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.