SABAH (5)

Memoirs of Sabah Vatankhah

Interviewed and Compiled by Fatemeh Doustkami
Translated by Natalie Haghverdian

2020-4-14

SABAH (5)

Memoirs of Sabah Vatankhah

Interviewed and Compiled by Fatemeh Doustkami

Translated by Natalie Haghverdian

Published by Soore Mehr Publishing Co.

Persian Version 2019

I spent the summer holiday of my fourth grade in a village called “Chaman Bid” in Bojnurd. Uncle Gholam brought our belongings with his bus to the village. Our belongings were decreasing in number. Every time we were moving, my mom donated one piece to our friends and relatives to make the hassle of moving easier. I had reached to an age when I did not like these moving and continuous trips. I could not have permanent friends because we had to say goodbye after a while. This bothered me a lot.

A few Bahaii families were living in that village. My father did not like Bahaiis but we had to reside in that village since the company was building the road from Chaman Bid to Mashhad. My father said that Bahaiis believe that our coming Imam has already arrived. They believed that their leader, Ali Mohammad Bab was our coming Imam and insulting Quran and our religious individuals were part of their religious rituals. Therefore, they are impure and unreligious. We did not even walk towards their houses.

We rented the house of a religious family and their grandmother was a “chosen one”. Grandmother had died ten, fifteen years ago. They said that she had seen a dream once in which she had been shown a few graves of Imams. She had followed-up the place which she had seen in her dreams and had found the old graves. After that the people had built mosques there and went for prayers.

Their house was very clean. We rented two big and white plastered rooms. We did not stay in Chaman Bid long. Only for two three months. During those two three months we went to visit Imam Reza once. Ali was five six years old at that time and suffered sore throats. He had a big tumor under his chin that they called “khanazir”. My father took Ali to Tehran for treatment, but it was not successful. My mother believed that we had to go to Mashad and Ali can be only cured by Imam Reza. We stayed in Mashad for three days. My father sacrificed a sheep for Ali’s health and divided the meat between the pilgrims. The pilgrims were mostly from Kuwait and Lebanon. We went to the shrine during the day and returned to our hostel in the evening.

When we returned from Mashad, Ali’s sore throat was better. After two weeks, the tumor disappeared. My mother was right. Imam Reza had cured him.

We returned to Borujerd when I was in fifth grade. It was year 1348. Mohsen was added to our family of seven. My mother was very happy for giving birth to the third boy. It had been ten years since we left Khorramshahr. While we were in Borujerd, my father bought a piece of land in Khorramshahr to build a house in case we return.

My fifth grade was an awful year. The lessons had become harder and my dictation was weaker than previous years. I stayed in the same class because I could not pass my dictation exam although I was a very disciplined student. Contrary to most of the students in class, I was excellent in math. I always hided my writing notebooks from Shahnaz and Fouziyeh. I felt shy that they would see my low grades. Later I understood that I was wrong, and I should have showed them and asked for their help.

Chapter two

After a lot of moving from one city to another, we settled in Khorramshahr in 1350. The piece of land which my father had bought was in the rear of customs and in “Santap” district. He and his two friends had bought 300 meters of land besides each other and had started building houses. When we had moved from Chaman Bid to Borujerd, my father resigned due to job hardship and long distance from family. Then he got an offer from a tricot weaving company. The central office was in Tehran. The Director of the company had offered my father a job in Tehran with a good house and equipment and facilities. My father had not accepted the offer saying that he does not like to atmosphere of Tehran with women not wearing covers and prefers to stay in Khorramshahr. Mom and Fouziyeh shared the same opinion and preferred to be in Khorramshahr. All of us liked Khorramshahr.

Same year, my father was hired in a company called “Gipson” importing home appliances. He was a truck driver. He carried the American imported appliances of the company to Tehran. The good point of this job was that he was not far from home for months and always returned after each trip. He went to Tehran once a week.

We rented a house while our new house was being built. The construction was half way that we moved in. although it was half built but we were very happy that we owned the house and did not have to make from one house to another. We did not have any financial complications but my father did not have the time to follow-up the construction of the house, therefore, it took one year.

The new house was located at the end of an anonymous alley in Seyhanzadeh street. The yard was at the rear. Its iron door opened to a small hallway. There were two 15-16 meter rooms in the form of L in the left side of the hall and the lavatory and kitchen were on the right side. Opposite the hall, within 3-4 meters distance, a door opened to the yard. We had a 200-meter yard. We had three date trees. Two were big and one was small which we called “Deyri”. The dates of Deyri were sour-sweet and all pregnant women in our neighborhood liked the taste. My father liked gardening. He took good care of the yard and had planted many flowers and herbs including Roshad which was a local herb.

Besides the dates, there was a small tree of Konar which grew three, four meters in one year and even had fruits. This was unusual for a small tree to grow that tall and have fruits. My mom was very worried and said: “we have to be afraid of this tree. It is going to be deadly for one of us!”

 Our guest room had a door which opened to the yard and a balcony. We used the balcony a lot for doing chores and drinking tea.

This was the first year that there was a change in the division of schools. Students did not go to sixth grade and moved from fifth to the junior high school. This was a new decision and the authorities had not taken any specific actions for junior high schools. The school hall of Parwin Etesami primary school had become first grade of junior high school. The school year had started but there was no proper arrangement. There was no book and curriculum. We went on strike. Our request was to have a separate class and special facilities. The principal announced that: “there has been a call from office of Culture saying that the first graders of junior high school will be transferred to a new school very soon.”

We moved to our new school called Abbas Masoudi junior high school in Molawi Street near “Sheytoun Bazaar”. Our school was a big and new built building and had ten, twelve classrooms. Saleheh and I were classmates again. I stayed in fifth grade for my writing skills and Salaheh stayed in same class for being naughty and lazy and we became classmates again.

The new school was far from home. We had to cross the Santap street and walk in a crowded place full of heavy vehicles. We were afraid of this route and changed it to the gardens of dates.

Fouziyeh and Shahnaz wore chador but Saleheh and I didn’t. We wore dresses with scarves. Although the situation of covered clothing in Khoramshahr was better than Tehran and Borujerd but as we entered junior high school, we felt that the situation is not very easy for those wearing hejab.

I had good classmates in junior high school. Inanloo, Zare and Naghdi were my close friends; we became more closed in high school. One I was in third grade of junior high school we went to bazar for buying cooking stove. We selected one stove in the first shop but decided to look around more. We visited a few other shops and the prices of the same stoves were different in each shop. I recommended my mom to go to the home appliances fraternity guessing that they will have a more reasonable price but the price there was the highest! At the end we bought the cooking stove from the store that gave the cheapest price and returned home.

I wrote this issue as an essay for my writing class. I started criticizing the fraternity and talked about the illegality in this country. I had read about rule of law in my social sciences book but I had not witnessed none of those rule of laws in the society therefore came to the conclusion that the country will not succeed when there is lack of law in it!

While reading my essay, my teacher was looking at me with wide open eyes and angry. I was the seventh student who criticized the social issues. The previous six students had highlighted the problems in the administration in offices, cities and even schools. When I finished reading my essay, my teacher started shouting at me saying that how do you dare talking about things which is not your business.

Our teacher ran towards the principal’s office. I felt very humiliated. All of a sudden the principle came and took our notebooks. Then she made us stand in front of the class until end of the school day with no break. She also threatened that if this happens again, she will hand us over to municipality.

I was sick thrilled. During the break, the gossip reached our Religion and Literature teacher, Ms. Zair. She was not wearing hejab but never objected to our sayings. She came to class and talked to us. She said: “don’t worry. I will talk to the principle and sort this out.”

She kept her promise and the issue was resolved.

Our vocational teacher was a Christian lady called Hakim. She had a special attitude. When we wanted to go out of classroom and asked her permission, she said: “no need to ask for permission. You can go out whenever you want!”

She was also open in talks and did not get upset like our writing teacher. Among the teachers Ms. Hakim and Ms. Zair thought like us.

Among my classmates there was a Bahaii girl who made Sambusa and sold them at school. Many students bought Sambusas from her and like it a lot but I was not ready to take anything from a Bahaii even if I was very hungry.

At that time, I because interested in reading. There was a library in our school which had fantasy books. I did not read a lot of books compared to the other members of my family but when I started reading sci-fi books, I became interested in reading and was a frequent user of the library. The stories of the books were very interesting for me.

I spent junior high school with this spirit and entered high school. Our high school was called Farah. It was located in Ferdowsi Street, opposite gas station. It was near my grandfather’s old house. I was studying in theoretical class. I had a good feeling as a high school student.  I had grown tall and my thoughts had changed. I felt totally out of my childhood world and my concerns were different. Different kind of questions about religion and life was being formed in my mind.

To be continued …