The day we won the Revolution

In the morning we were under the shah’s rule, in the evening it was a new age, a new totally democratic popular government, sort of the ideal of the anarchist philosophers, real power of the people in the hands of the people and for the people, no government institution left, everything run by soviets of people’s representatives, with no standing army but just local militias.

Early morning I wake up. I have an appointment to pick up Majid my best friend and go to a series of speeches and demonstrations by the Tudeh party in Elmosanat University. These days are so colorful and exciting. I know I will never live life like this in my whole life again. After all, These events, if you are very very lucky, just happens once in a lifetime and most people on this planet never have the opportunity to experience such a thing. They are doomed to normal boring lives, day after day. I am among the few lucky ones in the history that am going through a full fledged popular urban revolution like the English and French revolutions so let me cherish every moment of this ecstasy and every drop of this maddeningly strong red wine. It is like sitting in a movie theater 24/7 and watching the most exciting, the most interesting and absorbing action movie in the world. Every moment is different. River of time has changed pace and is running like a flood. Every day is new, every day something new happens, every day new cracks in the structure of power appears. The crushing strangling dictatorship of the Shah is falling apart, something nobody could even dare to imagine to witness in his lifetime. Shah has already escaped in disgrace with his family and a few moments after the radio announced that he has left the country nothing remained in the whole country that would testify that there was ever a shah ruling this country for the past 37 years. The smallest relics and statues were brought down and broke. Now we are in a new phase, where the core of the army who is still faithful to their ruler are facing the whole population. Every moment an explosion might take over the whole power structure. Everybody is scared of a copy of the 28^th of Mordad American. The American coup that brought back the Shah and a nightmare to my country for the next 25 years. Americans are still plotting behind the scenes to keep any possible remnant of his government, but the last pieces of the structure is falling apart now. Even the mighty empire can’t keep its crony on the throne anymore. The whole country, every class of the society is up against just one person, the Shah. The sense of unity is unique, something you never find in other revolutions. He is so hated in the society that there is no group left to support him. From the rich bazariz to the dirt poor peasants are all united in their opposition to one person, to Shah. Beautiful is this unity, which is so rare, but a glimpse of it is enough to make you drunk for a lifetime. For once, there are really two colors here and the choice is made so easy, you are either for the dark, the shah and the Americans, or you are for the light, the oppressed people of Iran. And after 37 years of bloody rule and torture and mayhem, nobody has any doubts about that choice.

I eat a quick breakfast and drive the car. Gasoline is nearly extinct in this second oil producing country in the world. A long-term debilitating strike by the oil workers and the whole industry has brought the country in to a near standstill in this cold winter. To fill up a tank you have to wait in long lines of cars for hours, and even for a few days. I am lucky I have gas in the tank today and I want to use it. The party has asked everybody to be present at the elmosanat university. And we are going. I drive true eerily empty streets in this early morning. If you have gas, driving in Tehran is an experience to cherish. There are no cars anywhere, and it is like driving on a movie set without any cars in the street. In a jiffy I am in North Tehran, pick up Majid and we are heading to Elmosanat, calm and cool in our ignorance of what is going on in the other part of the city, where last night a mere struggle over watching a TV program of the return of Khomeini, in an airforce base has now turned into an armed insurrection, with pro and anti khomeini forces in the army now facing each other in a battle over the fate of the revolution. This had to happen, sooner or later, since the day a big group of the airforce officers showed up in Khomeini’s residence and vowed allegiance to the revolution.

We reach the university. The gates are closed, nobody is here!? Strange, where are the throngs of people expected, the party supporters and cadre and sympathizers. There is nobody around. We get out, check the gates, there are not even guards anywhere, nobody in the university, the streets are too deserted, even for these days. There are even no signs about the cancellation of the program. We head back, we have come too early in the morning and there are nobody else to ask what has happened. It is strange, the party does not just call off its meetings without notice.

But on our way back we notice the columns of smoke, billowing from different parts of the city, something’s going on, something new. I notice some cars in the streets, agitated, driving fast, with lots of people inside each car, and for the first time, I notice something new in the cars. In a few of them, I see the tip of the guns jotting out of the windows. Some very few people in the cars are carrying guns. Well, this is new. This is the first time I see guns in the hands of the people not the army. OK, something is going on. The revolution up till now was strangely peaceful, with people carrying only their feasts against the guns, baring their chests in front of the guns and dying heroically without fighting back. But now, I see guns in people’s hands. Instantly we notice that we are entering a new phase. The battle has started, the one everybody was waiting for, and this time, people have guns in their hands.

Last night, pro Khomeini forces had opened the doors of the garrisons to people and started to distribute guns and ammunition to anybody who came in, indiscriminately. In parts of the city the battle is raging. The last remnants of the Shah’s special guard who are brainwashed to fight for him to death are battling the people and the other sections of the army that are on open mutiny now. Tanks are in the streets. Majid wants to go to his neighborhood. I drop him off at an intersection near his home and drive back home.

I am living in an anarchist’s dream now. It is pure anarchy. There is absolutely no central power, no government, no army, no police, it is pure anarchy, government of people for people. People say Khomeini has ordered everybody to break the martial law and stays in the streets tonight. There are talks about other units of the army invading Tehran under the command of the American officers. I stay in the streets. We walk down the main street of our neighborhood, past the police station. The hated police station, now a few of them are on the roof and one has a bull horn imploring people not to attack the station. He says the army central command has issued a command for the whole army not to take part in the battle pro or against Khomeini and remain neutral. People have brought huge thigh cables from the government Electrical posts and tied them between light poles as a barrier against the tanks. With these barriers, no cars can drive. We can only walk, ah, the pure air in the polluted Tehran, it is amazing. No cars, no heating, no oil, the air is pure as 200 years ago, when there was no Tehran here spreading on the foot of the mountains.

I join a group of neighbors near our house. Everybody is armed, with something, sticks and knives and I even see a sword. These days and nights have brought people together. Neighbors who had never met each other now know each other by first name. There is a huge bonfire in the middle of the street, it is cold, and people gather around it, I can count more than 100 of our neighbors here. Suddenly all of them break into singing “Ey Iran”, the national popular anthem of my country. After years and years of listening to the Shah’s imposed national anthem, which is nothing but praise of him and his father, it is so emotional. I start to cry and see lots of people crying.

There is no radio, and no TV. But at around 4:30 in the afternoon there is a rumor that the central TV station has been liberated by the revolutionary forces. The staff of the TV station who were on strike for months, are hastily back. I don’t see it, I am in the street, but the ones that see it say that they just gather in an indistinct room, in a rush and start talking to people. Apparently the Shah’s guard had tried to capture the TV station but people and other army forces had stopped them. The cameras show rows of tanks being stopped on their way to the TV station. This is so invigorating, for the first time in my life I am hearing the TV and radio, who were always praising his majesty, the sun of the Arians, now declaring his demise and the demise of the Pahlavi dynasty and the victory of the revolution. There are announcements by all the parties, mostly leftist parties, asking people to stay in the streets tonight and to fight against anti-revoluitionary forces. Am I dreaming? All my life, from the time I can remember, I had one big dream, and that was to see the end of the bloody rule of the Shah, and now it is happening in front of my eyes. Right here, in the streets of Tehran, and the world is watching us. We, people of Iran, are playing the greatest game of the last half century.

We hear shots fired from the direction of the garrison at the east side of the neighborhood. This is one of the greatest garrisons inside Tehran. We move towards the garrison. Near the garrison there are lines of people behind the walls, there are shots fired from inside the garrison, towards the people. I see soldiers escaping the garrison and running towards the people. I see one of them shot dead right there in the middle of the highway that separates us from the barbed wires and walls of the garrison. I see others escaping to this side and taking off their army uniforms, they don’t want to be mistaken as the Shah’s army and killed by people. Some people here have clothes ready for them, they change and melt among the people. Later we learn that the government officials that were arrested towards the end of the Shah’s rule, by his own command, to save his neck, were imprisoned in this garrison and managed to escape when the garrison fell into the hands of the people. Some of them were arrested later and brought to justice and some disappeared and later were appeared mostly in LA.

For the first time I see somebody with a M16. The American gun which is the standard army gun for the foot soldiers. The same gun that had killed so many Vietnamese when it was used in Vietnam. The guy shoots a few bullets into the air. I see one of the most famous Iranian wrestlers right there, with a radio in one hand and a gun in the other. People clap for him. He is so popular, wrestling is one of the most popular sports in Iran and this guy has got several gold medals in Olympics and is popular and now he is here, next to us, shooting at the garrison. The shots from the garrison die off gradually. Nobody is there anymore. People start to move towards the garrison and cross the highway. I follow, the barbed wires are cut off already in one place and the wall pulled down. People spread out inside the garrison through the hole in the wall. For so many years I used to pass around this huge garrison to go to school. I walked around it and always looked inside through the gates, mesmerized by the tanks and other army vehicles parked inside in huge numbers. And now I am inside. I follow the crowd. Now I come across a big building, one storey, people go in and come out with guns and ammunition. Loads of ammunition. Boxes of mortars and every conceivable explosives. I follow in, I want to have my own gun. Nobody tells me, or anybody else, that one spark might start a huge explosion that will blow all of us to pieces. In that confusion it can happen at any moment. This happens later that night in another huge garrison at the south west of Tehran and a for a long time that night we can hear huge explosions and the orange color of fire reflecting from the clouds.

But, this does not even pass through my mind. I want my gun. I go in. Inside is dark, pitch dark. It is night already and there are no lights. People roam inside and you keep bumping into them. You touch the shelves in search of a gun, and at last you come across rows of them and you grab one and you run out. Now, for the first time in my life, I am touching the cold metal of a gun, a heavy gun. Everybody is carrying guns, I get back through the hole in the wall and cross the highway. People are carrying big boxes of ammunition. And then I see a tank in the street, and it is run by ordinary people, it has been taken from the garrison and a few people are trying to drive the beast. There are many tanks and other army vehicles like this that night in Tehran, taken out of the garrisons, a few of them end up in the Tehran University and when tomorrow I go to the university I find them parked in the centre of the university with the leftist party’s insignia and flags on them.

It is getting late, there are bonfires everywhere. Electricity is back, the long strike of the electricity workers is apparently ended at last. As all the other strikes. In the next few weeks, everything will be back to normal, we will again have gas and electricity and public transport and everything. But tonight I am on cloud nine. I have my own gun, I have seen the birth pangs of a new order, of people’s power, pure and true democracy when there is no government, just people’s soviets. I bring the gun to home. My parents are there, and my uncles. All watching the new really national Iranian TV. There are news after news from different cities, following the lead of Tehran, all falling one after the other to the revolutionary forces. The army has just melted down and disappeared, the police also. There is absolutely no police force, and no army. Just armed people in the streets, protecting this dear newborn, this victorious revolution. No festive mood can be compared to this. Everybody is happy, everybody is laughing, people are crying with joy and hugging each other in the streets.

This morning, when I was leaving home, I was still an Iranian living under the oppressive dictatorship of the Shah and the Americans. Tonight, I am a proud citizen of a new democratic government, belonging to a brave people that after 50 years of resistance, and hundreds of thousands of executed and tortured, at last have managed to get rid of the yoke of the foreign powers.

And I have my own gun.

Starry Night

A story about revolution in Iran and its bloody aftermath

"They used to drag them out at night, under the stars, and then they shoot them. It wasn’t my fault. I did not do anything wrong. I was just watching them through the bars. They used to sing or shout for freedom when they were shot at."

Poormand and I looked back. We had arrived pretty late and had just managed to get the two seats at the back of the bus, the worst seats. The guy was behind us. He was sitting on something even worse than ours, the driver’s bed, or throne, a very uncomfortable box that was also used to store drinks. The driver had picked him up while on the road, just outside the city. He had flagged the bus and had begged to get in and now was sitting there talking to himself under his breath. A dark tall skinny guy in his 30s with old clothes clutching a small brown paper bag in his bony fingers. He had stubble on his face and it was evident he had not taken a shower for a long time. He was just sitting there and mumbling under his breath. Other passengers also looked back, but then turned back and “tried” to forget him. People did not like to listen to this sort of talk. It was 1985, just after the complete purge, when the crude and terrifying fist of the government forces had crushed the last remnants of opposition and there was a bloody murderous purge going on. Nobody dared to talk about it and nobody dared to listen to others talking about it. Especially outside the capital and in the small cities and towns people were really scared. They had to be scared. It was a matter of life or death, how could they know who was in the bus and who was listening to what one was saying to others. Especially with all those road blocks that were dotting the roads. Every half an hour, near each small town and village, there was a post established by the militia of the village or the town. The bus would stop and a young teenager with a Klashnikov would pop in and walk the length of the bus, looking at all the passengers. It was real difficult and scary. Everybody tried to avoid his gaze, some looked outside, some pretended to read something, some pretended to be asleep. From time to time one was picked out and ordered out and sometime they would not return and the bus was ordered to leave. So it was that our poor friend at the back was talking to himself and being ignored intentionally by everyone.

Poormand and I were on our way to one of those small dusty towns in the middle of nowhereland for the new master plan. I was newly employed by his office. There was a lot of work that had to be done in just a few days before we got back. I had the papers and plans and maps with me. I was trying to focus on them but could not help listening to the guy talking to himself. He was the tragedy of my sorrowful land that was talking and would not shut up. Poormand was also trying not to listen and busy himself with work. But I could not. I was still hot with revolutionary zeal and ideals. Still a student, though the universities were shut down in the so called “cultural revolution” to get rid of the troublemakers. Everyday was more horrible, darker and more painful than the day before. The long list of the executed was getting longer and longer. You felt helpless. It was like you have been caught in a madhouse, it was like there was no intelligence and pity left in this world. It was a civil war, but a silent civil war, without physical destruction and the clashes in the streets and the bombs and the bombers. It was a civil war, but a civil war without the loud explosions and without ruins in the streets. It was a civil war fought behind closed doors. Away from the eyes of the population, a civil war everybody was aware of but nobody would dare to mention. The only thing you knew was that everyday the list of the dead and disappeared would get longer and longer. The guy must be one of them, one of the casualties. Like many of my university friends. Like Kazem, Akram’s husband, with a one month old daughter, who was got killed in his own house in front of his wife and daughter. Kazem, who was the first one who introduced us to a guy called Khomeini preaching against the shah in Iraq, several years before the revolution, in the department’s cafeteria. Kazem, who the day after the massacre at the Jaleh square was in the university, the blood of the massacred still fresh on his shirt. Kazem, who at the same day, was in the car with us while we were driving around the city checking out the soldiers with their American gun and the tanks in the streets on the first day when the martial law was declared and more than three people in the street could not gather together. Later it became a joke when more than a million people were taking part in demonstrations and it was still under the martial law.

The bus stopped late afternoon at one of the cafes on the road. We got out to have the food we had brought with us and most passengers went in to order food. Poormand went into the long line in front of the washroom. There, while he was in the line, the guy had come to him, gave his crumpled bag and had asked him to keep while he was eating in the restaurant. When Poormand got in the bus he was still carrying the bag. Other passengers showed up little by little and the driver came in later and started the bus. We looked at each other. The guy was not in and the bag was left with Poormand. I told him to open the bag. Wow, there was lots of money, cash, in the bag. Thousands of toomans, before the inflation, at that time, it was lots of money. What should we do? We went to the front and told the driver about the bag and the guy. The driver was one nice guy, when he heard the story, he turned the bus and drove back to the café. Other passengers threw nasty looks at us, but who dares to challenge the driver who is going to drive the whole night and has our lives in his grip? When we arrived there, the guy was waiting outside. He got in, without even looking at us or the driver, without one word, not even a thanks, and went back and sat at his throne. Poormand gave him the bag. For the first time he looked up at us and thanked him. We sat down. It was dark and getting late. The monotonous movement of the bus had most of the passengers sleeping and dozing off already. But we could not sleep, he was still talking to himself. And then I heard him: “ It was not my fault comrades, it was not my fault. I swear to god, they pushed the gun into my hands and told me if I don’t shoot you, they will kill me, what could I do? Please forgive me comrades, please forgive me”. He was repeating the same line, and he was crying. I was shocked, motionless. When I looked back, I could see the tear lines on his unwashed face.

What could I say? How could I even try to calm him down? Is it at all possible to sooth this pain. I looked at poormand. He had also heard this, no denying it. He was also in a state of shock. We looked at each other, but uttered no word.

I could not sleep the whole length of the trip to that small dusty town. When we arrived, he disappeared into the dark cold night, a broken soul with one small paper bag in his hands, no suitcase, no backpack, nothing else. One broken soul spit out of a dark evil world that had crushed him senseless.

I can never forget that night and that trip. If anything can explain what we went through in those dark years, that is the closest. That trip through the dark night falling on my land.

The meal, the mortar and the bumps, a story of war

This is a draft:

We had just got the day’s lunch and were sitting in a quiet yard and having it. The lunch comes in a pot. The pot is rather large and they give you lots of food. They virtually fill up any size pot you take with yourself to the kitchen. It is the Pasdaran kitchen, they are more generous than the military kitchen. Pasdaran are the paramilitary forces that are the real backbone of the resistance to the Iraqi invasion. They are the ones that send the waves of young teenagers over the mine fields to open headways for the invasions.

The kitchen is located at the other side of the Karun. Karun is the river that cuts through Khoramshahr. At the other side Pasdaran and the mayor have their headquarters, at this side, it is mostly soldiers and militias and the front line, where the Iraqis are located at the other side of shatalarab. Here the devastation is complete, as Iraqis had it for two years and pulled down nearly everything. At the other side which remained in Iranian hands for the length of the war houses are still standing though shattered by a two year diet of mortar shells, katyooshas and artillery bombardment. You can find a family life frozen in time inside some of them who have escaped the heavy bombardment complete with rugs, TVs, beds and pillows and chairs and cars in the parking and even plants still growing inside the pots.

We use to take the pot to the kitchen, they fill it up with the meal of the day. It is always delicious and hearty. These people have money, you can smell it in the kitchen and the size of the handout. Then we hop on the car, drive over the temporary bridge(the main bridge was bombed by Iraqis on the first days of the war and is now but just a few shattered pillars jotting out of the water, good background for the first photos of Khoramshahr to send to your family), usually go towards somewhere along the river and sit down and eat. Eating is dangerous, eating is fun, eating is exciting. You can get killed any moment while eating. Of course, human beings being human beings both sides have to eat, both sides have lunch and dinner. During lunch and dinner time the war stops temporarily, there are no explosions, no shootings, no bombs. Everything gets eerily quiet, you can hear the birds chirping, the water running under the bridge, the wind howling in the empty streets and visiting half ruined houses. You can even hear the fat rats in the trenches running around. Rats getting fat by eating human remains. Rats that scare even the few ramining stray cats. Cats that have gone deaf by living under constant bombardment for two years. Cats that don’t’ hear you getting close by even when you are just behind them. They only run away if they see you, their ears being useless.

This day our feast is inside one rather standing house in a neighborhood who has somehow escaped the complete devastation in the Iraqi part. We are working here, arranging plans of the area and measuring the houses, and we have reached this house and decide it is the place for today’s lunch. We park the car behind the house. Our car sometimes becomes target practice for Iraqi mortar shells. The mortars follow us and then we try to drive fast and put a distance between us and them. Sometimes we just have to stop, open the doors and rush into the first trench or house that is nearby and pray that we, or the car, is not hit. It is scary, I don’t like it at all to be a target. Somebody having fun at the expense of my life?

We go inside the house and then to the courtyard. Like all Iranian courtyards it is surrounded on all sides by high walls. It is sunny in a mellow winter day, quiet, with a nice breeze. We sit down, move the lid and start to share the hearty meal when suddenly we hear the woosh. Something deadly is coming our way. Something very bad. Somebody had decided not to have lunch and instead ruin the pleasure of having lunch at the other side of the river. It is just one mortar, not a volley, a single mortar, and it has set its eye on our courtyard. The cold long hand of death reaching out for us from the other side of the river. Us that are not even soldiers but builders.

There is no time left. We just have time to dive onto the ground, crouched and with our hands over our heads. You don’t even have time for a prayer. Suddenly it is over us, suddenly it prefers the next courtyard. A deafening sound, an explosion, a gray blinding rain of particles big and small, lots of dust. We are dazed, death changed his mind at the last moment and gave us another chance at life. The walls, the traditional tall walls of the courtyard protected us. A 2000 year history of cultural introversion became our saviour.

But all is not well, after the first wave of sound and explosion and ricochets and debris, I feel pain in my shoulders. A quick touch with my hands exudes pain and red palms. The shirt on my back is tattered and bloody. My colleague is in better shape. That day he drives me to the makeshift hospital at the other side. The bearded doctor do a quick checkup and says it is nothing and just some very small debris left in my skin that will be rejected by the body soon and I will be as healthy as I was born. Just washes and disinfects my back. Well, compared to what he has to deal with every day, I am a completely healthy person, not injured at all.

I am out quickly.

Every time I touch my back now, it reminds me of that brush with death. I rub my fingers over all the bumps one by one, count them and think of the minuscule debris that is still embedded there. Some people keep a small bag of their motherland's soil in their pockets or at home, I don't need that, I have it on my back.

OBSERVATIONS OF A NEW IMMIGRANT ABOUT A JOB IN CANADA

Oh my, why does not the cook stop using “fucking” when he speaks? Between each two words he inserts one “fucking”, without no specific reason. It does not help the grammar and seems out of place, but it is inserted, as if out of a sense of duty. The others(the others who help him) aren’t much better. Even some of the women do it, out of a sense of duty. Worst one is the little guy with beard and ever- present baseball hat and Harley-Davidson jacket. He tries to look tough, but poor guy, the eyes give him away. Eyes like a beaten dog with the tail between legs, head down, looking anxiously around to find a place to hide. He is released from jail every weekend to visit his family and he has to work here for some hours. He is not much communicative so you don’t understand how long he has to work, you only know he has to work here. There is a competition between him and the cook to see which one can insert more f words in their vocabulary. The others are not that bad, of course “f” word is one of the standards by which the class you belong to is recognized, like the “Sun” and the baseball hat. Even the women use it frequently, and please, I am not a male chauvinist, but I find it unpleasant when a woman uses the word, like the last bastion of politeness has also been defeated.

The kitchen is just a greasy messy and untidy place, with lots of empty cardboard boxes and chairs and tables stacked at corners, big garbage bins, and of course the ever spewing hotplates, hot tops, ovens, microwave and a big bread toaster which for some reason has the pride of place and is praised by the cook form time to time, as if it belongs to him . It does not create much of a delicacy. What they cook here amounts to hot dogs and some sandwiches and burgers in different shapes accompanied by toasts and breads, so the cook can not be considered a chef per se actually. He has been working here for at least 6 years now and has quite a reputation. He is somehow considered “cool” and liked by the people working here. There are informal meetings in the kitchen and you learn a lot about behind the scenes of this establishment just by listening to people talking to him. He is a sort of father confessor, or the unofficial boss here. Under his baseball hat which never is removed he must have some hair, or perhaps he has already lost it. Only thing I see are two short sparse ponytails hanging out. He is rather tall and skinny. That always strikes me. Why aren’t cooks all fat, after all, they are working with food all the time and they can eat as much as they want. Is it because they know what horrible stuff they concoct in the kitchen that they are not tempted at all to nibble at the food? Is it a sort of secret sect like oath they take when they begin their profession, like the doctors, that forbids them from eating in the kitchen? But working here I begin to understand the reason. It is just the ever present smoke and smell of grease, and the professional way you deal with the food. After a short time you come to look at it just as a mechanic looks at the car parts. Does he want to eat them? No! Same here, for the chef and the staff, food looses it’s luster as something delicious, it turns into a thing like paper for office people. It is just something you work with. After some time, even I start to feel the same about it, although at first I was wondering how people resist the temptation to eat from the meals they serve for others. I even throw out the spillage from the courses I serve into the garbage, instead of eating it.

There is a small fridge at the back, a sort of walking through fridge, where you go in and grab lard or margarine and bring in. Also it is used to save the cooked but not ordered burgers from the night for later use. Sometimes these poor things have to wait for three days to be re-cooked and served at last. Once when I ask the cook about them, he becomes nervous and takes the pain of explaining that they are quite clean and he has cooked them just a few hours ago and he never uses leftovers. He does not use gloves and I don’t know what things does he touch with his hands and fingers during the day, I hope at least he does not play with his genitals. But anyway, “the people at the other side” don’t care. They even drop by sometimes, the old customers, the professional small time gamblers, the ones that don’t have anything to do except bingo, bingo, and more bingo, the ones that really live in this place, instead of living at their homes and consider the whole body of employers as some sort of family. They drop by directly to order what they want instead of writing and handing it over to the cashier. They stay there, talk and joke and don’t seem to care a bit about the hygiene of the place. Oh well, I suppose if they don’t, why should anybody else?

There is also a door at the back, which is used mainly for getting out for short smoking breaks by the people working in the kitchen. There is no place for people to sit and wait until the next serving session. It works like this, between the bingo sessions the kitchen is nearly lifeless and workless. The cook goes around, talks to the other employees, and the kitchen gets empty and soulless. The hands also get out for a smoke, or just hang around. I take one of the chairs from the tall column of old greasy chairs and sit down and start to read my book. It must be a strange sight, but nobody complains or says anything. Actually the hands are very formal, no camaraderie here. They look like people who don’t know how to carry their bulk, where to sit and where to stand and where to wait for the next order to be delivered. There is just one small narrow table by the wall next to the ovens with two chairs next to it. People often hang their jackets on it and you don’t dare sit there in case their jackets are creased. Sometimes when you get your miserable lunch or dinner you sit there by that thing called the table and gobble it up between the orders. The employees also sit there for their food. The only free food here is the beverages like coffee or pops. The coffee served is the worst imaginable type, a boiled water coffee soup, despite that, the customers don’t care and don’t complain. Anyway, the generosity of the Bingo house towards its employees only extends to the drinks.

There are two halls here, the larger one belongs to who else than the smokers, it is always blue with smoke, and smelly, and crowded, the non-smoking areas are usually relatively quiet and empty. It shows the types of people that usually go to bingo. There are vending machines, some old gambling machines and one of those bunny and teddy bear grabbing machines. Between sessions, the obsessive gamblers go to the machine and try their luck, it seems they can’t tolerate even a few minutes without the thrill of losing and losing more. There is one window to another world, and that is the window that opens to the hockey arena beneath the Bingo hall. Sometimes people stand there and gaze into that different world of sports and health, but then they come back mechanically to their own familiar world of bingo papers and markers and balls. Sometimes when I am tired I look through the window into that other world, usually there are people playing there, mostly young kids, mostly white, no immigrant stock there.

And what a pathetic bunch are these, customers of this bingo house. It is the saddest sight in the world to behold. Before seeing them I did not know that life could be so pathetically meaningless. can life be so miserable, so meaningless, so empty of joy and happiness? Is life meant to be spent in a smoky hall eating French fries and putting marker points on cheap checkered paper, machine like, soulless?? I wonder, between the delivery sessions, when I lean on the counter in the small shop area and look at these people, a sort of dark depression comes over and gets hold of me. Is this what humanity and life is all about? This place is the domain, the palace, of sad old fat women, smoking tons of cigarettes, wasting centuries of time. If Freud was alive today, he would call this place the temple of unsatisfied sexual desires, the replacement masturbation.

There are some permanent customers, some people that come virtually every day and sit at the same seat and repeat this meaningless pursuit day by day. They smoke, they mark, they eat cheap junk food, they play cards between the sessions, or do crossword puzzles, or play some board games, they have their cello tapes to stick the paper to the table so that it does not wiggle when they mark it. They spend most of their waking hours here. They must hate their guts, I can’t imagine why a healthy human being would spend hours here smoking or inhaling the smoke of others sitting motionless on a chair and mark endless papers like a machine. With a little change they could make at least some money, contracting out their movements to some packaging or data entry company. The most eminent one among these is an old emaciated woman in the last stages of decomposition, unkempt with cheap sports trouser and T-shirts, dirty, hair never combed, not taking any care of herself. Everyday she is there earlier than us, same clothes, same seat. I have enquired from other employees, they say that is her routines, she is here everyday. She always sits at the same chair and table in the smoking area. She sometimes plays cards with some regulars. Most of the time she is smoking cigarettes and after each session her ashtray is full. I don’t know how long is she going to live with this exciting and healthy lifestyle, but she seems to enjoy it. She must be losing a whole lot of money, where does she get the money from? She must be one of those compulsive gamblers. Some people hate themselves, or drown their sorrows in alcohol, this little woman seems to drown them in bingo.

There are other interesting personalities here as well. The woman that sits with her back to the hall and the people, in the smoking area, mechanically marking her papers. She seems to have a grudge against THE people. Always on the same seat, far corner of the hall, north east. Now this is a corner seeking creature if there is any. Then there is this shaky-head daddy. I call him by this name. Most nights he is here. Like other regulars, he sticks to the same area night after night. Always black dress, sort of western cowboy style, just without the hat. They all have a special area that they protect dearly and other regulars don’t dare to take, I guess they even mark it like dogs or cats from time to time. He wears a dark glass and shakes all over. His head shakes, his hands shake and his legs shake too. But he manages to mark anyway, and I think that is enough in this place. Oh, and of course, the Teddy bear woman. She brings a different teddy bear every night, has it sitting next to her cards and touches it from time to time. Come intermission, the Teddy is being rubbed all over her face, like a small baby. She cuddles and kisses it. I guess it is her lucky Teddy bear. Talking of luck, some people bring strange lucky stuff with them. There is this woman that lines up a whole menagerie of little figurines on her table, funny little statutes of people and animals. The other one has some sort of shiny stones museum that are lined up in front of her. From time to time she rubs them like a magician or witch, I guess they have some luck locked into them and by touching them, it moves to your arm and body and your marker and from there spills into the paper. You see some old gentlemen in full dress, ties and jackets and all? Cologne smell around them, coming for the Bingo, I don’t know if they manage to pick up any of those fat old sad ladies or not, but for their sake I hope they do. Some of them are too old, for example this old lady comes there with a stroller and can barely move, she comes up with the elevator, buys papers and stack them up on their stroller and walks slowly to the smoking area and drops herself down in a chair. And then there is the Halloween night. The young sleepy girl at the counter has got her white angel wings at the back, some others come with demon dresses. The funniest ones are the three old black ladies with full costume, red demons with even the forks.

Most people here are old, retired sort, but sometimes you see some younger ones. The saddest sight of course is of the ones sitting alone by themselves all through the session. I pity these bunch. Don’t they have any friends? Why should somebody come here all alone by herself/himself, sit in a corner and waste his/her precious time like this. Something strange I noticed here is some couples, the woman is visibly older than the man. The man is a young guy in funky dress, the woman old and fat smoking type, and definitely not his mother. Other thing you notice, there are no immigrant faces among the customers of this bingo hall. You don’t see one Chinese and Asian, or any middle eastern, or south American, or Russian. They are all Canadian-born. There are not even blacks among them. They are a homogenous bunch.

What I do here? I sit in the kitchen and serve the food to the customers. Most is ordered in the smoking area. Somehow they eat more, or are more extravagant and easy with their money. The non-smoking area does not order that much, it just nibbles some snack. Most of the time I am in the smoking area, when I come back home I reek of smoke. It just sticks with you and does not go away, it sits right there on my smell buds, even next morning I still feel it. One other duty I really hate and try to dodge as much as I can is emptying the ashtrays, after I do it, it seems like I have smoked a whole pack of cigarettes. The smoking area is large and after each session the ashtrays are full and you have to go table by long table and empty the ashtrays is small buckets, the bucket fills up quickly and you have to bring another bucket. I also wash the dishes and skin the carrots from time to time, not very difficult, but the difference with washing at home is that the pots and pans are huge, fortunately there are no patrons dishes as everything is served in paper plates and cups. Speaking of paper cups reminds me of this stupid young boy that usually serves the ground floor salon. Yes, there is also a little ground floor salon, dark and with no windows, but some people actually use it, I don’t know why on earth one wants to sit there. Anyway this boy has one very interesting character. he eats paper cups, after he drinks his pop, he starts to chew on the plastic cup and chops off big pieces and chew and gulps them down. he says it is delicious, I think he is stupid. He also collects coins, whenever he receives coins from customers, which is many times, as he uses to sell paper and food in the halls, he checks them and from time to time he comes up with something interesting. He is also somehow interested in the chubby young lady at the counter, both are the same age, but apparently the young one is not interested at all. She is the only one without tattoos, and the only one that does not smoke, a bit strange in this place.

Run Bita, Run

A surprise ricochet zinged through the room and struck the ceiling. Shocked students hit the floor by instinct. No one expected conflict today. There was no special event planned for today. It was just the normal small demonstrations here and there in the city that formed and deformed as the military showed up. For the big main demonstrations, you always had prior notice, people knew where and when to gather, but today, no, it was a normal day, just normal local ongoing demonstrations, fluid, like waves of ocean, hitting the rocky beaches of military and police here and there, disbanding and forming somewhere else. Nobody was supposed to die today, nobody.

I run along the wall, below the windows, a few more bullets ricochet. We run into the big staircase, we are on the second floor of this three floor Atelier of the Fine Arts School of Tehran University. I am a 3^rd year student, The Iranian revolution has started, with all its beauty, power, color, gravity, sadness and deadly attraction. We live right in the middle of it all, Tehran University, the beating heart of the revolution. It starts here and it ends here. It is the flowing stream, the mother of revolution, when you are here, you are at the heart of it all, and yes, I am a student right at the heart of it all.

I run downstairs, Bita follows me. A quick look through the ground floor windows, everything is quiet. From a distance, we hear the crashing roar of the crowd, and near us a few more pelting bullets. Danger, man! beware. Danger everywhere. There is an open ground Between us and the crowd, perhaps two blocks away, we are protected from the military only by some trees and bushes and the fences between the university and the street.

The street is dead, only the soldiers, with standard issue American M16s. helmets on, full combat gear, military trucks along the street. Dead silent. I wave to Bita, we have to run to the crowd, join them, something is going on. We have to be there. But two blocks? Two blocks of life or death. What if a stray bullet cuts through the blocks. What if one of the soldiers sees us? that will be the end, but somehow , these days, it does not matter, the end is everywhere, in the news, in the streets, in the university, the end is looking you in the eye every moment, the end fills up the cemeteries and graveyards, the end spreads its dark wings over the city, the end comes with the military trucks and American M16s. The end sits on each bullet.

Who cares, run Bita, Run. We crouch and snake from one column to the other, and now the open ground, the killing field, runs towards us. We duck, we bend, we run, through the parking lot, towards the trees at the other side. This is the most difficult part, you have to just run and focus on the trees that beacon to you to run faster and hold their arms open to protect you. In these few seconds, that last like an eternity, you just pray, and wait, wait for the soft sound of the bullet tearing through the flesh, and then hear the bang, but the end is kinder today. I am hiding among the ancient tree trunks now, and Bita, panting, is next to me. Her beautiful face sweating, her dark black eyes smiling, from here we can see the new bullet holes just under the Atelier’s windows. Bastards, now they shoot directly at the students.

We move carefully, slowly, among the Bush. During the Shah’s time, thick bushes were planted to wall off the grounds of the University to ensure that student demonstrations and strikes against the Shah were obscured from full view of traffic. Paradoxically, the same growth is now obscuring the direct fire of the military. Lucky for us. Didn’t think of this, did you?

The crowd is shouting, thundering, moving, breaking against the fences, anger, hatred, defiance. I see the bodies. High on hands, moving from hand to hand, wrapped in white clothes already, new martyrs. Later we know they are high school students. Joining their university brethren, they were shot at the gates. The soldiers don’t come inside the university, they never come in. they just shoot from the street, right into the crowd, inside the university. By now, all the trees and walls have bullets in them, everywhere you can see bullet holes. Run Bita, run, towards the huge snake of the crowd that bangs its head on the walls, and rolls over the central playground, rolling and rolling. Run Bita, Run, and do you see the end, one step behind you? Why couldn’t I see it? Why couldn’t I protect you?

We join the crowd, fists up in the air, chanting the slogans, the crowd is alive, it is like one, you feel like a cell in a huge body, like it has its own personality, over and above each one of us, like it knows what it wants and wants to do. I hold Bita’s hand firm, don’t want to lose her here. The dragon of the crowd changes course, decides to push towards the gates, directly towards the soldiers, towards the guns, towards the “END”.

The “end” is waiting, smiling, with its empty eye sockets, moistening its lips. The end knows who is the next, it has already drawn the cards for each of us. We are pushed towards the gates, there is no way back, there is no way fore, we are now just cells inside the body of the huge dragon. The soldiers are scared, they are small, they are tin soldiers. The fury and fire of the dragon gets closer. The officer lines them up, two rows, the first one sits down, the second is standing behind them, like they are posing for a group photo, M16s look forward. I see it coming, but what can I do, I hold Bita’s hand harder, a calm comes over me, over the crowd. Now we are facing the guns, looking into the barrels, we are chanting, we are alive, we want freedom, we want bread, we want our land, our oil, our natural resources, to belong to us, not to foreigners. The officer barks something, few moments later, you see the blue smoke, you hear the thunder, you hear the screams. It is like a dream, a bad bad dream, people start to fall all around you, like autumn leaves, is it the end? But why aren’t I scared? I am calm, I see it, I feel it, I am not scared. I hold Bita’s hand hard, harder. Run Bita, run, we have to get back. But why, why the hand is so heavy. I try to drag it, it does not move, it is not grabbing anymore. I grab at it, I don’t want to look back. I know, I know already. Bita, why don’t you run? Follow me girl, like all the other times, we always escape, we are always safe, Bita! She is not answering. She is already on the ground. There is a small red rose spreading on her chest. I sit down, I hold her, I am silent, all around me people are screaming, moaning, swearing, … but I am frozen, quiet, a stone. And at that moment, I feel him, face to face, cold as ice, dark and silent, moving slowly over Bita, over many many others there, happy with the new crop, there to reap the reward and gather the souls.

I am silent. I, Bita, and the “end”. The three of us.