George Sand Speaks

For a period of 2 months, ending April 20 1988, over 130 Al Hussein scud missiles hit Tehran. Apparently, there were never more than 11 missiles deployed in one day and the maximum at one time was 7. My friends and I had a game where we actually counted the missiles. This was easy to do because they were mainly weapons of terror and very loud. We could count them by looking in the sky. My family joined the more than one quarter of Tehranis who fled the city at one point or another but eventually we settled at home, it was more comfortable anyway. 

But at home, we couldn’t live in the darkness of constant black outs either. To combat the shadows that befell us every night, we installed gas lights. To keep soldiers from complaining about the gas lights, we added thick drapes. Everyone had flash lights, candles, matches, batteries, radios and stock piles of extra food. My mom even made home made protective masks in case of a chemical bomb which Saddam was using against the Kurds.

Those were indeed strange days. Danger was lurking every where and yet, we couldn’t run and hide. The opposite happened and people ended up getting together and holding on to each other. This made the ordeal bearable and I day say, sometimes even enjoyable.    

Who can talk about the Iran Iraq war without talking about the phone lines in Tehran? They were a mess. Following each attack, there were millions of phone calls in the space of a few minutes. Imagine Tehran, with all its then 10 million or so residents! Phone lines were always jammed and the lines were frequently mixed up. One time, I was trying to call my cousin and ended up on a line where a couple were planning a date. I giggled and blurted out: “Eva man chi? Manam mikham biam” (What about me? I want to come too). They panicked and hung up.  

 The Iranian national pass time, i.e. crank calls, reached an unprecedented height of excellence. What was previously mediocre was refined! There was no such thing as *69 or call display. Are you kidding me? People played all sorts of tricks on each other. Boredom can be a very funny thing. Someone use to call my dad every Friday at 12 pm. And it was always the same routine. He called and repeated everything my father said:

 Alo?

 Alo? 

 Baleh befarmaid?

Baleh befarmaid?

Akheh martikeh to bi kari?

Akheh martikeh to bi kari?

And so on…it was annoying, but very amusing. 

I am ashamed to say my friends and I crank called others on a regular basis too. My best friend was a year older and a natural born pest. She remained calm and serious even under extreme stress. I would dial numbers at random and pass the phone to her. She would say: “Alo? Sedam miad? Man az khaarej zang mizanam. Alo? Chi? Boland tar harf bezan! Ghazanfar Toee?”

One of my cousins was going through his awkward puberty stage and his voice cracked at the most inconvenient times. We used to get him to call random numbers and ask about a car that was supposedly advertized for sale. Usually a shitty car like Lada or an old model Peykan. It was hilarious.   

The last time I was party to such stupid verbal vandalism was when I was 15. One of my cousins gave me all his friends’ numbers we went down the list, one by one. I didn’t live there anymore and no one recognized my voice. It was great. Mostly, we just called and said “Aaaaahhhhh ooooooh oh yeah baby right there aaaaaaaaah ooooooooh” and that was it.  

 Just to put this into perspective, let me say that I was a female version of Dennis the Menace. For example, I once shoved a small ice cube in my cousin’s nose while he was sleeping. Another time I set our neighbor’s house on fire (a detailed account will be provided later). In order to avoid reciting poems in front of the class, I routinely told my teachers in Iran that we were war refugees from Khorramshahr. They pitied me and I got away with things. Finally, at 15, I was tamed.

I picked a name form my cousin’s list. I started with the routine sex noises but the person on the other end cut me off with a deep, sexy “joooon”. I forgot my lines. I couldn’t breathe and I just froze. Who the fuck replies to that kind of a call? He was supposed to get angry and hang up, not go along with it. As it turned out, it was the older brother of my cousin’s friend. What a masculine, wonderful voice! I felt embarrassed and started apologizing but before long, he manipulated me into telling him my name, where I lived, how long I was visiting Tehran and so on. I had a telephone boyfriend, a right of passage into womanhood in Tehran.

I talked to him every day I was in Tehran, and again the next year when we went back for vacation. We exchanged letters for about 2 years, just talking about school, family, and movies and so on. I tell you it was one of the sweetest relationships of my life. He is now a doctor in Florida and tried to add me on Facebook. Naturally, I declined.   

Even though family was around, we were never really supervised. We were supposed to be mature and responsible, which we were, most of the time. But there was no harm in a bit of phone fun. Besides, school was out…seemingly indefinitely. Do you have any idea how great that sounds to an eleven year old? Every time there were rumors about a truce with Iraq, all the school aged children got depressed about the catch up home work we’d be subjected to.  

What I enjoyed the most about the missile crisis was the family gatherings. My extended family came to stay with us. We got to spend a lot of time together. We had pillow fights every night and played games while our parents played cards, talked politics and told jokes.   

I developed a close relationship with one of my aunts. She used to tell me stories about when I was a child and remind me of all the mischief I got myself into. She used to tell me I would grow up and marry an American and forget about her. I eventually married and American but I haven’t forgotten her. Never.  

We also had some great birthday parties. My parents would go all over town and buy goodies. We had cakes and cutlet sandwiches with pop and “maashaeer” (root beer?). The music at these parties was wonderful too. Classic 80s Iranian pop in all it’s corniness. We loved Shabpareh’s “Yaareh moo kootah” or “Ey Ghashangtar az Parya”. My older cousins got the music off the black market and we played games such as musical chairs and “estop raghs”.    

My birthday party that year was in the dark, with candles and that gas light. But it was great, even the pictures turned out fine. The only bad memory I have from that birthday party is that when my mom and I went to pick up my pre ordered chocolate guitar cake, we saw the Komiteh in the pastery shop. Before we dashed off, we heard them telling the owner his breath smelled like alcohol. He denied it, I’m sure he was sober.  They were trying to force the kid who cleaned the store to admit his boss’s breathe smelled like alcohol. The kid was crying.  

 Hundreds of people died in Tehran during those 2 months. As a child, I was aware of the danger but protected from the realities of it. I miss the family gatherings and even the crank calls but not the rest.