine endows the traveler with the privileged name of 'Mashadi.'
Mashadi Hassan had the saddest eyes I ever saw on a man. Even when happy, he looked ready to weep. He always wore a hat far too large for his head. It rested on his brows in front, and covered all of his hair in back. His coat, also far too large, hung on his bony body, and his baggy pants gave him an almost comic appearance. He had pounded the backs of his shoes flat and when he walked up and down the halls of the Office of Education where he worked, his dragging heels made a scraping noise on the floor. Always in a hurry, the Mashadi was a man of very few words and deep emotions.
At the Office of Education the Mashadi filled the rôle of odd-job man. Along with his other jobs, he looked after my mail. Every day at noon I went to the Office of Education and wandered around until I found the Mashadi. If I had received a letter, he looked up and told me to follow him. Sometimes he put the letters in a basement storeroom. Others he secreted in the drawer of an old desk in one of the back rooms, and some he simply carried in the pockets of his tattered coat. Occasionally he hid them behind things in the room where he made tea for the officials, and once in a while he locked them in the safe.
When the Mashadi saw me, but had no letters, he looked sadder than usual, raised his hand, and shouted, "There are none, there are none!" Then he scampered off down the hall to perform some task assigned by one of the important people in the busy office.
One day I decided to thank Mashadi Hassan for taking care of my mail so carefully. Four letters came that day which already pleased him. When he handed them to me, his mouth turned into a big smile which contrasted with his soulful eyes. In my best Persian, which neither of us understood very well, I explained that I appreciated his time and his efforts on my behalf. Then I gave him a John F. Kennedy half dollar which I had brought from home.
"It is a picture of the dead president, Kennedy," I said.
"Oh, Mister," he whispered. "Oh, Mister!" His drooping eyes filled with tears, and he kissed the coin three or four times. "Oh, Mister," he said again, and then he ran off down the hall and into one of the rooms.
It took about ten days for airmail letters to travel from my home in Portland to Ahar. Now and then letters went astray and popped up weeks or months later. Some, especially any that had money in them, never surfaced at all.
I learned that I had to stand in the post office and watch the clerk cancel stamps on letters that I mailed. If I forgot, the letter seldom arrived at its destination. The twenty-five rial cost of a ten gram air mail letter to the United States amounted to the daily salary of some postal workers. So they tore off the stamps and resold them pocketing the money. The letter went into the garbage.
The Iranian government printed many commemorative stamps which collectors bought. It produced them in limited numbers in order to keep up their value. Collectors around the country made deals with clerks at the post office. In return for 'small gifts' (called 'bakshish' - actually meaning bribes) the clerks set the stamps aside and so patrons at the post office like myself often found no stamps or only stamps of small denominations available. Occasionally I mailed letters home with fifty rials worth of one rial stamps because I could buy nothing else.
Mail inside Iran moved slowly. A letter to Tehran took a week or longer. Special delivery cost a few rials more but speeded things along and reduced loss. My friends in Ahar called the post office the 'turtle office.' During the winter of 1967 the government reorganized the country's postal system. For a while after that it took two weeks or longer for a letter to arrive from home.
The customs office held the worst part of the Iranian postal system. Every American in the country could tell horror stories about attempts to get packages cleared, and the exorbitant duties charged. One volunteer received a card indicating that she had a package waiting. She arrived at the post office only to find that her mother had air mailed a birthday cake which the officials had put in a plastic bag, sprayed with D.D.T., and quarantined for two weeks before notifying her. The charges for the cake, the quarantine, and the spray amounted to over fifteen dollars. She called the officials thieves, screaming at them in front of a large crowd of bystanders, doing little to enhance American-Iranian friendship, and then she stomped out of the post office without her cake.
Despite general knowledge about problems with the post office, volunteers frequently wrote home requesting things unavailable in Iran. Many of the women wrote home for feminine hygiene supplies since they found tampons difficult to find and buy in Teheran and impossible elsewhere in the country. Islam teaches that during her monthly period, a woman is unclean. Specific restrictions and strict rules of sanitation surround any contact with her at that time.
One of the volunteers in Tabriz went to the post office to collect her package, clearly marked 'medical supplies,' which should have been duty free. But the clerk insisted on opening the box and inspecting it since her Persian failed to satisfy his curiosity about its contents. He became suspicious when he found tubes filled with cotton, and he started pulling some of them apart, spreading the pieces across the counter. Apparently afraid of smuggling, he insisted that he open each packet.
An Iranian woman sitting along the side of the room watched, and listened. She finally realized what the American girl had been trying to explain, and in Persian, through her veil, she told the clerk exactly what the box contained. He dropped the packet in his hand, turned bright red, and started screaming at the volunteer demanding that she clean up the mess and go away. As she left, he told the other people in the room to leave, and he closed up the office for the day.
My turn came when a friend sent me a two pound tin filled with chocolate chip cookies. After considerable deliberation and a search of the duty schedules in his books, the clerk in the customs office announced that the import tax came to eight hundred rials; just under ten dollars.
"They are not worth that much," I declared. "You are cheating me. Eat the cookies yourself, or give them to a beggar."
By then a crowd had gathered. Telling the man to eat the cookies insulted him as it implied that he would take things not his and was a thief. While that was probably true, it was impolitic to say it so bluntly. At the same time rhetoric and exaggerated speech typified the Middle East. Arm waving and shouted hyperbole formed an essential part of any hostile negotiation.
The clerk asked me to be calm, and he ordered a servant to bring tea.
"There is a mistake," he suggested.
"For sure," said a second clerk. "There is a terrible mistake."
They looked through the books again.
"The duty is only two hundred rials."
Everyone clicked his tongue, which Iranians did when they deplored something, and shook their heads and wondered how they could have made such a mistake.
"It is good," one of them said, "that you have found the mistake."
"Two hundred rials is crazy," I said. "Those cookies would not cost twenty-five rials in a shop. And they did not come from a shop. My friend's mother made them for me as a gift."
"Oh! Not from a shop. You must tell us this. This is important. We are making another mistake."
They returned to the book, turning the pages, clicking their tongues and computing on their abacus.
"The duty is seventy-five rials." Everyone smiled except me.
"Look," I said, "you are weighing this heavy can besides the cookies."
Before they could stop me, I grabbed the can and dumped the cookies into the scale. After the long trip, little remained except broken pieces and crumbs. Most of it ended up in the scale, but quite a bit scattered across the counter, fell onto the floor, and in general made a mess.
The clerks looked sad when they saw the debris which they would have to clean up.
"The duty is just thirty rials," the first clerk sighed.
One of my friends in the Tabriz Post office weighing a package that I was sending home.
I decided that I had gone far enough, paid the money, gathered up the larger pieces, gave a polite bow which they returned, and left the post office. Over the next months I came to know the clerks in the customs office quite well. We actually became friendly. But I refused to pay bribes, which was what they wanted, and which would have gotten packages through customs without difficulty. Consequently I never won the post office game.
I cooked my meals on a small gas burner in my kitchen. Tom Morgan and Tom Dawson had left behind a few pots, a pressure cooker and a meat grinder. At first I ate mostly boiled food, but in time I learned to fix more elaborate meals. But one day the blue flame of the gas stove burned lower, then flickered, then went out. Usef told me that I could replace the large yellow gas tank at the store of Mr. Hashemi's friend.
The next afternoon I disconnected the heavy tank and started off up the street with it.
"What are you doing?" came the voice of Mr. Haddadpor who had run to catch up with me.
"I am taking this to a shop so that I can get a full one."
"Why?"
"Because it is empty."
"No. Why are you carrying it?"
"How else can I get it to the shop?"
"Please put it down," he insisted.
Now it was my turn. "Why?"
"It is not good for teachers to carry such things on the street. I have told you this thing before. I will hire a porter for you."
I knew better than to argue. Again I had lost prestige for myself and for my fellow teachers. Doing any common labor in public was a luxury denied educated people, especially teachers. Mr. Haddadpor brought a porter who walked along behind us carrying the tank. We went to the shop, ordered a replacement, exchanged it for the empty on the porter's back, and headed for my house. Haddadpor insisted on paying the porter and I let him. He gave the man five rials. I would undoubtedly have paid too much.
As my cooking improved I decided to invite Usef to dinner. I made a stew with lamb, carrots and other vegetables. I boiled eggs. And I cooked rice, since I knew Iranians ate it with almost every meal, the way Americans eat potatoes.
"You aren't eating the rice," I said as I watched Usef poke at the stew and nibble on an egg.
"We are liking rice," he said, starting slowly and working toward his point. "We are liking rice made in just a certain way. Your rice is very different."
When I cooked rice, it rolled out of the pot in a sticky mass and landed on the plate with a solid thud.
"It isn't very good, is it?"
"It cannot be eaten," said Usef sadly.
"How about the stew?"
"I have never seen such a thing."
"Well," I said with a weak smile, "the tea seems to be okay."
"It is inexpensive tea, and of poor quality," said Usef warming up to being straightforward, something Iranians seldom accomplished.
"Let's go to the restaurant."
Usef smiled and got his coat.
"What should I do with this rice and stew?"
Usef thought for a minute.
"There are always some dogs near the back wall of the school. Put it there on the ground and the dogs will be eating it. They are eating just anything."
On our way to the restaurant, I opened my bag and dumped the rice and stew onto a pile of rubbish near the school wall. The next morning I saw it still lying there, and there it stayed until it rotted.
I continued to cook for myself, and over time my efforts brought results. I decided to try a chicken. Every day villagers brought hens and small roosters into Ahar. They sat along the sidewalk of the main street letting the birds wander around, tethered by pieces of twine tied to their legs. Buying a chicken involved lengthy bargaining and a knowledge of fowl. Nobody bought a slaughtered chicken for fear that the bird might have been sick. Before purchase, the buyer had to check over the product to insure its health. I had no idea how to do any of this.
"Ask Old Hotami to buy a chicken for you," Usef suggested.
It seemed like a good idea, so Usef translated, asking Pahlavi's janitor to purchase a chicken and take it to my house. The old man smiled, winked and agreed. That night he showed up with a large reddish rooster held firmly under his arm.
The evil looking thing strutted around my hallway pecking here and there while listened to Old Hotami who waved his arms and went on for ten minutes or so without my understanding anything. When he left, I locked the rooster in my bathroom and went to bed. In the morning, the thing started crowing and kept it up for an hour or more.
"Do you have a chicken in your house?" asked one of the teachers in the faculty room during the first recess.
"Yes."
"What will you be doing with it?"
"I'm going to eat it."
"How will you kill it?"
"With a knife I think."
The men shook their heads and clicked their tongues. So I asked Usef why the reaction and he explained:
"Our religion tells us how each kind of animal must be killed so that it is clean and good for eating. Of all the animals, the most important is the chicken. We believe that each time the chicken is taking a drink of water, it raises its head, and holy men are saying that the bird thanks God for the water. So for this reason, it is very important that each chicken be killed in just the right way. Because you are not a Moslem, the men are thinking that it is impossible for you to do this thing in the right way."
"And what do you think?"
"It is your chicken. Do whatever you want."
Being from the city, I had never slaughtered an animal before, but I decided to try. Usef, who knew something about the process, told me more or less what to do. That afternoon, after the boys left the school yard, I took my large kitchen knife, filled a dishpan with water, put more water on to boil, and then went into the bathroom to fetch the rooster.
My rooster had black piercing eyes and it clearly disliked me. We maneuvered about my bathroom for a while with me slipping and sliding through the excrement that it had generously deposited. Finally I managed to tie the bird's legs, and get it outside. In the process, the bird's beak hit its mark two or three times, and I had to stop and wash blood off my hands.
Then I took my knife, tried to face Mecca as Usef had instructed, held the bird down with my foot, found an open place along its throat among the feathers, and cut quickly and as deeply as I could. As I cut, I repeated the Arabic phrase Usef taught me which translated roughly, "In the name of God the most merciful and compassionate."
The rooster jerked violently and let out a loud squawk. Its blood shot all over my walkway, my garden, me, and the front of my house. My foot slipped off its body, and the string that tied its legs broke. With its head flopping loose on one side, it ran aimlessly around the school yard.
Old Hotami stood silently by the side of my house watching. I did not see him until he ran after the bird, grabbing it, and bringing it back to where I stood next to the pan of water. He took out a small pocket knife and carefully slit open the front of the rooster's chest. After a few seconds, he brought out the bird's heart which he cut open. Then he looked at me and smiled and said one of the few Turkish words that I understood. "Good."
Later Usef explained that the blood of the butchered animal must be drained from the body immediately or the animal would be considered unclean and inedible. Old Hotami had examined the heart to see if I had done the job correctly. As he found no blood, he felt it safe for me to eat the chicken. More by accident than skill, I passed the test, and Old Hotami spread the word around town that 'Mister' had satisfactorily dispatched his chicken.
Although I bought more chickens, and now and then butchered them myself, more often I paid Old Hotami to do it. He always happily undertook the task. He told Usef to tell me that he slept more soundly knowing that I ate only proper meat.
Buying a chicken on the main street was the easy part. |
Killing the chicken was the hard part. |
Plucking and cleaning the chicken came next
I decided that I had made a mistake trying to fix Iranian-style food for Iranians, as I had for Usef. I should fix American meals. I wrote to my grandmother and had her send me her recipe for chicken and dumplings. And I specified that the recipe had to tell me how to do the job from scratch as Iran offered no ready mixes or pre-packaged foods. When her letter arrived, I found I could get all of the required ingredients except baking powder.
I searched Ahar without much luck. Nobody knew anything about baking powder, and even Usef had no idea what I needed. Near the bazaar one day I saw a small blue can of baking powder sitting in the window of a sweet shop. It had somehow come from England years before, and its contents had solidified into a solid block. I bought it, took it home, and pulverized the mass with my hammer, reducing it again to a fine powder.
I practiced until I could make a satisfactory meal. Then I invited Usef, Mr. Hashemi, Mr. Kashavarz, and Mr. Fakhim. I found a box of strawberry jello in the bazaar, and made it, adding canned peaches. I bought an expensive tea and cookies to serve after the meal. From the one-eyed Russian baker I purchased flat bread which I cut into roughly six inch squares. I put a pile of bread by each place at the table. Iranians used the pieces of bread like napkins and then eat them, so the bread served double duty.
Everyone arrived at around eight that evening. We talked while off and on I checked the meal. Everything went smoothly. At around 10:30 we sat at the table, and I brought out the chicken and dumplings, yellow squash, gravy, and jello. The men sat quietly, and then started eating. They liked the yellow squash, and enjoyed the jello. Most of the bread disappeared, and Mr. Hashemi and Mr. Fakhim experimented with the dumplings although without enthusiasm. Nobody touched the chicken.
"I hope everything is okay," I said sadly.
"It is very good," mumbled Usef.
"I am liking it," said Hashemi lacking conviction.
"It is very unusual," said Mr. Kashavarz.
"I had to work in the school today," I said making conversation. "So I could not have done this without the help of Old Hotami."
"Is Hotami making these things?" said Usef poking at a dumpling that had gotten cold.
"No, but he did buy and kill the chicken for me."
They changed immediately. The chicken went around the table again, and so did the dumplings. Kashavarz smacked his lips and said, "Bah, bah, bah." Hashemi looked happier, and by eleven o'clock we sat around the room eating cookies, drinking tea and looking at the last remnants of my dinner.
Although the men ate the dumplings, they agreed that such things were new for them. They would not say that they did not like them, but their praise showed more politeness than sincerity. Usef left last, and before he went home, he explained what had happened. As long as the men believed that I had killed the chicken, none of them would touch it. Once they knew that Old Hotami had killed the bird, they relaxed and enjoyed the meal. Usef congratulated me for remembering this and for getting the janitor to help. He scolded me for not telling everyone sooner, and then he left.
Not long after that Usef invited me to his house for dinner. We sat together in a small room empty except for the thick carpet on the floor. Usef said that his family only recently bought the carpet, as an investment. New carpets are not as valuable as ones that have been used for a few months or even years. Use removes the stiffness and allows a buyer to see how the carpet will wear in the long run.
"We will keep it for a year and then sell it," Usef explained.
He said that a top quality Iranian carpet reached its peak value after about eighty or one hundred years.
"Are you knowing what is a 'koursi?'" he asked me.
"No."
"This is a koursi," he said pulling back the rug and exposing a depression in the dirt floor of the room.
"You mean the hole in the floor?"
"There is more. Outside is a thing like a table made of wood. That is the rest of it."
"What does it do?"
"On cold nights, we bring in the wood thing. We put it here in this place. And we take charcoal which is burning, and put it in a container made of pottery or metal. This we put on the ground in the hole, and then we put a large quilt or blanket over the top of the table. We sleep on the ground, with our feet toward the table where it is warm because of the fire."
"Sounds cozy."
"There is a danger," Usef warned. "You must be leaving some window open or the bad air from the fire can be dangerous. Some people every year are dying because of the koursi. But we are being very careful."
Usef's father and two brothers joined us. We ate dinner; rice and chicken stew which Usef said his mother had fixed in another part of the house. As we finished, Usef's mother came into the room. Covered from head to foot in her dark chadore, or body veil, she stood quietly.
"This is a very special occasion," said Usef. "Usually my mother stays in another part of the house if strangers are here."
His mother said something.
"She is sending greetings to your mother in America. She says that all mothers are alike around the world, and she hopes that your mother is well."
Then Usef's mother left, as quietly as she had come. One of Usef's brothers left too, but he returned carrying a small brass samovar.
"My father has bought this when he lived in Isfahan many years ago. Do you like it?"
"It's pretty," I said. "I like samovars. They're interesting."
"Good," said Usef, "because we are planning to give it to you."
"Oh no," I protested, "you can't do that. The samovar is something special for your family."
But the reaction of Usef's father and brothers convinced me that they had considered the gift for some time, and so I took it and put it in a prominent place back in my house.
Usef sitting in a Russian-style "droshke" which was Ahar's only taxi while I lived there.
Usef was a hard-working young man who loved his country, his religion, and his society. He wanted what everyone wants - to have a better life for his family and some day for his children.