I was staying in central Tehran at the
hostel of the American Institute of Iranian Studies, whose function was to help
American academics with some of the bureaucratic entanglements they inevitably
encountered. The hostel compound, which was an old house and yard surrounded by
a high wall, was located across the street from the Institute’s main building
where the Institute’s director lived.
By
9 AM the morning of the Shah’s birthday young men were marching near the American
Institute’s hostel, bellowing "marg
bar shah" (death to the Shah) and denouncing the kharaji and farangi, two
terms meaning "foreigner."
Sometimes the demonstrators ran down the alley in front of the
Institute. Even boys ten or eleven
years old joined in. The four of
us staying in the hostel took turns watching through a large keyhole in the
door of the compound’s wall.
Helicopters flew low, as if spying or poised to shoot.
The
young men we watched from the peephole were protesting against the Shah. They were not rallying for an Islamic state. They wanted the Shah out of power, and some wanted him
dead. The Shah had been a dictator
for decades, loved by some, hated by many. His autocracy emerged in 1953, twelve years after he had
taken over the title from his father.
At that time his popular prime minister, Mohammad Mossadegh, had
nationalized the Anglo-Iranian Oil Company. This action pleased the Iranian public. The British and Americans, though, were
furious at having lost their control over Iranian oil. They ousted Mossadegh in a coup d’état
in August 1953. After the coup,
the Shah’s rule became more imperious.
His CIA-trained secret police, Savak, imprisoned and tortured thousands
of political dissidents.
By ten thirty that morning the director
of the Institute entered the hostel compound.
“Don’t
go outside,” he warned as he walked in.
“Soldiers are everywhere.”
He sat down with the four of us in the courtyard. He folded his hands, rested them on the metal table, and
continued. “Apparently, the
demonstrators knew the soldiers were coming. They moved cars into the street to block them. But the army materialized some vehicle
that could lift the cars and put them down by the side of the road.” He looked at us as if he were waiting
for a response, but none of us said anything. “Okay, just stay inside the compound,” he cautioned. Then he left.
We
heard gunshots. Demonstrators and
soldiers raced through our neighborhood.
My heart was pounding so loudly that I feared the demonstrators could
hear it and would demand to be let into the courtyard.
By
two in the afternoon everything was quiet. I wanted to use the Institute’s phone in the main building to
call friends of mine who lived in a northern Tehran neighborhood to find out
what happened there. Bob, an
archeologist staying at the hostel, decided to join me.
I
wrapped myself in the black chador that I had bought on my first trip to Iran
in 1975. My right hand held the
chador clinched around my chin.
With my hair covered, my body concealed, and my face exposed, I opened
the hostel’s metal door two inches, then pushed it wide enough to stick my head
out. I saw no protesters on the
street. Three young men were
talking to each other several houses away. Garbage bags were piled outside the door of the American
Institute waiting to be picked up.
Bob and I crossed the street. In less than no time, the three young
men were standing next to us. They
lit matches and set the garbage on fire.
I rang the Institute’s doorbell, once, twice, three times. No one answered. My knees were shaking. I felt weak. I was perspiring.
I
was wearing a chador, but my American sandals were showing and they were flat
with thick straps—a good-for-walking style, the type that no Iranian woman
would wear in 1978.
One
of the men lit a paper bag. He
thrust it so close to my face that its heat tingled my skin.
"Come,
lady...come, lady...come, lady..." he taunted in Farsi.
My
feet were barely holding my body upright.
Sweat soaked me. My hand
trembled as I pressed the doorbell again.
At
last the Institute's director peeked out the door. We rushed in, pushed him out of our way, and slammed the
gate behind us, leaning on it to make sure it was shut. The director stared at us.
“Sorry
about that,” he said. “ We didn’t
see you, and we didn’t hear the doorbell.” He led us into the dining room. “We were on the third floor watching what was going on in
the streets.”
He
made me a lime vodka drink with the refreshing tart lime juice particular to
Iran. I sipped it, relished it,
needed it to calm my pounding heart and the intense disquietude I felt. In spite of Islam's taboo on alcohol,
pre-revolutionary Iran had decent vodka.
By four in the afternoon, tranquility permeated central
Tehran. In the early evening Bob
and I walked to Govinda's, the local Hare Krishna joint, for dinner. How strange—on that birthday, that day
of riots—to smell the incense and the mélange of Indian spices, and to talk to
English-speaking Hindu-practicing Western waiters dressed in saffron
robes. After dinner we strolled
back to the Institute. Stores were
open. Men, women, and children
were walking on the streets, talking, smiling, and laughing. It was as if nothing at all had
happened that day.
©Karen Lee Pliskin, Ph.D.
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