Camelia (4 page)

In contrast, my aunt Turan, my father's sister, was afraid to go out in her chic peach-colored Mercedes Benz with its royal plates. The Revolutionary Guard would stop expensive cars to check the identities of their owners. Usually, they'd seize the cars and take the drivers away to the Komité. My aunt's husband, Uncle Musayyeb, who was also my father's cousin, had been the highest-ranking member of our family under the Shah's government. He'd worked in the Shah's personal office as “His Majesty's Calligrapher.” He would write His Majesty's letters in elegant script for the Shah to sign. The walls of my aunt's house on Khiaban-e Fereshteh were covered with her husband's calligraphic renderings from the
Ruba'yat
of Omar Khayyám, and with exquisite miniatures of their older daughter, Gita. Their second daughter, Mahta, had a beautiful face and was being groomed to be the wife of a man of distinction. In fact, it was even whispered among our family that perhaps one day she would make a fine wife for the crown prince, Reza. Only a few hours before the Shah fled Iran, the royal car came for Uncle Musayyeb. The Shah summoned him for one last private meeting. The subject of this conversation has always remained a secret.

My father's family took great pride in the notion that not only was their family's honor and history not less than that of the royal family, but was in fact even more distinguished. My paternal grandfather's cousin was Amujan Timsar, “Dearest Uncle the Major
General.” He had been the security chief of Tehran and would boast that he had had the title “His Majesty's Private Guard.” We all knew his daughter Mahnavaz, who was the same age as my aunt Turan, had once been approached by Queen Turan, Reza Shah's third wife, for marriage with the Shah's half-brother, Shahpur Gholamreza. And we all knew that her family had declined this offer because Shahpur Gholamreza was a playboy and a philanderer and not worthy of their daughter.

Our proud family didn't go to the polls during the last two days of March to cast our votes on the new constitution of the Islamic Republic. But we heard on the first of April when the constitution was approved by a majority of the country, 99 percent to be precise, and Khomeini proclaimed it the “first day of God's government.” Fresh waves of arrests swept the country and the executions continued. Our ever-present television constantly broadcast interrogations of those condemned to execution, exposing the “traitors to the nation.” Then one night, we were shocked to see the image of my grandfather's cousin Agha-ye Sayf-Allah Shahandeh. He had been the editor in chief of a magazine now linked to the imperial government. He had gone into hiding, and we had heard that he had recently been arrested along with his daughter, Guli. My father, astounded, remarked harshly that he must have been severely beaten since his whole face was swollen. A dazed Agha-ye Shahandeh confessed like a parrot to treason, monarchist sympathies, and spying for foreign powers. They executed him and held his funeral at an undisclosed location.

My family became closer to his widow, Afsar Khanum. She never lost her sense of humor (and always had Smarties in her purse for me and my younger cousin Bita). And despite our sorrows, afterward I remember I also felt proud. Though many revolutionary families would be ashamed to have a relative executed, I was proud of my family's history because it showed strength and conviction.
Two decades later, when I was taken to jail, I know my family was waiting anxiously to see if I would suddenly end up on national television. My uncle Bizhan later told me, with tears in his eyes, that he kept remembering the shock of that day and how afraid he'd been that they would lose me, too.

Concerned for our safety, my father sent us along with our mother to England for the summer. But we returned home to Iran to join him in the fall, following the construction of our villa in Karaj. My father wanted to stay close to his mother, and my parents were full of false hope for a coup d'état. The schools opened, and I went to my first class at Chista No. 1 elementary school, where Katayun was enrolled in the fourth grade.

There was no sign of boys in my class—the new Islamic government separated the sexes in school. The most revolutionary girl in our school was one of Katayun's classmates. Everyone called her by her last name, Torkan. Head coverings were not yet mandatory at elementary school (the law went into effect when I started 3rd grade) and no one wore the
hejab
, but this coarse, olive-skinned girl wore a long black veil. She had a mustache on her upper lip and a hoarse voice, and would read the Qur'an and start chanting slogans at the beginning of each day as we lined up in the courtyard before class. Her family had come from southern Tehran and lived in a rough-hewn house in a slum along the main road in Shahr Ara, across from the Bulvar-e Gulha. It had once been a wide, open area and seemed to have been settled by fiery revolutionaries overnight. My mother hated Torkan and would argue with her when she came to pick up Kati and me up after school. Her brother had died in the revolution,
and years later, we heard that Torkan had gone to medical school on the compensation paid to her family for his martyrdom.

The mood of Iranians, regardless of group or faction, had heated to the boiling point. The burning and looting had come to an end, and the demonstrations against America weren't enough to quench the people's thirst. When my friends and I reached the front gate of our school one morning, we saw custodians with buckets and giant brushes in hand, painting something on the ground. Before we could take another step, they turned to us and said, “Go that way to go in. The painting is wet, it'll get ruined.
In sha' Allah
, tomorrow you'll be able to walk over it.” I asked, “But what
is
it?” My friend Mozhgan Tokaldani answered quickly, “The American flag.”

A few days before, the American embassy had been occupied by youths who called themselves Students Following in the Line of the Imam. They had taken sixty-six Americans hostage, demanding that America return the Shah to Iran. Ayatollah Khomeini announced on the radio that he supported their gesture. I gleefully clapped my hands, certain that we would have a special program before our lessons and that the first few hours of class would be canceled. The bell rang and we all lined up. Torkan had taken her place in front of the microphone and called out with great excitement, “Our motto of the day?” And we had to respond, “
Marg bar Amrika
” (Death to America or Down with America). And Torkan asked again, “The motto of the oppressed?” And we had to respond, “
Marg bar Amrika!
” She chanted, “
Marg bar Amrika!
” and we repeated it,
Marg bar Amrika
, our voices like a hammer hitting the courtyard.

Khanum Nuri, the faculty representative of Omur-e Tarbiyati, stepped up to the microphone. “Young ladies, you certainly must have heard that the ‘nest of spying' was occupied by the Students Following in the Line of the Imam. We would like to go stand outside the spies' lair to show our solidarity. Those who want to come may, in an orderly fashion, get on the minibuses in front of the school
when the morning program is finished. You have your teachers' permission, and we aren't having classes today. The rest of the students who aren't interested in participating in the demonstrations can call home and have their guardians pick them up or stay at school and go over their lessons.”

The students burst out clapping and yelling with joy. I prayed that I would be allowed to go. I imagined the hostage takers as a bunch of young girls and boys dressed as commandos with guns standing in front of the embassy. We rushed to the minibuses. There were more of us than there were seats. Some of the girls had to stand and were hanging from leather hand straps. We pushed and shoved each other, as we knew if we couldn't find a spot, we'd have to stay back at the school. I leaped on window seats for me and my best friend, Delaram. We waved at our envious classmates who couldn't find seats as we departed. Beside ourselves with joy, we all just kept clapping our hands together.

For two hours, the caravan of Fiat minibuses from Chista No. 1 was stuck in record traffic on what had formerly been Bulvar-e Elizabeth and was now Bulvar-e Keshavarz (Farmer's Boulevard). Inside we sang and clapped and generally misbehaved. The teacher scolded, “Children, we are not on our way to a wedding! Chant slogans! Give praise to Allah!” At about Khiaban-e Amir Abad, now Khiaban-e Kargar (Worker's Avenue), we faced a mass of people pressing eastward toward the American embassy, spilling into the streets. A riotous crowd of students and ordinary people seethed together, signs in their hands, struggling to make their way to the embassy. It was almost noon, and people were handing out tomato and hard-boiled egg sandwiches from the back of a pickup truck. We were getting cranky after sitting so long and complained, “
Yallah
! Why aren't we going anywhere?”

Khanum Nuri climbed into our minibus, holding a megaphone that now seemed completely useless. She shouted, “Children, quiet!
Be quiet! Listen!” Our teachers never imagined we would be met with such pandemonium nor did they have the courage to take all three hundred schoolgirls out to continue toward the embassy on foot. They had decided to turn onto the nearest street and head back to the school. She told us, “It is enough that we've come this far to show our solidarity. The best thing to do now until we leave this street is to yell slogans out from our minibuses in an orderly fashion with clenched fists.” Three or four girls stuck their heads out of each of the minibuses' windows. Khanum Nuri shouted into the megaphone, “
Daneshjuye Khat-e Imam! Bar tu darud, bar tu salaam!
” (Students of the Line of the Imam! Upon you praise, upon you peace!) Too tired to chant, we just clenched our fists in the air and screamed. You couldn't tell one voice from another, and we must have looked pretty funny to the demonstrators, as we certainly attracted their attention. A crowd of boys was marching in an organized formation shouting slogans, and our unharmonious voices clashed with their rhythm. One of them said, “Guys, will you look at that twerp?” The boys all turned their heads and burst into peals of laughter. Another one called out, “Look at that one's head! She looks like a monster!” They were making fun of Delaram, my best friend. She was an attractive girl with big frizzy hair like an afro, such as you rarely saw in Iran.

This was intolerable. We instantly changed our mission and went from chanting to waging war against these boys. We threw at them whatever we had left from lunch, from plastic bags to dry bread to wadded-up balls of paper. Khanum Nuri scolded us through the megaphone, “Girls! Girls! For shame! What's all this?” In tears, Delaram explained. Khanum Nuri climbed down to go talk with the custodian from the boys' school and again our chants changed from “
Marg bar Amrika!
” to clapping and cheering, “Khanum Nuri! Khanum Nuri!” Khanum Nuri tried to hush us from the middle of the frowning crowd. After that the teacher's
assistant got on the bus with a pen and paper to write down the names of the unruly students whose marks for discipline would be penalized. We sat still. We were told that everyone's mark for conduct for the term would be lowered by one grade. As we drove away down a side street, there were still great crowds heading for the embassy. Exhausted, with lumps in our throats, we made faces at the demonstrators out on the street.

That winter, my family still held out hope for a coup. Doctor Bani Sadr, who enjoyed the confidence and trust of Ayatollah Khomeini, was elected with twenty million votes as the first president of the Islamic Republic of Iran. Bani Sadr was a former classmate of my uncle Bizhan the dentist. Strangely, years later, he turned up again as a patient at my uncle's practice on Khiaban-e Sepeh near the parliament. Every time Uncle Bizhan saw us, he'd lower his voice and intimate that he had it on authority that in a certain month the regime would fall. And when that date had passed, another authority would give him a new date. The country was faced with a severe economic crisis. Fuel production had fallen drastically, and inflation had risen. Despite the new president and constitution, the country wasn't stabilizing. A few months after the revolution, the street assassinations began. A group by the name of Forqan took to killing prominent revolutionary figures. Their first bullets lodged in the heart of Doctor Mortaza Mutahari in May 1979, a university professor and one of Khomeini's beloved disciples. Khomeini was shown weeping on television, proclaiming Mutahari the apple of his eye. The day of Mutahari's assassination became known as teachers' day.