Scattered Pearls Read online

  As well as several hundred Iranians, Helicopter Sazi employed hundreds of expatriate Americans – employees of Bell Helicopter sent to Iran for this purpose. At first, the Americans seemed a bit distant. Most of them were older and it seemed to many of us that they were only in Iran to earn some big dollars before they retired (or even after having retired at home). In the office it often felt like the Americans didn’t want us to learn too much so they wouldn’t make themselves redundant.

  However, some of this distance may have been due to physical separation. There were two gates giving access to the IHI site, one for the Americans and one for the Iranians. The Iranian gate was some distance from my building whereas the American gate was right beside it. (Sometimes in winter, when I was running late, the guard on the American gate would kindly let me in.) There was a large dining hall that served both American and Iranian food – good food – with separate queues for each section. The American food was served on disposable plates whereas ours was served on china. I even remember separate toilets for expatriates and locals.

  There were different standards too. One hot day when the water was disconnected, meaning there was nothing to drink and the toilets were out of order, the Americans were told to go home but we were expected to stay. I was surprised that no one ever talked about this, let alone questioned it.

  Later, after I had been at Helicopter Sazi for a while, I decided that I had had enough of these differences. I made an appointment to see the ‘Commander’, an Iranian general who sat upstairs from me in a very large, wood-lined and beautifully furnished office. He was very gracious in receiving me, while politely pointing out that I had bypassed the normal hierarchy by going straight to him – something I had clearly learnt from my mother. He listened carefully as I complained that the Americans were earning much more than we Iranians while most of them just seemed to be sitting around and drinking coffee all day. After a little while he stopped me. ‘In a ton of apples there will always be some bad ones,’ he said.

  He thanked me for coming to see him, promised that he would look into my allegations, then asked me to return to work. Nothing changed, of course, and eventually I learnt that the commander wasn’t actually very senior, despite appearances, and had no authority to make decisions.

  Despite all this, the relationship between locals and the Americans was always friendly and respectful. In my work I spent time with a number of the Americans, partly because I was learning on the job and they were conducting the training. Also my supervisors were American so I would often go to them with questions.

  My work was tedious and repetitive – I never did any real programming but rather made minor changes to an existing inventory control program. I was helped by two Iranians who had university degrees and were much better at explaining the logic of the flowcharts to me than the Americans were. I also played a lot of solitaire on my computer, feeling guilty at times about earning a good salary for what felt like minimal work. I did get the opportunity to enrol in an economics course at the RCD International School of Insurance; I passed the course and was awarded a Bachelor of Science degree in insurance and economics – despite learning almost nothing about economics and, as a friend also did, paying 1000 toman to have someone write my final thesis.

  Because I was earning a good salary, which kept increasing, I was able to help my mother and buy things for our house that my father would never have spent his money on. I bought our first washing machine, and I bought furniture and other household goods to make our house feel more comfortable and beautiful. It gave me much satisfaction that my mother no longer had to wash clothes, blankets and heavy jackets by hand. Nor did she have to ask my father for money and get insulted when she did so. And as for my father, he had no objection to any of my purchases. His parsimoniousness was never driven by an objection to materialism; it was just that he saw his money as his and his alone. Now that I was able to make a contribution, the whole family started to live more comfortably.

  Eventually, I felt confident enough to host a party at our house. I invited a number of my Iranian workmates and also some of the Americans we were working with. I don’t remember all their names but there was a lady, Julie, and Bill, a large African American who wore a white suit that made him look even larger. Bill did a strange thing: he brought me flowers, but they were clearly old and wilting. However, no one had ever brought me flowers before, so I was very excited and thankful. Only later did I think that perhaps I should have been a bit more restrained given the flowers were almost dead. There was another older man who laughed a lot with his eyes closed, his large belly moving up and down with his laughter. Julie brought a punch bowl with cups hanging around the edge, while my mother cooked a feast of Persian food. My father, dressed in a white suit and tie, displayed the same gregarious side of his personality we only saw when he was with people from outside the family. I wore a lovely white, knee-high georgette dress – a Chanel design made by my aunty Mahin, who was a wonderful dressmaker. I felt wonderful. There was music and dancing and conversations in English and Persian. It was a beautiful night.

  I was in my early twenties at this time, and I had started to notice how much my friends and colleagues were always talking about relationships. They would brag about their boyfriends, or describe their perfect boyfriend, or complain about their boyfriend or husband. It was all very typical of conversations by twenty-something girls all over the world, but it just washed over me. My heart had not yet beaten for any man so I just sat quietly through all this talk and thought about other things. I did get approaches though. The Americans in the office wore a uniform of grey pants and a light grey shirt, with grey coats for winter. It was very . . . grey. In contrast, we Iranians did not have a uniform which, in my case, meant wearing attractive clothing most of the time. I took great care to wear a different dress, or a different combination of skirt and top, every day. It meant that I got noticed, even if I wasn’t aware of it. Some of the Iranian men were friendly towards me and might even have asked me out had I shown the slightest interest. But I didn’t. I was still constrained by the memories of my first liaison with boys, with Elahe, and the beating I received. That wasn’t all, though. I had no interest in marrying a local man and just staying in Iran. I wanted a man – a ‘prince’ – who would arrive on his white horse and take me away to some foreign land. And there were no princes among the Iranians at Helicopter Sazi.

  Unfortunately there were no princes on the American side either.

  Bill took me out for dinner once, but no prince would bring dead flowers to a girl, nor ask to be introduced to that girl’s friend, which he did some time later. (Really, Bill was quite condescending, but I was too naive to realise it at the time.)

  I got to know John, a tall, thin, middle-aged man who reminded me a lot of Dr Bellows from the television show I Dream of Jeannie. I loved that show, along with Bewitched, Days of our Lives, John Wayne movies and Disney cartoons. (We watched a lot of American television dubbed into Persian back in those days.) John worked in the depot and would come to me with printouts showing inventory items that needed to be changed in the system. We ended up talking a lot. He would give me mail-order catalogues and I would joke about all the things I would buy. We even joked about which engagement ring I should choose.

  Once I asked John to come to our house. Mum prepared another lovely meal, while John brought some spices for ‘chicken in a basket’ that he found in the American supermarket. I remember how polite everyone was – even my father – in the presence of this mature American. There did seem to be a sense among us that Americans were somehow superior, though I could not work out why. John and I started talking on the telephone in the evenings. They were just trivial conversations, but one night our call was interrupted by a third voice. In Persian, the man said he was a guard and that we should terminate our conversation immediately. This scared me a lot, but it also embarrassed me. How stupid that the Shah’s regime (or perhaps activists planning the future revolution – I wou
ld never know) was tapping phone calls between a low level American employee of Bell Helicopter and me, a nobody.

  Over time I started to dream that John and I could actually be married and he would take me back to America with him. However, there was never any sign from John that he was thinking the same thing. He was much older than me, and if he thought about a lasting relationship with me at all he would probably have thought it was a stupid idea. I was so ignorant that I really had no idea whether my feelings for John were love or just some fantasy. If it was love, I had no idea how to express it. In the end John left Iran without even saying goodbye. I cried, and even prayed to God that he would come back, or at least call. But after a few weeks I had to admit that our relationship was never more than a friendship. He only came to my house that one time, and we had never even kissed.

  Another man made a cameo appearance in my life around this time. The company bus would pick me up at seven o’clock every morning, if I was ready and waiting outside. However, I rarely was. Shahin was always shouting at me: ‘Sohila, wake up! Wake up!’ On one of these mornings when I had missed the company bus I stood outside my house waiting for a taxi. A small Citroën car – it was quite old – pulled up and the driver asked me if I would like a lift. I accepted. It seems strange to say it, given the general place of women in Iranian society, but at this time a well-dressed woman could quite safely accept lifts from men she didn’t know. We never had any fear walking the streets either; I would often walk home alone at 10 pm after college and always enjoyed it, especially in winter when it was quiet and snow covered everything, the sparkling reflections of the street lights creating a magical world.

  The driver of the Citroën introduced himself as Parviz, then spent the whole drive saying bad things about his wife while leering at me. I may have been naive but I wasn’t so stupid that I couldn’t recognise this man’s real intentions. For many days after that Parviz would park near my house and wait for me, but I either caught the bus or waited until he left then took a taxi. Other times I saw his Citroën driving around and around the reservoir opposite our house for up to an hour. I would just wait until he had gone. I guess eventually he got the message or found someone else to complain about his wife to.

  For a period life rolled along in this way – stable and free of upheaval. The addition of my income to our home had smoothed the relationship between my parents – not that my father would have admitted to any change. I continued to buy nice things for our home. I bought serving dishes and crockery. I bought tea sets and Noritake crystal jugs with matching drinking glasses for homemade sharbat – a Persian drink made with real juice such as sour cherry or lime. (My mother would later bring one of these sets to Australia, where I still have it.) I bought clothes, shoes and bags. I took my cousins and sisters out to cafés and the well-known Chattanooga Restaurant, to the ballet and to the bowling alley and ice skating. I even got my driver’s licence and bought a car – a used VW Beetle – which I used to drive to and from Bell for a year or so. I stopped driving altogether after having a bad accident due to stalling during a turn; I always struggled with the clutch.

  I used my income to travel as well.

  My old school friend Elahe had moved to India and I told my mum I wanted to visit her. Mum said, ‘All right . . . you go.’

  It was the same thing she said anytime I wanted to go anywhere. She had never had the opportunity to travel, so probably had no concept of how different things could be. In truth, nor did I. This was my first overseas trip. Landing in Delhi and immediately being surrounded by beggars and touts all shouting at me – something like ‘Baba bechama, bechama, bechama . . .’ – was like being dropped into an ant nest. I understood now what my father, after his travel to Europe, meant when he would say, ‘Once you get off the plane, the headache starts.’ Elahe was delayed and didn’t arrive for a few hours so I just sat in the airport and took in as much of the overwhelming scene as I could. Eventually Elahe and her partner arrived and we drove up into the hills to their home in Pune, a couple of hours from Bombay, where I spent a beautiful month. The city was relaxed and calm and very beautiful, with many colourful flowers, and the women were so radiant in their colourful saris.

  One strange thing I remember about this trip was giving my money to Elahe’s partner to look after. Whenever we went shopping to the exotic markets or around the city, I would have to ask him for it. I still don’t understand why I did this. I was 19 years old at the time, yet behaved like a 13-year-old. I was independent, but still deferring to a male.

  The culture shock of India didn’t put me off further travel. I went with another friend to Italy, which I fell in love with. Venice, Naples, Capri, Florence and Rome – it was all wonderful. I bought lots of gifts for my family, especially my sisters and brothers. A year later I went alone to Japan, Hong Kong, the Philippines, Malaysia, Singapore and Bangkok.

  This was a period, between 1975 and 1978, during which I was living the middle class Iranian lifestyle – a lifestyle very similar to that of middle class people in the West.

  By 1978, however, political change was brewing in Iran. However, strange as it may sound, I can honestly say that, along with the rest of my family, I was completely ignorant of what was going on and the changes that were afoot.

  6

  Revolution, activism and retreat

  At the start of the movie Argo there is what looks like file footage of a large demonstration outside the United States embassy in Tehran. The crowd is pushed tightly together and everyone is pumping their right fist in the air as they shout ‘Death to America’ over and over again, loudly and in unison.

  I was in that crowd.

  Well, it may not have been that exact crowd. In 1979, after the revolution that brought an end to the Iranian monarchy, there were many anti-American demonstrations in front of the US embassy, and I was in a number of them.

  Did I want to be? No, not at all. I had been working with Americans and liked them very much. In fact, the vast majority of Iranian people liked Americans. But what is not generally understood about those protests is that they were largely fabricated, with most of the people taking part being obliged to do so by their employers.

  For a number of weeks, every Thursday morning my workmates and I were told by our boss, ‘Today we will be demonstrating. Everybody get on the bus.’

  We were given no option. We would all pile onto a bus and talk about anything except politics as we were driven into central Tehran. It was like a school excursion. Near the US embassy we would get off the bus and follow the crowd to the front of the embassy building. We might buy some food along the way.

  Eventually, when enough of a crowd had gathered, we would mindlessly pump our right fists towards the sky in unison. And we would chant. ‘Death to America! Death to America! Death to America!’ Over and over. Some held signs, printed by the government, showing pictures of Ruhollah Khomeini.

  After an hour or so, the crowd would break up; we would get back on our bus and go back to work. Strangely, we never talked about what we were doing or why we were doing it. We were just sheep.

  To the rest of the world it looked like thousands of Iranians were supporting the new regime’s anti-American sentiment. In fact, there was only a small group of students who were actively anti-American – these were the students who eventually took over the embassy and held 52 Americans hostage for 444 days, as portrayed in the movie. The rest of us were just doing what we were told.

  Me? All I could think was what a waste of time and energy these protests were. To the outside world these demonstrations might have looked like idealism in action; to me they just marked the end of a short-lived period of idealism.

  ~

  Before the revolution my interest in politics was zero. Nothing.

  I now recognise that this detachment from politics was partly the result of my parents’ insularity. They were not educated people and didn’t take any active interest in the world beyond their own doors. Our house not only
had no books but also no newspapers. We rarely watched any television news: ‘Turn the TV off, it is news time,’ was my parents’ approach.

  Mohammad Reza Shah, known to the world as ‘the Shah’, was the latest leader of a monarchy that stretched back over 2500 years. My mother respected him as most Iranians had always respected their kings. Politics didn’t come into it. I don’t remember my father ever expressing any view, positive or negative, about him. It is important to understand that this was not an unusual situation for an Iranian household. It may be difficult to comprehend for those who have always lived in a free democracy, but when you grow up in a non-democratic environment there is a tendency not to see yourself as an active member of the wider society. We were living under a leader who had used a secret police force (known as SAVAK) to suppress dissent and who had presided over an increasing gap between the broad population and an ever-smaller trusted elite. Many dissidents were either in exile or in prison. But most ordinary Iranians were either ignorant of this or turned a blind eye to it. In a world like this you learn not to see yourself as having a role in determining the future of your country. Without political freedom, we had not even the faintest idea of what it would be to live in a democracy. It was easier – and safer – to keep our heads down and just get on with our lives.

  Detachment travelled with us into revolution. In 1978, dissatisfaction among a burgeoning number of concerned Iranians came to a head. There were many protests in Tehran and also around the rest of the country. However, in our neighbourhood of Yusef Abad, it remained quiet. This is a strange aspect of revolution – while it looks violent and noisy on a television screen on the other side of the world, away from the cameras life goes on as normal. We saw some of the protests on television but they always felt a long way away and nothing to do with us. I remember some small conversations about them at home. We figured that if the Shah was able to quieten things down that would be okay, but if not and he was toppled, that would be okay too. We had no concept of how life might be under a different type of rule, so it didn’t worry us either way.