My Memories of Iran's 1979 Revolution

I was a small kid, but I still remember the incredibly inspiring feelings of those days!!! Days like the "ashura" of 1978, or in our Iranian (solar) calendar, 1357, the year of the revolution.

In fact, I think that "ashura" was my first time participating in The Revolution, albeit it was an accident that I found myself in the middle of the revolution that day!!!
A note here to those readers who are not familiar with "ashura":

Ashura = Anniversary of Imam Hussein's Martyrdom in the battle of Karbala, some 1300 years ago

Imam Hussein, Grandson of our Prophet Mohammed = One of Shiite Islam's most revered saints, as the ultimate symbol of Courage and Sacrifice

In Iran, for decades and centuries long, even in the pre-revolution era of Shah's monarchy - Iranians of all races, creeds, or political persuasions, even those who were self-proclaimed as atheists and Godless - when it came to this particular religious day (ashura), everybody suddenly remembered that they were born Muslims, and not only Muslim, but Hussein loving Shiites!

For example, I'm the granddaughter of a couple of old "Tudeh" activists. I had a socialist grandmother, and a mother who hated anything political b/c of the hardships she endured as a child due to her parents' revolutionary ideas. But even my upper-middle class, non-religious, intellectual family would take part in "ashura"!
Every year, my mom would take us to watch the "ashura" processions, and my cool teenage brother would even join the chest-beating and sign-carrying droves of black-shirted men, most of whom would surely go back to their not-so-religious lives the next day!!!!

I must admit though, to most of us (especially kids), "ashura" meant "polo nazri", i.e., the most heavenly delicious food ever cooked on Earth, and served to everyone for free during that day!!!! That special food called "polo-nazri" is so incredibly mouth-watering and amazingly delicious that no matter how rich or poor you were, you had to go get some!!! and the good thing about it was that mosques and community centers that cooked it and gave it away, were not discriminatory about ONLY giving it to the poor! They would cook enough to give to anyone who showed up, rich or poor!!! So, yeah, to be perfectly honest here, that was the main reason we always went to the "ashura" events! and that's still the only thing I miss about not being in Iran for "ashura" every year!!!! :-)


Anyway, that year as in every other year, my mom took us to this particular downtown "tekiyeh" (religious community center) where her uncle would always donate money for the costs of their neighborhood "ashura" events. Outside that "tekiyeh", was where I noticed how the "feeling" and the atmosphere of the day was very different this year from the previous years! There was definitely something in the air!!!! It was so palpable that even a kid like me could feel it!

I don't remember the name of the street but there was a huge bridge in the middle of it where all the protesters were marching on. I remember witnessing a whole other kind of "ashura" that year! That year, even my 16 year old brother was no longer interested in impressing the cute girls in the audience and getting their phone numbers! He actually wanted to join the revolutionary activists who had replaced their traditional "chest-beating" practices with fearless chanting of anti-Shah slogans!

I remember my mom was so scared she kept begging him not to go, but teenage boys are teenage boys, and he wouldn’t listen, all of the sudden he was inside the crowds, screaming Down with Shah! I remember I was kinda scared for his safety b/c my mom was, but at the same time, I was so incredibly moved and excited I had goosebumps all over my arms! It was an incredible feeling! Just indescribable!

That was it, from that day on, Tehran turned into a city of "Allah-o Akbar" at nights, and student marches and strikes in the days!
I remember how I was fascinated by all that passion and fervor, and became an even bigger nuisance to my big brother than I usually had been (being a silly little sister)!
I would follow him around everywhere, and at nights when he defied our mother’s orders and went to the rooftop for the “Allah-o Akbar" rendez-vous with the nation (as was the directive from the leader of the revolution Imam Khomeini), I would go up with him to scream those two magical words that eventually brought down 2500 years of unpopular dynasties and tyrannical monarchy in Iran!!!

The two words that every night, at a certain time (I think it was 9pm), all people, from all neighborhoods, man, woman, young, old, religious, secular, Muslim, Marxist, rich, poor, would all scream in unison! In UNISON!!! That was the magic of it!!!
They all took refuge in the darkness of night, feeling less worried about being recognized by Shah's secret police who could be anywhere!!! My mom had every reason to be worried though, those SAVAK agents could recognize voices too!!!
But, she couldn't stop him, he had caught the revolutionary bug, and I as his "sertegh" little sister was right three with him on the rooftop screaming "Allah-o Akbar"!!!

Allah-o Akbar = God is Great


I have other memories, memories of finding myself in the middle of the Revolution (again by accident), hearing slogans like "mardom chera neshastin? homaafara ro koshtan!", hearing the sound of the gun, people being shot, seeing ambulances rushing to the scene of the massacre, ... and then when we managed to escape from that scene and got back to my grandma's house Uptown (Niyavaran) safe and sound, away from all the dangers, I did something that now seems strange, but for a little kid, I guess it made sense at the time!

I don't know why, perhaps it was so that I wouldn't forget what I had just witnessed! But as soon as I got to grandma's house, what I did was I took my grandmother's lipstick that was on her night-stand, and started writing all those exciting slogans I had heard that day, I wrote them all over the mirrors and windows of her house!!! That was the crazy part of it!!! I turned my grandma’s house into a Revolutionary Headquarter!!!
My grandma was cool though, she was an "avant-garde" revolutionary chick herself! In fact when she saw that, she just smiled at me, whereas any other day, she would have screamed my head off for doing such a stupid thing!!!

Perhaps that was my way of showing my frustration and protest to my mom whom I saw as the uncool one, not letting me stay there in the scene of action that day and be a young Che Guevara!!! I so desperately wished I could have fought alongside those brave young revolutionaries who were shouting those exciting slogans while facing gun shots and arrests!!!!!

The worst part of it was that my brother was not there that day. Actually that's why we had accidentally found ourselves in that scene of action in the first place!!! My mom, my pregnant aunt and I had gone downtown to a bank. I don’t know why we had to go to that particular bank? I guess it was the only branch that had foreign exchange?!!!!? I don’t know. I need to ask my mother about it! But we had gone there to buy some UK Pounds to send to my brother in Cambridge!
Yes, by that time, only a few weeks after "ashura", my mom had succeeded in sending him off to a foreign land, in order to keep him safe and far away from the revolution!!!
Anyway, as we were coming back from the bank, my aunt saw a street vendor selling a certain Iranian delicacy (del o jigar), and she (being pregnant) just had to have some!!! So when my mom stopped the car to buy her some of that "viyarooneh", that was when we heard those slogans, and saw those people first marching and then running, and shortly after, we heard the shootings of police guns and the sirens of ambulances!!! ... It was my most REAL and up-close encounter with the Revolution!!!

I remember how my mom was angry at her little sister for not being able to resist her cravings, and was really giving her a hard time (criticizing her) for not hurrying up. And I remember how my silly silly aunt was laughing!!!! just laughing as she always does when she's either nervous or very very scared!!!! It was a surreal scene!!!! :-)


There are many other memories, but my best memory of those years is that of the Referendum Day, Farvardin 12, 1358 (which was I think April 1, 1979)!
The day Iran voted for the new name of Islamic Republic of Iran to be the official name of our country!!! The results? 98% of the Iranian population voted Yes to that name, and I was so disappointed that kids were not allowed to vote!!! :-(

To describe the amazingly inspired feelings and the incredibly HOPEFUL atmosphere of that day is not easy! To this day, when I think about it or when I am trying to describe it to other people, I get teary-eyed and start humming that particular song which was playing on the radio that day, all day long!!!

“dar bahare azadi jaye Mosadegh khali, jaye Mosadegh khali”

translation: “In this Spring of Freedom we wish Dr. Mosadegh was here, we wish Dr. Mosadegh was here”

As I said though, it will take much more energy and concentration from me to be able to come up with a good description of that day! It's not easy to describe and accurately convey the intoxicating sense of FREEDOM that an entire nation was sensing that day! One has to allocate a lot of time and evergy in order to tap into the memory of passion that existed back then and capture the essence of that day’s historic uniqueness!

So, perhaps I shall continue that story later, in another blog! :-)
Until then, ...