a book of ordinary people

It all happened so fast, that I don't even think I got a chance to finish my watermelon. It was a big piece, I told "H," that it was too big for me and he took out his knife cut it into two halves and gave back the two halves to me!!!! We all laughed...
It was the Spring of 1999, and we were bunch of carefree kids enjoying our Weekend somewhere by the lake in between mountains outside our city. It was me , "A" my classmate and her two sisters one of their cousins "H," "R" and the three "P," brothers and couple of other kids. And all we did was eating our watermelons minding our own business..
All of a sudden from the middle of nowhere the army of god appeared with their guns in their tows in a big car. A heavily bearded middle aged guy dressed all in black got out and rounded us all up, yelling and screaming calling us immorlists , infidels or something like that. Growing up in Iran you get accused of so many things so many times that the chronology and etiology of accusations start to escape you at one point.
He had his soldiers to point their guns at us and then took each one of us behind a big rock to interrogate us. I was too young to realize that standing up for yourself and defending your basic rights as a human being will not take you anywhere when dealing with a fascist. And there I felt it, that slap on my face. for stating that I had done nothing wrong and will not give him my student ID. His next words after slapping me was "See you at the revolutionary court."
We somehow managed to get out safe, "A's" older and married sister was able to get us all out by flirting non-stop with the middle aged revolutionary Militia who deemed our eating watermelon immoral. At one point he told her that she should not think of him as a father but more like a brother because their age difference is not all that much!!!
They say they came after my paternal grandpa in the first national Iranian bank that he was one the founders with guns, and took him to the jail. Everybody was confused he was neither a communist ( Todei) or Corrupt. He was a man of morals and principles ( Not that Todeis were not), well known and dearly loved in the circle of writers, poets and intellectuals of his time.His crime " He published books," my father said. The books that were of historical value but were too risky to be published. He used to print them in his backyard, because everyone refused to publish and even print them. "He learned all the tricks of the trade of printing on his own." my father says, " He always said people need to know , they need not to forget who we were." One of his famous friends went to the Notorious "Bakhtiar" ( Not Shapour Bakhtiar) who founded " Ministry of Intelligence," and asked him to let my grandpa go. "This man had done nothing wrong, keeping him is just a bad publicity for the regime." They were smart enough to let him go. But My grandpa did not stop. He loved books, he later found a publisher paid him good money to continue publishing. He backed a lot of big projects. Again he went to jail, for publishing a newspaper during 1950s coup.
My father says" there were times that i would wake up in the middle of the night and think what would happen to our families have they kill my father?"
He survived somehow, and stayed a lover of books. I still remember his library. He had locks on the glass doors of his library. We had to ask for his permission to get our hands on his books. Alzheimer was the only reason he gave up publishing books.
And then there was my father, the young communist, they came for him in the hospital. "They said they would wait until I am done with my patient." He says.
My father is a quiet man, and all he likes to do is to sit and read books. And that is all he did with his friends, they read books and discussed them. They went to villages to teach people about basic hygiene,listen to their stories and read books for them.
My father got lucky, he only was in jail for a year, his family was well connected enough to prevent his execution. Besides two of my mother's students had important fathers who were able to help him. He lost half of his teeth during interrogations,they tried to make him talk but he was a quiet man who did nothing but reading books. He had nothing to tell them......
Nothing will stop my father from reading books but his death.....

Oh where were we? They came after me for eating watermelon, and no i do not even like eating nor am a fanatic fan of watermelon. I still remember those guns pointing at us,it was not as scary as the thought of going to revolutionary court. No one knows what happens there, absolutely no one.
They say when my grandpa came to jail to visit my dad he asked me dad:" Why did you do this son?" and my father replied:" Just like you did!!"
I guess had I been in jail I would have replied to the same question from my father with something like :" Didn't you teach us that eating watermelon is one of our basic rights as a human being?" I was lucky enough to be with someone who was smart enough to use her flirting skills to get us all out. She was old and wise enough to realize where in the world we were all standing.
I left Iran 3 months later at the end of June 1999.Couple of weeks later there were deadly protests. They attacked the students in their dorms while they were asleep, I guess sleeping is as big of sin as eating watermelon or reading books or maybe publishing them..

These days I attend protests all over bay area, wearing green and trying to remember if I ever got a chance to finish that big piece of watermelon that "H," caught into two halves by the lake??? I wish I could send an email to that revolutionary gaurd and tell him that I had a lot of pieces of watermelon by the ocean with my friends, and nothing horrible has happened as a result of our act!!!

Labels: ordinary stories

This entry was posted on Sunday, July 12, 2009 at 11:48 AM. You can skip to the end and leave a response.