“That book puts me in mind of my dog Sherpa,” said my grandfather over a dinner of local beef and sautéed spinach and mushrooms. The book in question was The House of The Mosque, which I lent my 92-year-old (soon to be 93) grandfather this weekend. He sat there quietly Saturday afternoon – after looking at Egypt pictures – and with Algy on his lap he ignoring the first two games of the Elite Eight in order to read (or skim) the book.
My grandfather lived in Iran from 1972 until December 1976[1], he spent his first two years there with the United States Department of State, and upon his retirement he ran the Iran-America Cultural Society in Isfahan. Along with the Society was an American School – and by the time he left Isfahan in 1976 there were thousands of Americans there – many working for companies involved in weaponry. I had lent him the book, with some trepidation on my part, as there were things in it that I knew he would not like, as he worked for years for the American Government, and I also knew that he had been given recently many books about Iran but that he had not yet read one. In this case he started to read it, and maybe because it’s a well-written novel, he did not hide it on a shelf or forget about it as he often does. (Can you tell I come from a family of bibliophiles on both sides?) The book brought up memories of that era – and while he did not agree with all that the author wrote, he found it interesting and for the rest of the night told active stories about the time.
Sherpa, it turns out, whom I remember as a fun warm dog that was always around my grandparent’s place in Clearwater, was a second generation Tibetan Terrier, given to them by a friend in the corporate world who came to visit Isfahan. One night, the dog would not stop barking – waking up my grandparents – who called the police. Sherpa chased two people off the property – the police determined that they had scaled a steep fence to get in and out.
At the time, my grandparents wrote it off as robbery. Although they lived in Iran, they lived in a bubble, even though my grandfather through his security work at the embassy had close ties with the CIA. They worked with thousands of people who supported the west, or were American themselves. Youths turned out in droves to attend shows put on by the cultural center, including one where my grandfather put on a wig and played an American Jazz set (to this day my grandfather plays the piano, he put himself through college playing piano and trumpet throughout Northern New York and on cruise ships that took him to Europe and back in the 1930s – on one of these trips he took a detour into Germany where he was run out of the country for taking to many pictures of what the Nazi’s were doing there as they were, rightly, skeptical of his motives). After this set he went backstage, took off the wig, and returned to the audience to see other parts of the program – according to him, no one suspected that he had been the one playing.
After reading the book though, and of course the developments in Iran over the last 30 years he now questions if instead the two men were coming to his house to target him. At the time he was there, Isfahan did not have a formal American consulate – even though many Americans lived in the area. This was partly due to the quick growth of the American population – in 1969 according to him, only 16 Americans lived in the area, by 1976 there were thousands. There had been a consulate in the 50s, but due to the decline in population it no longer was needed. As the director of the society (which also had branches in Tehran and Washington which also ran schools), and a former high ranking embassy official, he was treated as the defacto formal American consulate, which may well have made him and his wife a target for some of the extremists rising at the time.
According to my grandfather, the CIA and others misjudged the power of the extremist. They were not focused on, or aware of the rise of the religious right in the country, and were focusing instead on threats from other regions – such as the Soviets. The House of the Mosque touches on these groups when the children of the family join the communist youth undergrounds both before and after the revolution.
Perhaps his biggest complaint with the book was the portrayal of the Shah as an American stooge. To his knowledge this was not the case. Even after the Shah was deposed and reinstated by the Americans, the Americans were not providing him weapons or running him through the CIA. All of this changed when Nixon came to power and the two brought over the weapons dealers who put factories for munitions in areas like Isfahan, but prior to that, from his first visit to Iran in 1963 until Nixon the Shah was independent, and he believed his CIA colleagues would not have been able to hide the truth if they were running the country. While there may have been a perception that the Shah was an American pigeon prior to that – my grandfather at least, denies it.
But he does it admit that the Shah did not help himself. First of all his extended family and a few ministers lived exceptionally opulently – my grandfather described one party he attended with free flowing liquor, hired prostitutes, and a scene that made his hair curl, with no hint that all of this was verboten in a Muslim nation. Additionally, the Shah could not delegate, and as such every decision, no matter how minor, went through him. There were piles of goods at port, as portages papers and releases could not be completed, and even the American Commissary suffered because of it.
At the same time, he felt that the Shah was attempting to do much good, some of which is highlighted in the book. The Shah alienated the ayatollahs and may have radicalized them through some of his modernization attempts. Part of his work – according to my grandfather – was to cut up some of the large landowners who were stifling economic growth, these changes threatened most the power families who controlled the religious institutions, and therefore many of the ayatollahs lost land and prestige due to these reforms. At the same time, the Shah set up scholarships sending thousands of Iranians to school in the West. They also attempted historic preservation and to strengthen cultural traditions while opening the world technology, acts which are alluded to the in book, through the work of Farah, the Shah’s wife who worked on the preservation of the town and cultural sites and opened the local cinema. According to the book, people emulated her, and women flocked to get her hairstyle even if no one noticed it due to the requirement of Chador.
My grandfather noticed some of this discrepancy between tradition and westernization when traveling from Tehran to other areas. In Tehran, people did not dress in Chador, but just 10 km outside they did. It went from secular to more traditional in minutes, with no warning, and perhaps, we should have paid attention to the areas outside more as they grew in power.
At one point while reading, my grandfather turned to me and asked if I had noted the story about going to Qom. I had, as it is a key section when the patriarch heads to a religious town, famous for training fundamentalist Imams, regarding the marriage of the daughter of the family. I had grown up hearing stories about my grandmother, and on one occasion my mother, being hidden in the car, lying down on the floor to cover any exposed blonde hairs as they drove through parts of Iran. The area they did this in was Qom, a place where my grandfather never stopped, but whose reputation was so poor that he sought to protect his family when driving through, which he frequently did while living in Isfahan.
Even so – he was so surrounded by a Western circle that he was not aware of the growing power of the town. He now assumes that the reputation it had then for being radical was correct, but he was blindsided by the power of the revolution, and did not know that so many had been caught up into a more tradition fervor.
His focus instead was on promoting Western culture and the cultural exchange. But, as he did so, people opened up to him and he learned many things he may not have wished to have known. For example, when meeting with the president of the Iranian Red Cross, who lived in Isfahan, in order to arrange for a venue for a jazz musician who was touring as part of he American Cultural exchange program, the man started telling him about family life. The Red Cross trained nurses for work throughout the country – but paid for the women in nursing school to spend their vacations on campus rather then returning home. Their brothers or other male family members for this was simple – sexually assaulted the reason when the family was reunited over breaks. It was unsafe, and the best way they knew to project the women form incest was to remove them from the family.
This, like the fact that 85% of Egyptian women are circumcised, was an open secret, but one, which was never discussed. Women, even upper class women, were subject to incest and abuse, and most likely still are. Prevention of this type of crime against humanity does not seem to have been high on the priorities of the Revolution, who first gained power, then sought and destroyed dissenters, and finally used the people as cannon fodder against Iraq.
In all, my grandfather and the author would agree – that this was waste of life, and that the regime seemed bent on destroying much that was good that was there. They may dispute some things that happened before – but would agree that a different past and future would have been much better for the Iranian people and the world. I, on the other hand, look forward to hearing more reminciances as/if he completes the book.
[1] I may have some of these dates and details off. I have asked my father and grandfather to review what I have written – and will update when they do so. In the meantime, know that I wrote all of this a few days after my grandfather told these pieces, and I did my best to recollect what he said.
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