by Terence Ward
My brothers and I, moved and dumbfounded, stared at the images. Fatimeh touched my head, calling us her sons.
“Your hair is not so red now, Terry.”
“But they still call you Red,” Rasool said.
“Maryam also has pictures of Kevin, Chris, Terry and Richie,” Fatimeh said. “All my children have one.”
“Wasn’t it dangerous to keep these photos after the Revolution?” I asked.
“No, not really. They are in my drawer. Now tell me about all your children,” she said to my brothers. Small photos eagerly appeared from wallets, and a new generation entered the room.
* * *
The Ghasemis’ long journey back to Tudeshk, Fatimeh told us, began a month after we left Tehran. Hassan could not bear the thought of working for another family, so he moved back to the village. But Fatimeh hated living in Tudeshk, where she had suffered as a child. Since we had just been there, it wasn’t too difficult for us to understand why.
“I had to carry the water for drinking, for washing. So bad for me, all the time I had to carry heavy water. I never want to see Tudeshk again.”
Hassan tried to put a positive spin on the situation. “I like my village. I could live there, no problem. I don’t care if I wash every day,” he said. “I don’t need much water, only a little to drink. I helped Fatimeh with her rugs, the cooking, buying things, even doing the washing. At night I took everything down to the qanat. The men would say, ‘Hey, look at the crazy man who comes to wash his children’s clothes and the dishes.’ No men did any cleaning. Only the women. One man even said, ‘If I were Hassan, I would throw myself off the mosque roof.’ ”
“Now all the men are washing dishes,” Fatimeh said.
“Yeah, I started a revolution in Tudeshk,” said Hassan.
“You became a hero for the women,” my mother said.
“And enemy for men,” Rasool whined.
“Good baba,” Maryam said.
When Hassan first came to Isfahan to work, in the five-star Kowsar Hotel, a favorite of the ayatollahs, he was alone, without his family.
“I never forgot your mother’s recipes, and I put them on the menu.” He smiled.
Meanwhile, Fatimeh slaved away on her loom seven days a week.
“Mrs. Ward,” she said, “I never knew what time it was, whether it was summer or winter. In the morning I woke up in the dark and began working by a kerosene lamp. After one hour, I woke up my children, gave them breakfast and sent them off to school. Then I worked until noon, cooked something fast for their lunch, then back to work. When it was dark I would go to the qanat to get water and do the washing, then again feed the children. I worked late each night and fell asleep in my clothes.”
Her woven threads had paid for the sacks of concrete and truckloads of brick that built this lovely home where now we all had gathered.
Fatimeh recounted again the dark days when Hassan and her sons were far away at the front. She remained in the house, praying day and night. Twenty-three thousand boys from Isfahan alone died in the war. Every mosque was now festooned with photographs of the martyrs. Fatimeh was one of the few blessed women whose men had returned.
Hassan shared his memories of the frontlines, the poison gas attacks, the slaughter of young volunteers. As a cook, he was commandeered to feed the troops, hundreds upon hundreds of them.
After dinner, tea, dessert and tangerines were served. As Mom and Fatimeh chatted away on the couch, Dad did the same with Hassan, huddled in the corner, leaning on pillows. We boys spoke with our contemporaries. Maryam, a dynamo with unbridled energy, also revealed she was an avid reader. Her favorites were Doctor Zhivago, Jane Eyre, the novels of Virginia Woolf, Daphne du Maurier, Pearl S. Buck and Balzac, and Maupassant’s stories. She adored Gone with the Wind. Her brother Mahdi spoke about digital technology and wireless communications, and asked if we’d like to meet a fellow engineer who studied in America.
The Ghasemi and Ward families are reunited in the courtyard of Hassan's house in Isfahan. Chris, Kevin and I are in front. Behind, left to right, are Fatimeh, Donna, Hassan's grandchildren Masoud and Saeed, my brother Richard, Hassan, his son Majid, Patrick and Afimad. The figure in shadow is our eccentric guide, Vaz.
Sitting before me was the new Iran. The Revolution had opened doors to an entire class that would never have stood the remotest chance in the Shah’s “Great Civilization.” Hassan’s children now served their country as professionals. An engineer, a naval officer and a teacher. It would have been unimaginable thirty years ago.
* * *
The night before, my dad had reminded us once again of the poverty.
“It was criminal,” he said. “Never in my life had I seen conditions as grim. To be fair, none of us really knows how much the country’s infrastructure—services to the desperate underclass—had improved during the ten years from when we left until the Revolution. But one thing’s certain. Whatever changes took place, it was too little, too late. Those forlorn dust heaps of villages, cut off from the world, with no medical facilities, no school, no decent roads to get goods to market. There seemed to be no hope at all.” And now a whole generation had grown up far beyond that, with a normal childhood and education, and many going on to university. “Quite a miracle,” Dad concluded. “Whatever corruption there is now, they can’t have stolen as much as the Shah’s entourage.”
This Revolution had embodied a paradox. Populist and socialist themes had been woven into a conservative theocratic agenda. What was billed as a religious revolution actually championed a radical social transformation. The revolt against the Westernized Iranians blasted open gates for the vast underclass. Gardeners, cooks, laborers and truck drivers saw their chance to break through unassailable boundaries. And they took advantage of it.
The vacuum left by the exodus of technocrats and the wealthy elite, who had managed the economy and occupied positions of power, was quickly filled by the mullahs and a peculiar coalition of religious nationalists, traditional bazaaris and Islamic socialists. They confiscated the Shah’s wealth and the elite’s private property, starting foundations in the name of mostazafeen, the oppressed. Those marginalized under the Shah’s regime were promised work. The government launched an intensive “affirmative action program,” with plum jobs going to the clergy, their faithful followers, and war veterans. Housing, welfare and education projects took shape. The foundations, known as bonyads, quickly amassed fortunes and were run like fiefdoms by the clergy.
Twenty years had passed. Many confiscated factories continued to run at a loss, draining the country of revenue. The bonyads’ staggering wealth and economic power, which suffocated competition, were now a sore subject of criticism as the clergy and the revolutionary guards controlled these immense assets, with no public accountability. But it was clear that schools, medical facilities and electricity had spread throughout the land. Universities flourished, with women students brazenly outnumbering their male counterparts.
* * *
Meanwhile, on Bi-sim Street there was a flurry of festivities and daily gift sharing. The following evening, the Ghasemi cousins came to the house. One remembered me vividly. Zahra was her name. Now a mother of three striking daughters, she fondly recalled her visit to our home thirty-five years earlier. She had stayed only three days, but it had left her with an indelible impression. By night she slept with baby Ali. By day I taught her to ride my red bike. Around the overgrown garden paths she rode, with me running behind, desperately holding her in balance. I was only nine then, and she a coy six-year-old.
Zahra’s cheeks flushed when she gave me her present. Her teenage daughters were thrilled.
I slowly unwrapped the paper. Under glass and in a frame lay a hand-woven pattern in red and green, glistening with a gold thread border. It was the symbol of the paisley, the famous cypress tree, bent but never broken. Her daughters motioned that I should turn it over. On the back, I read what Zahra had painstakingly written: “Your bicycl girl-friend. Isfahan
1998, Iran.”
“Kheli mamnoun, moteshakerram, thank you very much,” I said.
“Basheh, let it be,” she replied.
I noticed that her husband, Ahmad, was sulking in a corner. Few men like to be reminded of their wives’ earlier love stories. No matter what age. Ahmad was no exception.
I bowed in self-effacing taarof style.
* * *
We gratefully used the Persian word for family, fameel. In fact, during our stay in Isfahan, all the words describing family—madar, pedar, baradar and fameel—strangely began to sound like words of an English dialect, one spoken, say, in Savannah, Georgia. “That’s right, y’all,” Rich said to me while driving back to the hotel one evening, our stomachs full to bursting. “We are fa-meel-y.”
In my hotel room before I fell asleep, my mother showed me a letter she had been writing. It was to President Khatami’s sister:
Dear Madame Khalili,
I shall write to you later from my home in California. However, I wanted to send this note to you now to thank you for your gracious hospitality when I visited your home. As I mentioned, I lived in Iran for ten years (1960–1969), and my family’s life here was filled with experiences of such joy and beauty that we longed to return to visit the people and the country we love. Your brother has done much to ease the tensions between our two countries and we thank him for creating an atmosphere that has made us feel welcome.
We grieve with you for the death of your precious son and for all of Iran’s martyrs killed in the terrible war. We pray that with leaders like your brother, there will be more peaceful solutions to all future problems. We will do our best to speak of Iran’s good intentions toward all people we meet in the world.
I greatly admire you and your family for the good work you are doing for the community. You have accomplished much in your life and have given a fine example for all children to follow.
We will leave Iran in a few days, but I know my four sons will return again. We found the dear family who worked for us many years ago in Tehran, and we will keep in touch with them, with their children and grandchildren.
We join you in praying that all nations and people follow God’s will and work for peace and understanding. Your family’s good works give us hope for a bright future for our children.
With fondest regards,
Donna Ward
11. On the Banks of the Zayandeh River
The Persian love for the ornaments of life pierces through religion in the domes of Shah Abbas; mistily lost in their blue patterns they melt above our heads like flights of birds into an atmosphere part heaven and part of the pale Iranian spring.
—FREYA STARK, THE ZODIAC ARCH
In the center of Isfahan’s grand square, called Naqsh-e Jahan—Mirror of the World—we had agreed to meet Hassan at the immense fountain. Then we would plunge into the bazaar. I was standing next to the splashing jets of water when a young, muscular hunk with a dimple on his right cheek, abundantly endowed with testosterone, began to quiz me. Like sports fans around the world, he simply wanted to know one thing.
“Please, who’s number one in America? Hulk Hogan or Eleeminator?”
“It’s difficult to say.” Not terribly familiar with the WWF’s bionic heroes, I threw my lot in with the Eliminator, preferring any masked man to America’s blond poster boy.
“Ah-ha! Gre-eat!” he exclaimed, pleased with my choice. I sensed this was the local favorite. “My friends watch every week,” he said. “You must come. We have satellite dish.”
“Isn’t it against the law?”
“Oh, no. My father is very powerful in Pasdaran,” he said. Hearing the word for Revolutionary Guards, I smiled nervously.
“Next match is tomorrow, from Los Angeles.” He grinned, offering his forbidden fruit.
“Well …” He did not expect my lack of enthusiasm, but he gave me his address anyway.
“You will enjoy. Please come to my house.”
Meanwhile, gliding airily by the fountain, two attractive young women approached my mother, whose eyes were fixed on a carriage clip-clopping around the square. Speaking first in German, then in English, they voiced their anguish over Princess Diana’s recent death in a car accident.
“Poor Diana,” one said, shaking her head.
“Charles never really loved her, did he?” her friend asked, as if my mother might know the answer.
The fountain acted like a magnet, with its opulent jets of water opening wide like the petals of a lily in full blossom. While Kevin eavesdropped on the conversation, a chic young mother approached him with her baby and a friend.
“Pardon, monsieur.”
In French, the demure woman—Parvin was her name—bemoaned that her second language was no longer a lingua franca to the world. However, Kevin and she agreed that it still exuded “elegance and civility.” Kev then inquired if her shy friend, a doe-eyed beauty, also understood French.
“Oui, bien sûr, monsieur,” she replied with a triumphant smile.
Deliciously cosmopolitan and curious, this young generation seemed connected to the wide world beyond their closed borders—still cultivated, urbane and suave. A bonus was the clear distinction they made between American politicians and ordinary Americans like us. So far, everyone we had met had proved unfailingly kind and polite.
Parvin’s trilingual, well-groomed husband, Firuz, joined us. He had spent five years in Paris.
Parvin greets us in Isfahan.
“Excuse me, I want to tell you how embarrassed we are about what happened here in Iran,” he said.
“But reforms are coming,” Kev replied.
“We really hope so! Last night, did you hear on BBC? The mayor of Tehran, Karbaschi, was released from prison?”
“Great. That’s a good sign.”
“Our president speaks of human rights and liberté.”
“Yes, he seems to be a very intelligent man,” I offered.
“We all voted for him. Some students call him Ayatollah Gorbachev.”
A band of giggling kids swarmed around us. The Parisian Persian stopped them with his hand.
“Insha’allah, we hope he does not become our JFK. Why can’t the mullahs go back to the mosque and teach religion? They should stop being politicians and businessmen.”
“They love money too much,” Parvin said, shaking her head. “All prices are going up. There is too much unemployment. Our young people cannot find jobs. We have no freedoms.”
“The mullahs sit on their thrones and make promises,” Firuz said. “And their families get richer. Do you know the Iranian theory of relativity? It is special. All must go to relatives.” Then he leaned over us, speaking sotto voce. “You know why the mullahs dream in green?”
“It’s the color of Paradise,” I replied. “The color of the Prophet.”
“No, no, no, baba.” He laughed, grabbing my arm. “They love the dollar.”
For all the talk of a “hard-line pariah state,” something had indeed softened in Iran. Both the Pahlavi and Islamic regimes had earned grisly reputations for their ferocious security apparatus—the secret police who spirit adversaries away to feared Evin Prison—yet now people on the street spoke openly and unafraid, with typical Iranian humor. This stood in sharp contrast with the Arab world, where self-censorship had gripped tongues for decades.
* * *
At the fountain we answered more questions. Do you like Iran? And Isfahan, are you enjoying my city? Is it the first time? Are my people treating you well? Yes, yes, yes. Their civic pride was evident.
Isfahanis still earnestly boast, Esfahan nesf-e jahan, “Isfahan is half the world.” Although the English prefer to imagine it as Iran’s Oxford, Idanna disagrees. “Just call it the Florence of Asia,” she says. “Not long ago, Florence officially proclaimed Isfahan its sister city.”
Fourteen bridges span the city’s Zayandeh River. The Khaju Bridge, with its two pavilions, one on each side, and its two stories of arcades and stone steps, rivals t
he Ponte Vecchio. As Florentine merchants built their city’s fortunes on textiles and silk, Isfahani merchants’ golden purse was silk as well. And just like Florence with its Guelphs and Ghibellines, Isfahan had its two antagonistic factions: the Haidari and the Ni’matillahi. All credit for Isfahan’s renown falls to Shah Abbas of the Safavid dynasty, who in 1598 moved his royal court here from Qazvin in the north. Naming sleepy Isfahan as Persia’s new capital, Shah Abbas, like Lorenzo de’ Medici, jolted awake the city with his ambitious plans, which spawned architectural wonders. The great square, the maidan, where we sat waiting for Hassan, has no rival in the entire world.
Twilight along the banks of the Zayandeh Rud.
Begun in 1611, it is a majestic rectangle, seven times the size of Piazza San Marco in Venice, where polo matches were played before foreign ambassadors seated comfortably on the grand terrace of Shah Abbas’s palace. In 1620, an Italian diplomat, Pietro della Valle, reported, “Every evening the Shah lights fifty thousand lamps for illumination.” This much-loved king often left his palace alone at night to wander incognito through the bazaars and coffeehouses, conversing freely with his people. He listened to criticism and was slow to anger, except when he heard of corruption by an official. For such an offense, justice was swift.
In the seventeenth century, a visiting Englishman, Sir Thomas Herbert, looked upon Shah Abbas’s creation in Isfahan: “In my mind, it is, undoubtedly, the most beautiful square in the world … the most spacious, pleasant and aromatic … in the Universe.”
* * *
From our strategic viewing place at the central fountain, the four points of the compass offered up ravishing landmarks. To the west towered the royal palace, Ali Qapu, the Lofty Gateway. There, on the grand second-floor covered balcony, Shah Abbas entertained guests with fifty-course banquets that ended with tangerine sherbet, made with ice transported from snowcapped mountains many miles away. Legend has it that the clever king fooled foreign dignitaries about his military strength by parading the same soldiers in the square over and over again. Circling the drilling troops into the arcade below allowed for swift costume changes. Diplomats watched from the terrace, drinking generous servings of Shiraz wine, as four thousand soldiers multiplied into forty thousand. Reports of an invincible civilization galloped back to European capitals.