Growing Up in Iran
by
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I was attending a physics lecture in the
“Where is he?” the sergeant shouted. “Where is the S.O.B that shouted ‘Death to the Shah’ this morning? I know he is here! Show me where he is hiding!”
The soldiers spread throughout the auditorium. We were all sitting holding our breaths.
I heard a commotion behind me. The soldiers dragged one of the students to the stage of the auditorium where they started kicking and punching him viciously while he sobbed telling them that he was innocent. I knew that student and he never was politically active in anything. The beating continued for what seemed like a long time. Then a soldier dragged the student’s limp body outside while the remaining soldiers began searching for their next victim. Never in my life had I felt so helpless and afraid!
Suddenly I felt a hand on my shoulder. It was the sergeant’s. My heart skipped a beat. Was I to be next? When I looked at him, he patted my shoulder reassuringly and smiled. He said something but I couldn’t understand him. I realized later that he must have been from
“Enough! Enough! I’ve had it! I can’t take it anymore!”
A student was standing there sobbing and shaking violently while others around him were trying to calm him so that he would stop shouting. We all feared that the soldiers would return.
Others seemed to be ready to join him. Then it happened. As if by command, everybody started banging their clenched fists ecstatically on the tops of their desks, chanting, “Ehtesab! Ehtesab!” (Strike! strike!) Nobody cared now whether the soldiers would hear us or not. The Shah could have ordered his tanks to come and do battle with us. We did not care! We were not afraid!
Soon the news about the outrage spread to other parts of our building. Everything came to a grinding halt. None of the professors tried to stop us and they quickly disappeared. The runners went to the medical and law schools inviting students to join the Ehtesab. Soon there were crowds of students everywhere. Everything was happening like in a fast forward film. It was as if a dam had burst and a wall of water was rushing onward threatening to destroy everything in its path. We had had enough!
By then I had already recovered from my fright. Certain that there would be no more classes on that day, I decided to linger awhile and then go home. There were several impromptu meeting all going at once. Someone proposed that we should make placards and banners and hit the streets, but we were not quite sure what to write on them. The time had not yet arrived to start a revolution. None of us suspected that the trucks loaded with armed soldiers were on their way to the university!
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About the Book
Iran is a land of broiling conflict as dramatic as its landscapes.As Sasha’s family traveled to Mashhad, he watched the Iranian landscape unfolding before him. Not a blade of grass, only desolate salt flats with dark foreboding mountains looming in the distance. How could anyone live there? When he arrived in Mashhad, he discovered an enchanted land! The cherry and apple trees in the garden were blooming with white blossoms. Huge red and yellow roses filled the air with their perfume as they swayed in the gentle breeze. The snowy tops of the northern mountains glowed like rubies under the rays of the setting sun. There were magnificent Persian carpets in every room of the house, were they magical? Sasha lived in Iran from 1935 to 1954, a time of great upheaval and transition. Iran had just begun awakening from its medieval slumber to find its new identity.
About the Author
Sasha was three years old when in 1935 his parents brought him from Prague, Czechoslovakia to Mashhad, Iran, where his mother was raised. When he was little, he listened to the enchanting tales of genies and flying carpets told by his Iranian nanny. In the evenings, his mother would thrill him with adventure stories in distant corners of the British Empire that she translated for him from English to Russian. He went to Iranian schools, played soccer with the neighborhood Iranian boys, and roamed the countryside on his bike. He was deeply in love with the mountains and deserts of Iran and with Iranian people. When World War II began, Sasha saw the occupation of Mashhad by the Red Army. He was living in Tehran when the triumphant Allies arrived there to hold a conference to decide the fate of the world near the end of WW II. Sasha witnessed the beginning of the Cold War and the fierce struggle between the pro-Soviet Tudeh and the Nationalist Pan-Iranist parties. He saw pro-Mossadegh demonstrations when the Iranian Prime Minister nationalized the Iranian oil industry and forced the Shah to leave the country. After the Shah’s return, engineered by the CIA, Sasha watched Prime Minister Mossadegh being taken into custody by the Shah’s soldiers which ended Iran’s experiment with democracy and eventually resulted in the emergence of Islamic theocracy. Sasha came to America in 1954, after the Shah’s soldiers had invaded Tehran University and terrorized the students. After that event he did not want to continue studying there. Sasha is a retired naval engineer. He lives in Falls Church, Virginia. Growing Up in Iran is his first book.