A Trip Down Memory Lane

Yesterday, the first of February or the twelfth of Bahman in the Iranian calendar, marked the thirty-first anniversary of Imam Khoneini’s return to Iran and the beginning of the Ten Days of Dawn (Dahe ye Fajr), which culminated with the victory of the Islamic Revolution on 11 February 1979.

Apart from the historical significance of these days for the Iranian nation, these days bring me back to twenty-one years ago, the tenth anniversary of the Islamic Revolution, and the very first time I flew to Iran as a guest of Iran Air, London (I was working at their Heathrow Airport station at the time). I was travelling with a colleague from the Iran Air town office in Piccadilly who was married to an Iranian and was able to explain things to a wide-eyed foreigner such as me.

When we arrived at Mehrabad Airport in Tehran, I rang Hossein’s parents to say I had arrived and that I would ring again once I was in the hotel. An Iran Air driver drove us to Hotel Homa but Aqa-jun, my father-in-law, who couldn’t wait to meet me, was at the Hotel Homa along with my sister-in-law and a maternal cousin almost as soon as I was shown into my room, and arranged with my tour guide for me to spend the night in their house.
I opened my suitcase in a hurry and retrieved a black chador I had borrowed from a friend back in London. My friend had explained that Shahrerey, or Shabdolazim, Hossein’s home town in the south of Tehran is a pilgrimage destination because the saint Hazrat Abdol-Azim is buried there, so a black chador was to be worn in the street (This has now changed.) I found the idea of wearing a chador exciting, just like a child dressing up. The trouble was that I was one hand short: overnight bag in one hand, bag with presents in the other and the missing one to hold the chador in place under the chin. I must have been a ridiculous sight as I stumbled out of the lift to meet my father- and sister-in-law (as it turned out later, the chador was too short for me.) Haj Nasser the Blacksmith, as Aqa-jun introduced himself, was shorter and stockier than Hossein and sported a three-day greying stubble, rough and blackened hands and a permanent smile. Sister-in-law, a primary schoolteacher, was the same age as me but still unmarried, so she had eyebrows still unspoilt by the beautician’s hand over hazelnut, almond-shaped eyes.

We drove through the streets in an old bottle green Peugeot, which, as I found out later, had been borrowed from a relative. The cars and pick-up vans on the road were wounded and worn out but patched up, testimony to Iranian inventiveness and resilience, the spirit of ‘making do’ that this brave nation recovering from war had to summon.

I had no idea in which direction we were travelling and could see no landmarks I could use to work out my bearings. Down a long street (Mostafa Khomeini Street, I now know) above the rows of shops the beauty of the old Qajar-period buildings showed through. Façades flanked by ornate columns and topped by lunettes decorated in polychrome tiles struck me like an old, faded beauty on whose face the previous glory lives on.

Eventually we reached Shoush Square (which technically isn’t a square but a circus) with its short clock tower, about the height of Little Ben by Victoria Station in London, and took the road to Shahrerey, straight and dreary, lined with low-rise mud brick workshops and frayed shop signs.

Aqa-jun’s house and blacksmith workshop was on 24 Metri Avenue, Shahrerey (Shabdolazim). This twenty-four metre wide avenue, hence its name, radiates to the east of Shabdolazim square and ends at the ancient fortress of Qal’eh Gabri. When Aqa-jun married my mother-in-law, they moved to Shabdolazim in the mid 50s. After a few years he managed to buy a house plot, where he had the workshop built, with the house at the back.

The entrance to Hossein’s family house was through a narrow ironwork gate that sealed the high wall. Aqa-jun had made the gate himself and shaped “In the Name of Allah, the Compassionate, the Merciful” in iron strips over it. He rang the bell. “Who is it?” a female voice asked through the intercom. “Open the door,” he answered. The door buzzed. He pushed the door. “Is it open?” the voice asked again. (This is a formulaic exchange: it happens every time. Identifying yourself through the intercom or on the telephone is the mark of the foreigner.) Aqa-jun lifted the thick green curtain just behind the gate and said, “After you, ladies.”

We went through a dark, narrow corridor and into a yard with an oblong pool on the left; I recognised the potted geraniums from a photograph Hossein had sent me during the pen-pal days of our acquaintance. Two more members of the family stood by the front door: his mother, slim, with the same hazelnut eyes and benign smile as Hossein, and his youngest brother, shorter and much younger, but quite similar to him. The mother hugged me and kissed me three times on the cheeks and welcomed me into their home. I took off my shoes in the yard, just before the door and was led into a room without furniture but with a hand-knotted carpet with intricate floral patterns on a dark red background (This carpet, the first real Persian carpet I ever sat on, is now in our bedroom. When it became threadbare Aqa-jun wanted to donate it to the local mosque but I asked him to donate it to us because, I joked, at the time we were poorer that the mosque. Now that we are a bit better off I have grown attached to it and can’t bear to give it away).

Trip down memory lane to continue soon.