On October the first, he received an email from Birthday Alerts reminding him that Angela’s birthday was coming up in seven days. It was a message from the underworld that had made its way to ours through the bleak and cold matrix of a virtual environment that doesn’t give a hoot about the beings that have created it. Angela had been dead for a whole year now. With Angela gone, the robins and hummingbirds that frequented his front yard suddenly disappeared. The petunias in his small flowerbed withered and died, and the old maple tree shed its leaves in the path of the lashing winds of fall. He had met Angela in 1993 when he had come to the States for the first time on an invitation from Glendale Career College.
Back in Iran, Hamid was the director of studies of one of the largest English language schools in the country. Shokouh’s English Institute had branches in Tehran and most large provincial cities. Hamid was in charge of teacher training. In this capacity, he came in contact with many applicants, some of whom went on to become successful teachers.
One such applicant was a young Armenian girl, who had been a student of Hamid’s before the 1978 revolution. At the time Hamid had been just a teacher.
In 1983, when he returned to Tehran after a five-year period of voluntary exile living in Babolsar, a coastal city at the Caspian, he was able to land a job with the Air Force Language Center, which required him to teach six hours a day, Saturday through Wednesday. Classes started at 7:30 in the morning and ran until 1:30 PM. He was free the whole afternoon, so he decided to rejoin Shokouh’s English Institute and teach a couple of classes in the evening. Dr. Shokouh, the school proprietor, had other plans for him.
For years, Shokouh’s English Institute had run on a traditional grammar- translation approach. The way Dr. Shokouh trained his teachers to apply this approach, however, was far from traditional. It depended on what may be called “speed oral translation.” A rapid succession of Farsi – Persian – sentences was orally presented to the students, who were then required to turn them into English. The teacher’s skill in implementing this approach was the ability to briskly produce as many Farsi sentences as possible while carefully keeping them within the grammar and lexicon that students had learned by this time in the course. The new grammatical point at the center of the lesson was supposed to comprise the only challenging aspect in the sentences that students were expected to translate orally. This brisk Farsi/English translation drill was thought to create in the students the ability to produce similar sentences in real life situations when need arose.
The briskness of this approach coupled with the fact that the Farsi sentences presented to the students for oral translation were carefully kept within or even below their knowledge of grammar and vocabulary, created an illusionary sense of achievement in them, for which they continued attending Shokouh’s classes. Once in real-life situations, they quickly found out that they were unable to communicate with English speakers effectively.
But this was not the only reason why Iranian language learners filled up Shokouh’s classes in great numbers. At the time – just as is still the case currently – English was taught at Iranian high schools and universities. The achievement exams designed to assess and measure students’ learning at the completion of each level were entirely based on how much grammar they had learned, how they could apply grammar rules to written sentences, and how well they could translate from English into Farsi or vice versa. This gave Shokouh’s English Institute an advantage over other language schools in Iran due to the emphasis that Shokouh’s approach placed on grammar-translation. Simply put, Shokouh’s students were better prepared to take such exams and always made better grades.
Another less emphasized factor accounting for the success of Shokouh’s English Institute in attracting large numbers of students was the mere fact that in a time when Iranian high schools were still segregated, Shokouh’s classes were co-ed, turning them into an opportunity for young Iranian boys and girls to meet and socialize.
When Hamid rejoined Shokouh in 1983, five years after the Islamic Revolution had toppled the Shah’s regime, many of these factors were no longer in place. Rivaling language schools had generally been able to educate the public as to the fundamental flaws of the grammar-translation method. English language instruction at high schools and university level were either completely discontinued or had otherwise lost its significance in light of much reduced international ties with the Western world and the severance of diplomatic relationships with the United States. And last but certainly not least, language schools were barred from running co-educational classes in compliance with the new rules and regulations put in place by the Islamized ministry of education. Most parents who sent their children to English language classes simply did so with a far-fetched hope that, some time in the future, they might be able to flee the country and shed the noose that was ever tightening around their necks as a result of the enforcement of rigid Islamic laws.
In light of all these new changes, Dr. Shokouh wanted Hamid to develop a series of new classes geared towards the teaching of spoken English, using more modern language teaching methods.
Hamid, who had taught at the Air Force language center both before and after the revolution and had gone through an extensive teacher training course each time, was well familiar with direct methods including the Audio-lingual approach to language teaching. He seemed to be the perfect candidate to be assigned the task of developing and running what soon came to be known as the Spoken English Course – SEC.
In no time, SEC classes attracted a breed of students that were quite new to Shokouh’s. These students demanded the skill to communicate in English rather the ability to translate from Farsi into English or the other way around.
Most Existing Shokouh’s teachers were barely able to speak in English themselves and could not be expected to impart to their students a skill they did not possess. Along with creating an entirely different set of materials suitable for the Spoken English Course, Hamid had to set about recruiting and training a whole new group of teachers to teach these classes and the newly developed materials. The first source he tried to tap into was American women living in Iran who were married to Iranian men. Debbie was one of the first in this group that responded to Hamid’s ad and showed up for the interview.
Debbie was a 33-year-old New Yorker, who had married to Nader Nayyeri, a young Iranian man of about the same age, when they were both students at the City University of New York. When Nader’s parents had no longer been able to wire money to their son in the US due to the rapidly deteriorating diplomatic relationships between the two countries, the couple had returned to Iran. They lived in the same house with Nader’s parents very close to Shokouh’s English Institute. They had turned the upper level of the house into almost independent living quarters but shared the same kitchen with their parents and Nader’s younger sister.
Both Debbie and Nader had had to leave their education incomplete. Nader was now working in an advertising company, but his meager income was hardly enough to meet the requirements of a four-member family. They had two young sons. Their ultimate goal was to raise enough money to be able to return to the US when the boys reached school age. On Nader’s income, this goal appeared less and less achievable as the cost of commodities towered in a war-stricken Islamic Republic. Consequently Debbie decided to respond to SEI’s ad for teachers. The ad specifically asked for “native or near native” ability to speak the English language.
Dr. Shokouh had given his own office room on the fifth floor of Shokouh’s building to Hamid to run the new program from. It was the largest office room in the whole building with Victorian style bookshelves and cabinets built into the walls. A dark cherry wood baroque desk and its matching pivoting chair lay at one end of the rectangular office facing an elaborate baroque conference table surrounded by eight matching chairs. The windows were dressed with drapes whose reddish brown fabric and inlaid golden flowery pattern were in perfect harmony with the chairs upholstery.
The fact that Dr. Shokouh was letting Hamid run the new Spoken English Course from his own office was an indication of the importance that he attached to this fledgling program. He wanted it to be a success.
In the days and months that followed, Hamid interviewed and hired Debbie, Lucia – another American female married to an Iranian – and Akabi, a young Armenian girl, who used to be a student in one of Hamid’s classes before the revolution. This small group and a couple of others who joined later comprised Hamid’s materials development team. Although the teaching method that he planned to use was the Audio-Lingual approach, Hamid strongly believed in a core grammar syllabus around which vocabulary and expressions could unfold. The gradation of the course, therefore, was based around grammatical structures, which gradually went from simple and more frequently used to complex and less frequently used patterns. Hamid provided the grammatical patterns to the team. The team was assigned with the task of devising dialogues and readings, which used the grammatical patterns in a natural way. After every dialogue and reading came a series of vocabulary practice sentences. And at the end of every lesson the grammatical patterns were brought out and highlighted with a brief explanation and more examples. Every lesson, therefore, was a carefully planned journey from exposure to a new grammatical point to focus on it.
Hamid also hired some teachers from among his colleagues at the Air Force Language Center. The advantage of hiring these people was that they had already gone through an extensive teacher training course, and all Hamid had to do was explain to them how he wanted the SEC classes to emphasize a grammatical core while stressing verbal communication.
The aspect of SEC approach that Dr. Shokouh had a hard time swallowing was Hamid’s claim that using his method the teacher would not have to utter a word of Farsi in class regardless of the students’ level. Students were expected to discover the meaning of the words and the application of grammatical patterns through their presentation in universally familiar situations and functions such as greeting, introduction, shopping, etc. Dr. Shokouh just couldn’t bring himself to believe that this was going to be possible. Hamid reasoned that the English language class resembles a boat in the midst of an ocean of Farsi speakers. Speaking to the students in their native language – Farsi – on this figurative boat would be like intentionally drilling a hole in it. It will sink. He believed that the greater the learners’ exposure to the target language – in this case English – the sooner they will master it, specifically since the students’ exposure is limited to just four hours of English class per week, and the rest of their time is spent immersed in the ocean of Farsi speakers.
Soon SEC classes became popular. More and more classrooms had to be allocated to Hamid’s program. More and more teachers had to be hired. It was at this stage when Dr. Shokouh asked Hamid to give up his morning teaching job at the Air Force and come work for him on a full time basis. Frankly, Hamid did not like the atmosphere at his morning job. His students were air force cadets and some Revolutionary Guards members who were studying to become pilots, navigators, or aircraft maintenance technicians. Teachers were constantly under strict scrutiny. One wrong move, or one careless and unstudied comment about the regime, or even about the way the language school was being run, and the person could wind up in Evin for counter-revolutionary and unpatriotic behavior.
At the time, Iran was engaged in a brutal war of attrition with its neighboring country Iraq, and there seemed to be no end in sight for this war. On the domestic front, the regime was being challenged by the religious leftists, the Mojahedin, who had been actively involved in the processes that resulted in the toppling of the Shah and, consequently, expected to be given a share in the power structure of the country.
The situation at Shokouh’s was quite laxer and never as rigid as it was at the Air Force language center. You could dress pretty much the way you wanted to. You were not required to wear a long sleeve shirt in the middle of the summer. You could even leave a button or two open down your neck and show some chest hair. You did not have to wear a beard and always have the shabby, unclean, unshaven look that was a sign of allegiance to the Islamic Republic and the indication of belief in Islam. You could actually shave, look clean, and smell good.
Hamid decided to accept Dr. Shokouh’s offer and give up his morning job at the air force, specifically because the pay that Shokouh was offering was quite more handsome than what he was making at the air force and his evening job at Shokouh’s combined. He did not have to leave home so early in the morning any longer. He could sleep in for a change. He could spend more time with his children. He had two children, a four-year-old daughter and a two-year-old son, whom he loved greater than the pupils of his eyes.
Hamid had met his wife at Shokouh’s shortly before the revolution, and had fallen in love with her. They had married despite the staunch and bitter disagreement of Niloofar’s parents. They had, in effect, disowned her for marrying Hamid. Their life had been filled with love and joy until Niloo – as Hamid called his wife Niloofar for short – became pregnant with their second child and decided that it was an unwanted pregnancy. She then did every senseless and stupid thing people suggested to get rid of the unborn child. She ate saffron because someone had told her that it terminates the pregnancy; she jumped up and down stairs to help start bleeding that might result in miscarriage; she lifted heavy objects. At the time – and this was while they still lived in Babolsar and had not returned to Tehran yet – they had a local woman who came to their house from the country every day and helped Niloo with the house chores. She brought her some sort of potion, which, she claimed, would help drop the fetus. Niloo was not an uneducated woman. She had done part of her college education in the UK. Yet, despite her schooling, she took the potion whatever it was.
When Hamid found out, he lost his temper. It was at this time when they had their first serious domestic altercation. Life had never been the same after that night. Somehow, after giving birth to their second child – their son – Niloo had started losing weight. She was no longer the gorgeous looking, desirable girl that Hamid had married. The potion had done no harm to the baby boy, or at least no apparent harm had been done to him. But its effects on Niloo had been drastically devastating. The young woman, whose skin resembled rose petals of the Caspian early dawns, was now skin and bones, wrinkled up and shriveled, looking old and timeworn. Hamid’s resentment with Niloo lingered on despite his attempts to leave the whole thing behind and move on with their life. He simply could not forgive Niloo. It had never been the same. Day after day, he could find more and more reason to allow his resentment and anger grow greater in intensity.
Niloo and Hamid had agreed to speak to the children in English so they could learn it as their primary language. Hamid rationalized that that the kids would automatically learn Farsi as a result of their exposure to the language in the environment. Their grandparents and everyone else would speak to them in Farsi. So why not turn them into bilinguals by speaking to them in English at home? The two of them could simply just speak English to and around the kids.
Soon, however, it became obvious that Niloo did not have sufficient command of the language required to communicate with the kids. Speaking with children demands a different level of linguistic competence. It calls for the ability to simplify one’s speech without sacrificing meaning. The simplification makes the language that the child gets exposed to simultaneously easy to understand and challenging, in that it presents new words and patterns to the child. Parents and babysitters do this unconsciously. Niloo had never lived in a setting where she could pick up this skill in English. True, she was able to communicate in situations where sustaining an adult, intelligent, even intellectual conversation was required of her. But when it came to bending over the crib and carrying out the baby talk with Rosa and Ramin, she was at a loss. She either made unintelligible sounds – noises – or said things that had no relevance to the child’s intelligence or level of comprehension.
- Honey, you need to talk to the kids in language that they can understand. You’re either talking to them as if they were grown-ups, or making sounds that simply mean nothing. Why don’t you just speak to them in Farsi? I’ll continue talking to them and with you in English around the house. This way they will pick up English and will also learn Farsi more rapidly.
What Hamid said did not sit well with Niloo at all.
- Are you saying that I don’t know English?
- No honey; that’s not at all what I mean. Your English is fine.
He was lying. Niloo’s English was at best as good as that of all other grammar teacher at Shokouh’s, maybe just a tad better because she had gone to school in the UK for some time.
- You just don’t know how to talk with children. You’re able to carry on an intellectual conversation at college level, but when it comes to bringing yourself to the level of children, you simply can’t find the right type of language. What happens when they do not understand you? They just don’t listen to you any longer, and you get frustrated. And then, of course, you start yelling at them.
It was true! All Niloo said to the children was “Do that!” or “Don’t do that!” Say Rosa would pick up a two-liter bottle of soda and attempt to fill up her glass. Niloo would not reason with her why she was not yet able to pour herself a glass of soda out of the full bottle and that the full bottle was too heavy for her to lift. She simply screamed, “Don’t do that!”
Kids are inquisitive by nature. They have a natural proclivity towards accumulating knowledge and information. They are like a sponge. They absorb information that is presented to them. They learn through the process of experience and observation, through trial and error. However, if the experiences are explained to them, and their errors are discussed with them, by their caregivers, the process becomes more meaningful and goal-oriented. If Niloo could talk with Rosa and explain to her why she was not able to pour her own pop out of a full bottle, and why it spilled every time she tried, Rosa would learn that she could pour herself soda only when the bottle was, say, one-third full. She would then know that she had to ask for help every time the bottle was too heavy for her rather than make a mess every time, which, in turn, resulted in more yelling and screaming on Niloo’s part. The “Do that!” and “Don’t do that!” seemed to be a never-ending process. Hamid became more and more frustrated as Niloo refused to be on the same page with him when it came to the children’s upbringing. The gap between Niloo and him kept widening, as Niloo appeared to stubbornly defy everything that Hamid reasoned with her to do. She insisted that she knew better and did not need anyone to tell her what to do. She behaved based on the wrong premise that Hamid was trying to belittle her. As much as Hamid reasoned with her that his motive was entirely the children’s upbringing and betterment, Niloo kept harping on the obsession that Hamid was trying to despise her. Maybe Hamid was not able to express his thoughts to Niloo properly; maybe his frustration found a way into how he expressed himself; maybe he actually sounded belittling. Whatever it was, they were no longer the affectionate and loving couple that had taken marriage vows with passionate love five years before.
Ah, Niloo, what have you done? Do you know that you are alienating Hamid more and more with every passing day? Are you aware that that you may lose him? Why do you refuse to listen to him? In your heart of hearts, you know that he is right. So what is it that stops you from doing what he asks? You know well that the children will be much better off if you stay on the same page with Hamid, yet you resist trying. Why?
It was about this time, on a summer day of 1983, when Akabi, the Armenian girl, who used to be one of Hamid’s students, walked into his office to be interviewed as a teaching applicant. At once Hamid found himself drowned in the greenish blue ocean of her big eyes.
- Hi, Mr. Kyani. How are you?
- Good, good! Come in! Are you here for the teaching position?
- Yes, Mr. Kyani. Don’t you remember me?
He did not. Had he met her before? Where had he met her? How could he not remember such an adorably beautiful young woman? She must be in her early twenties. Hamid was thirty-four years old at this time.
- I was your student before the revolution. Remember how you used to assign books to us to read and write reports on? You had me do “The Old Man and the Sea.”
Hamid still could not remember her, but he pretended that he did. He said he remembered the face but not the name. How could he have forgotten such a gorgeous girl? She must have been very young then.
- I remember you. You were one of my best students. How could I have forgotten you? I’m just not very good with names.
He was simply lying.
- Akabi – Akabi Azadian. I was your student in Advanced two and three levels, room 304. Do you remember me now? Maybe if I take my scarf off, you can recognize me. I hate this.
And she proceeded to take her scarf off revealing her golden blonde hair, which at once lightened up the azure of her eyes enhancing their beauty. Hamid was taken aback by her rash action.
- Wow, Akabi! You need to put your headpiece back on. Do you want to get us both into trouble? Of course I remember you. How have you been? Where have you been all these years? By the way, just for the record, I love to see you without your scarf on. But I have to ask you to put it back on here.
- I went to the States for a few years. I lived with my aunt in Seattle. I finished high school there.
She paused for a few seconds, while she was putting her scarf back on, as if she was reluctant to volunteer any more information:
- I am married and have two sons, a five-year-old and a seven-year-old.
Hamid wanted to ask, “Why should you be married, darling girl?” Instead he said:
- So you learned in the States what I wasn’t able to teach you here. You speak very good English.
- Thanks! I owe it all to you. Yes, I did learn some English in the States, but it was all because I had a solid foundation that you had given me.
- Well, it’s good to see you again.
Hamid had already done the hiring for the quarter. He didn’t need any more teachers. But how could he let Akabi walk off? She was so beautiful. And she spoke English so well. He did not know what to do.
- I hate to tell you that you’re late for this quarter. You know? We require all applicants to take a written test and an oral interview. Once they pass the test and the interview, we then put them through an intensive Teachers training Course. During the TTC, they are given chances of getting up and performing actual lessons. Many will drop during the TTC. The ones that can successfully complete the training are hired.
Akabi looked quite distraught. Hamid could swear that her eyes were welling with tears.
- I really need this job. You know? My husband is out of job. We live with my parents.
She spoke better English than many that Hamid had hired so far. And she was gorgeous. Even wrapped up in the manto – the long robe-like apparel that the Islamic Republic required women to wear – it was obvious that she had a well proportioned- figure. Those greenish blue eyes set in the fair complexion of her slightly freckled face, and those lush inviting lips said a lot about the body to which they belonged. She was all that an unhappily married man could dream of. And Hamid was an unhappily married man.
- Perhaps I can give you the test individually. Why don’t you follow me to my office upstairs?
Akabi had found Hamid on the first floor of Shokouh’s building where all the administrative offices were located. He could give her the exam right there in one of those offices, but he was determined to impress her. Besides Dr. Shokouh’s office, which he now used, was on the fifth floor, far from any noise and distraction.
On the elevator, on the way up to the office, Hamid had to fight the urge to hug Akabi. This married girl arose a desire in him that he thought had forever died, a desire that he had suppressed for so long. The girl that he once had loved so dearly – his wife – was no longer able to wake any feelings in him. Little by little, bit by bit, as time had passed, she had driven Hamid farther and farther away, so far now that, at this moment, in this four-person elevator, he could allow himself to be attracted to this young Armenian girl, who was once his student.
Love is a living organism. It is born; it grows; it reaches its peak; it ages; and then one day, it perishes. If it is not well attended to, ignored and neglected, it languishes and dies prematurely. Such was Hamid’s love and marriage. Niloo still claimed that she loved Hamid, but he knew that she was confusing love with a mere sense of ownership. This was HER husband, HER marriage. She didn’t intend to part with her belongings easily. Hamid, though, did not even have this sense of possession and ownership. He had given up. Up to this day, the only feeling he had was a sense of helplessness and desperation, a feeling that he had no way out of this marriage and was forced to grin and bear it. Here he was now experiencing a pleasantly warm desire, very much like the cuddly warm sensation that fills one up as one awakens after a good night’s sleep in the warmth of a fluffy, furry blanket. For a long time after you wake up, you just don’t want to leave bed.
All this was an impossible desire though. Akabi was a married woman. In this rigidly Islamic society, the punishment for having an affair with a married woman was – is – death by stoning. He had to quell this foolish desire, to nip it in the bud.
He must have been staring at Akabi as these thoughts raced through his head. When the elevator stopped on the fifth floor, the jolt brought him out of his thoughts. Akabi was looking at him with a sweet but unmistakably gloomy smile.
- Are you okay?
- Oh, yes, yes. Here we are.
The sadness in Akabi’s smile betrayed the unhappiness that she tried to conceal. It was obvious that she was being troubled by something. Could it be that she was unhappy with her married life as Hamid was with his?
Ramin was only two-years-old at this time. He was younger than his sister Rosa by two years. He was a restless little boy. He could not stay put for one single minute. He had just learned to walk, which had been a little alarming to Hamid since Rosa was already walking on her first birthday. A more alarming thing was that he was still not talking, not in English or in Farsi. On her first birthday, Rosa could already say a lot of words, even some two-word compounds, mostly noun/adjective compounds, like “dad gone,” “mama nice,” “fire hot,” etc. To everyone’s surprise, on her first birthday, Rosa pointed to the fire in fireplace and said, “Fire hot! Ouch! Burns!” At two, Rosa was a playful, healthy, little girl. With her light brown hair, naturally highlighted with blond streaks, and her hazel eyes filled with frolicsome naughtiness, she looked so cute that friends and neighbors begged Hamid and Niloo to let them have her at their places. Niloo had no problem finding willing babysitters for Rosa. She spoke enough in both Farsi and English to keep everyone around her entertained with questions that she asked and responses that she gave to other people’s questions. Niloo and Hamid called her Rose. Sometimes, she would just disappear behind the house and walk to the neighbor’s with neither Niloo nor Hamid knowing where she was. At such times, Niloo would get out and call out her name loud, “Rose! Rose! Where are you, honey?” when she failed to respond because maybe she was busy playing with the neighbor’s daughter, Niloo would become worried and would call her name out louder, “Rose! Rose! Where are you? Rosa?” as a rule, it was always “Rose” at first, and “Rosa” when she failed to respond after several calls. Amazingly, Rosa had overgeneralized a rule out of this whole process. She thought that when a person’s name is called out several times and they fail to respond, an “ä” sound should be added to the name. She could barely pronounce Hamid’s full name. She said Mid, instead. She called him “Daddy Mid.” Sometimes, when Hamid was busy reading a book, cooking, or engaged in doing something, and Rosa wanted his attention, she would call him several times, each time louder, finally screaming “Daddy ‘Mida!” adding an “ä” sound to her father’s name.
The human brain tends to learn only when it can extract rules out of what it is exposed to. We learn languages only because they are rule governed by nature.
Ramin, on the other hand, showed no interest in verbal communication. He babbled all right. And, lately, his babbling had started to resemble intonational patterns. He babbled questions, interjections, or responses. It was obvious that he did not lack in intelligence. It was clear that he was a healthy two-year-old. But somehow, at two years of age, he neither walked nor talked. Hamid’s mother, having raised four sons, reassured them that boys usually start speaking much later that girls.
- Your cousin is two years younger than you. She started saying whole sentences long before you could say single words.
It is not that Ramin could not comprehend language that was spoken to him. He would respond to verbal stimuli perfectly well. If you asked him where his shoes, or a certain toy was, he would run on all his four and bring it to you. Running on all his four was what he did best. He did this so fast neither Niloo nor Hamid was able to keep track of where he was at every minute. Now he was in the living room, the next minute he was in the kitchen.
And he was alarmingly curious. Nothing could be placed on the edges of tables or kitchen counters. In his curiosity to find out what they were, Ramin would tip them off creating a mess, not to mention putting himself in danger of getting hurt, burnt, or injured. In a nutshell, Ramin was a menace. Niloo could not keep up with him. Hamid would spend much of his time with Rosa and Ramin when he was home, but he was generally at work all day and only returned home in the evening when it was the children’s sleeping time. They were mostly at the mercy of their mother, who displayed greater indications of frustration and irritability as Ramin became less and less manageable. Physical punishment appeared to have become her only resort since she was unable to talk to the kids in English and stubbornly refused to communicate with them in Farsi despite Hamid’s pleas with her to do so. Consequently, when the kids, and specifically Ramin, acted up, she would scream, “Don’t do that!” several times, and when she did not receive the response that she expected, she would raise her hand - or whatever she happened to be holding at the moment – on the kids. Once, when she was in the kitchen cooking, she burned the back of Ramin’s hand using the ladle she was stirring the soup with. He still has the burn mark to this day. Ramin is twenty-four year old as I am writing this story.
The most unfavorable and devastating result of the way Niloo treated the children was that she conditioned them to responding to nothing short of physical punishment when they engaged in undesirable behavior. You could no longer talk Ramin out of doing or not doing things. The only deterrent appeared to be threat of physical punishment or physical punishment.
As Ramin grew into a school going boy, the gamut of undesired behaviors that he demonstrated expanded into an uncontrollable spectrum, leaving him prone to more and more serious punishment. He stole money from his parents, or out of the pockets and wallets of visitors; he toyed with household appliances and broke them; he fought and beat his peers; he lied about the simplest things; he urinated in the houseplant pots… In short, he had all the symptoms of what DSM categorizes as anti-social behavior.
Sadly, no amount of reasoning or talking seemed to have any effect on his behavior. Promises of favor in return for positive behavior or avoiding to engage in negative ones appeared to be ineffective. After a while he demanded those favors, and if he were denied, he would engage in more destructive behavior. The negative and positive reinforcement mechanism of behavior modification, which Hamid attempted hard to implement, was rendered useless by Niloo’s unwillingness to be cooperative. Using reinforcements demand a great degree of patience and consistency. Niloo lacked the patience and did not attempt to be on the same page with Hamid. The result was that a certain behavior that Hamid had set out to reinforce positively in Ramin went completely ignored and unnoticed by Niloo, who was the primary caregiver in the household due to Hamid’s professional engagement. Likewise, what Hamid intended to negatively reinforce was either ignored or simply responded to by yelling and screaming or by physical punishment, which tends to become useless if its severity is not increased over time.
Worst of all, every time that Ramin engaged in his detrimental behaviors, Niloo reminded him that he was an unwanted child. At the time Hamid argued that this was going to leave a lasting impression on Ramin’s psyche, subconsciously affecting him and his behavior negatively in the future. Niloo would not have any of it. She would not stop:
- Don’t do that! Now I know why I didn’t want you.
It was under these circumstances that Hamid met his azure-eyed angel. Outside, a brutal war of attrition raged on with Iraq; Iraqi planes incessantly conducted their nightly bombing sorties over Tehran; paramilitary Baseejis – unofficial militia members mobilized by neighborhood mosques – stopped every car at checkpoints for alcoholic beverages and video tapes or to make sure that every woman accompanied by a man was either legally wed to him or his blood relative; revolutionary guards patrolled the streets so that no female could be seen flaunting a strand of hair sneaking from underneath her headscarf. Inside the office room on the fifth floor of Shokouh’s building, Akabi and Hamid would lock up the door and defy all that the Islamic Republic stood for. They experienced the highest peaks of carnal gratification, two married persons engaging in the ultimate taboo, punishable by stoning in the Islamic Republic. Their love was the conquest of desire over fear, the defiance of attraction in the face of persecution, the victory of uniting over hatred and dogma. Strangely, fear made their lovemaking more intense and passionate. The awareness that every minute could be the last, that at any time, some agent of the Department of Public Premises could knock on the door, or even worse, a fanatic officer of the Ethics Corps – the anti corruption corps – could break down the door and barge in on their most intimate moment, increased the joy of their bodies’ union rather than extinguish their lust.
Akabi was engulfed by Hamid’s charm, intelligence, command of his job, and the authority with which he ran his fledgling department – Spoken English Course. And Hamid had found a warm and loving bosom in Akabi to refuge to from the perniciousness and bitterness that ruled at his home.
They say men and women are different in the way they communicate. Men advise; women empathize. When you take your problem to a man, he, at once, attempts to show you a way out, to tell you how to handle your problem, and what the best way of dealing with it may be. A woman, on the other hand, will reassure you that she understands how you feel, that she will be there for you, and that she will help you find a way out. A man communicates from the standpoint of authority; a woman relates to others from the vantage point of mutual understanding and support.
Somehow Hamid was unconsciously able to look at the world from a feminine viewpoint, which enabled him to work more effectively with women rather that with men. Once he returned to Shokouh’s in 1983, he soon surrounded himself with a team of female employees – mostly American women married to Iranian men – who took charge of developing materials for the newly founded Department of Spoken English Course – SEC. Debbie, Lucia, Janine, Michelle, and, of course Akabi, were members of this team. Each of these women had a story, which, although remotely related to the people of our story, helps shed light on the kind of social atmosphere in which the events of our story develop and unfold.
Debbie and her husband were happily married with two young sons. Their whole life was geared towards a single goal: raise enough money to return to the US, where their children could live a happy life.
Lucia was married to an Iranian doctor, who came from a very religious family. A few years later, when Hamid read Betty Mahmoodi’s book “Not Without My Daughter,” he could swear that Betty Mahmoodi could be no other than Lucia. According to the laws of the Islamic Republic, a wife cannot leave the country unless she can obtain the written consent and permission of her husband. Lucia had been unaware of this law when she had been persuaded by her US educated husband to travel to Iran. For all that she knew, they were going to Iran to visit Masoud’s family for no longer than a three-month stay. Everything had been going according to the initial plan for the first two months of their stay in Iran. But then the death of Masoud’s father had changed all the plans. At first, Lucia and her children – a seven-year-old son and a two-year-old daughter – were supposed to leave for the States while Masoud stayed behind to take care of the inheritance. Soon, though, Masoud started trying to change Lucia’s mind. Initially he attempted to sweet-talk Lucia into staying. When Lucia insisted, however, that she and the children wanted to return, despite his education, Masoud resorted in the traditional ways that his patriarchal socialization had taught him. Threats and menacing words soon turned into screaming and shouting, and before long, into physical thrashing.
Lucia had had enough. She called British Airways and confirmed her and the children’s return tickets. Masoud remained quiet all the time as Lucia packed up and got ready to leave with the children. On the day of their flight, he even gave them a ride to the airport. It was at the airport, where Lucia found out that she or the children could not leave the country without Masoud’s consent. When they returned home that day, Lucia’s nightmare had started. Masoud agreed to let Lucia leave the country without the children. It was at this point that Lucia decided to find herself a job and started working on Hamid’s team at Shokouh’s.
Most days, Lucia would show up for work with a black eye, or bruises on her face. Those were the parts that were visible to Hamid. The girls reported that she was black and blue all over her body. At times, Hamid became so mad that he wanted to go kill Lucia’s husband. How can an educated man raise his hand on his wife? Hamid’s own father had time and again physically abused his mother, but those were the old times, Hamid would say. And his father did not have much of an education. Hamid himself had gotten in a bit of physical scuffle with Niloo once or twice, and had had to live with qualms of conscience for a few weeks after each time.
Lucia’s case was entirely different. It was an every-day thing. She came in with bruises and contusions every day. There were some days when she simply had to call in sick. Everyone knew then that she and her husband must have had a really big fight. On such occasions, Masoud would simply lock Lucia up in a room and not allow her to leave the house.
- Do you know what they do to whores in this country? They stone them. They shoot them. You’re lucky I don’t turn you in to the revolutionary guards, you bitch! You’re lucky I’m a nice person.
When Lucia would return to work a couple of days later, she would give everyone a detailed account of what had happened amidst empathetic words of the rest of the team.
Hamid called their group the M&M team. Michelle was the one that brought the M&M chocolate bars and shared it with everyone else. Her mother-in-law, who had just returned from the United States, had brought back a suitcase full of chocolates. To them, they were the M&M team because of the chocolates. To everyone else, they were the Material & Methodology team, responsible for the development of the syllabus for the fledgling Spoken English Course.
Michelle was married to another Iranian and had followed him to Iran when he had had to leave the US. When they were still in the US, Reza – Michelle’s husband – had been arrested on trafficking charges when he had tried to smuggle a bagful of Marijuana across the Mexican boarder into the US. Once out of prison after he had posted bail, he had convinced Michelle that they should run away to Iran. Reza was on a federal wanted list for trafficking, and there was an outstanding warrant for his arrest. Michelle was under the impression that as her husband’s accomplice, there was a warrant for her arrest, too. But soon after they escaped from the US, she was informed by her brother that she was clear and could return any time she wanted to. She had chosen to stay in Iran with Reza both because she still loved Reza, and also because her in-laws were so wealthy that she could not even dream of the level of comfort that she enjoyed here in Iran back in the US.
Soon after they had returned, her mother-in-law had let them move into a huge house – a semi mansion – that she owned in a high-end northern suburb of Tehran. They had a maidservant, a chauffer, and a gardener. Michelle did not have to raise as much as a finger. Everything got done for her.
Michelle did not know that a woman could not leave the country without her spouse’s consent. The day that she learned the fact through Lucia, she stormed back home demanding that she wanted to return to the US. The next day Reza gave her a notarized power of attorney that allowed her to obtain a passport and leave any time she willed. It had been like pouring water on a raging fire. Assured that she could return any day she wanted, she never raised the issue again.
Janine was another member of the M&M team. She was quite unlike the other American woman that worked with Hamid. She had converted to Islam and was more devout in her newfound faith than anyone that Hamid had ever known. While other women took their head scarves off as soon as they found themselves behind the closed doors of the office, Janine kept hers on and carefully tucked all her hair under it. She would lay a couple of newspaper pages on the floor in a corner of the office facing Mecca, which Muslims are required to face during their daily prayers. She would say her prayers disregarding the chuckles and smirks of the other girls. Later she brought a silk, hand-woven prayer rug and left it in the office.
- I’m going to leave this here. Feel free to use it for your prayers.
And she would cast a sarcastic look at everyone, specifically at Hamid. “You’re forgetting that I’m a Zoroastrian,” Hamid would say quickly. He was not. He was born to Muslim parents, which automatically made him a Muslim. He told everyone that he was a Zoroastrian despite the knowledge that the punishment of a Muslim that denounces Islam is death.
Zoroastrianism is the religion that was prevalent among Persians – Iranians – before Arabs invaded Persia and forced their own faith upon Zoroastrian Iranians. Hamid believed that Iran had foregone four huge cultural invasions that were collectively responsible for the cultural crisis that the country is grappling with today. The first was the Greek invasion during which Alexander led his armies into Persia. He looted and burned cities and took Persian men and women into slavery. The second was the Arab invasion, which forced an alien religion on Persians and severed their ties with a proud, ancient civilization forever. The Mongolian invasion was the third. Genghis Khan’s army of nomadic Mongols left a trail of bloodshed and total devastation as they ran through Persian territories leaving in their wake a culture of helplessness and desperation. And the last but certainly not the least is the ongoing invasion of Western values that has put Iran at the crossroad of the most crucial decision making in its history.
While the Islamic Republic wanted Iranians to believe that adherence to fundamental Islam was the country’s best way of staying clear from the pressures and influences of the Western culture, Hamid contended that the only way out of the cultural impasse that Iran is cornered in is a return to its Persian roots.
This motley group of women had embarked on the colossal task of devising a syllabus for the Spoken English Course under the leadership and supervision of Hamid, who was the only one in the group with prior experience and formal education in language teaching and linguistics.
Hamid’s blueprint for the syllabus included six levels with each level consisting of eight modules that gradually increased in difficulty. The difficulty grade was geared around frequency of grammatical patterns and lexicon. Patterns and words that are thought to be more often used in everyday speech were presented earlier in the syllabus. As the course unfolded, more complicated and less frequently used grammar and vocabulary were introduced.
Every module consisted of a dialogue and a reading intended to expose the students to grammatical patterns and lexicon in a natural setting. The module then unfolded with a grammar lesson which highlighted the structural forms that were naturally presented in the dialogue and reading. Every module also consisted of a vocabulary practice section that underscored the new words and expressions used throughout the module. As Hamid kept reminding the M&M ladies, every module was supposed to be a careful journey from exposure to focus. Expose the students to a certain pattern through dialogues and readings; bring the patterns into focus through grammar lessons.
It was an immense undertaking. Up to this time, Shokouh’s English Institute had, time and again, attempted at “conversation” classes unsuccessfully. Dr. Shokouh himself had probably been the main reason why no such classes had ever successfully taken off. He could not bring himself to believe that a person could learn English simply by speaking it. He believed that a sound foundation of grammar had to be developed before a learner could attempt to communicate verbally. Students, therefore, were placed in grammar classes, and only after they had completed six levels of such classes, were they then channelized into “conversation” classes. As much as Hamid had tried to change this outlook, he had had very little luck until his return to Shokouh’s a few years after the revolution in 1983. This time, Dr. Shokouh, who had witnessed the waning enthusiasm of his clientele in joining traditional grammar classes, had reluctantly allowed the formation of a “conversation” course, which Hamid decided to refer to as SEC – Spoken English Course. Somehow Hamid found the title “conversation class” hackneyed and tasteless. SEC, on the other hand, spoke quite effectively to the purpose of the course, which was mastery of the English language through using it. He argued that the target language – English – had to be changed from a goal to be achieved at some indefinite time in the future to a here-and-now means of communication.
The problem, however, was that the older teachers of Shokouh’s English Institute, who were experts in the teaching of Grammar but were barely able to speak the language, found the SEC a threat to their livelihood. They feared that Dr. Shokouh might simply relinquish his attachment to the grammar classes and focus all his attention and resources on the promotion of SEC.
At the time, the person that was in charge of the grammar section was a middle-aged, sly-looking, gray haired man of a short stature, whose name was Ansari – pronounced like “an” as in “an apple,” and “sorry” as in “I am sorry”.
When Prophet Mohammad and his followers ran away from persecution at the hands of the Meccans and settled in Medina, those who had joined him in this exodus were called “Mohajerin,” which means the “immigrants.” And those, who joined the faith in Medina, were referred to as “Ansars,” which means “comrades.” “Ansari” literally means related to the comrades of Prophet Mohammad. As sly and mean-spirited as this guy was, Hamid had a nickname for him, which consisted of the English translation of the first part of his name “an,” and the English word “sorry.” “An” means “shit” in Persian. The M&M team referred to this guy as the “sorry shit,” and for good reasons. He spearheaded the consorted attempts of Shokouh’s grammar teachers to undermine the young and fledgling SEC program. They would go to students and tell them that they were wasting their time by staying in SEC classes. They would reason that unlike children, adults learn a foreign language by primarily learning its grammar. They argued that unless one knows the rules of grammar, one would not be able to communicate orally or in writing.
Despite all their differences, Hamid had to agree that this was a valid argument. How can anyone speak or write in a language without the knowledge of its grammar? The famously made claim that children speak their native language without knowing its grammar fails to take into account that the knowledge of grammar does not necessarily have to be conscious. It is true that children - the native speakers of any language for that matter – do not possess a conscious knowledge of the grammar of their language. They will not be able to tell you whether a certain word is a verb, a noun, an adjective, an adverb, a conjunction, etc. But the mere fact that even a three-year-old child can tell you whether a certain sentence is right or wrong is enough evidence that s/he has an unconscious knowledge of the grammar of his/her language. A foreign language, therefore, cannot be learned without the learning of its grammar.
What the opponents of SEC classes failed to acknowledge was that SEC students did learn – were taught – grammar in an inductive manner through exposure to myriads of examples that employed grammatical points. SEC students were allowed to discover the grammar rules for themselves in much the same way as children unconsciously extract rules from language that they are exposed to without being directly taught those rules. As a matter of fact, the first graduates of SEC classes, about a year and a half later, proved to be not only good speakers of the English language, but scored better grades in grammar exit exams that were given to grammar classes.
All this did not stop the “Sorry Shit” – Ansari – and his team of traditional grammar teachers from plotting against and trying to undermine the SEC classes. With their theoretical arguments having been proven wrong, they had now directed all their efforts at hurting Hamid by spreading rumors about his love affair with Akabi. In a campaign of character assassination, they thought that if they could get rid of Hamid, the SEC classes would lose their direction and leadership. A weakened SEC department, without a person, who could theoretically defend its premises and define its objectives, would be easy to undermine, specifically since Dr. Shokouh himself had his allegiance and faith vested in the grammar classes.
Hamid’s domestic life was not showing any signs of improvement. At one point, when Akabi informed him that she was planning to immigrate to the US with her husband and children, Hamid made a conscious effort to put her out of his life and try to mend his broken ties with his wife, Niloo.
Akabi’s husband, Mathew, had a sister, who was a US citizen and had filed an application on behalf of him and his family with the US Immigration and Naturalization Services. The application had just been approved. All they were waiting for now was the paperwork that they had to present to a US consular mission in order to receive their visas. Mathew had decided that he wanted to spend the waiting period in Larnaca, in Cyprus. The family was leaving Iran for Cyprus in a couple of months.
It was at this time that Hamid thought he could take advantage of the situation and put some new life into his married life. For quite some time, he had been shunning Niloo’s bed. Niloo had not been showing any interest either. He now approached her for sex again. With all the rumors and gossips that were rampantly circulating about his affair with Akabi, both she and Hamid had thought it was wise to reduce the amount of time they spent together. Akabi was excited about leaving for the US. The development had revived her relationship with her husband. She now saw some hope in the horizon for the family. Maybe in the US, Mathew would be a different person, a working person, a more responsible family man, and one that would pride in bringing home the bacon.
The pernicious rumors had reached such a critical level that Dr. Shokouh had decided to curb Hamid’s responsibilities. Hamid no longer had any managerial responsibilities. His role had been limited to the academic aspect of the job. Dr. Shokouh brought in his nephew, Iraj, and assigned all the management authority to him. Hamid’s role was now stripped down to merely writing materials and preparing tests.
The M&M had disintegrated with each of its members going their own separate paths. Debbie had found a better-paying job at a rivaling language school. Lucia had finally decided that she was no longer able to tolerate the abuse and had left for the US leaving her children behind. The day she came to school to say goodbye to Hamid, she told him, with tears in her eyes, that she was hoping that her children would choose to come to her in the States once they reached legal age. Hamid chose not to tell her that her daughter would not be able to make such an independent decision even when she reached legal age. He did not tell her that even then her daughter would need her father’s permission to travel outside the country. A girl in this Islamic Republic lives with her father’s noose around her neck until she marries, at which time the noose holder changes from one man – the father – to another – the husband.
Michelle’s story took quite a surprising turn. She and Reza had had no luck having a child despite the fact that Reza wanted a child badly. Ever since Reza’s father had passed on, his mother had become a great influence in his life. Reza, who had squandered all his share of the inheritance during his years in the United States, was now forced to depend on her mother for money. They were staying in one of her houses. She paid the wages of their domestics. She helped out with Reza’s dependency on opium and the extravagant lifestyle that both he and Michelle were accustomed to. When she found out that Michelle and Reza were not able to have children, she started trying to talk Reza into taking a second wife, one that could give him a boy child, who could carry the family name.
- You don’t have to divorce Michelle. Just marry another girl, and once your child is born, you can get rid of the mother if you don’t want to keep her around.
- I can’t do that maman joon.
Maman joon was the endearment term with which he addressed his Mom. The literal translation would be “dear mom.”
- Michelle will freak out. She can’t understand this. She finds out I’m having something going with another woman, she’ll go crazy. I can’t tell her I’m marrying another woman. Their culture is different from ours, maman joon. Don’t even talk about it. She’ll go insane if she finds out I’ve even let you talk to me about it.
- She’ll be fine. I’ll get her to understand. After all she lives here in Iran now. She’s not in America. She’s got to get used to our culture. Any man would do what I am telling you to do if he found out his wife is sterile. You need a child, a boy child.
- What if I do what you say and get to have a girl child? Come on maman joon! I don’t want to talk about it.
- Leave it all to me, son. I’ll take care of everything. Michelle will have no other choice but accepting the realities of our life here. She’s an Iranian now. She should have thought about all this when she got married to you and accepted to come here. I’m giving you a place to live; I’m footing the bill for all the high-end, expensive things that Michelle khanoom (Miss. Michelle) buys. She’d better listen to me, or I’ll make her life miserable.
A few days later, to Michelle’s chagrin and surprise, maman joon had managed to get her to understand the idea. That evening she had a big fight with Reza.
- Maman joon can say whatever she wants. It’s not like I’m going to do what she says. Never mind her! You know how much I love you. I will never do anything to upset you. Come on honey! Just be rational!
- You’re saying all this to fool me. Maman joon has the power of life and death over you. You can’t afford to make her mad. Besides if you actually go out and take a second wife, I’ll probably not even know.
Reza laughed it off. He was trying to play down the situation. He said jokingly:
- Don’t you love it here? It’s a man’s world isn’t it?
When Michelle burst into tears, Reza hugged her and pressed her against his chest.
- You know I’m joking. There’s no way I’d do such a stupid thing, and you know it. Come on, honey! Go get dressed and let’s go out to dinner.
But the hurt had been done. Michelle, the tall American blonde, who looked beautiful even inside the Islamic manto and under the headpiece that was not supposed to reveal even one single stray strand of hair, was no longer the confident young woman that strutted up and down the corridors of Shokouh’s English Institute arousing envy in the hearts of the young girls that attended classes. All of a sudden, she felt helpless and vulnerable.
Michelle and Akabi were good friends. Michelle was probably the only person, who knew that the rumors about Akabi’s affair with Hamid were indeed true. Hamid and Akabi had actually met at Michelle’s apartment several times. It was the only hideout where they could relatively safely see one another. The fifth floor office had become a risky place. For one thing, what was left of the M&M team – Janine, Michelle, Hamid, and an Iranian guy named Sadegh that Dr. Shokouh had assigned to the team – held their meetings there. For another, students and teachers often came up to ask questions and talk about their concerns. Keeping the door locked, which Hamid did under the pretext that the ladies sometimes took their scarves off, was no longer a good option. It only strengthened the rumors: “If nothing is going on, why do they always keep the door locked?” Beside, Hamid was no longer the only person with a key to the office. Iraj, Dr. Shokouh’s nephew had a key, too. Akabi and Hamid no longer risked making love in that office. Hamid’s nemeses – mostly the “Sorry Shit” and his team of grammatical teachers, but also some in his own department, who were green with jealousy why Dr. Shokouh did not place as much trust in them as he did in Hamid – were waiting for a chance to land the final, fatal blow.
Michelle confided in Akabi. She talked to her about her mother-in-law. And Akabi told Michelle about her forbidden love affair with Hamid.
- Maman joon is telling Reza to take a second wife so he can have a boy child.
- What’s Reza saying?
- He says he’d never do such a thing. I want to believe him, but then I know how much power maman joon has over him. He can’t drink water without maman joon’s permission. After all, she pays all our expenses. My salary is nothing more than pocket money for me.
- What do you want to do now?
- I don’t know. If Reza does a thing like that, I’ll probably leave him and go back to the States.
- Did you know that you cannot leave without his permission?
- I’m not worried about that. He has given me power of attorney so I would not need his permission if I choose to leave. It’s just that I don’t want to get to a point where that would be my only option. I still love Reza. I don’t want to leave him. I want this to be resolved. How can maman joon do this to me?
- Is it even your fault that you guys can’t have children? Have you guys been to a specialist?
- Maman joon says there must be something wrong with me because all other men in Reza’s family have kids. Both his younger brothers have children – all boys. His cousins have children – boys and girls.
- You know? I have heard that opium addiction slims the chances of a man having children. Can that be the reason you guys cannot have children?
- I don’t know, but there’s no way I can have Reza give opium up. He loves that stuff.
- He drinks a lot, too. That affects fertility too, doesn’t it? You guys have got to go to a doctor and run some tests. Don’t just take maman joon’s words for granted that you are to blame. It may as well be Reza’s fault.
Dr. Shokouh was a divorced fifty-year-old, who had no intention of succumbing to old age just yet. He had just ended an emotional love affair with a married woman. Ironically, Hamid was the one that had been advising him against continuing his affair with a married woman:
- Do you realize how much you have at stake if someone finds out about you and Roya? That’ll be the end of you. That’ll be the end of Shokouh’s English Institute. As it is they are refusing to renew your license on the grounds that you had ties with the old regime; you live a western style life. They consider you an agent of America. In these people’s eyes, teaching English is promulgating western values. If by some chance your affair with Roya leaks out, God knows what they will do to you. They’ll probably hang you by your balls.
Hamid was right. The Islamic Regime had no lost love for Dr. Shokouh and his English language institute. They refused to renew his license. Dr. Shokouh was then forced to enter into a contract with some guy, who was close to the administration, and use his license so that his school would not be shut down. Shokouh’s English Institute was now operating with this guy’s license. He was collecting ten percent of the gross income. The school had to run on the remaining ninety percent out of which all the expenses had to be paid. This person was a relative of the president and had close ties with Khomeini’s office. While everyone else had to take a written exam in what they called Islamic management and then undergo an extensive and thorough background check, this bearded clown was granted his almost overnight after a phone call had been placed to the ministry of education from Khomeini’s office. This was the regime’s way of putting money into their cronies’ pockets.
At one time, Hamid had attempted to get a license and open his own English school, too. This was when Niloo had asked why he had to always work for others:
- Why can’t you have your own business? Why should you always let others exploit you?
Her intentions were not good. She didn’t care if Hamid worked for others. Hamid decided to follow through with the idea.
Unlike Dr. Shokouh, who had failed the exam, Hamid passed both the written exam and the interview that ensued. He failed the background check because of his reputation among friends and co-workers as a communist. He also used to translate and write for the Iranian Radio and Television Services during the Shah’s regime, and was a member of the Twentieth Century Literature Group, which was headed by the renowned Iranian poet, Nader Naderpour. The Tuesday night cocktail parties of this group were famous in the intellectual circles. That, in itself, was enough to label a person as corrupt and un-Islamic.
Hamid was really not a communist. He did have an inclination towards social democracies of Northern Europe, and strongly believed in a system that could secure social justice and a level of equal opportunity for all the members of the society. He certainly did not think of the Islamic Republic as the kind of governance that could bring about such social justice.
Religious regimes are by nature pro capitalism. Religion is a tool in the hands of the wealthy with which to quell the unprivileged masses. He might have, at some time or other, quoted Karl Marx’s famous adage that “religion is the opiate of the masses.” And surly this was enough reason to be labeled a communist. Indeed the reason why Hamid had chosen to go into voluntary exile at the Caspian right after the revolution was that if he had stayed in the capital, he might have been arrested for the open expression of his opinions in his classes during the period that led to the victory of the revolution and in the months that followed. When he ran away to Babolsar, the few friends that he was still in contact with had told him that the Comiteh agents had shown up at Shokouh’s looking for him. Comitehs were later organized into the Revolutionary Guards.
In those early years, the Islamic Republic rounded up and imprisoned or simply executed anyone that was thought to have had ties with the previous regime or was suspected of opposition to the Islamic Republic. People that were picked up at this time were quickly tried in revolutionary courts with no access to representation. They were sentenced to death or long prison terms. Many were never processed through the legal system and were held in jails indefinitely. Habeas corpus had no meaning to the new rulers.
The situation was compared to a joke where a person was seen running like crazy. A friend asked him what he was running from. He said, “They’re arresting people with three testicles. They cut off one of their balls.” “Yes,” responded the friend, “but do you have three testicles?” “No,” he said, “the problem is they cut them off first, then they count them!”
Before a person could prove his/her innocence, s/he could have spent months, even years, behind bars; or worse yet, could have been put up against the wall or hanged.
Getting a license to open an English language school had nothing to do with the knowledge of the English language. Many of the new license holders could not speak a word of the English language. They were good reciters of the Quran, however, and invariably had a callus on their foreheads, which was an indication of years of devout practice of Islamic prayers. In one stage, the Islamic prayers among the Shiites, requires the person to squat on his/her knees, bring the head to the ground, and press the forehead against a small clay tablet, which is supposed to have been made from the soil where one of the Shiite Imams is entombed. A Muslim is required to pray five times a day carrying out the above ritual as many as seventeen times daily. A callus on the forehead, therefore, is a symbol of devout dedication to Islam, and a sign that the person practices his/her prayers regularly.
Another symbol of devotion among men was – is – the unshaved beard. The likes of Dr. Shokouh and Hamid, who could not tolerate even a five-o’clock shadow, much less grow a beard, were automatically regarded with suspicion.
By nature, Dr. Shokouh was a micromanager. He liked to be in control of everything that went on in his school. Before the revolution, his brother, who was a US educated civil engineer – or so they said – had taken charge of class schedules and assignment of teachers to classes. At the time, his father was responsible for the finances and bookkeeping. Even so, Dr. Shokouh made sure every decision was made with his approval.
Two years prior to the revolution, Dr. Shokouh had decided to expand his operations and had opened up a few branches. He opened his first branch school in Narmak, a densely populated, middleclass neighborhood on the eastside of the capital. In his look beyond the capital, he also opened a branch in Mashhad, the site of the mausoleum of the Shiites’ eighth Imam, the only Imam that is buried in Iran. He opened another branch in Gorgan, which was, at the time, a rich agriculture based city in the North, where Hojabr Yazdani a Baha’i entrepreneur and a close friend of the Shah’s family, had created a huge agricultural empire.
Soon, Dr. Shokouh’s brother took charge of the new branch in Tehran, and just before the revolution, the two brothers got into a bitter disagreement over how to share the proceeds from the new branch resulting in a period of acrimonious tension in the family that remains to this day.
Despite his tendency to micromanage, after his divorce and even more so, following the termination of his emotional roller coaster with Roya, the married woman that he had been involved with, Dr. Shokouh had distanced himself from the day-to-day affairs of his language schools, delegating responsibilities to people that were close to him, and he trusted. When Hamid accepted the offer of the full-time job, Dr. Shokouh was happy to completely give the control of his advanced classes as well as that of the new and fast growing SEC section to him. he became more and more dissociated from the school and seldom showed up to see what was going on. Hamid tried to keep him in the picture by either going to his house and briefing him, or by calling and reporting to him the state of the affairs at the institute.
On one of these trips, Hamid was accompanied by Michelle, the young, tall, and beautiful American woman, who was unhappy with her mother-in-law and was having a difficult time with her husband. She was especially mad at her husband, who could not leave Iran and go back to the US with her because of the outstanding warrant for his arrest on trafficking charges and jumping bail. She had had enough of the Islamic Republic, enough of the nightly air raids, power outages, food shortages, head-to-toe covering Islamic attires, never-ending checkpoints, constant mourning processions, and TV programs that signed on with the glorification of death and martyrdom and signed off with the reinforced determination to kill and slaughter the enemies of the Islamic Republic.
So when offered her a shot of smuggled Jack Daniels on the rock and a few complimentary pleasantries, she relaxed and brought down her guards.
- How do you get a hold of Jack Daniels? Reza can’t get anything other than the homemade raisin spirit.
- You’ve got to know the right people and have the right connections. I can get you some if you want.
- Can you really? That would be awesome. I can pay you now or when you get it.
- I’ll take it out of your paycheck. How’s that?
And then he immediately continued:
- No, I’m joking. Look at it as a gift from me.
He chuckled and carried on changing the subject. His voice was clearly marked with an undertone that revealed some lascivious intentions and expectations.
- What’s a nice girl like you doing in a crappy place like this? How did you end up in the Islamic Republic? If you were my wife, I would not keep you in this God-forsaken place even for one minute.
His innuendo sat quite well with Michelle, who thought that Reza and her mother-in-law were not treating her well.
Dr. Shokouh left the room for a minute and came back with a bottle of Jack Daniels in its box.
- I’m giving this to you, but God knows I’d prefer that you came here one night and drink it with me!
His casually joking tone did not completely conceal his serious intentions. And Michelle’s smiling face did not completely close the door to more advances either. When Dr. Shokouh left the room to bring some ice, Hamid turned to Michelle and said, “I hope you know what you’re doing, and what you’re getting yourself into!”
- You mean it’s good when you and Akabi do it, but it’s bad when I do it?
- He is twice your age, for crying out loud!
- So what? He’s a good man. Besides, I’m sick and tired of how Reza’s mother has been treating me.
The Shokouh family was originally from Isfahan, the third largest metropolis in Iran, located about two hundred miles south of the capital, Tehran. They had moved to Tehran when Daddy Shokouh – that’s how everyone at the school referred to Dr. Shokouh’s father – had gotten a job in the treasury department as a senior accountant. As a child, Mohsen – that’s Dr. Shokouh’s first name – had attended a missionary school run by a number of American nuns and priests. That is how he had picked up the English language. Unlike his younger brother, who had been sent to the US for his higher education, Mohsen had never left the country except for vacations in Europe. His ability to communicate in English was limited to everyday cliché exchanges, which he produced in a clearly affected American accent. When it came to holding prolonged conversations, he soon gave away his shortcomings. Even in the everyday conversations, he sometimes pronounced simple words so wrongly but with such a high degree of authority and confidence that his listener was left to wonder whether Dr. Shokouh’s way of rendering the word may actually be the correct pronunciation. He pronounced the word “colleague” with its stress placed on the second syllable. The first time Hamid heard him say it this way, he had to look it up in the dictionary thinking that maybe he had been saying the word wrong up until then. No, Dr. Shokouh was wrong. Later on, Hamid found out that Dr. Shokouh’s pronunciation version of the word “colleague’ was quite prevalent among Indian speakers of the English language.
Another area of pronunciation where Dr. Shokouh gave away his lack of command of spoken English was his confusion of the “v” and “w” sounds – or phonemes to be linguistically more appropriate.
Even his command of the grammar was not entirely impeccable. There was a lot that he did not know. When Hamid used to be just a student of English in Shokouh’s classes, he thought of Dr. Shokouh as the god of English language, the ultimate authority on correctness. Once he started going to college studying English literature and translation, he sometimes came to Dr. Shokouh with his problems seeking answers to things he did not understand. Before long, he found out that his image of Dr. Shokouh had to be redrawn. The knew image was that of a person, who might not know everything but was capable of teaching what he knew in the most effective way. It did not take long for the new image to be shattered too. As soon as Hamid became familiar with more modern teaching methodologies and learning theories, he knew that Dr. Shokouh was not the most capable teacher. To this day, though, Hamid admits that Dr. Shokouh knew how to keep students coming back for his classes. He was a great comedian. Students had fun in his classes. Specifically before the revolution, when he could freely make any sort of remarks as long as he stayed clear of political contexts, his classes were quite popular. Most of his jokes, though, contained licentious innuendos. He basically had to give up teaching after the revolution because he found it very difficult to curb his graphic remarks. Moreover, classes were no longer co-ed, and his jokes did not make much sense in exclusively male or female classes. Several times, he found himself having to apologize for his carelessly made observations when some fanatic student took offense in them and objected.
On the business management side, Dr. Shokouh knew that the only way he could make greater profits was to keep his teachers’ pay scale low. Before the revolution, he used to have his teachers sign up a binding contract. He also required a signed, undated promissory note from every teacher for the amount of 50,000 Tomans – then times the equivalent of 7000 US Dollars – as guarantee that they would not use his grammar-translation method anywhere else. He really did not have to worry at all. Most his grammar teachers could not secure a teaching job at any other language school anyway, as they were hardly able to speak in English. The ones that were proficient in spoken communication taught in the advanced department classes; and Dr. Shokouh knew well that he could not make them subject to the same contract and pay scale.
Hamid had joined Shokouh’s way back in 1969 after a year of teaching at the Iranian Imperial Air Force. How Hamid had gotten tossed into teaching English is an interesting story. In 1967, when he was in his senior high school year, for a whole week, he missed school, not because he was physically sick or anything, but just because he simply he simply didn’t feel like going to school. He would leave home in the morning telling his parents that he was school bound. Instead, he would go sit in a teahouse, or walk in the park, and when it came time to go back home, he would return home pretending that he had been at school all day.
At this time, he was a student at the most advanced level at Shokouh’s, and he seriously thought he was in love with one of his classmates. After a week of missing school, he finally decided to go back to school only to find out that he could not attend classes unless he had his father come to school and excuse his absence. There was no way he could tell his father that he had not attended school for a whole week. He would kill him. He would disown him if nothing else.
The next day, as he was sitting on a bench in the park, he happened to see the wants ad section of Tehran Journal – Tehran’s English morning paper – that someone had left there exposed to autumn winds. He picked it up absently and started looking at the ads columns out of boredom and just to keep himself busy. He was trying to keep his mind off his dilemma.
What were you thinking, Hamid? How are you going to tell your father that you have missed school for a whole week? He is sure to kill you. You should be thankful to god if he just throws you out of the house.
He ran his eyes down the columns of the ads section, as he was deep in these disturbing thoughts. Just then, his eyes stopped on an ad that had been placed in the paper by the Iranian Imperial Air Force Language Center for English teacher. You had to be eighteen or over to apply. Hamid would be eighteen in a couple of months. The ad said that upon successfully passing a written test and an oral interview, applicants had to complete a teachers training course. He could give it a shot; nothing to lose! An hour later, he was at the reception office at the air force training center.
- I am here for this ad.
- We’re no longer recruiting cadets. You’re a couple of days late applying. Next recruitment will be in spring.
“No sir; I am here for this ad.” And he pointed to the ad for English language teachers in the paper.
The air force sergeant sitting at the reception desk looked at Hamid in disbelief.
- Son, aren’t you too young for this job? How old are you?
- Nineteen! It says here you have to be eighteen or older. I’m nineteen.
The sergeant eyed Hamid from head to toe one more time. He, then, turned to the private that was standing guard at the door and said somehow mockingly:
- Take this young man to the language center.
At the language center, Hamid filled out an application form and was told to return at 9:00 AM – 900 hours – the next morning to take the exam. On the application form, he lied about having a high school diploma. He also lied about his military service exemption. By law, all individuals, who were not in school when they turned eighteen, were required to do a two-year, mandatory military service term. One could become eligible for exemption if one was the only male child of parents older than the age of sixty, on the grounds that the person had to take care of his parents and support them.
Hamid had decided to go through the whole exam and interview process just to see if he could pass them. He really wasn’t serious about employment. He doubted if he could succeed in the exam.
The next day, he left home again pretending that he was headed for school. At the air force language center, quite a few people were waiting to take the exam. There were a few American women among them, mostly wives of Iranians or US advisory personnel. Also waiting to take the exam was a young British girl, whom Hamid could not take his eyes off. There were twenty or so Iranian men of all ages, a few Indians, and, to Hamid’s great surprise, Mr. Nefees, the Pakistani teacher that Dr. Shokouh has assigned to Hamid’s class at Shokouh’s. Seeing the crowd, Hamid could not help but laugh at himself inwardly. He had no chance of passing the exam, he thought. He had no anxiety though, no feeling of butterflies in his stomach that he normally felt before exams. He went into the exam session quite relaxed.
The exam was a version of the Michigan Proficiency Test. it consisted of listening, vocabulary, grammar, and reading comprehension sections. Though Hamid had never taken an exam like this, he found it to be very simple. The whole thing took about an hour and a half. Upon completion, they had everyone wait in the cafeteria for results.
Throughout the exam, Hamid had been very relaxed, but in the thirty minutes that it took before they announced the results, he was very tense. His palms were sweating. His heart was racing. He was sure he had gotten most of the questions right. The only part he had a little doubt about was the reading comprehension section where he was running short of time.
When they finally announced the results, the uniform-clad air force captain that came out with the list started out by asking:
- Mr. Kyani, Hamid Kyani?
Hamid raised his hand and said, “Here!” as he would when his teachers at school called out his name.
- Are you Hamid Kyani?
Hamid did not know what to expect. The eyes of everyone in the cafeteria turned in his direction, scrutinizing this young man, who barely had any hair on his chin yet.
- Yes sir! That would be me!
- Congratulations sir; you have scored highest on today’s test.
And then he went on reading the names of the applicants that had made a passing score.
Hamid had a hard time believing what was happening. His Pakistani teacher, Mr. Nefees, was among the ones that had passed; so were the American ladies and the tall, beautiful, British girl. None of the other Iranian applicants had managed to pass. The failing applicants were told that they could take the test again in six months, and they were dismissed.
Hamid could not tell if he was happy, surprised, bewildered, lost, or simply incredulous. Maybe it was a combination of all these emotions. Certainly, he was disbelievingly exhilarated. Simultaneously, though, he was apprehensive. What’s going to happen next? What if they ask for his high school diploma? What about his military exemption?
There was no time to worry about these concerns, though. The air force captain that had read out the test results asked the successful candidates to follow him into a classroom. In all, there were nine of them. This was unlike Hamid’s traditional classrooms in school or at Shokouh’s. There were no rows of chairs and desks. Instead, there were fifteen chairs with attached desks arranged in a semicircle on three sides of the room. The green chalkboard was hung on the wall facing the chairs.
The captain explained that the next step was going to be an oral interview that the language school commander, Major Ferdowsy, would personally conduct. One by one, they would be called upon to go to the Major’s office where he would speak with them deciding if their command of the English language was good enough to become English instructors. Sure enough, Hamid was the first to be called upon.
He was led into a huge, carpeted office room. Unlike all other offices here, this one was furnished with an ornate wood desk and chairs, a large conference table, and glass-door bookshelves boasting numerous hardcover books, including a set of Encyclopedia Americana. Hamid closed the door behind him and stood there waiting for the air force major, who was snugly sunk in a lush leather pivoting chair behind the desk, to tell him to sit on one of the two gigantic, upholstered chairs that were positioned obliquely in front of the desk on each side.
After about twenty seconds, that felt more like an hour, the major raised his head from behind the big desk lamp that matched the Isfahan-made, handcrafted desk set, and said in an authoritative tone:
- Son, have the first interviewee come inside.
The command was spoken in Persian. Hamid knew immediately that the major must have thought he was a new recruit serving as his office errand personnel. He mustered up all his courage and said in English, “I am the interviewee, sir!” with a stress on “am.”
The major eyed him from head to toe in disbelief. It took him a few seconds to get up and stretch his arm out across the desk to shake Hamid’s hand. His first question was:
- How old are you, son?
- Eighteen, sir! I’ll b nineteen shortly!
- Don’t you think you’re too young for this job?
Somehow, Hamid felt a surge of confidence:
- I really do not think so, sir. I know the English language well; I have done a lot of tutoring. I have many private students, who are very happy with the way I teach them.
He was lying about his tutoring experience. He did not have any students. He continued:
- Given the chance, I can prove to you that I can be an asset to the English Language Center.
- Well, you’re certainly not lacking in confidence!
He said this with a smile, which immediately put a whole in Hamid’s confidence.
- Sir, I trust your judgment. If you think that I am too young for the job, obviously, I am. And despite my score on the test, and my great love for teaching, I’ll attempt this again a few years from now when I am a little older.
It was obvious that the major was impressed with Hamid’s command of the English language. He sank back in his chair for a few seconds fidgeting with his pencil and blankly gazing at the Encyclopedia Americana on the top shelf of the glass door bookshelves. He then said:
- You know, son? You’re right; your English is good. And though you’re very young, I think I am going to give you a chance to prove yourself.
He picked up the phone and spoke to someone in Persian. Minutes later, the captain, who had read the test results, walked into the office and stood at the door at attention.
- Yes, sir!
- Captain, Mr. Kyani is very young, as you can see; but he has scored the highest on our test and speaks English very well. I have decided to give him a chance. However, we still have until then end of the teachers training course to decide, don’t we?
- Yes, sir.
Then the Major turned to Hamid and continued with a kind smile:
- Son, you don’t have any objections now, do you? I’m not making any commitments to you at this stage. I’ll let you take our teachers training course. if you can prove that you will make a good teacher, then I’ll disregard the age issue. What do you think?
- I thank you much, sir. I promise you’re not going to regret your decision.
Major Ferdowsy then stood up, came around the desk, shook Hamid’s hand warmly, and walked to the door with him: “See you later, son.”
Hamid’s Pakistani English teacher failed the interview. Major Ferdowsy did not like his accent.
Hamid was scheduled to start his training course on the Monday of the coming week. For two more weeks, he continued to lie to his parents about his school. He would leave home for his training class in the morning and his parents were still under the impression that he was going to school. On the last day of the class, after their instructor, Lieutenant Yousefzadeh, introduced Hamid to General Compani, the commander of the Air Force Training Center, as the top student of his class in the graduation ceremony, Hamid knew that it was now time to go home and face his father. He might get angry; he might give him a good beating; he might even blow up and throw him out of the house; but he deserved to know.
None of that happened. Hamid’s father just asked him what he was planning to do about his education.
- You know, son? You are old enough to make decisions about what you want to do. I’m not about to stop you from making your own choices. I just hope to God that you make the right ones. I think that it’s a good thing that you have started working. But I wish you could wait and do this after you’ve gotten your high school diploma at least.
- I’ll get my high school diploma. I can study at home and go take the exams. I promise I’ll do that. And Dad, thank you for supporting my choice.
At the time, there was an arrangement in the Iranian system of education that allowed high school dropouts to prepare on their own and simply take the final exams with everyone else. It was kind of like independent home schooling. It was known as the equivalency diploma and was very much similar to the American GED – the General Educational Development. Hamid was seriously planning to go this route and get his high school equivalency diploma.
The next year went by very rapidly between teaching his morning classes at the air force, studying and preparing for the equivalency exams, and spending time with the first ever girlfriend of his life.
Nazi was a petite-figured, freckled-faced, green-eyed seventeen-year-old girl, who studied in the same class with Hamid at Shokouh’s. And Hamid had fallen head over heels in love with this cherubic looking girl. They would come to Shokouh’s an hour before their class time, would sit on one the benches in the waiting area, and would whisper words of love to one another. After the class, Hamid would walk Nazi home. Their physical contact never went beyond the innocent hand holding on these walks. For Hamid, everything else was left to the moments of high soaring imagination during his nocturnal hours when he resorted to the lonely art of self-satisfaction.
This was how Hamid entered the teaching profession. He might have just as easily come across an ad for construction workers or salesclerks and become a bricklayer or a salesperson. Everything worked to his favor though. His age was not held against him but worked in his favor as it aroused the willingness in others to be supportive of him. Everyone marveled at such a young man doing so well on a difficult exam, or in the meticulous elimination process of the teachers training course. General Compani, to whom he had been introduced in the graduation party, had expressed satisfaction that, “We should be proud that a young Iranian man has been able to perform so outstandingly among a group of American and British people. We are proud of you, young man!”
During the next year, Hamid scored a few more accomplishments that were enough to restore the faith of his hard-to-please father. He successfully passed all his high school equivalency exams and received his diploma. He took part in the Michigan Proficiency Exam at the Iran-America society and passed it with honors. When the certificate was awarded to him by the US ambassador in a ceremony at Iran-America Cultural Center, his father kept pointing to him proudly telling everyone, “That’s my son! That my son!” the next day he framed the certificate and hung it on the wall in the living room next to Hamid’s newly received high school diploma.
A few months later, Hamid successfully passed the university entrance exam, the envy of every youth in Iran and the highest degree of pride that a child could bring to his parents those days – and even today.
In Iran, the number of institutions of higher educations – universities and colleges – has never been proportionate with the huge number of students, who graduate from high schools annually with the intention of pursuing their higher education. Many more applicants that universities and colleges can admit apply to be enrolled. As a result, there has always been an entrance exam in which only the best high school graduates can obtain a high enough score to allow them to attend. The majority of applicants are usually left behind. Most male students who fail the university entrance exam end up end up being drafted into the army. By the time they complete the military service after two years, they have been away from academic environments long enough not to be able to start studying again. Female students, who fail, remain at home with their parents. They try the exam again in the following years, and are ultimately married off to the first well-to-do suitor that knocks on their door.
During that summer of 1968, Hamid had quite a few reasons to be thankful to God for: He had received his high school diploma; he had a prestigious job; he was soon to start going to college. He walked tall. His parents were proud of him. And best of all, Nazi, his freckled-face, green-eyed girlfriend was proud of him. Up until then, every time someone referred to Hamid as her boyfriend, she had been quick to laugh the idea away, saying, “Oh, no; we’re just friends!” Now, though, she proudly talked about him as “my Boyfriend.” On their evening walks to Nazi’s home, she would now let Hamid put his arm around her waist. They never went all the way to Nazi’s door. Her mom did not approve of their friendship. As a rule, they said goodbye just before Nazi turned into her street. They paused there holding hands for a fleeting minute before Hamid reluctantly let go of Nazi’s hand. Nazi would then walk off, and Hamid would stand there looking as she walked towards her home. He would not leave until she disappeared behind her door after a last stealthy look behind to see if he was still there.
Hamid would then return home, and in his imaginations, he would take up where they had left off in the safety of his room. Those hot summer nights of early September quickly elapsed though leaving in their wake a sweet warm feeling that has nostalgically lingered in Hamid’s memories up until this day.
What happened to Nazi? How could you forget her, Hamid? Wasn’t she the purest love of your life? Wasn’t she the cherubic looking, innocent girl you wanted to spend your life with? How many summer nights did you spend immersed in the tingling sensation of the warm thought of making love to her? How many restless hours did you spend sitting on the wood benches in that small waiting room at Shokouh’s with your eyes glued to the door for Nazi to show up?
That Fall, Nazi went to Shiraz, a city of about five hundred miles south of the capital, to attend the Pahlavi university. Her score on the university entrance exam was not high enough to qualify her for the institutes of higher education in Tehran. With her gone, the colorful butterflies that teemed the city part, where they so often took strolls, disappeared too. By the time the maples and poplars that lined the streets of Tehran had shed their clothes in anticipation of the unrelenting caress of the autumn winds, and the first winter snow had covered the streets of the city in its white shroud, Hamid had completely forgotten Nazi and no longer warmed up in the shameless thought of private minutes with her. He now warmed up in the real bosoms of a real girl, who did not possess Nazi’s cherubic innocence, but was sensuously real. Susan, her name was. And she was voluptuous and curvy, with big black eyes that seemed to read Hamid’s every desire responding to them with the intuitive know-how of a natural female.
Hamid soon drowned in her earthly warmth and submitted to oblivion the celestial warmth of Nazi’s love. He grew out of the youthful art of self-gratification and began to experience the mature craft of lovemaking.
The dirty old man – Dr. Shokouh – had managed to talk young Michelle into the thought of getting a divorce from Reza and marrying him. Reza was so hopelessly devoured by his opium addiction that he barely noticed the increase in the number of hours that Michelle said she was spending at work. She still had her classes in the afternoon, but left home at about 9:00 in the morning going straight to Dr. Shokouh’s home, where she gave herself up to the old man’s lust for a few hours before he sent her off to school for her afternoon classes. The sex was not that great, but the gifts were expensive. And this went on for a whole two months, until one morning when Reza had to call a cab because his car was in the shop.
In Tehran, those days - and probably even today – if one did not have a car, one could get around in a number of ways: You could take the city buses, which were always so filled up with passengers that seeing someone literally hanging on to the bus on its doorstep was not an uncommon scene. You could also stand at the curb and try to flag an orange taxicab. Taxicabs were mostly the domestically assembled Peykans – the Iranian version of the British Hillman – whose production had started in Iran way back in the early sixties. The factory was originally owned by an Iranian entrepreneur called Ahmad Khayyami. The word on the street was that the Royal Family – the Shah and his sisters – owned a substantial number of shares in the factory; but, then, that was a normal thing those days. Most successful entrepreneurs gifted some of the shares of their businesses to the Royal Family in return for favors, which included, among other things, looser oversight of the labor laws and regulations, evading taxation, and getting away with breaches of environmental protection laws. Although every part of Peykan was imported from Britain, and it was only assembled in Iran, soon it found its place among Iranians, who looked for every little excuse to redeem their long lost national pride, as the “national vehicle.” It was meant to be an affordable car so that every family could own one. The Shah’s prime minister, Amir Abbas Hoveyda, who was executed shortly after the revolution, had once said that he hoped one day every Iranian family could own a Peykan.
With the revolution, the Peykan factory was nationalized, although God only know what it means to nationalize a company, which has to continue paying royalties to a foreign company. Obviously in this case, the term “nationalization” was used to ameliorate the act of confiscation of private property in the name of people. In effect, all privately owned companies, in which the Shah and his family owned some shares, were confiscated after the revolution of 1978 and their control was handed to a foundation that was headed by the Supreme Leader of the Islamic Republic, Ayatollah Khomeini. This foundation carried the ostentatious title of “Mostazafan Foundation,” which, literally translated, mean “the foundation for the poor and the needy.”
Back when Peykan had first started its production, in an effort to uniform the fleet of taxicabs in Tehran but in reality to promote the sales of a company in which His Majesty owned shares, Tehran taxicab drivers were given easy and long-term loans to buy Peykans and turn them into taxicabs by having them pained orange, which Tehran municipality had mandated for cars that made up Tehran’s fleet of taxis. It is not that they did not initially consider yellow for the color of taxicabs, but then yellow would probably have been too obvious an imitation of the New York taxicabs.
The revolution did not change the rules. The only thing that did change was the number of Peykans that were made available to the public due to drastic reductions in the factory’s output. With the price of oil having plummeted to about eight US dollars a barrel, and the war with neighboring Iraq, which did not seem to have an end in sight, automobile production appeared to be more of a luxury that necessity. Taxi drivers were no longer given easy loans to purchase new Peykans or to replace their old ones. As a result, the fleet of orange cabs that, at one time, made American visitors to Tehran feel not too far away from home, dwindled in size and grew old and dilapidated, contributing, in a big way, to the pollution and unsightliness of a metropolis already torn and lacerated by the wounds of negligence and constant air raids.
To help this dwindling fleet, and mainly to offset the prevalent unemployment and underemployment, a number of companied sprang up that called themselves telephone taxi service companies. They hired people, who owned cars but were unemployed, or those that were employed but needed to supplement their income by driving for these companies in the evenings or on the weekends.
When Reza called one such telephone taxi service that morning, the dispatcher asked:
- Are you going to the every-day destination, Sir?
- What every-day destination? Shokouh’s?
- No sir, the Pasdaran address. We drop Mrs. Eftekhari off at that address almost every morning.
It didn’t take Reza long to figure out where Michelle was going every morning. She was surely not going to Shokouh’s, where she said she went.
That evening, all hell broke loose. Michelle was on the defense:
- Some mornings, we had to have our meeting over at Dr. Shokouh’s house. So I went there. Everyone else was there, too. Do you have a problem with that?
- You’re telling me that you went to this guy, Dr. Shokouh’s, house every morning for two months for meetings? Do you expect me to believe that?
Michelle felt justified in what she had done. There was no reason to be on the defensive. She did not have to admit any wrongdoing voluntarily, but if Reza found out what had really been going on, so be it! She was a free woman; she could choose to do what she wanted to do. She did not have to stoop to the level of women in this backward Islamic culture.
- You tell me Reza; why do you think I went to Dr. Shokouh’s house every day? Are you trying to say that I went there for something other than work? Come on Reza! Stop beating about the bush! Say what you want to say! Are you accusing me of something?
- No, honey! I don’t mean anything in particular. It’s just that I don’t understand why you should tell me that you are going to the school while, in reality, you’re having your meetings over at Dr. Shokouh’s house?
He was clearly trying to back out of the situation.
- Look Reza; for one thing, I don’t have to explain to you everything that I do. My work is my work. Do you ever tell me where you go with your friends, or what you do when you’re not home? For another, there were days when we had our meetings at the school and other days when we gathered at Dr. Shokouh’s house. He owns the business, you know? If he tells us that he’s too lazy to make it to the school for a policy meeting, then we have to go to his place. This is part of the job.
She was amazed at herself. The American girl in her was coming out. She had managed to turn a defensive position into an obvious attack on Reza’s implicit judgment. It felt so good she did not want to let go even as Reza was looking for an exit strategy.
- I am not your every-day Iranian girl. You cannot lock me up in the house and dictate to me what I can or cannot do. If it wasn’t because I love you, I wouldn’t be staying in this god forsaken country even one more minute. Look at me! I am wearing all this crap just to be here with you. And then you dare accuse me of fooling around! You’ve got to be ashamed of yourself!
She pulled her scarf off angrily and threw it on a nearby coffee table. Reza was completely off balance by now. He was at a loss for words.
- I didn’t accuse you of anything!
- Yeah, right! Like hell you didn’t! What else did you want to say? Look at me? I didn’t even dream in my worst nightmares to be in a place where I would have to wear these things.
She said this as she tugged at the collar of her dark brown Islamic manto.
- How dare you talk to me like this when you Mom and you are constantly plotting against me? Don’t I have enough anxiety and stress as it is with all the air raids and bombings and gunshots? Aren’t you ashamed of yourself?
And then she burst into tears with an uncontrollable sob. In an act of desperation, Reza held her hand and tried to pull her close to him. She angrily pulled her hand out of his grip and ran upstairs to her bedroom. For some curious reason, she now wished that Reza would not give up so easily. The feeling of vindication with which she had gone into this exchange was now replaced with a tang of shame. She felt ashamed of what she had done. That was it! She would not go back to Dr. Shokouh again. She would quit working at Shokouh’s all together. She yelled out the last segment of her thoughts loud enough for Reza to hear.
- I’ll quit my job at Shokouh’s!
And that’s exactly what she did. The next day, she just slept in. she did not gey out of bed until well after two o’clock in the afternoon. Right after she got up, she called Hamid.
- Hi Mr. Kyani, how are you?
“I’m still here Michelle,” said Hamid sarcastically. “You’re late for your first class. Don’t tell me you’re not going to show up.”
- Actually, that’s exactly why I’m calling. Something has come up and I’m going to have to excuse myself for the rest of this quarter.
- Don’t do this to me Michelle! How can I find a replacement for you this far out into the quarter? What’s going on? Does it have to do with you and the old man?
- Yes, but don’t ask me anything now. Just remember if Reza asks you about meetings in the morning, tell him that we’ve had work meetings at Dr. Shokouh’s house almost every day.
- Oh, so now you want me to lie for you too?
- I lie for you, don’t I?
This was a small price Hamid had to pay for the many times that he had hooked up with Akabi at Michelle’s house far from the envious eyes of all the people at Shokouh’s, whose only intention was hurting him.
- All right, all right! You don’t have to get feisty with me! You know I’ll do that for you. Do you want to tell me what has happened?
- Reza has become suspicious. He was asking me why I have been going to Dr. Shokouh’s house every morning.
- How did he find out? Don’t tell me you have been having Ali agha drop you off at Dr. Shokouh’s house every day?
Ali agha – Mr. Ali – was Michelle and Reza’s chauffeur.
- No, I was actually thinking I was doing the right thing taking a telephone taxi there. Reza wanted to go somewhere yesterday and he called the same taxi service. That’s how he found out.
- Ooh, that’s not good!
- I denied everything. I told him we went there for meetings he may cross-reference that with you.
- What do you want to do with the old gynecologist?
Dr. Shokouh had a degree in medicine, which he had never practiced. He told everyone he was a gynecologist. He had nearly dropped out of Tehran University’s school of medicine when he had started his language school. A couple of years after he had stopped going to school, a family friend, a distant relative from Isfahan, happened to become dean of the school of medicine. He arranged for Shokouh to return to school and literally handed him his diploma in 1966. Dr. Shokouh was a self-proclaimed doctor from a long time prior to getting his degree. Not only was he a doctor, but he even claimed that he had specialized in gynecology. Close friends joked, who knew he was not a gynecologist, that he was a “boobs and butts” doctor.
- I don’t want to see him any more.
- But what if he calls you? He will do that, you know?
- You’d better tell him not to. Talk to him. Put him in the picture.
- So now you want me to wash your dirty laundry for you.
This time Michelle was able to detect the sarcastic undertone in Hamid’s voice.
- Please Mr. Kyani, please! You’ll do that for me, won’t you?
“It’s going to cost you, you know?” He laughed loudly, “I’ve got to let you go now. I’ve got to take care of your classes.”
Reza never called to double check with Hamid. Dr. Shokouh called Michelle’s home several times, but he soon got the message. Besides, he had just met a young widow that was soon to become his wife.
With Michelle no longer teaching, Hamid had to give her classes to Akabi, which meant less time in the office alone with her. A week earlier, one of the teachers, a Mr. Sadegh, who had followed Hamid to Shokouh’s from the air force language center, had caught them in an embrace when Hamid had forgotten to lock the office door in an indiscreet moment. He had gone straight to Dr. Shokouh and had made a big fuss about it. Of all the people, this guy, Sadegh, was the last that Hamid suspected to be capable of giving him any trouble. Sadegh was a member of the National Front, which had coalesced with the Islamic fundamentalists during the process that culminated in the victory of revolution and the toppling of the Shah but had changed course after they had felt swindled in the power-sharing struggle that ensued following the victory. He had been imprisoned for a few months for his staunch support of the National Front. For some reason, Hamid never thought of him as being the type of person that might want to judge another negatively because of involvement in an extramarital relationship. For some reason, Hamid had confused – as many do to this day – the conviction in Islamic principles with the adherence to the Islamic Republic. The majority of Iranian people are Muslims but that does not necessarily translates into an allegiance to the Islamic Republic. It does, however, mean that they are discomforted when they encounter a situation where they feel that an ethical code of Islam is being violated. Such was Sadegh’s state of mind when he had found Akabi and Hamid in what he described as a lovemaking scene.
- Islam condemns sexual relationships between unmarried couples let alone a relationship between a married man and a married woman. It’s immoral; it’s a great sin. Now, I don’t go as far as the Islamic Republic and say that they must both be stoned to death in public, but they should certainly be fired and not allowed to continue working in a position that can set a role model for hundreds of young people. Teaching is a sacred job. It’s the tradition of Prophet Muhammad and his followers. It should not be occupied by sinners.
At least on the surface, his opposition to Hamid was different in nature from that of the “sorry shit” and all the other traditional grammar-translation teachers. It was ironic, though, that soon Sadegh became the closest consultant to Iraj, Dr. Shokouh’s nephew, who had taken over the administration aspect of Hamid’s job.
It was the winter of 1984. The war was raging on. A few days earlier, Iraqi bombers had targeted the oil refinery south of Tehran. For quite some time, huge clouds of black smoked could be seen rising into the hazy skies on the southern horizon. When it rained some days later, the raindrops were black as if bringing down with them a message of death and destruction to a city already dead in the wake of long blackout, and partially destroyed by air raids and many years of neglect.
Akabi and her family finally left for Cyprus just before Christmas that year. Two days before their departure, she and Hamid got together at Michelle’s house for a last time. After a passionate reunion, between small kisses and smooth caresses, which, they wished, would never end, they promised to remain for one another forever.
- As soon as I receive my Green Card, I’ll get a divorce. The only reason I’m still in this marriage is my Green Card.
- And I just have no reason to remain in mine. I’m going to sell my car, raise some money, and try to join you in the States. Keep writing me from Cyprus. If you give me a phone number once you get there, I’ll surely call you. I cannot imagine life without you.
And more kisses and gentle caresses! Two days later, Akabi was gone. In some ways, it was a relief. Hamid’s enemies could no longer take advantage of the rumors about him and Akabi to keep him under constant threat. But Hamid’s mind was made up. He was determined to leave. He would go to the States, where he could be with Akabi free from the worry of being constantly plagued by the Islamic regime for loving, where they would not smell your mouth for alcohol at every intersection, where love is not a crime. In no time, he would arrange for Rose and Ramin to join him. Niloo could do whatever she wanted to do. She did not deserve Hamid. Despite her academic background, despite her years of education in England, she belonged in the Islamic Republic; she belonged to a culture that glorified reactionary opposition to any sort of change, a culture that was heavily invested in the past and was averse to attempting new ideas. Revolution, in this culture, meant a turnabout to the past rather than a change towards the future. Is this the dilemma of all declining civilizations? The plague of the Iranians appears to be in their nostalgic longing for the glory of the olden times rather than looking forward to building more glorious times at a higher level of history’s spiraling upward movement. Bringing back the past seems to be the mentality. Hamid could not give in to this backward mentality. He had to move on.
For the five years that he had been away from Shokouh’s, during his voluntary exile at the Caspian, all those people that had stayed on with the school and were now acrimoniously undermining the changes that he had brought about, had been, time and again, given the opportunity to introduce some new program that might stop or slow the constant decline of Shokouh’s English Institute. None had been able to do anything. Hamid came back after five years and put together a change that restored the name and the good standing of Shokouh’s once again as a leading school in teaching English as a second language in Iran. The “sorry shit” and his team of grammar teachers belonged to the past, a past that had, at one time, been gloriously successful. But they had become petrified in the past, much like the whole nation, which was petrified in the abolished antiquities of fifteen hundred years ago, when Islamic laws were deemed to be progressive for their time.
He had to leave, not just because he was in love with Akabi and longed for her loving touch during every minute of his waking time, but because he wanted to run away from this society in which the majority of people slumbered in the past. He wanted to go to a place, where hope and change are values that are held high.
Once Akabi was gone and with his authority and status sharply curbed at Shokouh’s, Hamid plunged in a state of deep depression. His wakeful night did not seem to have a dawn at their end. The days at work were not fulfilling any longer. Even with Akabi gone, the paranoia of persecution at the hands of the Islamic Republic’s “Ethics Corps” for his forbidden relationship with a married woman continued to haunt him. But he loved her; he loved her with every cell in his body. And what was wrong with that? Why don’t this backward thinking lot want to realize that this greatest drive of all human motivations, this splendid phenomenon that is called love, is a sacred thing?
The paranoia refused to leave him alone. He had become suspicious of everyone and everything. Everyone seemed to be plotting against him in a consorted effort. His fear was not entirely groundless, of course. One morning, he found a piece of paper glued to the door of the small office he had been confined to with a note that said: “Don’t think your dirty relationship with the Armenian whore will go unpunished!”
The Armenian whore! Far from it! Akabi was an angel. She was the most innocent soul he had ever come across. She was the personification of the best smelling fragrances in the world. In her wake, she left a trail of vitality as she walked. With her, came the spring blossoms in the dead of the winter. How could they not see all that? Were they blind? How could they allow themselves to call her a whore? It was so unfair.
He took the note to Dr. Shokouh. He was almost sure that the “sorry shit” was behind it. He must have provoked one of his surrogates to do this.
- Look Doc, you need to tell this guy to stop doing these things. He may hurt me in this way, but I’ll make sure he goes down with me. It’s not like he is the prophet’s son, free from all sins! Everyone knows about his affairs with Ms. Sharifi. How would he like me to stick a note like this on his door?
- Calm down, son! How are you so sure he is behind this? Just forget about it. No one can hurt you. Akabi is gone. What can they do? How can they prove anything? It’s all hearsay, other people’s words against yours. Just let go!
He was right. Hamid had to stop being so paranoiac. But fear refused to leave him. it was nestled in his brain cells and sent shivers down his spine everyone he saw someone in the dark green uniform of the Revolutionary Guards. It was not so much the fear of punishment per se but the fallout from the revelation of an affair he had always vehemently denied, and the sense of vindication and the satisfaction that it would bring his sworn enemies. Haunted by these thoughts, he would stay awake in his bed night after night, while Niloo and the kids were sound asleep. Niloo never asked what he was being troubled by; she probably didn’t even find out, or bother to find out, if her husband was being perplexed by something. As long as he was able to put food on the table and to pay for the heating of their apartment during those early months of winter, she did not think much about anything else. With the electricity rationed out due to fuel shortages caused by the ongoing war, and the long blackouts that followed every air raid, they had to depend on kerosene heaters to keep their home warm. Many a day, Hamid had to stand in long queues to buy kerosene before going off to work. They had to eat and sleep in the one bedroom in their relatively large apartment that they were able to keep warm, because their ration of kerosene was not enough to heat the whole apartment. While Niloo was unaware of her husband’s plight, and did not even care to notice the change in his disposition, Hamid was completely alone in grappling with his deep trepidation. He had to think of strategies to help him through his dire dilemma.
He picked up reading. For many years, after he had graduated from college, his reading had been confined to non-fiction, specifically literature that had to do with the teaching of English as a foreign language. During his voluntary exile in Babolsar, he had read quite a few books on history and politics. Then one evening, when word had gone around that the Revolutionary Guards were going from house to house looking for counter revolutionary books and literature, Niloo and Hamid had made a big fire in their fireplace and had burned over two hundred books and a lot of political pamphlets and journals. That late spring evening, in that township close to Babolsar, where they lived, smoke could be seen coming out of the chimneys of the handful of summerhouses whose owners had occupied with the fear that the government would confiscate the non-occupied ones. As he threw the books into the fire, he could not help but think of Guy Montag, the character in Ray Bradbury’s Fahrenheit 451. What book would he choose to memorize if he were caught up in the same circumstances? Wasn’t he in the same situation right now? He was sorry he had not memorized any of the books that he was burning. Niloo, on the other hand, appeared to be ecstatic at the sight of the raging fire. She laughed like a child.
Every now and then, during all these years of non-fiction reading, the translation of a novel or an original Persian fiction stood out against the eventless backdrop of Iranian literature, which had for long been quelled by the atmosphere of censorship and strict scrutiny. At such times, Hamid felt compelled to read these works. Beh Azin’s translations of the works of French writer, Romain Rolland and Russian novelist, Mikhail Sholokhov, were among such works. Hamid had to let Sholokhov’s “And Quiet Flows the Don” burn with the rest of the so-called counter-revolutionary literature that he possessed. Still another novel that Hamid read with enthusiasm during this non-fiction reading period was Mahmood Dowlatabadi’s colossal work “Kelidar,” which, he thought, could have been three separate stories, or at least a trilogy.
He now resorted to reading non-fiction again as a therapeutic means to ward off the paranoia that had nested in his mind and did not appear to want to leave him even as the initial cause of it no longer existed in the realm of reality.
Sunday, June 22, 2008
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