mish mash (and work in progress) for a story

Immigration and The Everyman editions (starting in 1906) was one of the first books i remember in my parents library; it reminds me of "Everywoman" and Every hu"man"i have ever known.

I was born from my mother who was an amazingly  beautiful  woman who had married for "attraction", to my father who was her first cousin.  They had grown up in the same community in South India.  My mother was the main personality of our family mainly because she was energetic and ambitious and rather aggressive.  My father (even tho full of  testosterone looks and behavior) was dominated by my mother who was probably much more energetic than him.  They did have traumatizing arguments about money  partly because he was living by the philosophy that each man or woman should act according  to his or her talents (and not roles).  She made more money and didn't want to spend it.  While  he   loved to stay at home after office hours, in peace, and wasn't social, she was the opposite. He liked to cook and cultivate plants and practice his Yoga exercises and read books. She wanted to go out to parties and mingle with society.

 In the fifties a married woman had to follow rather than lead, but he had decided to give my mother the power she needed and to keep supporting her publicly.  In a male dominated  Persia  a man in the house was a necessary presence.

  I always remember the sunny apartment where we used to live in Tehran and i was born in the Russian hospital. The garden full of rose bushes happened to be right next to the building were my family lived.  My mother had just walked round the corner.  At the time a lot of people who didn't have money went there because they gave a proper and reliable service without charging people.

 My parents had been born and were brought up in the Persian community in Banglore  and Mysore. That is why my mothers wedding picture is of her wearing a Sari. She was the first woman in the family who had a university education and had a degree in literature from the university of Mysore.

My Parents in the house my mother bought with a loan from the NIOC in the 70's .  It was in Mehraban Street off Eskandari .  and it had lovely cherry trees.  It was curtsy to the Mohammad Reza Pahlavi  who was king at the time  and the country was doing very well economically speaking.
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My  Father's father Abbas was my mother's uncle from her mother's side and he was teaching Persian literature and history at Mysore university. He decided to move to Iran after the "Partition".

 My grandfather sits among his students , while my mother sits at his feet on the left. (about 1940)


After several generations of living in India Abbas emigrated to Persia  which had taken on the modern name of Iran in the 30's when the Qajar Dynasty had finished with the last king Ahmad Shah  and the new king Reza Shah Pahlavi was a soldier in the army who had was trying to modernize the country. Ataturk had already started to make changes in Turkey and the new king was following some of his ideas.
 

My great grandfather Mr Shushtari/Mehrin and his children in India


Mr Shushtari came from the ancient town of Shushtar in the province of Khusestan where people were a mixed race of Persian and Arab, this was because of its geographic position .  Even today there is a controversy about the Persian Gulf because some call it the Shatta al Arab.  Sadam Husein thought that this traditionally Arabic feeling and rich with petroleum region would be a ready morsel for him.   For a long time it had been neglected and that was why a lot of people went to India to do business, since the British Raj had established stability and prosperity in the neighboring country.


One of the cartoons i I appreciate "The Simpsons"  reminds me of my own family .  The cartoon series which is all about The American "working class"  family (some would say middle class because  he works in an important industry ie a nuclear energy producing plant) .... and i can see how  everyone of us from the five continents on this earth could in some way  relate to this version of the  family     .....   i want to write the story of my family which was functional (but I never realized this until many decades later) like many others and  had people in it who believed in themselves and tried to create a better life for themselves and for others .

Another programe on Tv i follow is Joel Osteen's sermons. Joel who is an  Evangelist preacher i listen to and Mrs Joyce Meyer who is one of the  women  preachers in his  team  talk about their life experience with God .....  both tell us that God can change  people and their life for the better.  I think they speak about   "The Force"  of the creator of the Universe which helps people  to  move upwards and forwards !

In various sermons Joel Osteen the well known evangelist tells us  about  how  his father  left his  family home in Paris Texas when he was eighteen to go out into the world and search for a better future. Joel talks about his family which seems to be and is,  an "Every Man's" family (considering Every man/ every woman).  Something   which we can all relate to.

In various sermons i heard, Mr Joel Osteen talk about his father  Mr John H. Osteen who was an  eighteen year old  with a dream in his heart …..   and how he left his  family home  which was on  a farm in Texas.  He went off on his own even if there was not much hope of him finding a better life since it was during the years of the great depression in 1939.  During the years of economic  depression, even the most humble  paying jobs were few and far between.     He adventured out into the world risking to loose the comfort of what he had left behind  in order to look for a better future . 

 It was curious to see the similarity of his story to that of my Muslim grandfather Mr Abbas  Shushtari / Mehrin who left his home at the same age and changed the game for himself and the family. He was the first person of his tribe to reach and live in the US in the begining of  the century.  Even though his father ie my great grandfather  was a preacher and doing reasonably well in India ......  as a young man his son, ie Abbas had not  wanted to follow the relatively safe profession.  He  would often tell his grandchildren about his miraculous survival of the 1906 earthquake in San Francisco.


   Like Joel's father, my grandfather too changed his life by choosing to leave his comfort  zone and to  travel far from his homeland. My Muslim grandfather  Abbas, was born to Persian parents in northern India.  Even tho my great grandfather Mr Shustari  was a preacher himself and doing reasonably well in the community.

  At eighteen he decided to  start to work on a merchant ship. Some relatives had a trade in tea and he was employed by them.  They were exporting tea to various countries. He had been living in the turbulent times before the indipendace of India and his strong political opinions about the liberation of India had gotten him into trouble.  He had been considered to be politically active.....  and that was why he chose to stay on the ship and to go to the United States. He studied there and came back to marry his first cousin.  Later on he had settled in India and was a professor teaching History and languages at the university of Mysore. He didn’t travel because he suffered from being in a disadvantaged situation, it was an open world and people could travel and he took his opportunity to see the world...

 Perhaps today a lot of the “first world” population does not realize how much the rest of the world is occupied with the idea of "class" and being from a certain background  and how much people want to live in a country where they can get a better future for their children and move out of their "fixed cast limitations" . The US still symbolizes and  promises a fairly classless meritocracy for many people and  i think this idea is what makes it  one of the most attractive places on earth today ....

      Which class you belong to has always been an issue for people living in Asia and in Europe and the only way anyone could try to overcome this feudal class obstacle was by moving to the new continents.  The US or Australia promised  people a life without the hindrance of  class  .....   Even in communist countries where ideally there was only the working class .... there were other forms of hierarchy  which didn't depend on competence. 

I was overjoyed in 2009 when i heard that the elected president of the US was an African American  and i celebrated this "event"  in my book called a "Time For Dreamers" .  i thought it was a brilliant moment in world history    .....  it was not only a question of overcoming the taboo of color and race, but it gave us  hope that the election of "merit and intelligence" had won the day. It seemed  not to be  the money and other strategies of winning power that were at work but a Democratic  political career that mattered most. 

 Today i am writing about this in, a lovely day of peace  in spring of  2019   (even though a lot of us were hoping that Ms Hillary Clinton would be a second Democratic president elected for her education and her capabilities,  she surprised us all  by not making it through)

President Trump won the elections in 2016 promising that, if elected he would  put up a wall on the Mexican border and control the immigration into the US.  In  recent years and  ever since the year 2000 various wars in different parts of the world  have boosted the number of people who have fled the situations in their countries and continents.

I have some idea about immigration because  my family  immigrated  several times after the “Patition” of India and Pakistan. That was in 1947 and perhaps i can relate to the immigration  that is happening now in 2019.  I myself chose to leave my country before the Iranian Revolution and lived in Italy for many years as a student and then as a freelance artist. In recent years i have followed what is happening in France.  Everyone seems to be aware that immigration  is the most important issue  in  Europe, and in the world as a whole. A subject we hear about on the news all the time. 

For several years now there have been ship loads of people arriving on the coasts of Europe.  They are full of people who have left and are leaving  Africa. A lot of my Italian friends are wary of what is going on because Italians receive a lot of the boat people at Lampedusa in Sicily.. I met and talked to some of  the lucky young people who had survived the trip on the unsafe boats.  They were studying the language. These were young men, who had  arrived some years ago,  they had survived the journey across the seas telling me about the frightning experience of the wobbly boat and the hysteric people he travelled with.  , Having lived through dire conditions they had arrived on the contenant and had started their new life.  What is most tragic in our times is that many boats carrying the refugees are not able to make it through and capsize and a lot of people and families have lost their lives by trying to cross the waters of the Mediteranian. 

  I was told by the young African people i met in Italy  that a lot of the refugee camps are in Libya  and many more people living in these camps are waiting to come away. That the boats they were travelling on were overloaded with nervous and anxious passengers.   Other people i met and spoke to  are from Asian countries and the Middle East and they travel on foot and go through the land route in order to reach industrialized countries. However the most controversial of all is  the flow of refugees from south America into the US..

 South Americans leaving their homes to reach the US  have been the reason for the creation of the controversial " Wall" and the  border control between the US and Mexico, There has been an incomprehensible  policy of separating children from their families which received a lot of protests from American citizens. 

 There have been other famous walls already known in history; Hadrian’s wall for example or the wall of Berlin.  These were perhaps an  inspiration for  the one  built in Israel to keep the Palestinian people away from where they used to live a hundred years ago. 

.  My grandfather Abbas led the family back to Iran in 1948, and some of his eight children found work in the National Oil Company (NIOC) because coming from India, they spoke english and had a colonial education.
 The oil company  was initially  a consortium run by the  British in the 50s and it was called the Anglo Iranian Oil company..  This company had then been Nationalized through the efforts of Mr Mosadeq (who became a national hero)


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 The US had been in the Middle East  together with the British.  They were a very important source of inspiration for the educated middle class and for the young, mainly because unlike the "feudal system" (which was the norm in the old world and very strong in Asia), it didnt have a class system like the one we were used to.  Here is an interesting bit of history about the discovery of oil which was also one of the reasons for the Shah's politically incorrect pronouncement;  I remember it was on the news that he had said that crude oil was being sold under its real price because it had taken billions of years for the earth to produce such a product (which is scientifically true).

The D'Arcy oil concession

Exploration and discovery

In 1901 William Knox D'Arcy, a millionaire London socialite, negotiated an oil concession with Mozaffar al-Din Shah Qajar of Persia. He financed this with capital he had made from his shares in the highly profitable Mount Morgan mine in Queensland, Australia. D'Arcy assumed exclusive rights to prospect for oil for 60 years in a vast tract of territory including most of Iran. In exchange the Shah received £20,000 (£2.1 million today),^[2] an equal amount in shares of D'Arcy's company, and a promise of 16% of future profits.^[3][4]
D'Arcy hired geologist George Bernard Reynolds to do the prospecting in the Iranian desert. Conditions were extremely harsh: "small pox raged, bandits and warlords ruled, water was all but unavailable, and temperatures often soared past 50°C".^[5] After several years of prospecting, D'Arcy's fortune dwindled away and he was forced to sell most of his rights to a Glasgow-based syndicate, the Burmah Oil Company.
By 1908, having sunk more than £500,000 into their Persian venture and found no oil, D'Arcy and Burmah decided to abandon exploration in Iran. In early May 1908 they sent Reynolds a telegram telling him that they had run out of money and ordering him to "cease work, dismiss the staff, dismantle anything worth the cost of transporting to the coast for re-shipment, and come home." Reynolds delayed following these orders and in a stroke of luck, struck oil shortly after on May 26, 1908.^[5]



 My family had immigrated to Persia (Iran).  I was told about interesting films about Persians in Indian History one of which is about Akbar Shah ( Mogul e Azam and his courtisan dancer Anarkali are subjucts of a  film by the same name).   Grandfather Abbas had become a professor at the university of Mysore where he taught Persian literature and  culture and the languages of antiquity.  Abbas had come back from his travels and had lived in Bangalore close to his sisters. Even if the family had enjoyed generations of prosperity here,  he decided to leave for Persia.  The "Separation" of India and Pakistan had brought on turbulent times.  He went on to  settle in Iran taking  his wife and children with him because it was fairly safe there, (even if they didnt know the language or the customs of the new country).  The king in Iran  was Reza Shah Pahlavi who was soon to give way to his  young son Mohammad Reza a man who had little experience in politics and had just come back from studying in Switzerland.


As a child i had lived in London with my aunts family and had had the opportunity to go to school with my cousins. The stability of life there was very reassuring. Later on in Iran  when i was going  to high school i knew of people who were communists fighting against the government. A lot of skirmishes would happen in the universities. Even if there was stability people were not happy with the new western trends which seemed to go against traditional and  nationalistic ideas of how people should live.  Women's liberation  and the way they dressed was a main issue. Since my brother went to university and my mother taught English there ....   one of our neighbors had told my mother in a very civilized way that he was working for the Savak (the feared security people).  Now  when i look back i see the irony of it all. Actually we were very "a political" and didn't want to change anything, life was good and my mother was very enthusiastic and  encouraging relatives from India to come and settle down in the country as we had done. You couldnt talk about anything serious if you were in a public place. Every one was aware that you had to zip it when you were in a Taxi because criticizing or commenting politics was not allowed (these days it does not matter where you are .... you have to watch it anyway  since the ears are everywhere).  It seemed to be  unbelievable that the secret police couldn't hold back the revolution.

 In those years you heard about two countries very often on the news and one of them was Vietnam, the other was the Palestinian People and Israel and that was what continued to be on the news all through the seventies, eighties and is a question which has not found it's solution.  In the Middle East things changed drastically.  Iran which was a safe haven for some years, went to be on the news in the late seventies with the event of the  "revolution" which brought the Ayatollah Khomeini to replace the King Mohammad Reza Pahlavi.  A  war with Saddam Hussein's Iraq ensued and lasted for eight years.  It swept away all the prosperity and the oil revenue brought to the people of both countries.  

 I ask myself if  politiians   come from a Simpson type  family  like the rest of us ?  I wonder what would happen if President  Trump opened the borders to Mexicans and all of the  third world people .....   instead of shutting the door on them.  Some people say even today that America is about making good things happen in the lives of those who seek to have their children in a better future than themselves.   

A lot of the people we knew went to live in the US before, during and after the revolution. My brother had had a dream of taking our family to the US, but he only managed to go there himself . He lived in LA for seven years and loved to have made his dream come true.  Many Iranians of our generation, had left the country before the revolution in 1979 shook the nation.  My parents didn't want to leave because they had already moved twice  and they felt they could stay and adapt.  Everyone was seduced  by the enthusiasm  of creating a new democratic system, but my parents didn't partake in this because they were anglophones and not "trusted natives".  They had left India because of the Partition and then they left Pakistan because of my grandfather's belief that Iran would be the best place for us (that was his dream.) 

 Reading  the story of a family is fascinating  .....  I am thinking of a book by Thomas Mann called  "The Buddenbrooks" about fairly modern times, and even in the biblical times;  "Joseph and his Brothers " . Will  "families"  be different from now on ? What with surveillance penetrating privacy in every home  and every way it can, people like myself seem to have lived a life of luxury when there was freedom from CCTV's and microphones .... and i have had the  experience of what  surveillance can do  in my own home in Tehran and also in Dubai .... and  how  in these recent years everything will change for the future  generations.  Will  living  with our Smart Phones (that listen to us and interfere in our choices)  make life better for the poor and underprivileded ?    The birth of the smart phone and other such gadgets seems to have a grip on the world population and humanity  ....    

 The internet is "a tool" which everyone can use and .. it cannot yet "create" it's own creatures !t  is useful  as a  source of info and entertainment  and it fills up the "voids" in our minds. A lot of people like it better than going to church or pursuing a religion. It is unbelievable how we are making another Golden Calf out of this tool !   Even the poorest of the poor now a days have a phone .....  Perhaps a genius is about to rise up from among us "little people" to find solutions for keeping the environment from floundering ?  Alas the animals and plants living with us on this earth for centuries are at risk !  

>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>

In my imagination i see the seas rising and people having to go further inland to build the new " Nuclear cities" . I am thinking about a  film about the future, a science fiction movie  called  "Down Stream" where everyone who is fortunate lives in the "walled in" cities called Nuclear cities where  life is "easy".  All the people living outside of the city walls are the unfortunate  ....  does this ring a bell ?  The wall being built by president  Trump is to keep out the unfortunate travelers.

 Another similar walled in city in art is Springfield, and the episode about the Simpsons in Springfield is about the glass protective  Dome being put there by the government because the city itself is polluted with nuclear waste  .....     just imagine another sort of Nuclear city .....   where the glass Dome was a protection for the whole territory of the USA  from the outside world. It would facilitate  the  manipulation of  all the resources in it and to keep the peace  there would be a  huge Mall atmosphere  were every one living inside  the Dome would be living in a luxurious glass case or a "bubble".

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A bit of info  about The Springfield film for anyone who does not know it  ..... 

The Simpsons Movie is a 2007 American animated comedy film based on the Fox television series The Simpsons. The film was directed by David Silverman, The film follows Homer Simpson, whose irresponsibility gets the best of him when he pollutes the lake in Springfield after the town has cleaned it up following receipt of a warning from the Environmental Protection Agency.  Homer works to redeem his folly by stopping Russ Cargill, the head of the EPA, who intends to destroy Springfield.

The beautiful solution to the drama of being kept under the glass dome comes from the baby ..... Maggy is playing at digging and finds herself busy digging on the other side of the glass Dome.

 Perhaps this sort of thing predicts  the future .... since building  walls is thought to be "the" solution ...

   The idea of building a wall is really the same idea of the Medieval city walls and is today the building is a modern  version of the wall erected between Mexico and the United States; " Nuclear city" America  is  the island  of luxury juxtaposed to the human realities of poverty everywhere else out side of the wall. Another similar point as "when art becomes life" in the science fiction  film "Down Stream" mentioned  is the use of telepathy and mind reading which in our years is being used by the powers that be  .... ESP is used officially to controle  the unruly  ! Who knows how long this know how has been in use.

 For the future i suggest building  "cities"  right in the middle of  the deserted lands where there are no built areas .  In this way there is no necessity  for  the destroying of forests and green areas as is happening now in the Amazon  where large areas of what used to be jungle is  now being used to pasture cows . Saving the animals  and plants  in the wild is the biggest issue of the new century .....   another would be finding a solution for sweet  water ...     

 ....

I am writing the story of my relatives because  i feel that the future is going to be very impersonal.  The story of  the family which makes it ours  to create, since we are "the People".

The Six Sisters  Like Wilma in "The Simpsons" and her  two unmarried sisters .... my father had six of them and four remained single  .....             Only two of the six sisters had gotten round their father (who wanted  Persian Shiite son in laws) and had managed  to get  married .  It was probably because of  the "Partition"  of India and Pakistan that they didnt settle down in India. This historical event  changed everything.  They managed to settle down in Iran and to survive the changes and they  became  independent through their work and their"sisterhood".  Fortunately they found work  in the new country as English speakers and made it in  the old Homeland of their ancester's ie Persia .   They had left India during  the Partition , because my grandfather feared for his daughters life and security.   A lot of the extended family moved to Pakistan.  My father had been in the Indian Army and had opted out and had joined the Pakistani side. He and some others in the family had been serving the army,  and there had been colleagues of his who had spent time in Europe during the II WW. He  had told the family living in sleepy Indian towns , about what was  about to happen in Europe.  It seemed unbelievable that anything similar to  the second world war could take place in India ....  no one hardly believed him.  ..  For many years  I couldnt understand why Abbas had left such a good position at work and his life style and respectability in the Persian comunity in Mysore and Banglore .  He had  disrupted the life of his young daughters. .....  Leaving India and making the effort was a huge risk  and he was enterprising enough to take the leap.  While other people in the Persian community stayed on and adapted .....   some of them had already achieved very high positions as one Sir Mirza who was Devan to the Maharajah  (he helped  people in the family who were talented) .  His own great grand child would become a diplomat  and ambassador for India. Maharaja Jayachamarajendra Wadiyar, was the twenty-fifth maharaja of the Kingdom of Mysore from 1940 to 1950. He was a noted philosopher, musicologist, political thinker, and philanthropist. He was also the founder-president of Vishva Hindu Parishad                                                        Abbas was a sort of Patriarch and i used to call him "a self made man" but now i realize he was  "a God made man" ( according to Victoria Osteen there are only God Made men/women because we dont make it through the difficulties on our own ) and he  was part of a group of priviledged courtisans at the court .  By leaving  India he would loose out on his life style and a lot of things but he would  reach  his own personal dream of  going back to the homeland which his forefathers had left.   He had always thought of rediscovering it. Perhaps you could see that he had chosen the  right moment even if the task of moving was very difficult;  The family  would have to lower their living  standards and make an effort to adapt to new ways.  There is a film called "Train to Pakistan " which paints a believable picture of what went on back then .... it made me realize that sometimes you need to make major life changing decisions and perhaps that was why i decided that the revolution was not a good thing in my life and didn't go back for 20 years. Abbas had had a very adventurous life in his youth .... the merchant ship had taken him to Japan and London and then to the US where he stayed for some years , studying at university. He had then returned to India to marry his first cousin.  . His wife  who was called by a persian name "Monireh", was from a very traditional family  Even if it was an arranged marriage,  there was a lot of love and affection between them.  Infact my grandfather would complain that he had not wanted to have eight children at all, but there had been no birth control pills to help them keep the number of offspring down. .  Monireh   had been born in Iraq in a wealthy merchant family and she had seen her  husband to be, in the courtyard of their residence in the city of Basra. It was a hot summer afternoon .  She had been watching the stranger  from behind the curtains of her windows. She lived a very protected life  and hardly ever met anyone who wasn t from their family or acquaintances.  The young man had just arrived at their door and out of the blue presenting himself as a relative. and a cousin. No one had believed him at first because he had looked like a poor disheveled man without money or friends.  No one knew him or recognized him.  He had just come back from America.. He had survived the earthquake in San francisco in 1906 and had come back from his travels on the merchant ship.   Having arrived in India he had travelled to Iraq in a carriage, but had had to walk  across the desert where their carriage had broken down.  He had only managed to save himself from various difficult situations and had arrived at his uncles door . He had finally convinced his relatives that he was really who he said he was. Wki says ;  San Francisco quickly recovered from the earthquake, and the destruction actually allowed planners to create a new and improved city. A classic Western boom town, San Francisco had grown in a haphazard manner since the Gold Rush of 1849. Abbas had lived and studied  in San Francisco  for several years ... had he stayed on he would have been an American.   Infact it was because of the advice of his professor at the university where  he was studying that he left and came back to the Middle East.  He had been told to "follow his heart".    He had gone to the university to ask how to enroll there.  The man he met happened to be the teacher, and when he confided  that he didnt have much money  to pay towards the fees , this person who was the professor and had simply handed him the broom he had been sweeping with and had said ; "we can exchange work for the tuition fees" ..... After some time spent studying he was invited to the teachers house for Sunday lunch and  during the dinner table  conversations he had told the hosting family at the table , that he loved the King of Persia . He was talking about the last King of the Qajar Dynesty  and that he loved the history of his country more than anything else.  Later on in life when he had returned to the East and had become a teacher himself, his marriage with Monireh had been  a sort of stepping stone which had helped him find his identity and roots.  Even if his  wife  had been a woman who wore the veil and was brought up  to remain in the home,  he would treat her as an equal partner and would help out at home.  He had seen it done with the pioneers who would help out at home. Contrary to the normal attitudes of the time towards women, he participated in caring for the children. It was difficult for her to adapt to her husbands travelling life and she had had to go to live in India and follow him where his  carrier took him . She had never been  interested in her husbands social life at the university or at  court.  That was why  Sharbanoo  their second eldest daughter accompanied her father on social occasions and  acted  as his secretary and assistant.  Sharbanoo  always stood next to her father in the family pictures. She had married at a very late age, because her father wanted to find the right person for her and wouldn't accept a lot of people who asked for her hand.  She had had a fair complexion and wore western clothes.She had been considered to be an attractive woman. When she was finally married at a very ripe old age of thirty, she had decided to do it herself and overcoming the patriarch's opinions.  When  married, she would sometimes talk about her past, a glamorous sort of life at court because she had been the companion of the Maharajas daughters .  However even if she had a full social life at court and even played the piano and played tennis,  her father would not allow her to mix  with people who he didnt consider to be from the "right" background .  He was adamant that his daughters should marry into Shiite families.  That was the reason why she had had to wait. My father's sisters had had a privileged life style since Abbas was working at the University of Mysore . He had a big house and a carriage and a car at his disposal. This life style allowed Sharbanoo  to learn to play the piano beautifully, and  to go to the Missionary schools and  later on in life she would teach English at home.   Mr Parvaneh, her husband was working for the Anglo-Iranian oil company as a tecnitian and engineer and had a good social position. he was part of the modern world.  ( Many people in the family started to work for the Anglo -Iranian  Oil company which later on  was  called the NIOC). I remember him as a silent shadow always working in their garden.  He was tall for a  Pakistani and had an elongated  face , and long limbs. I knew him to be an enthusiastic gardener . For many years he had  cultivated  the  fruit trees around their villa as a hobby.  It was an exclusive area built by the Anglo Iranian oil company for their workers and called Tehransar (because it was outside of the capital and close to the airport).  Nowadays this airport is used for internal flights, (in the 50s it was a most important place), and Tehransar  has now become an overcrowded working class satelite town.  In the sixties my family enjoyed going to their garden and sitting around among the trees, while my father and the host exchanged tips on trees and flowere we chatted and picnicked .   My aunt was a bit of a gossip and loved society .... she had made many friends in the new country and was always  talking about her acquaintances and family.  In the sixties when i came into the picture i remember the popular TV series Peyton Place  and how it was similar to what went on in that community. Sharbanoo would  very often talk about her husband .... she really was in love . She would particularly tell us about her life at the court of the Maharajah , and how her husband cured her of her memories of living that extraordinary life.  She was fond of a particular anecdote when at the begining of her marriage , seeing how unsatisfied she felt,   he had  sat her down one day in the kitchen and had talked to her.  What is probably called a very effective pep talk.  I imagine  it must have been difficult for him to say all he said because he was such a silent man. He had noticed how high flying she had been in the past.  what he  told her would prepare her for her future life. He said:" since we are now married,  you have to adapt to a new life style and dedicate yourself to your family !" .   He meant to say that  she had to forget the past glamour of the court and live in the present.  "We can build a life together if we are a team" ! It sounded reasonable enough and since she was willing to learn, she followed him in his plans.  Mr Parvaneh cultivated his garden for many years but when he was in his sixties one day we had gone to visit the family and we noticed he had a  sort of yellowish colour all over .... and since no one ever heard him say anything i was surprised out of my mind when he awnsered my childish question . "why are you yellow?"  and he probably said those few last words to me about his illness ...  he didnt live  to see the revolution happen . He left  four children for my aunt to take care of . Lucky for him , his wife had sisters to help her out !  My aunt's husband died  .... i mean we knew he had yellow fever because he had turned yellow , but since he lived a very healthy and sane life with no bad habits , everyone thought it was impossible  he should exit the scene so early in life.  His children who had never showed great signs of affection certainly bore the loss with difficulty. Infact my cousin Farang who had been the only cousin to play with me when i was a child, changed personality from one day to another..  My first  cousin Farangis ( the name of a female epic figure from the Shahnameh ie The Book of Kings)  had been a very intelligent student of mathematics at school and there had been talk of her as a real future  talent .  Even tho she was sickly and "annorexic looking" and too pale (a sort of milky "neon" white from what i remember) and too thin for comfort .....  as a child  i was in love with her.  She never hesitated to play at dressing up and  doing theater and to (" twist") dance with me. She had a suitcase full of clothes with shinny decorations and extravagant looking things like tiaras , Sarees and pieces of colourful silky textiles to dress up with.  We just had to use our imagination to make up costumes with whatever we found in her box .  Later on she went to a painter's atelier and was  creating oil paintings with the help of the artist who gave her and Sharzad (her sister) lessons.  This is probably where i received my first obsession with becoming a painter and a creative .  .  I was about ten years younger and about eight or nine when she was eighteen, but we were on the same page . It was just before her final collage exams that she lost her father.  She had been a studious angelic young teenager.  She was eighteen, and after her loss she suddenly changed and became interested in wearing fashanable clothes (bell bottoms pants with chunky extravagant belts and miniskirts) going  out to restaurants and Discos.  She went to  places where "good girls" usually wouldn't be going on their own.   She had become interested in life with a capitel L and having finished college , she was worrying everybody with her female adulthood and  sexuality.  She had shown no interest in sex ever before. I often think it was perhaps  because we watched the American soap on TV and that it was influencing her. It would have been different if she had lived in the West where women had more freedom to live their life . Even my cousin Ameneh who lived in the UK was restrained by family , but since Ameneh 's father (had died when she was a child) she now had her uncle ie my mother's brother to look out for her. Uncle Ismile who was a substitute father for my widowed aunt's children,  was very much a leftist.  Ameneh had been free from restrictions and even went to live on campus .... in the UK ... it would not affect her reputation.    Farang and Kamran  (her brother who was elder by a few years),  were in their twenties and both entered a crisis after their father died. They didn't manage to get over it on their own .  My cousin Kamran was at University and into mathematics and he had to drop out.  He was the same age or younger than my brother Taher  , but while my brother continued to study and finished his BA in electronics, Kamran had to take pills and stronger stuff to control his moods.  My brother too felt worried and affected because these  cousins were very close, important childhood friends for him and he was emotionally involved with them. Much more important to him than i was because i was ten years younger and only came into his life much later.  In the good times they had been great friends, had had parties and danced the twist listening to the Beatles and all the music which was in vogue in the 60's.  No one was ready for what was happening to these two young people.  It was almost unbelievable !  I was a child and didn't know that things happen to people and that the situations change.t Nothing remains at the same. Farang and Kamran benefited from the medicine available for depression and psychological treatments because their father had worked in the oil company. They managed to pull through, even though it took many years for them to recover.  Even though their father had not been a relative, they had suffered a breakdown of some sort.  There had been many  intermarriages in the family and. we had an aunt who was not well.  Parveen was one of the eight children of Abbas and Monireh (who were first cousins) and she had come into the world in India and was doing well there , but having to leave her home she had not been strong enough to endure the changes in life style and had basically remained as she was, ie a teenager. On the other hand,  my parents who were also first cousins had  had to cope with my eldest brother Dara who was mentally handicapped and who died at thirteen. It was risky for my parents to continue having children but fortunately and by a miracle my brother and i  were both born  healthy children, even after several generations of intermarriage in the family.    A tabu subject in the 50's and the 60's was having people in the family who had mental issues.  It is probably still a dark cloud that casts it's shadow on people and families in most of the third world.  If some members of the family suffered from "psychological dysfunction " then people didnt know how to cope and how to behave towards the people affected  and this shadow  hung about the whole family.  It meant that not only did we have aunty Parveen who was not "normal" and suffered from autism  , but now we had two youngsters going  in the same direction  of dysfunction ....  . It was true that Parveen's parents had been first cousins , but Sharbanoos's husband was not a relative so his children had had a breakdown purely because of  their loss of a parent (even tho they were adults).  Mr Parvaneh was not vociferous and never threw his weight around as the breadwinner of the family.  This trauma was amazing, his  children suffered so much after his death  .  His silent gardening all those years must have  generated a lot of feelings of love and security in his family.  He had been a very important "sane"  person , even if he didn't drive a car or do other things men usually liked to do. Meaning to say that people don't have to be achieving anything special .... but their mere presence and their attitude in a group situation, can influence everyone around them.  My aunt had been widowed  (in the sixties)  but she had  a bit of luck because one of her daughters had a proposal from a distant relative.  Someone  asked for the hand of her second eldest daughter Sharzad's out of the blue.  It was almost a miracle that she was not judged for being in a family with two problem children. A very positive thing for everyone  when Sharzad who was a very charming and gracious 20 year old was married off ( to the disappointment of my brother who was about the same age as her) . Her husband was thirty years old and had money and whisked her off to the UK and then to Spain.  She was not to be seen by her mother or siblings again . She had a child called Setareh who is now a scientist and has two children.   Being a creative artistic type my aunt  concocted a marriage for her third daughter Farang.  She  found a cousin from her husband's family  and invited him to visit the country and stay with them.  This young man came to a prosperous Iran looking for work and eventually got interested in Farang even though he knew she had some issues.  My aunt who had been a talented pianist had had her wits about her when she wrote certain sentimental letters  to the young man.   I think of Jane Austin novels  when my thoughts turn to Aunt Sharbanoo.  She had  been trained to play Chopin and Beethoven  and all the classical composers, but she hadn't burried her musical ambitions when she got married and turned her intuitions by dedicating the energies and talents to her family.   (Typically a male sciovanist; my brother Taher  thought i should have followed her "awsome" example of serving her husband and her family!)   Effie as Farang would call him in their married life  was interested in mathematics and had a master's degree in the subject. This too was very positive since it brought the good vibes to a situation which could have looked a bit hopeless  if things had been left to run their course .  Farang recovered by taking her pills and worked as a secretary for some years in the Oil company where her father had worked when he had first moved to the country.  She eventually bought a house together with her husband and had two sons.   I am trying to point out that some times God gives you certain things  which hinder you, but then you come out the winner of the game anyway, and this is what happened with my cousin Kamran.  He had been  seriously ill after his father passed and could only stay at home. My uncle Ali (my father's brother) who was a writer was interested in helping him and introduced him to his own profession of  doing translations (Persian to English and vice versa).   Fortunately Kamran got married and lived in a lovely place which was the house he had grown up in ..... it was the villa  house  with the big garden his father had cultivated.  My brother too kept an eye on Kamran and helped by bringing him  in and out of hospital. At times his situation  didnt look good .  For some reason  Kamran himself had  started to say his Islamic prayers even though he was taking medication and became a staunch believer .... this perhaps was the best medicine he could have taken in order to gain control of his life  . One of his ambitions was to get married ....  everyone would wonder which girl would want to take so much responsibility and more than that  which family would want a groom who wasn't working and was having  medical treatment ?  He wanted to get married because he thought it was his God given right and surprisingly one of his sister's friend' s accepted to marry him!  Rudabeh who had always been a friendly chatter box and the eldest sister was now working  at the Post office for some years and she was the only one who had been a tower of strength for her mother and very supportive of her family . She dedicated herself to her mother's health. She had contributed to her brother's marriage ( a petite woman and rather sparrow-ish) she  did n't want to get married herself).   Kamran and his bride were very sociable and knew a lot of their neighbors from old times and a lot of people came to visit them. Kamran who wasn't very talkative himself had married some one resembling his sister, and they had a happy child..  They loved socializing and since their families knew each other from the shah's time and both families had been working for the NIOC for  many years  ....  her family  accepted his illness and allowed the knot to be tied .  His daughter  born of this marriage confirmed Kamran as respected member of the new religious society because he was now a father ! This was an unexpected victory for Kamran ! (This story  reminds me of some of Joel Osteens sermons where he talks about God making the negative situation work for your benefit and where you walk into victory even when you have done nothing much to deserve it, it is simply God who makes it all work out for you  .. "who would have thought ? " asks Joel in one of his sermons ) that Kamran or Farang would have walked out of their sufferance and turned out to be very respectable members of society ?   Even tho they didn't have much money left to them by their father (because my aunt spent all the money her husband  had left his family on health issues )  ......  Kamran  would not have been considered to be an able bodied man in other societies. He didn't serve in the army during  the war between Iran and Iraq (which was also lucky) ....  but since he was now living under the  Islamic regime ....with making babies being a top on the value list, he was considered socially on a higher level than my brother Taher who never got married and didnt have any children and had decided to go to the US, instead of participating in a nationalistic fratricidal  war. Perhaps my brother and i were both traumatized by my parents having had a mentally handicapped child . Dara was a first  born who was a healthy beautiful child for some years but he began to show signs of mental handicap afterwards ....  Both of us thought that it had something to do with genetics because our parents were first cousins, as our grandparents . So hats off to Kamran's prayers because they worked for him .... while my brother was secular and believing in achievements (but he always kept fast during the month of Ramadan) he lived alone for many years until he came back to my parents home again in the late nineties. He had lived in LA for seven years  and he drove vans for a living.  His best friend there had been Hamid, who he had worked for.  Hamid and his brother sold cars. Hamid too had come back after many years of living abroad.  He had had to take care of his mother. Both had to come back to live in the caos of Tehran's traffic> My mother was very happy to have him back because my parents both  needed him to help them.  Taher was a sort of ladies man because he had an  gift of saying the right things and  he tried to be charming.  It was very surprising that he never could make the connection . ....  My parents could have moved to the West like a lot of other friends and relatives had done, but having come from an immigrant culture they hadnt mixed with the natives who werre much more "forwardlooking" than they were. Taher died in 2005 of a heart attack all alone in his room.  This was. while  having to look after our mother who was now suffering from dementia ....       A May child like my mother and myself, he had spent his birthday flirting with  twenty year olds.   He had tried his luck  in the dreamland USA.  I knew that he was missing my parents and that they needed him to be around.  My father had died in hospital from heart failiure and he had tried to encourage him to settle down. Those were social rules in conservative Iran and everybody was wondering why he wasn't making the decision.  He had loved the  years in the USA because he felt the friendship and the solidarity he didnt feel back home.  He liked the fact that people felt they were part of something that seemed to give respect to individuals. Above all to work and  to  working people. He had wanted to stay on because things had begun to fall into place for him .  However now the reality was  that he was the only one who could  take responsibility for all our elderly relatives.  Even if a lot of families put their elderly in homes, he was giving up his dream of making it in the US in order to look after the old folk in the family and this was a very Asian  way of living life . Traditions were like time capsules in the DNA and since he had done what was required of him , he was happy  ..... in his heart he knew he had done his duty,and the right thing.......  in any case   his dreams  had  been partly  fulfilled ! About the Partitian; British Indian Empire Part of a series on the History of India Ancient[show] Classical[show] Early medieval[show] Late medieval[show] Early modern[show] Modern[show] Related articles[show] ·         v ·         t ·         e Part of a series on the ·         Etymology ·         Timeline ·         Traditional ·         Urheimat Ancient[show] Classical[show] Medieval[show] Modern[show] Related articles[show] ·         v ·         t ·         e The Partition of India was the division of British India[a] in 1947 which accompanied the creation of two independent dominions, India and Pakistan.[1] The Dominion of India is today the Republic of India, and the Dominion of Pakistan is today the Islamic Republic of Pakistan and the People's Republic of Bangladesh. The partition involved the division of three provinces, Assam, Bengal and the Punjab, based on district-wide Hindu or Muslim majorities. The boundary demarcating India and Pakistan became known as the Radcliffe Line. It also involved the division of the British Indian Army, the Royal Indian Navy, the Indian Civil Service, the railways, and the central treasury, between the two new dominions. The partition was set forth in the Indian Independence Act 1947 and resulted in the dissolution of the British Raj, as the British government there was called. The two self-governing countries of Pakistan and India legally came into existence at midnight on 14–15 August 1947.[2] The partition displaced over 14 million people along religious lines, creating overwhelming refugee crises in the newly constituted dominions; there was large-scale violence, with estimates of loss of life accompanying or preceding the partition disputed and varying between several hundred thousand and two million.[3][b] The violent nature of the partition created an atmosphere of hostility and suspicion between India and Pakistan that plagues their relationship to the present. Both my grandfather Abbas and his son Mehrdad  had been for a free India !. Infact my grandfather had acted on his ideas  and had been a bit of a revolutionary in his youth . Initially he had been against the Raj.  Later on when i watched the film Mangal Panday   I could imagine what he was thinking . However having  spent some  time in  Britain in the begining of the 1900s . he had changed his mind. Tipu Sultan a Hero of Indian Resistance   (born Sultan Fateh Ali Sahab Tipu,[2] 20 November 1750 – 4 May 1799), also known as the Tipu Sahib,[3]was a ruler of the Kingdom of Mysore. He was the eldest son of Sultan Hyder Ali of Mysore.[4] Tipu Sultan introduced a number of administrative innovations during his rule,[5] including his coinage, a new Mauludi lunisolar calendar,[6] and a new land revenue system which initiated the growth of the Mysore silk industry.[7] He expanded the iron-cased Mysorean rockets and commissioned the military manual Fathul Mujahidin, and is considered a pioneer in the use of rocket artillery.[8] He deployed the rockets against advances of British forces and their allies during the Anglo-Mysore Wars, including the Battle of Pollilur and Siege of Seringapatam. He also embarked on an ambitious economic development program that established Mysore as a major economic power, with some of the world's highest real wages and living standards in the late 18th century.[9 The film "Mughul-e-Azam" is a good film about how Akbar shah had unified India and had become an indian .  "Anarkali" is about the courtisan dancer at the court of Akbar and his son.   Even if my grandfather was successful, he had not been able to take care of his own siblings when they needed help. This meant that all was not well with other members of Abbas's  family. .  One of  his sisters was widowed  and another was living in relative poverty with her husband and five children.  Mr Kazim Namazie was not a Wealthy or a healthy man at all but fortunately he had relatives who were charitable and helped him run his family. It was wonderful that the community took care of the less fortunate members. Mr Namazie  was  my mother's father .and she was his eldest daughter born after seven years of marriage.  She was everyone's darling and very spoilt.  She  managed to go to the university.of Mysore  My mother was a successful student and adored  her  uncle Abbas who  was teaching there .      Mr Namazie was a business man but not very good at the profession. He had arrived in India with his brother. some of his relatives owned ships and were trading with other countries. They had been Persians who lived in Egypt and they had both been marrie , but they had survived their wives and were looking for a new life in Banglore .  That was when my grandfather Mr Namazie married his second wife that is Sahib Soltan .   Sahib sultan  my mother's mother,  had given up on having children.  This was considered unfortunate  but my mother came into the world after seven years of childless marriage. People married to have offspring in those years, and her having a husband who didn't mind waiting was a miracle in itself. Then there was a second child my uncle Joon who was brilliant at his studies and became an engineer,  the third child uncle Ali Mohammad whostudied  law and my aunt Jahan my mother's sister who was a great cook  and my uncle Ishmael who was a teacher living with his wife Swedish Ylva  in London in the swinging sixties . Saheb sultan as her sisters,  had been educated at home and knew how to read and write and insisted that their children;  girls and boys would be educated and  all given equal opportunity to go to school.  She made her husband allow their eldest daughter ie my mother Mirza Beygum to go to university . This was the first girl in the family to get a university Masters degree in English literature.  Most families at the time believed that girls didn't need an education since there would always be some one to look after them if they got married.  Mr Namazie  my mother's father was a goodhearted man and in his generosity had taken yet another sister of Mr Abbas 's,  (who had been widowed), under his wing .  In those times extended families were the norm and Bibi Sultan benefited from this tradition. She was a very intelligent woman who brought up her children with out having much money. Even tho Abbas her brother was rich now, he had his sister with her three children , living  under Mr Namazie's protection and in poverty.  Fortunately there was love which saved the day and  all of the children  turned out very well .  Some times i heard my uncle Ishmael , my  youngest uncle and  child of the family,  rail against his father Mr Namazie because he was always reading the holy book of Islam and not making money to feed his family  ......   his sons and daughters would complain later on that there wasn't any sort of paternal contribution or enough to eat under his roof .  Even so all the children were sent to school and their education  saved them .  Mr Namazie and his wife both died in their forties , and their  children had to  stick together and move to Pakistan .  They all managed to cope  without the help of their rich uncle.   My mothers sister Jahan Namazie on her wedding day My aunts living together in their fathers mansion had been brought up differently .... they had been prohibited to socialize with their less fortunate cousins  and they were very individualistic. Even so they had a feeling of sisterhood between them..  One of the sisters Parveen would be diagnosed as autistic .   I have this idea of her because of the film "Temple Grandin" .  It made me realize that a mental situation can be treated. For years my family lived in apprehension and shame because of various members of the family having mental issues ... Today these  are diagnosed as official illnesses.... and controllable .  In a sense mental issues were quite similar to  having a physical disability.  We visited her frequently because she lived with my other aunt Homa who was an ideal nurse for her.   She was peculiar because she loved to  go on walking trips for hours and  knew all the streets in the city  ....  she would have made a good taxi driver. Miraculously no one bothered her and nothing ever happened during these long walks.   Homa  was in the nursing profession and worked in a hospital. Most of the time Parveen was in  her own world but sometimes she would get out of hand  and out of control when she had her"moods ".  Their father had made a deal with Homa that he would give her a house if she promised to look after her sister.  My aunt Homa had been to a nursing school in the Uk in the 50's, my father's brother who was a writer Mr Mehrdad Mehrin decided to live with them on the top floor of a three storied house.  The  house was in the center of town off Eskandari square in Tehran.  Their brother was called  Ali at home but was a well known writer  who worked for the oil company and wrote books about travelling and health . He was away travelling very often.  The times he was at home he spent many hours writing his books, sometimes he would sit with guests with his note pad and pen  even when talking to visitors and guests. In these occasions he and my aunt Homa would order chelo Kabab a typically traditional dish of white rice with barbecued meat and qormeh sabzi whcih is a work of genious and a vegetable curry.  We would listen to his stories while eating.  There were many interesting  anecdotes about travelling in Italy or in Japan . He would also rave about his hero Tipu Sultan.   .  Two of the sisters Rokshan and Mahin  had been artists and taking painting as a serious profession. The eldest sister Rokshan had married her cousin and was living in Iraq. She would sell her paintings which were paintings on black velvet and would contribute to the family expenditure.    Mahin was a painter of persian miniature paintings, she was working for the NIOC . She had become a librarian and lived on her own in Abadan and later on  worked in Shiraz . It was also the city where mr Namazie my mother's father had all his relatives.The people of Shiraz were well known for their poets and progressive ideas and the Namazie family was well known in shiraz.  Many from this family  and relatives had  setteled down in India and had become wealthy through trade . They had many charities and were known for their public services. some info about the  beautiful city of Shiraz ;   The earliest reference to the city, as Tiraziš, is on Elamite clay tablets dated to 2000 BC.[3] In the 13th century, Shiraz became a leading center of the arts and letters, due to the encouragement of its ruler and the presence of many Persian scholars and artists. It was the capital of Persia during the Zand dynasty from 1750 until 1800. Two famous poets of Iran, Hafez and Saadi, are from Shiraz, whose tombs are on the north side of the current city boundaries.  Who knows how and why Aunty Mahin , had left her father Abbas and her sisters and gone off to live on her own in Shiraz!  She didnt belong to the sisterhood and was doing her own thing .  For years she would contact  the family by phone to say hello but she had a high and dry attitude and would never reveal much about her real life. No one really knew her well .   I would look at her picture and wonder why an attractive intelligent woman like her was so aloof even with her own sisters. Apparently there was some sibling rivalry and she had her emotional issues.  She had been lucky in that she had found a very good position and had managed to support herslf all those years without ever asking for help. Years had gone by and i had been living and studying in Florence Italy, only travelling back to Iran because of my father's  health issues.  In 2002 i had gone to visit  my family during the persian New Year .....   One day she called my aunt  out of the blue . It was not the usual "how are you doing"  call.  She was now in her 80's and she was saying ;" i dont know how to get back home to my house ....I have lost my way ..... can you help me ? "   I had been sitting with my parents in my aunt Homa's house off  Eskandari square.   Fortunately for her my brother Taher had  friends  in Shiraz . Mahsheed was a native of Shiraz and  married to Taher's childhood friend and she  was a professional physiotherapist and had her  practice in the city .  She was asked to help find my aunt and to bring her home . She looked after her until we arrived.   Mahsheed had a charming bed side manner and was able to  connect with my aunt and to take her home.  This was our lucky star shining on us because  Mahsheed was living in Shiraz and was there to save my aunt Mahin.  There wasn't much anything anyone else could do for her  .... it was the month of April and all the flowers and trees were in full bloom , and my aunt was still managing to go out on her walks on her own. She had found her guardian angel and Mahsheed was there for her until her last days.     My aunt Mahin had studied in the UK and had intellectual interests and had been  living  away from the family in Abadan and Shiraz for many years.  It was the Persian new year and Shiraz was breathtakingly beautiful.  In Shiraz Tahmin needed to see what we could do for her.elder sister Mahin who seemed to be on her way out.  She had been living in a sunny appartment  which to our surprise was full of her miniature paintings.  It was also full of diaries written by hand  in a tiny handwriting which was difficult to decifer .  She told us that she had a helper , a girl who would come in to do errands and to clean, but she was  wondering if it was her who took her belongings .  She was worried about her missing items .  It was obvious to everyone that she was now unable to cope on her own and needed to get back home to people she knew and trusted . However she had made her decision to stay on.   After she passed away it was Tahmin who took care of all her belongings and the papers    I was very upset when i heard that she had thrown  away all her precious diaries   ....  it was the real life she had been living day after day, and i was interested in knowing how she had coped all those years on her own with all the new attitudes after the revolution.  She seemed to have done very well in the new  country . She had survived through the revolution and all of the changes that it brought with it. /////////////////////////////////////////////////////////// Having lived through this experience and having seen her life , i was very happy about my decision to go to Italy in 82 . I wasn't for the revolution at all . It came and blew away all the good things in my life.  My relatives had been against my going to Italy and infact my aunt Sharbanoo had taken it on her to write to the iranian consolat in Milan and to ask them to send me back to my parents who she claimed ,"needed me" at home. The man working at the counter chuckled when he told me about the letter. Such old fashioned ideas about family had made my lovely aunts live difficult lives.  My having gone to live in Italy was seen as an unbelievable act of rebellion against our traditions . But i was of the opinion that "they" were all wrong because they were staying on in a country which had overthrown a good man. I loved the cosmopolitan London i had lived in and wanted the "international"  "good" embrasing everything  and  rather feared the "nationalistic" mood. .  My aunt Tahmin  had been talking about her life on our journey to Shiraz .... We were going there to help out her sister who seemed to suffer from dementia.  Tahmin had been a pillar of strength for the family all through her life and had looked after her father Abbas ; the writer Mr Shushtari Mehrin , and had contributed to the well being of her sister Sharbanoo's family enormously.  It was as if she was a sort of hand maid to her elder sister, always there to run errands and solve issues .   She said that she had felt loyal to her sister because she had a promise from her when she was a child.  At her mother's deathbed   she  had said that Tahmin would have had a mother in Sharbanoo. She had been nine years old , and  now as a seventy year old she looked back at her life and wondered why her sister Sharbanoo had been so  "unhelpful" .  Actually she had feared her more than anyone else.  It is true that as a young woman she had her chance to leave the nest at the age of  twenty one  when a respectable foreigner they knew had asked for her hand . She had been afraid of her sister and hadn't made a decision because she "feared her sister and her father". They wouldn't agree. And she couldn't fight their authority.   Tahmin had believed in and had stuck to the family and had now taken the responsibility to look after all her siblings who needed help. She was grateful that she had had no problems at finding work .... she had been a secretary in big companies and had made friends with mr Bozorgmehr who she worked for.  He even came to visit Abbas on the Fridays and sat down for a chat. Through her work, she had been integrated and had found dignity, but what she would have really wanted was a family of her own. She had the courage to buy her first house on her own when she was in her thirties and obviously chose to be  close to her sister and lived there with her father Abbas. All the family went to visit her every Friday. He had visitors who were Zoroastrian since he had written a lot about this religion.  Her loyalty should have set a good example for some one like myself , but even though  i appreciated her when i went to visit her once, my mouth said the words out loud ; "i dont want to be like you !"  For the first time in my life i was being undiplomatic and out of control.  For some reason she  didn't take this lightly.  She would probably have  liked to hear me say it in a diplomatic fashion ie  "i would rather do it my way" !  When i said those words ....  she had told me to leave her place ... which was rather extreme of her but it was OK !   I understood that she was in pain because she knew that she had been dedicated to her family more out of fear of the unknown rather than because of real love.  How could she be so insecure ?  she had done the right thing and had everybody's approval and  respect.  Except that i was from another generation and my father hadn't exercised his authority in order to use me for his own benefit (as a full time and trusted nurse) and he had generously given me my freedom! I didnt tell her that i only respected one story that she had to tell .... that was because i wanted to keep the peace!  The second hand , cream coloured  Volkswagen which she drove around Tehran was usually giving service to friends and family . She said that in one of her missions to serve Sharbanoo she had been nagged because she was still single and criticized about various things.  Her sister was sitting in the back seat and one of her daughters in the front seat.  At one point Tahmin was very upset about having to hear all the negativity coming out of her sisters lips and she came out with her first disrespectful phrase ; "if you don't shut up , i'll run the car straight into this pole "  ....  it was an amazing moment of liberation and independence !  She said that it had been enough to get some respect and cure everyone of their freedom to criticize her with  negative speech !                                                                        . The Three kings ruling Iran during  this time      Top of For Bottom of Form

·        Mohammad Reza Shah Pahlavi, (born October 26, 1919, Tehrān, Iran—died July 27, 1980, Tehrān, Iran: 1953 riots and coupThis newsreel clip discusses the anti-shah demonstrations that occurred in Tehrān, Iran, in August 1953, which were followed by a coup that deposed Premier Mohammad Mosaddeq and restored Mohammad Reza Shah Pahlavi to power.Stock footage courtesy The WPA Film Library Under Mohammad Reza, the nationalization of the oil industry was nominally maintained, although in 1954 Iran entered into an agreement to split revenues with a newly formed international consortium that was responsible for managing production. With U.S. assistance Mohammad Reza then proceeded to carry out a national development program, called the White Revolution, that included construction of an expanded road, rail, and air network, a number of dam and irrigation projects, the eradication of diseases such as malaria, the encouragement and support of industrial growth, and land reform. He also established a literacy corps and a health corps for the large but isolated rural population. In the 1960s and ’70s the shah sought to develop a more independent foreign policy and established working relationships with the Soviet Union and eastern European nations. The White Revolution solidified domestic support for the shah, but he faced continuing political criticism from those who felt that the reforms did not move far or fast enough and religious criticism from those who believed westernization to be antithetical to Islam. Opposition to the shah himself was based upon his autocratic rule, corruption in his government, the unequal distribution of oil wealth, forced westernization, and the activities of Savak (the secret police) in suppressing dissent and opposition to his rule. These negative aspects of the shah’s rule became markedly accentuated after Iran began to reap greater revenues from its petroleum exports beginning in 1973. Widespread dissatisfaction among the lower classes, the Shīʿite clergy, the bazaar merchants, and students led in 1978 to the growth of support for the Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini, a Shīʿite religious leader living in exile in Paris. Rioting and turmoil in Iran’s major cities brought down four successive governments; on January 16, 1979, the shah left the country, and Khomeini assumed control. Although the shah did not abdicate, a referendum resulted in the declaration on April 1, 1979, of an Islamic republic in Iran. The shah traveled to Egypt, Morocco, The Bahamas, and Mexico before entering the United States on October 22, 1979, for medical treatment of lymphatic cancer. Two weeks later Iranian militants seized the U.S. embassy in Tehrān and took hostage more than 50 Americans, demanding the extradition of the shah in return for the hostages’ release. Extradition was refused, but the shah later left for Panama and then Cairo, where he was granted asylum by President Anwar el-Sadat.