Chapter 4
Revolutions and Reversals
‘Firooze, a two word verb is called a phrasal verb. It can have a number of words in a phrase like ‘turn on, turn off, go through, get on, get off, take care, get along’ and so on’. I explain carefully.
‘Mr George. What do you know about Dickens’ ‘Great Expectations’, it’s in the exam’, she pleads.
‘It is a story about an orphaned boy’ I reply, ‘who is convinced that he is from a very good family and will one day succeed in finding them. And become wealthy, rich and famous. The frightening convict, Magwitch who Pip, the boy, feeds in the cemetery turns out to be his benefactor. He gives him all of his fortune and turns him into a ‘gentleman’. Pip’s friend, Miss Haversham’s ward, Estella, turns out to be the blood daughter of the convict. It suggests that some rich families had acquired their wealth from dubious sources. The story fits a trend in popular nineteenth-century fiction, the bildungsroman that depicts personal growth and development, usually from infancy to manhood.’
I’m teaching English as a Foreign Language at the British Council, Tabriz, Iran. Suddenly a brick comes crashing through a high window in the library where I am working. There had been rumblings and rumours about the rule of the grandly titled Aryamehr Shahanshah Mohammad Reza Pahlavi, the Shah of Iran who had inherited the ‘one thousand year kingdom’ from his father, Reza Pahlavi. In actual fact his fatherhad overthrown the previous Qarghar regime of Amad Shah in 1921 and, with the help of the British, had established the new monarchy in Tehran in 1925. Pahlavi’s secret police, the Savak, were the oppressive, cruel and hated spy organisation terrorising every Iranian family. But I digress. ‘Don’t panic’, I call out and carry on with the lesson.
Firooze is dresssed in a Chanel suit with expensive jewellery and uncovered hair, whilst in the Council buildings. Once outside, she dons the black veil known as a ‘chador’ covering all of her body and her face, except for one eye. I had been noticing in the streets that there were corner kiosks and shops selling radical C60 tapes of fundamentalist mullahs preaching a new, rabid Islam through the medium of magnetic tape. Favourites were the teachings of Abd A’la Maududi, the founder of the Jamaat al Islami, a Salafi organisation. These rantings were being blasted out from nearly every street corner. Oddly enough, the songs of Cat Stevens, who becomes Yusuf Islam, are very popular due, I suppose, to his conversion to Islam. He too preaches a message of conversion, hope and redemption through personal discovery. It is a period of directionlessness and uncertainty in a Britain, reduced now to a ‘Winter of Discontent’ and a ‘Three Day Week’.
‘I’m on the Road to Find Out’, he sings:
‘So on and on you go, the seconds tick the time out. There’s so much left to know, and I’m on the road to find out, ooh.
Then I found my head one day when I wasn’t even trying, and here I have to say, ‘cos there’s no use in lying, lying.
Yes, the answer lies within, so why not take a look now, kick out the devil sin, and pick up, pick up a good book now, ooh.’
© 1979 Freshwater Music.Ltd.
No doubt the book he had in mind was the Holy Quran.
To continue about the Savak. They are the Shah’s secret police and a very nasty crowd they are, too. People are ‘disappeared’ and many tortured for the slightest dissenting voices.
We are socialising at SnamProjeti, the Italian construction company swimming pool. We are sitting around the pool soaking up the sun. My flatmate, Maurice Trainer says to me
‘See that guy over there.’
‘Yeah’ I go.
‘He’s everywhere we are. Haven’t you noticed?’
‘Can’t say I had’, me being the trusting type.
‘You wait.’
And sure enough, he’s at the Iran – America Friendship Society do. At the embassy party for the Fourth of July and at the Council fundraiser.We’re obviously being watched. Firooze tells me later that she has been called in and asked to account for her association with us at the Iran – America Friendship club. She explains that she’s just jumped out of her Mercedes sports to see a friend and happens to see her teacher and talks to him. Nothing more.Nothing less. She gets off with a warning not to associate with foreigners.
The anti Pahlavi movement is gaining ground rapidly. People are mobilising. There are gunmen on the streets. I’m returning from a visit to Zeena’s family, behind their high brick walled Persian mansion. Her brother, Dawood is with us. I’m driving their green, Iranian built Paykan with a British manufactured (Rootes) engine block. I’m not accustomed to the headlights and I’m approaching my apartment in Baroon Avak Street. There’s a road block. I’m on high beam.
‘Eaaasstt!!’ (Stop) they scream. I can’t find the dip switch. Machine guns are pointed at the car. Men are shouting. Flash lights pointed. I had noticed that the militant groups were bearded, very Islamic-looking types with old ragged fatigues and out of date Soviet era weapons. They chant Koranic slogans. Allahu Akbar! Tagbir! BisMillah! They promote a Sharia law agenda for Iran and revere the Ayatollah Khomeini currently in seclusion in Paris, who is directing the Islamic resurgence... But I digress, I quickly pull up at the frontier post. Men rush forward. Dawood leans out of the window and explains, in perfectly cool terms, that we are supporters of Ayatollah ShariatMadari, the Azerbayjan area cleric who is leading local resistance. And we pass by with a wave. I manage to dip the lights.
Later the fighting intensifies in BaroonAvak Street. Both sides are machine gunning outside the apartment. Zeena and I retire to a back room. The dumdum bullets can pass through a wall and slay you. We are uncomfortable and concerned. There’s a knock on the door.
‘Can you supply sheets and pillow cases to stem the blood of the wounded?’
We rip up a few sheets and pass them out.
In the morning, we attempt to go out to get meat. The butcher’s is at the town end of the street. Approaching the town, we are tear-gassed by the Shah’s riot police from the top of the town square. The kindly butcher says:
‘Come into the shop.’
He lifts the shutters. Eyes streaming, coughing and spluttering, we gladly accept his offer.
‘Smell this vinegar in a saucer and imbibe the fumes.’
It helps. And we hurry back home thankfully, shopping done.
The Council offices are attacked with heavy machine guns by the insurgents. The Director has been advised by the Foreign Office to leave. And I am the only Brit left in the place. It falls to me to inspect the damage to the Director’s bedroom at the top of the building. They have climbed on to adjacent roofs and machine gunned the bedroom from two sides. What would have happened to Nick, if he and his wife had stayed in that room for a few more days, is mind boggling. The place is torn to shreds.
It is now down to me to sell off all the furniture and equipment belonging to the British. I hold an auction sale at the offices…in Turkish! I’d always wanted to be an auctioneer, ever since that time in Neath when I’d heard those magic words…‘Going, going, gone!’ Office chairs –bidding prices in Azari are Atmeshtooman,Yetmesh, Hashtad. A picture – small items at low prices - On Beertooman, On Ichee, On Ouuch, On Dirt, On Besh, On Alti, On Yeti, On Sachees, On Dockoos…Satelurp!(Sold!) I shout. Mr Harcopian, the office manager, banks the money in the Council account.
A few days later, I take Zeena’sHilman to go to the Ministry of Higher Education to try to collect my monthly salary. The office is probably closed due to the revolutionary activity, but I’m going to try. I’m driving towards the bazaar area of the city. Suddenly, as I round a street corner, there’s hundreds of people surging forward towards the car like a football match crowd. They are all panicky and rushing away from the Pahlavi regime soldiers who are firing at them point blank. Hundreds are killed. The bodies are piled up in a mound in the square. That’s me with a huge crowd of people surrounding the car, reversing back away from the firing.
I’m trying to remember my fork-lift truck driving days when I had to steer using the rear wheels. I’m looking in the mirror and trying to see my way clear. That’s no good. I stare back out of the rear window and try to see what is behind me. It’s hopeless. I remember my visits to the bazaar with affection. A collection of all the spices, materials, carpets, birds, fish, and fowl is on display in its historic domed roof corridors and passage ways. We buy tamarind, sumac and coriander, as well as silk carpets for what is to be our future home. But I digress… eventually I find a way through and escape from the scene and drive back to the flat.
We now have to leave. There is no other alternative. The Council decides to transfer all the remaining valuable Persian carpets that were not put up for auction and take them by road to Tehran – a journey of a thousand miles. I accompany the driver in the Mercedes truck with some of my furniture and belongings. It’s a fourteen hour journey in excessive heat, dust and on badly made roads. Eventually we arrive in the capital to join the British Embassy staff. I’m allocated by the Embassy to a very grand apartment in Shirazi Street near ‘pompe e’ benzin’ - the petrol station.The lounge room is as long as a cricket pitch and it has four bedrooms and a grand piano.
My whole library is shipped over by sea from the UK in a container. There's a swimming pool in the grounds. There are servants providing tea in the traditional Persian cups at every turn. Mr Rehani, the caretaker, is helpful and indulgent of our every need. Water melons for afternoon thirst quenching and luxury mutton kebabs for dinner. It was all heat. Long siestas in the afternoons, a bit of skiing in the winter – yes, Mount Damavand has a ski centre! My skis and boots are shipped from the UK. Shopping in the well-stocked malls is a treat.
Some weeks later it was amusing to see my wooden crate from the library shipment clearly marked 'BFCO Teheran via Dubai' being used as a habitation (yes, a shelter) by the local Iranians. I buy a Ford Sierra from the embassy staff who are leaving. It is bright yellow. I'm running around Tehran in the middle of a revolution in the most obviously Brit vehicle imaginable. At a crucial point in the revolution, I drive up Mount Damavand to make my eternal search for fresh air. I'm parked up looking at the great view over Tehran. A cop car comes up the mountain road. He pulls up alongside me.
'What are you doing here?' he demands.
‘Are you sending radio signals to the Eengleesh?'
'No.' I reply. ‘I'm just enjoying the view.'
Get down from this mountain and don't let me see you up here, again', he demands.
'Yes, Officer', I reply politely.
Why does everyone seem to think I'm a spy? As if the British Foreign Office would employ a locally recruited employee as a spy. Well I tell a lie actually. Because, come the final days of the Shah and the establishment of an interim government under Bani Sadr, I’m asked, as the last Brit in Tehran, to report by phone to the Resident now hiding in Bahrein about daily events in the country. No doubt the phone is tapped, but I send my innocuous coded messages to my superiors. 'The chicken has left the coop.' 'The bearded one is in Mehrebad.' 'B S has got on an aeroplane dressed as a woman.'
The Council had a cultural centre in central Tehran at Ferdowsi Street, near the statue of the poet. It was a bit cockroach infested, but not bad. The classes were running smoothly. The Committay of the Iranian revolution enters the Council Centre with machine guns and demands that it close its offices. English language is no longer wanted. The Director of Studies, John Warrington, decides to relocate to a quieter northern suburb of the city out at Afrika Boulevard.
We recruit, test, and receive fees from hundreds of prospective students. They are desperate to learn English to escape from the revolution in their country. But over the same weekend the Council is forcibly closed. And thousands of pounds of British money has to be repaid to the unfortunate students who have registered for classes. I try to teach English privately to earn some cash at the Residency, but I’m soon visited by a member of the Revolutionary Committay who says
‘You can’t continue with English here. We don’t want to see streams of people visiting a foreign compound. And we only require Farsi language now.’
‘OK’ I reply, acutely embarrassed about my open shelves of alcohol – whisky, gin, rum, vodka, Campari – we’d run out of soda. Either he didn’t notice them. Or he was not concerned as a member of a fundamentalist group of hard line Muslims taking over the country. Anyway, he departs with a smile and wishes me all the best in the future.
Driving into Pahlavi Street (now Vali Asr) in the city centre leading to Ferdowsi Street under the flyover. A traffic officer steps out into the traffic and beckons me to stop. He’s joined by a dozen other armed uniformed men. The car is carrying foreign plates and, as I said, is bright yellow. They want to know the owner of the car. I show my papers.
‘Why are you still in the country’? ‘Leave this country tomorrow!’
The following night Saddam Hussein’s F16s bomb the airport. They streak over the city at lightning speed. It is pretty worrying. We spend the night in the mountains away from the bombing. The city is in complete blackout. I try to remember all the good times – the tennis, trips to picnic out in the verdant valleys in Damavand. The long cool nights when the cicadas chirp and crickets sing, the locusts swarm and the bees hum, the ants follow their social systems. But I digress…
We have to leave, once again. I organise an overland return to Wales in the car. The only problem is that petrol supplies in Eastern Turkey are very sparse. I buy some used Feta cheese tins measuring ten litres to store petrol. They go in the boot with our luggage. I can still smell the petrol spilled over on our clothes. That night the car is impounded by the caretaker.
I have all our dining tablecloths, embroidered linen and expensive silver in the luggage. Pity we had to leave behind the crystal chandeliers and the winter sports gear we had bought. Never mind the grand piano. It’s probably still there along with the Peacock Throne. The handmade silk carpets go back to Zeena’s. The rest are sold. We manage to get the Ford out, despite the caretaker. My son, Seanie O’Flaherty, over from Britain, jumps in. And we head back to Tabriz for home.
An uneventful journey back to Tabriz.Seanie is taken sick and is looked after by Zeena’s sister. We take our last look at the palatial Persian house with its balconies, gardens and grand pillars. The oaken doors and windows are pre Pahlavi and solid in their structure.
Brass fittings and massive arches enhance the effect. The garden has a pool with goldfish swimming freely. There are pomegranate trees, hazelnut trees and pistachios. The vines provide a luscious crop of white and red grapes. Doves come to visit in the evening coolness. It is the last remnant of a more splendid era of Iran. If only we’d seen the slendours of Shiraz, the Mosque at Isfahan or the rain soaked hills, lakes and marshes of the Caspian region.
We wave farewell to Azerbaygan and carry on into Turkey. At Dogabayuzit we enter another world. Its coal fired houses belch out acrid smoke. Horse drawn carts made from the back axles of cars plough through the town. It seems like a century from the past. Its ancient fortifications and ramshackle houses form a dusty backdrop. Petrol supplies in the East of the country are plentiful after all. I pour my cheese cans of petrol into the tank at a petrol station. I just remember the Boy Scouts motto: Be Prepared!
With Zeena and Seanie driving alternate shifts, we cross the endless plains of Eastern Turkey. We drive down the middle of the empty roads at high speed. In Istanbul we pick up transit visas for Bulgaria. The grand mosque is a magnificent site and the Bospherous calm and inviting. Sadly, we have no time to swim or visit the attractions. Half way through the journey we decide, on the spur, to take a detour for a short holiday in Yugoslavia, as it then was.
We spend the nighten route at a ‘Bed and Breakfast’ establishment. Sean stays the night in his own room. There is no lock on the door. On checking to see if he is safe and well, he takes me for a burglar and jumps on me in the dark. In the morning, we laugh outrageously at a notice behind his door which states ‘Bad Breakfast 50 million Turkish Liras.’ Perhaps it was a misprint for Bed and Breakfast. However, it was a bad breakfast consisting of two dried up black olives, some cold coffee without milk, and pieces of stale unleavened bread.
In Yugoslavia we see Split and Dubrovnik. We drive to Split via a twisting, winding, coast road cut into steep mountain slopes. It gives us a succession of dramatic mountain, Adriatic and inland lake views. The busy port of Split was home to the palace of Diocletian. That evening Seanie goes out on the town and we stay at the local taverna supping the ouzo and cherry brandy. Sean returns and, over tiny cups of dark coffee, recounts his evening programme. He’d been talking to a local doctor – one medic to another - who says that he’s a Croat and those men are Serbs and those people are Bosnians. Sean concludes that there’s an agenda there. And that something dark and racially mysterious is fomenting. Sure enough, a few years later, the Serbs open up a corridor to Banja Luka and the Bosnians are killed, imprisoned and tortured in their thousands. Not another revolution!
Arriving home safely only to hear that Elizabeth and Moazzim’s children, Alan and Cedric – Alan is a software engineer and Cedric into childcare - are planning to emigrate to Australia. And we are not sure if we shall ever see them again.