Memoirs of a Persian Childhood by Words by Design

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It is some fifty years since my early childhood came to an end when our family moved from the Royal Court quarters to a larger house in HassanAbad, i.e., from the vicinity of the old Qajar Palace to within half a mile of the new Pahlavi Palace on the newly built Pahlavi Road. This road, over ten miles long, connected the main Railway Station in the south of Tehran to the royal summer residence of Sa’d-abad Palace right on the slopes of the mighty Alborze mountains. And while I was studying in the UK, my family moved once more, to the spacious mansion in the Amir-abad area on the northern edge of the city, near the old Racing Course of Tehran. Despite all these changes and moves there grew a yearning in me to visit the old grounds of my childhood.

ISBN: 978-1-909075-23-8

RRP £8

M.A.R. Taleghany

M.A.R. Taleghany comes from a family of lawyers and men of letters. He followed the family tradition and received two degrees in law from the University of Tehran. He continued with his advance studies at the University of London where he received another two degrees. He taught law for several years at his alma mater. Subsequently he moved to England where he practices as a consultant lawyer. Being interested in literature from early childhood, he has written a number of books on law and literature as well as translating several books from English into Persian and vice versa. His collection of poems The Flight of the Phoenix was well received. Apart from the present work, he has a collection of English poems entitled, “Dawn”, a collection of short stories and also a collection of fables from the east. He lives with his wife and second son, also a lawyer, in London. His first son is a film director who lives in Los Angeles, California.

Memoirs of a Persian Childhood

Towards the end of his fascinating memoir, recalling a different time in what seems like a distant world, M Taleghany writes:

M.A.R. Taleghany

MEMoiRS of A PERSiAn CHiLDHooD

MEMOIRS OF A PERSIAN CHILDHOOD

M.A.R. Taleghany

www.wordsbydesign.co.uk ISBN: 978-1-909075-23-8 The right of M Taleghany to be identified as the Author of this Work has been asserted by him in accordance with the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988. All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form or by any means, electric, mechanical, photocopying, recording or otherwise, without the prior permission of the copyright holder or a licence permitting restricted copying. In the UK such licences are issued by the Copyright Licencing Agency, 90 Tottenham Court Road, London W1P 9HE. British Library Cataloguing in Publication Data A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library

For

Pari who is the angel of our clan

Contents My Family The ‘Royal Court’ Quarter The Coffee House and the Storyteller Going to a Public Bath The Silver-haired Lady Going to School A Gentleman A Childish Rebellion A Purse Full of Hair A Summer Holiday in the Mountains A Venture in Horse Riding Autumn Evenings Attending a Shi’ite Passion-play (Ta’ziah) Day Trips with Mother “Norouze”: The Joy of Festivity and the Horror of Phlebotomy Remembering Grandpa Shoot-out at the Sanctuary The Bazaars of Tehran The Emergency Ward at the Royal Court Area The Magpies The Hunters The War and the Searchlights The White Ball Visiting the Shrine of a Persian Princess A Holiday in Autumn

1 15 33 39 43 49 53 57 63 67 93 101 107 113 121 131 141 145 151 155 161 167 175 181 185

Graduation from Primary School Going to High School Learning Foreign Words and Visiting Dr. Meyer Meet Mr. Churchill Going on Pilgrimage Winter Nights Scenes of My Childhood Revisited

193 197 203 207 213 231 239

My Family I was born into a middle class family of professional people. My parents were distant relatives of each other and had five children. I was their fourth child and the first surviving boy. My brother, the last of my parentsâ&#x20AC;&#x2122; children, is three years younger than me. ***** When I was born, my father was a county court judge. I was still in primary school when he was promoted to the high court and by the time I had reached high school, he was President of the Criminal Court. My father was a Supreme Court judge when he retired. He was a man of medium height, quite fair, very kind and good tempered. He rarely got angry but whenever someone had breached a principle of good behaviour he would be enraged. Although my father was kind to all of us he never showed his emotions, even to me, as a much loved, first surviving son. To this date I do not know whether this was due to the effect of his profession or due to the fact that I appeared on the scene relatively late. My father was well versed in literature, knew a lot of poetry by heart and sometimes, when he was in a good mood, hummed a sonnet of classical poetry. I started reading newspaper headlines with him from the age of five; this was important because in Persian writing some of the vowels are not written and the pronunciation of the words containing some vowels should be learned through hearing them pronounced. For me at the age of five learning the correct pronunciation by listening

Memoirs of a Persian Childhood

was still even more important when it came to political, literary or economic words that are not spoken in the day to day routine at home. After I had done my homework, and before having supper, I used to sit next to my father and read, first, the main headlines and, later, the secondary headlines and, in time, the more important articles in the evening newspaper. Whenever I made a mistake he corrected me. When I came across an Arabic phrase or maxim he read it and explained the meaning of it and its application. He was a scholar in religious studies too and I learned a lot from him. It was thus that from a tender age, I learned how the different principles of law applied, supported or negated each other. It was also a source of great pleasure to see my father talking on legal or literary subjects with his friends, who frequently gathered in our house. Education wise I owe a lot to my father; he was my first teacher in the classics. He was more than a teacher though; he was my leader and guide and I proudly looked up to him as a moral and spiritual mentor. Above all, my father taught me how to be kind to others. If anyone needed help, my father would see to it and sometimes at great cost to himself. He also taught me to be straight in my thinking, honest in my dealings and not to be afraid to tell the truth even if it were not to my liking. My father’s mother had passed away by the time I was born; her name was ‘A Bouquet of Flowers.’ She must have been a beautiful woman and the name made me feel she was. My paternal grandfather was still alive until I was about twelve years old. I saw him during my summer holidays in our village where he had some land. My grandpa was what may be called a gentleman farmer but, although he owned numerous, small pieces of land, he was by no means a feudal landlord. Still, he was called ‘my lord’, by every one, to my great astonishment. Years later I learned from my father that grandpa was in sole charge of the administration of a whole village that was an endowment to the shrine of the 2

My Family

Eighth Shi’ite Imam and, hence the accolade of ‘Lord.’ He remembered two generations of his ancestry and knew three generations further back by name. All of them were gentlemen farmers with claims to a good education. Grandpa was a tall man who donned a cream-coloured, oval shaped, fine felt cap that made him look even taller than he was. He must have been in his late eighties or early nineties when I first met him but he talked and walked much more like a man in his sixties. He must have been a man of literary taste and great wisdom because he spoke to me of things that after many years I discovered were much in line with the teachings of the great masters of philosophy and mysticism. I liked grandpa’s manner and the respect that people showed to him. Sometimes the farmers would come to our house in the evenings and would be entertained with numerous cups of tea and biscuits. They reported to him the state of the crops, the amount of water flowing from the main water source, i.e. the spring that started from under a rock in our mountain farm. They told him of their animals, kept at home or sent to the high mountains for summer grazing. The village barber frequently came to our house, trimmed grandpa’s beard and hair and accompanied him to the village baths. This barber-cum-surgeon had an unusual briefcase that I later on learned to be a ‘Gladstone’ case. I also learned that whenever there was going to be a wedding in the village the bride and the groom’s fathers would first come to grandpa to ask for permission. This was to show their respect and grandpa never refused such permission. ***** My mother was a few years younger than my father. Father called her ‘Dear Darling’ and so did we the children. I always thought that her real name was Darling. She was a pretty woman and had a great sense of humour. What I remember her most by was her sweet voice; she hummed some of the popular 3

Memoirs of a Persian Childhood

songs of her youth when at work at her famous ‘Singer’ sewing machine. Apparently she had a soprano voice and sang quite a lot. However, she gave singing up after marrying my father. When I asked her why she did not sing any more, she replied by saying: ‘I had a great voice. It could be heard several houses away on either side of our house and that was not in line with my husband’s status.’ My mother was very fond of travelling and whenever she did not have any important undertaking for the near future she would go visiting other cities for a few days or would take one of the maids for a day trip to places of interest, especially shrines. The most remarkable thing in my mother was her spirituality. She had a beautiful, spiritual attitude to life that always kept her happy. There was a kind of telepathy between my mother and myself and I frequently did things that she had thought of. I did this without any effort or even awareness. Physically I had inherited most of her features and although she never spoiled me, there was a bonding between us that I could only describe as spiritual. The only occasion when my special rapport with her let me down was her death. Perhaps I never thought of her passing away even subconsciously. She passed away all of a sudden within three days of being taken ill. Since I was studying in England when she passed away, I was not aware of her illness and my father, knowing the great relationship between my mother and myself, did not inform me lest I have a breakdown. I kept writing to her even after she had passed away and asked for her letters and a new photo but my youngest sister always managed to say that mother was busy or that they had no opportunity to get together for a new photo showing the whole family. I was kept in the dark until two years after her death when a family friend let the cat out of the bag when I met him in London.

My Family

I do not think of my mother as someone who has passed away. I have a feeling that she is still with me and keeps me company. I dream a lot about her and in my dreams we usually have a good chat. It is always uplifting to have talked to her and I am on a spiritual high for a few days after each dream meeting with her. I also have the feeling that she somehow protects me with her blessings. My mother was the favourite child of her father, whom she referred to as ‘Dear Papa.’ My maternal grandpa was a great theologian cum literary man. He was a titled man and would, according to my mother, accompany his mentor and master, Mr. Ashtiani, the grand scholar of Tehran, to the royal court to present New Year’s greetings to the king. My mother relayed to us a number of royal anecdotes that her father had told her. In one anecdote, my maternal grandpa had by chance escaped a collective assassination attempt during the Iranian constitutional movement at the beginning of the 20th century. Apparently a number of great Muslim theologians had protested against some of the Qajar Shah’s measures. They had formed a committee leading the protesting activists. Their main base was a house situated next to the famous shrine in the city of Ray, some ten miles to the south of Tehran. Once they were short of provisions and sent my maternal grandfather, who was their youngest and more administrative-minded member, to Tehran to order provisions for a whole month. Grandpa left the city of Ray in the early afternoon, reached the great food and fruit warehouses to the south of the capital, Tehran, ordered the necessary provisions and arranged for them to be picked up early in the morning. He went home for the evening and very early the next day he went to the warehouses, ordered the provisions to be loaded on a carriage and he himself, in a droshkee (a horse-driven carriage), led them to the city of Ray. He arrived at the house at sunrise to see the house, where his friends had stationed, encircled by a number of policemen. It 5

Memoirs of a Persian Childhood

turned out that that night a number of provincial soldiers had attacked the house from the roof and had shot all the committee members dead. My grandpa escaped a certain death by the very fact that he was not there that night. Grandpa died very young when his star had just started rising on the Iranian political scene. This happened a long time before I was born. After my grandpa’s death, the mantle of the head of our family was passed to my father. My maternal grandmother outlived her husband by several decades; she must have been in her nineties when she died. I was about sixteen years old when she passed away and I missed her a lot. Grandma was titled ‘Galeen-Jaan’ or Darling Bride, a title used by those who were somehow linked to the Qajar royal family. She looked and behaved like Queen Victoria. She chaired the family meetings in her house and her word carried the weight of a dictum in any subject discussed. She also had the habit of giving anyone whom she disliked a nickname, usually a derogatory one. Grandma liked my father and respected him a lot. In fact, my father was the only person with whom my grandma spoke on equal terms in her house. My maternal grandma had inherited a fortune from her husband and she herself had a keen sense of business that saw her augment her wealth with shops and arcades and so on and so forth. Unfortunately over time she, and after her my mother, lost most of these properties because they had not registered their letting deeds(in those early days agreements were done verbally). With the passage of time the “key” money, or goodwill, to these shops and arcades had gone up so much that the actual properties were of little value in comparison. Grandma lived with her son and her second daughter in a grand house near the main bazaar of Tehran. The unusual character of this huge house was the yard, which consisted of a long corridor the length of the house. When I asked my father why this was so, he replied that the enormous garden of the house had been 6

My Family

lost when the Tehran municipality had demolished it to create the first main avenue of the capital. This wide thoroughfare was called Khayyam Avenue, after the great poet of the famous Rubaiyat. My elder sister, Mahin, was much older than me. My mother being the Dear Darling, I thus called my elder sister ‘Maman’ and, hence, some people thought that she was my mother. She was a pretty young woman with long auburn hair. She finished her high-school education and was preparing herself for a teaching job, which in the early days of women’s emancipation was of great prestige, when she married. I was probably two years old then, since I do not remember anything of her wedding. Her husband was a school principal. What I remember my Maman most by is her beautiful, large brown eyes. I also remember that during the New Year festivities, i.e. the twenty first of March every year, she was in charge of preparing the sweets and cakes for the whole family. This must have been during the immediate post-war period when luxury sweets and cakes were scarcely available to the population at large. I watched her consulting her cookery book for the right recipes, gathering the ingredients and inspecting the different saucepans that were used in the process. She would always offer me the first piece of whatever dessert that she had prepared. I also remember her coiffeur and the way she made her hair wavy. It must have been fashionable in the mid-forties to have wavy hair. What fascinated me, however, was the gadget she used. This was a long handled, scissor like object that instead of blades had a long metal cylindrical arm and a half tube, tightly matching the metal cylinder, as the second arm. The arm tightly fitted the metal cylindrical tube when closed. My sister would warm the gadget up on a stove fire and then pass her hair through the two arms, close it and keep it there for a few minutes. The hair was quite wavy when released. 7

Memoirs of a Persian Childhood

My elder sister was in her fifties when she passed away. My father was devastated by her untimely death. He could not stop crying for her for weeks. I had never seen my father crying before. Her husband outlived her by two decades. Mahin was survived by two daughters and four sons. I also remember her funeral and burial. Graves are usually dug five feet deep in the ground plus a narrower passage at the bottom. The body of the person is wrapped in a white shroud (called coffin in Farsi), then lowered and laid in the narrower, deeper part of the grave. The body is laid on the right side facing towards Mecca. They cover the body and narrower part with large bricks and then cover the grave with earth until it is level with the ground. However, before laying down the large bricks on the narrower grave a mullah recites prayers. A man, close enough to the dead woman so as to be her intimate, then climbs down onto the shelf like sides of the narrower grave and loudly repeats the mullahâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s recitation into her ear. I was the only man close enough to my sister to be religiously able to repeat the prayer. I was asked to carry out this sad task. I was trembling and sweating profusely. I opened the shroud and could see my sisterâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s face; calm and serene as I had never seen before and repeated the prayer that the mullah was reciting. To this day I remember her face. I then covered her face with the shroud and climbed up. The grave-diggers laid the large brick over the narrow section of the grave and started placing the earth over the grave. They then poured several buckets of water over it to steady the earth. It was then that I remembered the saying that you may never carry any worldly thing with you except your shroud. It has kept me content with whatever that I have and has stopped me being greedy and materialistic. My middle sister, Ehteraam, was about twelve years older than me. Ehteraam was tall and slender and very chic indeed. In her teenage days she was a pretty girl and the best dressed-girl in our locality. 8

My Family

I remember her younger days because of a few factors. First of all, she was my private tutor before getting married. She helped me a lot with my writing and specially reading. It was due to her care that I could read at the age of four and knew the multiplication tables by heart when I was only five. It was also due to her efforts that I could attend primary school at this tender age instead of the standard age of seven. The second thing that makes me remember her youthful days was her artistic talent. She was expert at embroidery. She had a couple of tight-matching, wooden rings between which she fastened the cotton material she was to work at. She had several colour skeins with which she made different patterns on the cotton held between the two rings. The way she wove the colour yarn into the white, cotton material and the speed with which she did so was indeed amazing. I used to sit by her and watch the long, weaving needles movement in and out of the base cloth. The way the patterns, birds, flowers or people, emerged from under her slender fingers was mysterious to me. I very much wanted to learn the art and the skill from her but to no avail. Ehteraam sometimes used stronger material, made the pattern she liked in the shape of a shoe, or slipper, cover. She would then give it to our local shoe-repairer to make the leather sole for it and in no time she had a designer pair of shoes or slippers. They looked exquisite on her feet. My middle sister was also in charge of my health. It was she who took me to the dentist and had my decayed, childish teeth extracted. She admonished me to have fewer sweets. ‘It is the sugar that rots your teeth,’ she would say. Ehteraam completed her high school education and received the relevant diploma; a great achievement back then for those pioneering years of women’s formal education. Soon after her graduation from high school, however, she got married. I do not remember much of her wedding except the great party in our 9

Memoirs of a Persian Childhood

house. I must have been about five years old. Her husband, who passed away a few years ago, was a learned man and was the head of a firm of solicitors. Recently she was mostly residing with her two daughters and one son in the United States. The last time I saw her was when she arrived at Londonâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s Heathrow airport en route to the United States. She was accompanied by her elder daughter Atefe. I saw them at the airport and had a lengthy chat with her before she departed. That was the last time I saw her. Soon afterwards, she fell ill and died. She was a happy soul to the end. I miss her very much. My youngest sister, Narguess, or Narcissus in English, is five years older than me. She is called Pari in the family; a word which means angel. Pari is indeed the angel of our family. After my middle sister married, the duty of coaching me with homework was entrusted to Pari. She was indeed of great help in my education especially after I went to high school. She helped me a lot with my studies in natural science and English. My elder sisters had learned French as a second language but by the time Pari was at high school, English had become more fashionable and had replaced French as a second language. Mastering the alphabet and learning how to write in English was indeed a great task. The Persian alphabet is written from right to left and the words were familiar to me whereas English is written from left to right and the words were strange. I had first to learn how to write a word in English and then try to remember the meaning of it. Happily, English grammar is not that difficult and I learned the conjugation of verbs quickly. Pari and I had a lot in common; together we regularly went to the pictures, visited our house in the village and even went together to the high mountains and lived under the shepherdsâ&#x20AC;&#x2122; tents; this was the summer camp where our flock of sheep were looked after by shepherds during the summer. She finished her studies at the university where she received a degree in natural 10

My Family

sciences, was a schoolmistress for a while and then went on a scholarship to the United States for her further studies. Her love of learning was a source of my inspiration. While she was in the United States I received my admission to the London School of Economics and travelled to England. She visited the US a second time and received her PH.D. On her return from the US she became an inspector at the Department of Education, where she earned a reputation for being very strict. After a while in that position she began lecturing at the National University of Iran. She is the author of a number of books and has also translated several books from English into Persian. After my mother passed away the management of our household was entrusted to Pari and she devoted most of her free time to looking after my father. My younger sisterâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s love of learning and her aspiration to become an authority in her field did not leave her any time for socialising. Thus it was that she did not marry. My brother Hisam, sometimes referred to as Sam, is three years younger than I am. Apparently Sam was born within a few weeks of the birth of my first niece. It seems that my mother did not consider it right to have another baby when her daughter was expecting one. Sam is the youngest and the last of our parentsâ&#x20AC;&#x2122; children. Whereas I felt the burden of being the first surviving son and did my best in my studies and behaved very gentlemanly as a young boy, Sam, the darling of my mother, was free to do whatever he liked. He was very intelligent but naughty. What I first remember of Sam as a child is that he was an outgoing fellow even at the tender age of three and had picked up a lot of street words that was not approved of in our household. I was never allowed to use them but he used them often and got away with it. The second thing was that my mother had bought him a matching Cossack uniform and hat that looked very nice on him. The hat was made of white lambskin and had red ribbons 11

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round the top of it. It looked really nice and gentlemanly. The stubborn boy that he was he never let me put the hat on even for a moment and that I resented. The third thing that I remember showed his character was during the war. It must have been in the autumn of 1941 when the Allied Forces had occupied Iran and had forced the king to abdicate. To create the necessary atmosphere to do so, there was an all night curfew and all the city lights had to be turned off. The total evening blackout was carried out under the pretext that German planes could bomb the city. After the government air raid warning given on the radio we moved into our large basement. At the entrance to the basement a thick blanket was hung to stop light spilling outside. Here my father could study his papers and read the newspapers. During one of these nights of total blackout Sam insisted that he wanted to go to our yard to get the watermelon that was floating in the small pool. With no refrigerators back then, watermelons would be put in the pool in the back yard to stay cool. Sam kept insisting on retrieving the watermelon, against my motherâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s advice that he could not see his way in the dark and could fall and harm himself. After a while my father lost his patience, stopped arguing with Sam and allowed him to go and get the watermelon. Sam went to the yard, got into the pool and managed to get the watermelon, which he triumphantly brought down to the basement. â&#x20AC;&#x2DC;You see, I got my watermelon and no bombs were falling down,â&#x20AC;&#x2122; he said with great pride. Sam completed his high-school education while I was in England and then joined a firm of solicitors before my return. After I returned home I did not think that it was fair that he should end his education so early, something unheard of in my family. I encouraged Father to send him to the United States for his further studies. Altogether, Sam spent over six years in the US, and received a PH.D, with distinction, in animal husbandry.

My Family

He was a professor at the University of Tehran for a time and then set up his own animal husbandry consultancy. The strange thing is that whereas I was quite shy and softspoken in my childhood but turned into an outspoken person on social subjects when I passed the threshold of my thirties, Sam, who, as a child, was a rebel and said and did whatever he liked, turned into a more thoughtful person after he completed his studies. He is married with two sons. Had it not been for the social upheaval in Iran in the seventies, he would have become a national figure due to his great scholarship and management skills.

The ‘Royal Court’ Quarter Our house was in a locality called ‘the Royal Court’ Quarter; thus called because the houses in our lane were in the nineteenth century occupied by the king’s wives or the ‘Royal Wives’. Our quarter, or mahalleh in Persian, centred round the Small Bazaar, or bazaarcheh. It was a junction where two main streets met and formed a T, where a parade of shops, about fifty yards in every direction, on both sides of the streets were connected and covered by high, brick arches; a specific character of Persian bazaars. The first important shop in the Small Bazaar belonged to Asghar-Agha. He owned a very large greengrocery shop in the direction of the long leg of the T. The manager of the shop was Asghar-Agha’s youngest brother called Ahmad-Agha. The fresh seasonal vegetables were brought in at dawn every day, then washed, bundled and displayed on layered shelves. It was a beautiful display of natural colours: green lettuces next to red radishes, more vegetables next to tomatoes and so on and so forth. On the left side of the shop was the fruit section. Iranians eat a lot of fresh fruit in the hot afternoons during the summer and autumn seasons. At this time of day they take high tea starting with lettuce leaves dipped into very sweet syrups or with a slice of watermelon or with different kinds of melons. Several stores beyond the grocery shop was a shoe-repair shop. Opposite this there was a shop selling all kinds of antiques and second-hand tools and furniture. The owner was called Kaka of Shiraz. Kaka, in Shirazi dialect means brother, and was a very nice and popular chap. He was a dark fellow with curly hair. I now think that he was probably a descendant of the early

Memoirs of a Persian Childhood

Abyssinians who arrived in Iran with the Arabs in the eighth century and usually married into the family with whom they were attached. Opposite the grocery, was a spacious coffeehouse that was in reality a tea-house. The coffee-house belonged to Asghar-agha’s middle brother, called Akbar-agha. Historically these coffee shops served only coffee imported from Arabia but started serving tea in the Nineteenth Century when, due to a change in the political scene, the Indian merchants started exporting tea to Iran. The ‘coffee-house’ served as a gathering point for the workers and shopkeepers, and the name survived. Even today people call them coffee-houses. The coffee houses served tea, from the early morning until late in the evening, hookah (or, hubble-bubble) and lunch at noon. What I liked most in the coffee houses were the Nakkal and the radio. Nakkal, or storyteller, was a man who recited the events narrated in our national epic, the Shahnama, or Book of the Kings, in public gatherings and more often in a coffeehouse. Our nakkal was a middle-aged man, with a long, grey beard and shoulder-length hair that flowed round his face, very much like wandering dervishes. He donned a cream-coloured conic felt hat on which some patterns in black were imprinted. On a podium placed in the middle of the coffeehouse the Shahnama was laid open to which he regularly referred. He had a saint-like appearance, or so it seemed to me when I was about six. While reciting the story, he acted out the scenes as well. He had a silver-studded baton that he used to employ as a sword when describing a battle scene or conversely as the walking stick of an old man. He spoke softly when speaking as a princess in the story and changed it to a coarse, low voice when he spoke as a vizier. He walked the length of the aisle in the coffeehouse and looked to the right and to the left as though he was reviewing his troops. I knew our Nakkal only from a distance. My father

The ‘Royal Court’ Quarter

had forbidden us from going into the coffeehouse and I could only hear and see him through a gap in the side-window. The second thing in the coffeehouse that mesmerised me was the radio set that was placed on a stool in a corner of the chamber. I mostly heard it when returning home for lunch, when the radio had been turned up loudly for the azaan, or call to the noon-prayer. I wondered how such a voice, or sometimes music, could emanate from a wooden box. My father once replied to my query by saying that there was a person at the end of the wire behind the radio set, and this I had taken literally and always searched for a man behind the set in vain. ***** To the north-west of the Small Bazaar, that is, on the long stem of the T, and some one hundred yards from the triangle, there was a small square leading into a mosque that had been turned into a seminary. The children played football and a kind of rugby, called ‘pass-it-on’(Dastesh-deh), in this square. Next to the seminary was a narrow lane where the old royal houses snuggled next to each other on both sides. There were half a dozen of these royal houses and we lived in one of them. Further along, about four hundred yards from the junction was the beginning of the Jewish Quarter. This was a rather large area with streets and alleyways and the boys sometimes went there to play with the boys from that locality. The Jewish Quarter sprawled a long way down to the Ironsmith’s Bazaar. The surgery of our family doctor, Dr. Meyer, was at the very beginning of the Jewish Quarter. After visiting Dr. Meyer, my father sometimes took me for a walk through the quarter at the end of which, near the Ironsmiths Bazaar, there were a parade of shops each one of which was called ‘Entertainment Company’, with the name of the owner on it. I was baffled by the name and one day gathered the courage to ask my father what they actually sold. 17

Memoirs of a Persian Childhood

‘These are in reality music shops. Each shop belongs to a family of Jewish musicians who form a band, playing violin, percussion, dulcimer, tambourine and so on and so forth. It is a family tradition among them to learn to play at least one musical instrument. Most of them play two or three instruments well.’ ‘Why are they called entertainment companies?’ I asked. ‘Because they are invited to play and entertain people whenever there is a wedding or engagement party, circumcision ceremony or when someone’s son returns from Europe or, maybe, when someone builds himself a large house.’ Let’s go back to our Small Bazaar once more. At the very junction of the two streets sat the large grocery shop of Mahmoud-agha. He was a plump man in his fifties and had two assistants. We bought our sweets from this shop. To the right of the grocery shop were a number of shops that ended at the women’s baths, called Hamam-e-Maramar, or the Marble Public Bath. To the left of the grocery shop also, there were several shops. The noteworthy ones were Mashdi’s ice-cream café, followed by a master mason’s workshop. We children loved the ice-cream shop and bought our ice cream in wafer cones or sandwiched between two round wafers, from the Mashdi. I very much liked the way they prepared Iranian ice cream: the ingredients were put in a metal barrel that was within a much larger, wooden barrel. The gap between the two was filled with ice and an assistant would continuously beat the ingredients until they turned into a white, sticky paste that was the ice-cream. I also liked the mason’s shop. Here there were slabs of polished stone of many different sizes and thicknesses in black, white and marble. There were some alabaster-stones too and I had heard my father saying that they came from the city of Yazd, and they were very expensive. The stone-slabs were mostly gravestones but there were also stones made to order on which 18

The ‘Royal Court’ Quarter

some maxims in Arabic or some poems in Persian were written. These were used as an ornamental piece to be fixed on the top of the main entrance doors to the big houses. A calligrapher would first write in black ink the text commissioned and the mason artists would then carve the letters, in which case the text was one centimetre deeper than the background, or carve the background, in which case the letters would be standing out. After the completion of the carving work the master mason would paint the letters with thick, black paint. I sometimes stood by the master mason for a long time and watched him work on the stones. He did not mind me standing at his side while he was at work; he appreciated my amazement and fascination with his art. Another aspect of the master mason’s work that interested me was when a Jewish calligrapher would write the text in Hebrew. This I could not read and, as usual, was very anxious to learn. The Hebrew writing seemed to me very much like the cuneiform writing of the ancient Persians. Whenever I happened to pass by the mason’s shop and the Hebrew calligrapher was at work I would ask him about the alphabet and he very kindly would explain the different letters to me. However, I was much too busy with my own school texts and homework to remember anything worthwhile. ***** In our locality there were several personalities that were respected for different reasons. First and foremost, was my father who was referred to as ‘Mr. Judge’. Unbeknown to me, Mr. Judge was a County Court judge. My father was highly respected by all the residents and shopkeepers not only because he was an important person but also because he was a gratis adviser on legal matters to the whole community. Whether it was marriage, wills, divorce or small wrongdoings, they would refer it to my father. No one would bother us children or make any offensive remarks to us. 19

Memoirs of a Persian Childhood

This was not only because of my father’s status but because there was a collective sense of community that stopped any wrongdoing in the vicinity of our Small Bazaar. If anyone got drunk or did something that was disapproved of, he would be ostracized. It would take him a long time to regain his previous good name by helping out in communal affairs. The second most influential person in our locality was Asghar-Agha, the green grocer. He not only owned the large, strategically placed green grocery cum fruit-shop, but had the place managed by his youngest brother Ahmad-Agha, who was a famous athlete. On the top of that, his middle brother, AkbarAgha owned the famous coffeehouse that catered to the shopkeepers and manual workers in our quarter. The third important person was Mahmoud-Agha, the grocer. Mahmoud-Agha’s grocery shop was well stocked and the women folk usually had to go to his shop at least once a day. His importance, however, derived from the fact that he arranged and organized the annual remembrance of saints’ martyrdom processions in our quarter, of which I will speak later. The fourth most important person of the locality was Dr. Meyer. Dr. Meyer’s home-run clinic was at the very front part of the Jewish Quarter, some three to four hundred yards from the Small Bazaar. He ran his clinic with the help of his wife whom he called and referred to as Cheri. My elder sister thought that Cheri was her name but my middle sister believed that that was an endearing term in French. Dr. Meyer was a tall man in his sixties, with dark skin, grey hair, large glasses and a fatherly manner. He charged his patients a small fee and sometimes administered injections or eye-drops personally. He had a great sense of humour and joked with his patients all the time, making light of their plight and giving them great hope for a quick recovery. When his sons returned from the United States with their doctorate degrees, they set up their clinics in the affluent, 20

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northern part of the city and, after a while, encouraged their father to move there too. He finally did and my father and myself visited him there several times. However, he was not at all happy with his new surroundings, saying that the residents were more impressed by the ‘décor’ (which he pronounced in French) of the clinic rather than by his expertise. ‘The place is dead, Agha!’ he would tell my father. ‘These people have no soul and they do not know me the way people knew me in the old place. They just know me as another Doctor Meyer. That is all.’ Although Dr. Meyer was a friendly chap with everybody and especially with my father, I did not like him much. The reason was that whenever my father took me to him for whatever ailment I had, he would laugh loudly and pat me on the back and say ‘come on baldy,’ and then he would point to the surgery couch and give me an injection in my thigh. His quick treatment and his joking with my father was probably part of his being friendly but to me, a child of six, it seemed rather rough. Taken altogether, Dr. Meyer’s method of treatment put me off the medical profession and I chose to follow a legal career. All that said, I should confess that his nickname of ‘baldy’ for a child with plenty of hair turned to be prophetic about thirty five years later. From this old quarter of the Royal Court, near the Bazaars of Tehran and in the close proximity to the palaces of the Qajar dynasty, a few memories stand out clearly in my mind even now, so many years after my family left the area for a much larger house closer to the royal palace of Reza Shah, the founder of the Pahlavi dynasty. ***** My first memorable features of our locality were the square and the seminary. The square, which seemed to me in my childhood eye as large as a football pitch, was the place in which we played 21

Memoirs of a Persian Childhood

soccer with a tennis ball and also played a kind of rugby we called â&#x20AC;&#x2DC;Pass-it-on.â&#x20AC;&#x2122; It was also here that we peered into the coffeehouse to watch the Nakkal, or the storyteller, whenever we heard him depicting a scene loudly. It was also in the coffee house that I came to know about radios. This must have been about 1942 when we had not yet acquired a set. The seminary was of interest to me because of the two, beautiful minarets that adorned the facade of its internal court. The mosque/seminary is usually a collection of what may be called double-room studios because each studio had two interconnecting rooms: the front one of which was the study room and the back room served as the bedroom. These studios were built around a rectangular courtyard. Each studio was allocated to one of the apprentice mullahs. The washing area of a seminary is located at the end corner of the yard. In the centre of the courtyard there is always a pool in which the students made their smaller, ritual ablutions that is a pre-condition for the validity of a ritual prayer. Around the pool there were four flowerbeds around which the students would sit, in the summer heat, and carry on lengthy discussions of their previous lessons. The arena and its architecture is a model after which the Spaniards made their seminaries and thence it came to England. The Oxford colleges are practically a copy of the Iranian seminaries. However, what interested me, and other children, most were the minarets. Minarets are made mainly for the purpose of calling the faithful to prayer. At the top of the tall minarets there is a round balcony where the Muazzin, or the caller, says the preliminary prayer for the ritual prayer, and hastens the faithful to attend to their religious duty while he goes round the balcony. He does this so that the residents of a locality in every direction could hear him. What we children liked most was the narrow, spiral staircase inside the minaret that took one to the top. Once there, we could see the whole of our locality, including the old royal palaces, from a vantage 22

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point. It was very exciting to be up there and we would sneak in whenever the keeper of the place was absent or was attending to other duties away from the minarets. I remember well that seeing the glorious, tiled façade of the old royal palace filled me with awe and made me wish I were able to see the inside. Little did I know then that sometime in the future I would attend the royal Salaam ceremony in my capacity as a senior government officer. The second thing that I recall well from those days was the appearance of camels in our square. I was, of course, well familiar with the rural scenes and animals such as horses, mules, donkeys, cows, sheep, goats, shepherd’s dogs and so on and so forth, from going to our village for summer holidays. But camels I had never seen before. I remember that one night my father told my mother to make some room in the interior space of the kitchen for melons and watermelons that were to be delivered. ‘They bring two loads of melons and watermelons tomorrow. Just be prepared for it,’ my father said. The next day I was doing my summer homework when there was a knock on the door to our house and a man informed the maid that the melons had arrived and he would bring them in. I rushed to the square to see the horsecart that was supposed to have brought the melons. What I saw surprised me indeed; instead of horses I saw two camels heavily loaded with melons; standing high in the square. I had not seen a camel before. Camels are much taller than horses. They have a very long neck and a short tail. The cameleer had difficulty in making them squat on the ground. The camels were roaring frighteningly. We watched the cameleer tap a short stick on their necks and tried to encourage them to kneel down and squat. He told the children to stay away from the camels. ‘Why are they roaring like that?’ I asked.

Memoirs of a Persian Childhood

‘They do not like to squat on the ground; they only squat at night,’ was the reply. ‘Why is that so?’ ‘Because they know that after unloading they have to stand up again; and they do not like that.’ ‘It is very clever of them to remember that after unloading they have to stand up and start another journey,’ I said. ‘Camels are cleverer than most people think. They have good memories too. Try not to bother them; otherwise they may hit you hard with their long neck,’ he said. It took the cameleer a good twenty minutes to make the two camels squat. In the meantime one of our farmers who had come to town for shopping and who stayed in our house came along and helped the cameleer unload. Each camel had a load of two very large, woollen sacks full of melons. These sacks were tied at the top and two heavy pieces of wood kept the ties tight. The melons were very large, about five kilos in weight and yellowish in colour. Each side-sack contained about twelve melons. I could be of no help carrying them to our house but the farmer was a great help. When the camels were made to squat I gathered courage to go nearer, that is, three yards from the animal, for a close look at them. The camels have a very long neck, about a yard and half long. The neck is also very strong; it is more than a foot wide and a foot thick. The camel’s head is longer than that of a horse, the ears are small, the lips are very long and the eyes are large, expressive and have very long lashes. After the unloading finished, the camels stood up immediately. The way the camels stand up after squatting is very awkward: First they stand on their very long hind legs, which makes the saddle stand at a sharp angle. Then they get up on their front legs in a jerky manner. The cameleer hobbled them by winding a rope around one of their front legs. I asked him why he did so and he replied that that was a sign that he wanted 24

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them stay in the same spot. Otherwise they go astray. With their huge necks and towering bodies camels are nevertheless very gentle animals. A young boy could easily lead a caravan of twenty camels in any direction. I liked the camels for their gentle way of looking at us children. The third thing that I remember well was an annual event called Ashoura and ‘Sin-e-zani’ or beating one’s chest in mourning. This was held in remembrance of the martyrdom of the grandson of the prophet of Islam who was also the third, Shi’ite Imam. Historically speaking, when the prophet of Islam passed away there was a dispute over his succession. The Prophet had designated his cousin and son-in-law, Imam Ali, to succeed him. A pressure group of the early Muslims succeeded in ignoring his will by electing one of themselves as the First Caliph. The first three caliphs were theoretically rejected by the followers of Ali but in reality they were tolerated because they led a simple life style and followed a semblance of an Islamic style of government. Then Imam Ali was belatedly elected the fourth caliph. He was murdered after a few years and the governor of Syria, who belonged to a tribe in great enmity with the prophet, imposed himself on the Muslims as the next caliph. He established a monarchy and appointed his son as his successor. His son, however, openly ignored the Islamic tenets, and appointed his relatives as governors of the conquered provinces. Under his caliphate started an unprecedented corruption that angered all Muslims. Still, the Shi’ites kept their distance from his rule until he tried to force the third Imam to take the oath of allegiance to him. His demand was refused and in a battle that followed at Karbala, in present day Iraq, the Third Imam’s whole male family members, except one ailing son, were massacred and the women of the prophet’s family were taken captives and were transferred to Damascus in a most humiliatingly way. That was the Ashoura. The Ashoura procession symbolises the spirit of resistance to tyranny, 25

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standing against bullying in whatever shape and name and the value of defending the principle of justice and one’s right to an honourable life. The event, and the principles embodied therein are celebrated by the Shi’ites all over the Muslim world from Indonesia in the east to Morocco in the west. In our locality, the arrangement and management of the procession was the prerogative of Mahmoud-Agha the grocer. He had a very large house with many rooms where the people of the locality gathered from early morning that day. The elders were looked after in the rooms; the younger ones gathered in the courtyard. Trays of tea and biscuits went round and offered to every one until about eleven o’clock in the morning. Mahmoud-Agha was the main provider of the necessary funds but others, well-to-do members of the community, supported him with their donations. In the meantime, the black, mourning flags were brought to the court and entrusted to the stronger, young men. At about eleven o’clock, the main symbol of the procession, or Alam, was brought in and the people started saying “Salavaaat”, or praise to the prophet, and the women started crying loudly. The Alam was an elaborate piece of strong wood frame that formed an upside down letter T. At the middle of the horizontal handle of this T-shape frame rose a very long, strip of bronze, four inches wide and about two yards long. On this metal strip were engraved patterns and writings and it was ornamented at the very top. The horizontal part of the Alam was covered with layers of embroidered cloth of different colours and sizes. The Alam served as the flag of each group of mourners. The bigger and more elaborate the flag, the more important the prestige of the group and the locality. Some guilds, like the goldsmiths or the shoemakers guild had Alams with as many as five bronze strips, called blades. Our local Alam had three bronze strips: the middle one was about two yards long and the ones to each side of it were a bit 26

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shorter. It was very heavy indeed. It was especially so because the main bronze strip would at the top swing back and forth at every step the carrier took. Holding it upright required a strong man. Our Alam was entrusted to Ahmad-Agha, the youngest brother of Asghar-Agha the greengrocer. This was a great honour indeed and the carrier was looked up to as a twentieth century Knight with all the respects and responsibilities attached to the office. Ahmad-Agha wore a very wide leather belt in front of which there was a leathery device, to hold the short base of the Alam. Ahmad-Agha, helped by several strong men who held the horizontal arm of the upside-down T, raised the Alam and put the base of the T in its holder. These strong men gathered around Ahmad-Agha and carried the horizontal base of the Alam during the whole procession. Whenever the Alam-bearer felt tired, the boys around him put a wooden stool in front of him so that he could rest the base of the Alam on it. We children went to Mahmoud-Agha’s house at about eleven o’clock in the morning. We were enthusiastic about participating in our communal remembrance processions and our parents did not stop us. When the Alam was raised high enough for Ahmad-Agha to place it in his belt the people in the yard and in the rooms cried a loud “Salavaat”(praise be upon the Prophet and his family). Then the senior threnodist, or mourner, of the group started singing his lamentations in a most mournful tune. The poems he sang depicted the Imam’s journey to the battlefield. He stopped after a while and the people cried out ‘Ya Hussain’ three times, after which the group of mourners started going out of the yard in rows of five or six. First out and in front of the group was the threnodist. Then Ahmad-Agha carried the Alam behind him very slowly. The elders of the community followed with great dignity. The fourth group of the main party were the young ones who served as the engine of the procession because they beat their chests in a rhythmic manner following the songs sang by the threnodist. Behind the young 27

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people came the professionals: the teachers, civil servants, officers etc. Even the very senior and old persons joined the procession; they considered it an honour and a source of spiritual inspiration. After this group came the teenagers who also beat their chests in mourning. The children, like me, followed this group and after us came the local cleric, Mahmoud-Agha and other senior businessmen. The threnodist sang for a few minutes during which time the men beat their chests in a regular rhythmic manner. He would then sing a couplet, like a signature tune, which the men hummed and the younger ones sang for a few minutes to give the threnodist a chance to rest his voice and throat. The procession would follow a route around the locality, stopping whenever another procession was passing. It also stopped whenever it passed a mosque; Ahmad-Agha would turn and face the mosque and bow the Alamâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s metal strip in respect towards the mosque and the theological students. He would then receive a Kashmiri shawl from the prayer-leader of the mosque. By the end of the procession some twenty such shawls were gathered and hung from the shoulders of the young men around the Alam. Some houses prepared sherbet drinks in advance and would offer it to all the participants of the procession. During the whole procession people living on the route came out of their houses and sprinkled the participants with rosewater. The whole community felt a kind of kinship without any reservation as to the age or status of the people in the procession. At about two oâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;clock in the afternoon the mourning party would return, exhausted, to Mahmoud-Aghaâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s house. A few youngsters at the house would immediately welcome the returning group with cold sherbet drinks, buckets of cold water to wash their sweat away, while others produced towels for drying faces and arms. In no time some other youths would come out of the basement kitchen with large, round trays full of different kinds of risottos, rice with meat, chicken or aubergine 28

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stews. Decanters of different sherbet drinks went round for the thirsty ones. The whole thing ended with glasses of tea at about three o’clock in the afternoon. We then returned home. Some mothers would give their children a small dish to bring back some of the food for blessing. My mother who was greatly spiritual in her attitude towards the Third Imam’s martyrdom gave me one of these dishes and the kitchen hands would fill it with risotto to be taken home for those people who could not attend the procession in person. My mother believed that a portion of the Aashoura food worked as a bonding with the Imam in his stand for justice and resisting the tyranny of bad governments. I have inherited her deep sense of justice and have all my life stood for the rights of the poor and the needy. ***** Another memorable event of this period relates to the war and the occupation of Iran by the Allied troops. The story was like this: One night we were preparing for our dinner when there came a knock on the front door. The maid went to the door and after a while came back to the first floor dining room and informed my father that Asghar-Agha’s assistant at the grocery store wanted to see him on a matter of urgent nature. ‘He says that the Agha should please come at once to the Small Bazaar as there is a great fight between the local youths and the foreign soldiers,’ she reported. My father went to the door in his casual clothes. I followed my father and was a few steps behind him keenly listening to what Asghar Agha’s assistant had to say. ‘Agha! A fight has broken out between the English soldiers and the local boys. Asghar Agha is afraid that there may be casualties and has asked you to come and intervene,’ the boy said in a hurry. ‘What sort of people are these soldiers? Are they fair or not?’ My father asked him. 29

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‘They are all fair and big fellows.’ ‘They are not English soldiers then. Tell Asghar Agha to keep them apart for a few moments and I will come over in no time.’ The boy left in a hurry. My father returned to his room, got dressed as though he was going to his office and told my mother that he would return in a short while. When he left the house I felt so excited that I did not listen to my mother’s warning and followed him. I followed ten yards behind my father. To the right side of the Small Bazaar, some two hundred yards from Asghar Agha’s green grocery, right in front of the master mason’s workshop there had gathered in a circle some fifty angry youths. They brandished sticks and all sort of things in their hands and were all shouting in a very excited manner. Apparently they were on the verge of attacking the people inside the circle. I could not see the besieged people. Asghar Agha left the group and came to my father and reported the incident. ‘There are some seven soldiers, sir, and they have been bothering the local women. The boys threatened to kill the lot of them but I have persuaded them to keep calm until you arrive. They are apparently English soldiers,’ he reported. My father calmly approached the gathering. The angry boys immediately stepped back and made way for my father to go into the middle of the gathering. There my father stopped and started talking to one of the senior soldiers. I could not hear him because he spoke in a low voice. After a while my father somehow dismissed the soldiers and the boys made an avenue for them to leave the bazaar. I could see my father pointing the way towards the main street, in the direction of the old, royal palace and the soldiers hurriedly left the place. My father wanted to leave when a number of the youths started arguing with him and protesting that he had let the soldiers go scot-free. I saw my 30

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father pause then turn and start talking to the angry group. Now that the danger of a bloody fight had ended I went nearer the crowd. I saw the youths gathered round my father in a circle. I was a bit frightened lest they disrespect my father. After all, I was a small child of about six years old and this was the occupation of Iran by foreigners, a fact that angered a lot of people. It was September 1941. My father started his fatherly admonition: ‘our country is now occupied by the Allied troops. This is a fact, even though we do not like it. Our government had no option but to agree with the terms of the agreement imposed upon us. These soldiers have been away from home and have gone a bit wild. In their country the women are treated differently but these Russian and American soldiers are ordinary people and do not know that we respect our women far more than they do. I told them to go back to their garrisons and never contemplate repeating what they had done today; otherwise they may get badly hurt. And remember this: their armies are stronger than ours and if something untowardly happens to them, they may do violent, dangerous things in reprisal. Also remember: we are a proud Muslim nation and one of the dearest things with us is hospitality towards strangers. By telling them of their wrongdoing and letting them go, I made them understand that we are a civilised, hospitable people. Now they appreciate our hospitality more.’ My father stopped. The crowd were now quiet and listening. Someone shouted ‘Salavaat,’ and the people loudly cried the chorus. This meant that the argument had been peacefully settled. My father had taken a few steps towards home when someone shouted ‘another Salavaat for Mr. Judge,’ and the people cried the formula and scattered. I felt very proud of my father. We calmly returned home. Once in the house I ventured to ask my father the question that had crossed my mind.

Memoirs of a Persian Childhood

‘Father, how did you know that the soldiers were not English?’ ‘Because the English army do not employ their own soldiers on the Asian front. They always use Indian soldiers who are commanded by English officers and these officers are well trained and do not get involved with the local populace’, my father replied.

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ISBN: 978-1-909075-23-8

RRP £8

M.A.R. Taleghany

Memoirs of a Persian Childhood

Towards the end of his fascinating memoir, recalling a different time in what seems like a distant world, M Taleghany writes:

M.A.R. Taleghany

MEMoiRS of A PERSiAn CHiLDHooD