The only hope I had was my pen friend
The principal of the German Embassy School changed. The new principal was a different person. He knew very fast that Iranian have financial problems and the Iranian teacher or employee in the school do not have the same chance to be employee to Iranian government. He knew that the salary of Iranian teacher is hundred times lower than German teacher sending by German government and the Iranian teacher in Iranian school have even less salary as the Iranian teacher in German Embassy School.
Before him the principal adjust the salary so that the people who worked there with same qualification have different salary. So in this way the Iranian people worked there were not united, because they earn different salary. It is clear that those who had more salary than their college were more satisfied. The German Mark had three different rate in Iran. I think the official rate was 50 rials per Mark and in black market it has two other rate. 150 rials and 200 rials. The German change their mark with 200 rials per Mark, but the rials that they had over changed through the Bank with official rate which was 50 rials. With other words, they change for example one Mark for 200 rials and bought something for 50 rials, so they had 150 Rials over. They went to the Bank and changed this 150 Rials to 3 Marks. So they paid their cost and three times gathered also cash money.
The new principal knew these facts very fast and like other German misused the situation in Iran. They paid their cost for example in Iran for 400,000 Rials and they got 1200,000 Rials over which they changed in Bank for 60,000 DM cash in their pocket. So it is clear that they think that Iranian is stupid to let them to make so much money. So they used it for their insurance companies also; they paid in Rials and got 4 times back from insurance company the money back. I was the head of the teacher and; the Iranian teacher has to suffer for the inflation. So they asked me to write a letter and explain the situation. The school and embassy reported that the Iranian teacher have good salary. Our salary was about 100,000 Rials. With official market or Bank change it was DM5000. But in reality it has the power of buying not for 5000 Mark, but may be DM500. The problem was that every day the prices were going up and we had every day less and less power to buy and to pay. As our salary was in Rials and the teacher sending from Germany their salary was in Mark. I wrote the letter and send with that letter also an Iranian newspaper which printed in English in Tehran the rate of Dollar and Mark as a prove that a Mark has three different rats in Iran and we do not really have DM 5000, but DM 500 and every day the power of our buying is going less and less.
The other problem was that they looked down over us as we were paid so poorly and as our work was not worth. I was teacher for German, English and fine arts. The new principal could not speak even English and wanted to change everything as to show he is important and is a principal. He knew that a lot of Iranian have no work and he can give them work so he can enjoy may be more respect from the new teacher as the teacher who were long in the school have more experience than he had. I should also add that between us there were also German female teacher who were married to Iranian and they have the same salary as other Iranian teacher. But Mr. Carl Fritsch knew that fact and advertises that the school need teacher. The embassy people and teacher who were sending from Germany did not like my letter as the business to make a lot of extra money was jeopardized. He said very clearly that the Iranian teacher is not worth and we should change them. Any way the embassy called me and asked me if I can write another letter and say that I did a mistake. I said I cannot do this because I wrote the truth. The other teacher left me alone as they may get some benefit from the embassy. Mr. Fritsch send me out of school and they gave me just DM 5000 as the compensation. A salary of a German teacher from Germany was over DM 15000 to DM20, 000 per month. Before him sending me out of the school he reduced my hours of teaching in half and hired two other teacher part time, one for English, one for Fine Art and he was trying to hire another teacher also for German. So he wanted to show that I am not important and so many teachers can replace my function easily.
I was out and university needed a teacher so I got that position. Mr. Mosavi Tirabadi Morteza sends a letter to university that I am a Bahai so I lost that job, too. Now I was trying to find a job in Iran or out of Iran. I wrote to many German schools and British schools for finding another job. I wrote also to university to get a position and wrote also in the German newspapers that I am looking for pen friends. As I had time I could write a lot of letters every day for searching job or finding pen friends. The FernUniversitaet in Hagen send me material to read and Carl Duisberg send me also books in German to real. It was not so bad. They put also my name in Sprachrohr a university newspaper, so I got a lot of letters and contacts. My wife treated me to divorce me if I do not get a good job.
Among the pen friend I got was a 19 years old student from East Germany. She showed a lot of interest about my life and was a nice friendly pen friend. She wrote almost every day a letter or two for me and she wrote a lot of pages. Another girl who said she is a German writer wrote letter to me also. She offered me to send my writing to her and she can make them in a better German and will send me back. These two pen friends were a good hope for me. So I could know about today Germany and news. After few months a university wrote to me that they need a guest teacher for three months. I was very happy and the 19 years old pen friend encourages me to go there. Her name was Claudia Zange. She was very nice and a real good pen friend to me. In the time that I had so many problems she always encouraged me and inspired me to fight and do not give up. Because of the letter I wrote to the German officials and German Federal government, the embassy did not give me a visa. So I lost the 3 months job.
For a while I could not go out of Iran, because my mother was Bahai. So I started to teach in my house privately and I had enough students, but because I was not teacher in the system, with the time my students get less and less. After few years I could go out of the country. I went to Turkey to get visa for Germany. The German Embassy in Turkey asked me why I did not get a visa in Tehran from the German Embassy. So they did not give me visa. US gave me visa and I came to Washington DC. Claudia writes every day to me and I used to read her letters. Her friendship with me seemed to be very serious and very deep, now she was almost 30 years old and as far as she shared with me she changed two boy friends. She wrote that she had also problems with this new boy friend and she does not thing she will marry him. In the time that she had no boy friend she wrote more letter and little bit friendlier. Now she wanted to come and visit me in Washington. I wrote back that my landlord does not allow me to have another person in my room. Now she was playing that she has to see me and I do not have the possibilities to invite her. She sends also a lot of pictures of her and her environment, she moved now to West Germany and the two German states were one now. For over 10 years she was a very honest and nice pen friend. She showed a lot of interest in her letter and she wrote without my writing she cannot live. For over 10 years we had every day or every other day’s letters from each other. Nice letter and nice envelops and sometimes expensive letter and envelops. Beautiful nice almost love letters. After a while I could manage to rent a two bed room house and I wrote to her to come. She excuses that she should take first permission for her job to leave. Later she did not show interest to come and now every letter of her shows less and less interest; her writing from a very interested person and love letter was going to be a very formal and cold letter.
She did not show a deep relationship any more and she does not say that she will be my friend for ever as she wrote before. Something should have happened in her life that she changed so radical. My dear very lovely nice Amir changed first to my dearest Amir and than to Dear Amir, to Amir and at the End to Very respected Mr. Ghiassi. I think she may shy to stop writing to me and wanted that I stop. The last letter was very cold and she blamed everything on me as if I made a big mistake. I love you for ever and you are my best friend in the world and I never forget you. Now the situation changed so that she wrote; I have no time to write and it is boring for me to write dear Mr. Ghiassi. It seemed that beautiful young girl has no interest about me and looking for a good excuse to stop writing. After tons of letters that we changed and every day we were used to read each other letter, now I get even not every month a letter from her. I answered all the letters I got. I did not want that she blamed on me later. One day I get a letter from her. She wrote please do not answer this letter. I do not want you as a pen friend any more. I do not understand what has happened. We were just pen friends. She showed so much interest and I answered it. Are the girls not normal? I did not want anything from her. I wanted just to be a pen friend and change our experience to each other and understand each other cultures and language. She even started to learn Persian by my letter and each time I wrote some Persian sentences with translation in German and she wrote back them to me. She could write good Persian. She wrote about everything in her life and about her interest. Where she goes and what she does. She learned through me a lot about Iran and USA. And I learned a lot about her culture and Germany. But now her interest out finished and she asked me to cut the relationship of pen friend. I do not understand, may be you can understand.
