The first real hint that life as I knew it would never be the same came in the summer of 1980. We were told our school, Iranzamin International School would close it's doors. There were many tearful goodbyes that summer, as we knew there would be friends we would probably not see in a long time. Many of my friends had already left Iran. As it was that last year at Iranzamin was less like an international school as most foreigners had left Iran. Most of the students were iranians. To make matters worse we were told that our school and others like it were seen as decadent, the remains of the old regime. Everyone was equal under the Islamic revolution so there would be no more private schools. We all had to go to public school. Our only saving grace was that they allowed us one year to transition from an english school to a persian public school. A special transitional school was setup, one for girls (in the Rostamabadian building) and one for boys (in Iranzamin building).
We were taught the public school texts although we had teachers who would help us along in English. This was the worst year academically for me. I hardly knew how to read and write in persian and now all of a sudden I had to do everything in persian. The year I arrived in Iran, I was tested for my persian language proficiency. I was given a grade 2 proficieny simply because I knew the persian alphabet. Iranian kids in my school studied persian for an hour a day, so while my grade 5 classmates studied grade 5 persian, I went off to my 2nd grade persian class. Grade 5 is a crucial year in persian public school system. You take national exams and are awarded a certificate. All the persian kids in my grade 5 class were taking the exam. I obviously could not. My mom really fretted about the fact that I was so far behind all my classmates, so she figured during the summer I would catch up on grade 3, 4 and 5 and take the national exam at summers end. Did I mention that did not know how to read and write? That summer I was shipped off to my aunts house. She was a teacher and she was going to tutor me. It was hell. I hated every minute of it. I could do the science and math stuff since I already knew them from having studied them in english, although answering questions when you can't spell can be a problem. The hardest lessons were Persian literature and history. All my cousins pitched in to help me learn to read an write. It was overwhelming. The only silverlining was that my aunt lived in a bustling part of town and I got to go out into the streets and buy persian ice cream and roasted corn from street vendors. I lived a very sheltered life at home since returning from Japan. My mother didn't feel like we were prepared for life in the dangerous streets of Tehran. We were only allowed out in front of the house to play with neighbouring kids.
My aunt had arranged for me to take the exam in some downtown district, were mostly underpriveledge folk were registered. Grade 5 certificate is the minimum degree you need for many menial jobs, so there were plenty of adults in that district taking the exam with me. As it turned out, it was a blessing. The proctors knowing most folk just want this certificate for a job, were very very helpful. They read out most of the answers. I was astonished. I'd never cheated or seen anyone cheat before in my life. I was so shocked I didn't realize for sometime that I was being given the answers. So I cheated a bit, specially during dictation. I still hadn't learnt to spell. The only part of the exam that I could get no help on was the composition essay. I don't remember what the topic was. Something about trees I think. I know what I wrote was God awful, it just had to be. All I know is I got a passing grade on it. My overall grade was 13/20, that's like a C-/D+. I didn't care. I'd satisfied my Mom that I had caught up with my other classmates. Didn't matter that I really hadn't and I still couldn't read and write. I had the certificate, so I would be placed in the same class as my classmates once the new school year started. I could finally go home.
So when I started 6th grade, I was placed in 6th persian. The first day of class our teacher decided to give us an impromptu dictation quiz from the grade 5 textbook. She marked the papers right there in class and handed them back. I was so happy to see that I hadn't flunked out. I had gotten 5/20. It was an F but still it was better than zero. Later I found out I had actually gotten zero. In persian zero and five can look similar. You get a zero mark if you have more than 20 spelling mistakes. I think I had 40. I somehow got thru the persian class. There wasn't a big emphasis on it in our school curriculum. And the teacher were very lenient. No one expected that we would need to use our perisan language skill in the future. The expectation was we would graduate from Iranzamin and end up abroad going to a nice college.

Again I digress. So having told the tale of my illiteracy, you can imagine my horror of now having to study everything in persian. The thing I dreaded the most was being called on in class to read. No offense to retarded folk, but that is what I sounded like. I couldn't read, and I hated the fact that everyone in my class had to hear how bad I was. I would devise all kinds of schemes, so I wouldn't catch the teachers eye and get called on. I think that was about the time my palms started to sweat profusely. I was petrified of looking like an idiot everytime I was called to read. This in spite of the fact that I was a popular student and all. Eventually I ended up practicing every text in advance at home in preparation for being called on. Slowly I progressed, but I had a terrible time with it. The transitional school had it's owm drama. We had some militant teachers there. These were revolutionary women, who despised us because we represented the decadence of the Shah regime. Us rich folk who really had no rights in the new republic, they thought. Boy did they hate us. One in particular comes to mind. She was our PE teacher. She wore a very strict hejab and was always after us to wear the hejab even though it was not yet mandatory. I don't think in regular public school they had yet to wear the hejab. But this was our punishment for being decadent. Forcing us into a school uniform and hejab. This lady was butt ugly too. She had an underbite, a nice thick black mustache and a unibrow. A right vision of a persian beauty!! She was so mean and vicious to us that we were scared shitless by her. One time we were so scared to meet her for PE, we locked ourselves in our classroom. We pretended the lock had jammed. We kept this charade up for an hour. By this time the janitor had been brought in to open the door. We were so scared of her wrath when the door opened that we piled all our desks behind the door and pushed at the door so they could not get in. By this time the gig was up. She knew we weren't locked in. She was threatening us with explusion. The principal finally came and negotiated with us to open the door. I don't remember what happened after that, I think we got sent home. We were in big trouble with the school. Parents got called in, but I think they realized their children had acted the way they had out of sheer fright. Needless to say not too many were happy that a place that is supposed to protect and nurture their kids was tramatizing them so. I think their indignation saved us collectively from getting expelled.

Okay so just to keep track of things I'm going to post a timeline:

1977-1978 Year I returned to Iran, this would be 5th grade
1978-1979 6th grade
demonstrations
Jan 16 1979 Shah left Iran
Feb 1 1979 Khomeini returned to Iran
March 1979 referendum
April 1 1979 Islamic republic proclaimed
1979-1980 7th grade, last year at Iranzamin
Jan 25 1980 Banisadr president
May 1980 cultural revolution, universities close for 2 years
July 27 1980 Shah died
1980-1981 8th grade, Soroush Azadi transitional school
Sept 1980 Iran Iraq war started
Nov 4 1980 American Embassy was taken
Nov 6 Bazargan resigned
Start of arrest of dissident groups
Talleghani died
1981 -1982 9th grade, Fadak public highschool, definately had to wear the hejab at school, but not out in the public
1982 -1983 10th grade, Fadak public highschool, hejab had become madatory for everyone in public
1983 -1984 11th grade, Fadak highschool
1984 -1985 12th grade, Fadak highschool, tehran bombings
1985- 1986 1st year university
1986-1987 2nd year university
1987 -1988 3rd year university, missile attack on tehran, missed an entire semester of school
July 18 1988 ceasefire
1988-1989 4th year
1989 Khomeini died
Nov 1990 left Iran

So finally, I'm going to start to tell my story. I'm not to clear on some dates, but I will edit them in time. Right now I just want to get the ball rolling. So my first memories in Iran as a teenager are from circa 1977. We had just returned to Iran from Japan, where we had been living for 5 years. I'd been going to a nice catholic girls school there. Life in Iran couldn't have been more different. First of all I signed up in a co-ed international school. I didn't have a uniform to wear and for the first time in my life my school was no a longer walking distance to my home. That meant taking the bus, which happened to be quite educational and not necessarily in a good way. Our bus I think had some of the rowdiest kids, ranging from elementary school all the way to highschool. It was quite an eye opener. I'd been going to a school in Japan run by the nuns. I was a very good girl. I was a good little brownie, and I believed in fairies. My world was devoid of anger, meanness. I didn't know a single curse word, and I was always nice to eveyone, sharing my snacks with my friends, etc. Well because that what fairy people did. Well I grew up very fast once I was in Iran. I was cursing like a sailor in no time, and reciting dirty jokes I learned from the boys in my bus. I never really had a problem making friends, I've always been the class clown.
Anyways I started 5th grade in Iranzamin. My teacher was Mr. Yowell. My best friends were Kathy , Kim and Cara. We all had simmilar background having been abroad and then returning to Iran. We got on fantastically. Mr Yowell was a very special teacher. I was lucky to been one of the priveledged students to be in his class. He was an older gentleman, single and it seemed lived for the kids. He was one of the kindest people I've ever met. We had this thing in our class, where at the end of the day he would read us a story. We'd sit at our desks, heads on the table and dream away. He always had snacks that he would bring for our reading time, and we all took turns going up to his desk to get our treats. He was famous for his sweet hot pickles, and he'd give a jar of his famous relish to one of the students every week. We had a patio attached to our classroom and he would bring out a BBQ and cook hotdogs for us. I can still remember the smoky flavour. He played with us at recess. He read us the Hobbit, and generally made life in his class a joy. I miss him dearly. So my first year back in Iran was all about adjusting to new surroundings. It was great fun. It was only in the following year ('78-'79) when the rumblings of a revolution started. To be honest I had no clue it was happening. We were really sheltered in my school. First of all the school building was in an undeveloped western suburb of the city. There were hardly any other buildings there, so we where quite out of touch from the rest of the city. While demonstrations were going on in downtown and in other parts of Tehran, it was quiet and peaceful in our neck of the woods. That year most public schools in Tehran were closed for the better part of the year. I remember my cousin who went to school near where my Dad worked in the city centre, only attended for 2 months. At home I don't remember much being said about all that was going on. Those were the days when everyone was scared of the SAVAK (secret service) so they still kept to themselves regarding any political views. My only brushes with the chaos that was ensuing in the city was, when we came to school one day and found the window to my classroom broken. Someone had thrown a Molotov cocktail throught the window. Luckly it didn't blow. It hit the teacher desk, and the fuel in the bottle dissolved all the paint from her desk. Of course we had no idea that some one was trying to blow our class room up. My other experience was the day they came by to tell us that martial law had been imposed and that curfew was 4:00pm. That was the time we usually got out of school and then it was another hour before we got home. We ended up leaving school around 3:00. Of course many of the roads were blocked so it took us longer to get home. The streets around where we lived (northern Tehran) were vacant. Fo the first time we saw soldiers with guns. At every turn the bus driver had to negotiate with the soldiers to let us pass through check points so that he could get us home. I remember when we finally arrived home, my parents were out in the street anxiously awaiting us. After that we had a couple of weeks of school closure, but then everything went back to normal. Our school was run by an American couple, many of the staff were American. We had students from all parts of the world attending. I still remember the fashion. Considering what really transpired that year, I believe the King left the country in Jan 1979, things remained unchanged at our school. It was as though time stood still. Back at home there was now a noticable change. My Dad, had reconnected with many of his university classmates, and we used to have monthly gatherings. These gathering became quite animated, seeing that every possible political view was represented. There were people from the extreme left, to devoted followers of Khomeini. These were all educated members of society, yet at these gatherings, it became a shouting match each convince they knew the real truth. Many from different ideologies were banding together under the Khomeini banner, in hopes of defeating the monarchy. I didn't know much about the monarchy. I had seen pictures of the King and Queen. They looked regal, and the romantic part of me, day dreamed of meeting the King and becoming a princess. So I guess I had no reason to dislike them. In all my fairy tales I'd never read about an evil King. My only experience with royalty was when the Queen came and visited my school when I was in grade five. We practiced for days to recite the national anthem. It was quite funny cause everyone had to learn the anthem, even the foreign students that did not speak Farsi. On the day of the queens arrival we all lined up in the parking lot of the school to welcome her. When nicety were exchanged we started to sing the anthem. Except that we were lined up in such a way that one side could not hear the other side, so we ended up singing the anthem out of time. It was a bit of a disaster. Later the Queen stopped at every class to say hello and a few select students got meet with her. She seemed very nice and I was in awe of her majesty.
So getting back to my story, it was a shock hearing people talk in such ways about the King. I remember thinking, wow, what a terrible injustice. How my people have suffered. Of course it never crossed my mind that I myself had never felt this injustice. As kids we are so impressionable. I remember this one gathering at our house when one of the guest had brought a tape from Khomeini. Khomeini was in Paris at the time and he would issue out these tapes to fuel the anger of the demonstrators. In this tape he was claiming his divine rights as holy leader to the Iran people. His proof was a demonstration of a miracle. He said that should you open the Koran, preferably and older volume, and you'll find a white hair , his white hair, among the pages, and that some how he had made it appear there. Well all hell broke loose. My Dad did not trust this Khomeini guy. He's an atheist so he saw all clergy as charlatans, and Khomeini was no exception. But his friends would not hear of his disagreements. How could he argue in the face of proof. One guy busily was flipping throught the pages of the Koran looking for the alledged white hair. When he found it he flung it in my Dads face. So what have you got to say about this Ardeshir (my Dad)? I think the look on my Dad's face can only be described as contempt. He turned to his educated friends and said have you lost your mind, lost complete touch with reality? This is a trick. To prove his point he picked up a old volume of poetry, and said I predict that you will find my black hair in this book. And sure enough, there was a black hair. My Dad then laugh at his friends and said, are you blind, can't you see this guy is pulling wool over your eyes. What miracle is this? The Koran is a book that is studied by the elderly in every household, the elderly have white hair and invariably in will fall out. The older the volume is the better the chances of finding that hair. Khomeini didn't perform a miracle he just used the laws of probability to fool you. You could see the doubt in my father's friends eyes, but they were still not backing down. They said he just didn't get it because he had no faith. Some of these same people that were so vehemently pro revolution and Khomeini, were later arrested after the revolution. Some ended up in prison for some time and even a few of them were executed. How naive they all were.