Pedestrian

(2005) The beginning of the school year is celebrated in Hajar Shahed junior high school, in Tehran with the mayor.

———————–

Madreseyeh Shahed in Iran are schools which were changed or built after the war, to accommodate the children of war veteran and martyrs.

I had the pleasure of going to one such school for one year, and let me tell you, it was one of the best years of my life.

Yes, the schools are -even more- oozing with propaganda and the religious codes are even more strict. But the principle herself was a fine lady indeed, and the kids were so kind. Never once did officials come to visit or speak at our school, which is something they do quite often at shahed schools, because she would tell their reps “the girls will be bothered by having to fully veil themselves” for the visit.

She didn’t let these kids become another photo-op for officials and was very protective of them, as I found out later, in discussions she’d had with my parents.

As an educated guess, I would say that about 40% of the students were children of martyrs, and the remaining 60% like me, were regular kids who had to pay tuition to get in.

So how did I end up there?

We moved back to Iran only two weeks from the start of the school year, and I had a choice between this school, and a private school where the girls seemed too vicious and snobby (that was my perception, having not lived in Iran for some time. It could have been totally wrong.)

So I chose to go to the Shahed school, and I never regretted that decision.

And boy, did I learn a lot.

Before this experience, I was a snotty kid who thought pretty much along these lines: “the martyrs of the Iraq-Iran war are regarded as sacred men with divine powers, whose families were treated like untouchable royalty” (from an article on Tehran Bureau). That is what many angry at the regime still believe.

They could not be more wrong or brainwashed. These kids lived in government housing (yes, at least they had housing, many of them don’t), in some of the most destitute situations. They were far, FAR from anything remotely “royal” and interestingly enough, far, FAR from anything remotely “loyal” to the IRI.

I particularly remember Masoomeh, the beautiful girl who sat beside me, who would always tell me of her aunt’s affairs or her dad’s girlfriends (before he died in the war), her boyfriends, fights with her mom. I will never know, but somehow, a lot of it sounded more like her fantasies. She had three stepsisters, and lived in government housing projects with her mother and stepdad. She was vibrant and beautiful and so full of life.

The Shahed children were academically the weakest students in the class, and I remember our kind, wonderful teachers coaxing them, reminding them of their dads’ sacrifice so they could live a better life, pleading with them to take their studies more seriously or staying extra hours to help.

At least as long as I was there, it never happened. They had too much to deal with at home. Stepfathers, angry mothers, poverty, society’s expectations and labels, …………

One issue which has never been studied very much is that many of the martyrs’ wives were verbally and physically threatened and forced by official government bodies into marrying men who had been chosen for them by the government, after the death of their husbands.

Now that I look back, this was one of the most unfair situations anyone could have put together. On one side you had the relatively well-off children of doctors, engineers, lawyers, etc (these weren’t however Tehran’s famous “rich” crowd. Those folks stay away from schools like this and I later spent a year with them too.) On the other side, you had the kids of war veterans who were doing very poorly, who led very different lives.

These were kids whose fathers had lost their lives defending every last one of us, and it just didn’t seem fair. Though the world never is.

We all got along and had a terrific time in class, but I wonder about those girls, and what became of them.

I find myself thinking of Masoomeh quite often. Where is she now? What kind of life does she lead? Did she meet the handsome, rich fellow who was going to rescue her from all her miseries? She spoke of dabbling in drugs at a young age, she’s o.k., right?

Far from royal, but she was golden.