George Sand Speaks

My earliest memories of war go back to the very beginning of the tragedy. I was three years old, alone with my mother and younger sister. My father was on a business trip.

I’ve wanted to piece together my memories from those days and it’s been quite hard. Often times, I can’t always distinguish between events that actually took place and false memories I’ve accumulated over time. I question my mother incessantly about the details of those days. I’m confident that most of what I remember here is pretty accurate.  

The first day of the bombings on Tehran is a haze. I don’t remember the first bomb, if there were more than one, or even what they sounded like. I just remember my mother panicking and packing.

One of my cousins had just obtained his drivers license and came over to pick us up. In those days of youth and early manhood, he wasn’t really concerned with the bombings. He gave us a ride to my aunt’s house. With my father out of the country, my mom was too terrified to stay by herself.

My cousin loaded our bags into his car and proudly placed my sister and me in the back. He put on some music and started driving. I remember my mom telling him to slow down. I was glad he was picking us up because it meant he would stay at my aunt’s house too. Usually, he was too busy with his friends and girlfriends to hang out with me. This time, he would be staying with us for lunch and dinner and the wonderful experience of sleeping over. I would have him all to myself. He used to spoil me with Kit Kat and gum. I was his khoshkel khanum.

From that ride, I remember going through some dusty and curvy roads, all deserted. I know now that my cousin was taking a short cut through some undeveloped constructions sites. At some point, my mom really panicked and started yelling at my cousin to slow down. Apparently, there was some kind of explosion (“zedeh hava-ee”?!). I was told to keep my head down and away from the windows. I’m pretty sure we weren’t using seat belts.

I have no recollections of what we did at my aunt’s house or even how long we stayed there.

We made a similar trip to my grand mother’s house. At the time, my grandmother’s house was truly a fantastic place, full of every material thing that adds emotional security and makes a house a home. It was warm and smelled like lunch all the time. There were “poshtee’s” next to every chair or sofa because my grand father couldn’t sit on chairs anymore. And this place was always full of people.

The house was stuck between two other houses; it shared a wall on each side, with a next door neighbor. The front and sides of the house were walled off in a square and created a perfectly private world where we could do whatever we wanted, sheltered from the outside world. Sometimes, my cousin would climb over the wall and jump over it to get to the neighbor’s yard to see his friend there. He regularly used me as a look out when he did this on the roof. Back then, I wanted to be a cop and he told me it was good practice.  

My grandmother’s house had a huge green metal door. We used to call the lock a “cheft” and I wasn’t allowed to touch it. It was undoubtedly smaller than it appeared to my little eyes. Beyond it, a thin “joob” separated it from the street. Leaving that house was an ordeal for me because I was always worried about falling in the tiny stream. Another cousin once told me I was adopted! He said they found me next to the stream and if I wasn’t a good girl, that’s where they would get rid of me too! No matter how many times my mom made her apologize, I was still worried.

The front yard, or garden or “hayaat” had space for 2 cars. It also had a little garden and a diamond shaped little pond we called a “hoz”. The hoz had a hose! There were little white fish inside the pond. I tried to push my cousin in the hoz a couple of times but I wasn’t successful. I’ve played enough pranks on her since then and revenge has been sweet! Guess who was adopted next to a “joob” now?!  

The ground of the yard was made of grey square concrete tiles. Each square had a bunch of in laid diamonds. It’s a pattern you see a lot in Iran. As you walked closer to the house, you had to take a step up to the veranda. There were three huge benches covered with cheap and old red carpet. In the afternoons, the adults used to sit there and have tea while my cousins and I played in the yard. I didn’t like sitting on the benches because the carpet was rough and bothered my skin.

The house was 2 stories high. The first floor had what we now call a family room, which is where we spend most of our time. Many of my war time memories come from that family room. My uncle had a couple of radios tuned to foreign stations.  

The house had a sweet kitchen and I loved it! I used to watch the ladies of the family cook there. I’ve never eaten food that delicious any where else. One meal I never tasted was eggplant skin stew “Khoresheh poosteh bademjan”. I regret that now. As a picky eater, there was always someone to make “macaroni” for me, with thick noodles. My grandmother cooked a lot of various chicken casseroles, “khoraak”, my aunt made lots of kabob, rice, salad, soup…you name it.

There were two things I hated about my grandmother’s house. First of all, they didn’t have a modern toilet. And secondly, if I didn’t wear slippers, my white socks had grey soles in less than an hour. The smog never let you forget you lived in Tehran.

The time we spend there while my father was away is hazy. I wanted to join my uncles outside. They looked at the fighter planes or bombs or whatever it is they had their eyes on when they stared at the sky with their hands over their eyebrows. But I wasn’t allowed to join them. I was convinced my father would’ve let me tag along but they wouldn’t believe me. A few times I sneaked out and one of my uncles scolded me and send me back inside. I remember mooning one of them out of frustration. I also remember getting punished for it, in more than one Iranian language! These days, after a couple of drinks, my cousins remind me of that incident and they all think it’s pretty funny. Too bad the grown ups didn’t see it that way!

I recently found out that my father wasn’t able to fly back to Tehran for some time because of all the mayhem of the war. He had to fly to Turkey, take some kind of small airplane to Ardebil. And he took a train from there to Tehran. During which time, the phone connections were terrible. My mother tells me the spoke about once a day, if they were lucky to make a connection.

The last time I went back to my grand mother’s house, it appeared much smaller than I remembered. My uncle who lived with her got rid of much of the yard’s greenery because it was hard to maintain. The kitchen looked really primitive and the family room seemed very old and small. There were a lot of oil stains on the concrete outside. But the rugs on the beds were still rough. I chose to sit on the steps for my daily “asrooneh”. Sure enough, the green door was still guarding our privacy while my aunt made kabob on the veranda.