My Mother Was a Teenage Infidel

6:00am and I’m wide awake. The alarm isn’t set to ring until 7:00. It’s my mother who’s woken me up this morning.

“Keith! Wake up.”

My mom yelling at me to get me out of bed for school is a common occurrence. But today she sounds particularly agitated. I wonder if I forgot to take the garbage out the night before.

“Keith, you need to get up. Something’s happened.”

Fine, no problem. I’m awake anyway.

“I’m coming!”

Out of bed now and down the hall. Better not take the time for the ritual morning pit stop. She really doesn’t sound very happy. I walk into the living room and find my mother. She’s sitting, remote control in hand, poised forward on the edge of the couch staring at the television. The image on the screen is something I’ve never seen before. Two identical sky scrapers standing alone against a backdrop of blue morning sky. The one on the left looks perfectly normal. It’s the one on the right that has my mother’s morning routine on hold and has me up out of bed an hour early. I sit down next to my mother to watch. I, unlike the talking heads on the television, know exactly what this is. I suspect now, that my mother did as well.

In September of 1941, Great Britain and Russia staged a preemptive invasion of the declared-neutral Middle Eastern country of Iran. Despite his country’s neutrality, Reza Shah Palavi had maintained close ties to Nazi Germany and the invasion was an attempt on the part of the allies to prevent Iran from entering the war on the Axis side. Reza Palavi was forced to abdicate the throne to his 21 year old son Mohammed Reza Palavi. Mohammed Reza Shah Palavi ruled Iran through the 50’s and 60’s, in much the same way his father had before him; as a limited but still powerful head of state in a multi-party governmental system.

By 1975, as Iran’s oil wealth granted the country more and more international power, the Shah had the means to abolish the multi-party system and establish a single party autocracy with himself as its head. This was the final step in the Shah’s sweeping modernization process. He had begun the process earlier in his reign, but had now become powerful enough to implement it fully. The Shah, educated in Sweden, was in many ways a reformer and a progressive. He extended suffrage to women and gave them far more rights and freedoms than they had been allowed under the previous Islamic political system. He confiscated large and mid-sized estates and redistributed them to small farmers.

In addition to these social changes, he also hired western companies as consultants and advisors for Iranian businesses, government and military. One of the American companies hired was Boeing. In 1974 my Grandfather, a Boeing employee, along with his wife, son and two daughters, moved to the other side of the globe to live in the Iranian capitol city of Tehran.

Tehran is a bustling city of 14 million people. This city’s northern district was home to the Imperial palace. Naturally this was also where most of the city’s more wealthy residents, and most of the foreign advisors and their families lived. Tehran American School, where my mother and her two younger siblings attended classes was also in this same district.

While residing in the most wealthy and westernized part of the city may have insulated her from the feelings of the “average” Iranian, my mother still claims her four years in Tehran were an eye-opening experience. She says, “I think it just showed us what the rest of the world was like. That’s something most Americans never see.” The majority of the stories that are told in my family about Iran are positive. On their first day they arrived at their apartment in the late afternoon. The Iranian family living next to them brought over a tray sandwiches and drinks. They were very concerned that their new neighbors had missed tea.

While I’m freely told about friendly English speaking rug merchants and frightening but exciting taxi rides through un-policed traffic, it takes a bit of probing to get the story of the last few months my mother spent in Iran. This is partially because my mom and her siblings were in the dark about much of the political turmoil that surrounded them. “We knew something was happening, but we didn’t know exactly what,” she says, “We saw the Imams [Islamic religious leaders] on TV and they were clearly upset, but our best information came from my dad.” My grandfather was able to get information through Boeing. While it was reliable, it was incomplete at best, having been filtered through several layers already.

While the Shah’s aggressive westernization plans may have been enough to anger Islamic leaders now striped of much of their official power, it was Palavi’s other, less progressive tactics that caused a backlash among the Iranian people. The Shah’s autocratic government had become known for its political corruption. It also practiced brutal repression of opposition parties through its secret police, SAVAK (Organization for Intelligence and National Security). In the summer of 1978 a series of religious riots broke out in Tehran. Their immediate cause was a story in state sponsored media attacking Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini. Khomeini was an Imam considered by many of the poorest (and most religious) Iranians to be their spiritual leader. The riots steadily escalated.

“I remember we spent a few nights on the floor of the living room, the entire family,” my mom says. “It was the only room in the house without any windows. We could hear gunshots throughout the city.”

“That must have been scary?” I ask.

“You know,” she says, just a bare hint of a southern accent seeping into her voice, as it always does when she’s thinking, “I probably should have been a lot more scared than I was.” She’s right. As an American, she would have been considered a direct symbol of the Shah’s westernization and friendly ties to Europe and the United States. In September The Boeing Company, unwilling to leave its employees and their families in such a dangerous city, began pulling its people out.

“The airport was insane. It was incredibly crowed. Everyone wanted out. It was mostly foreigners but there were a few Iranians trying to leave while they still could.” My mom flew back separately from the rest of her family as there had been a problem with the tickets. None the less, my entire family made it home safely. They were just in time.

On December 12, a 2 million man protest in the streets of Tehran signaled the beginning of the end for the Shah. Ayatollah Khomeini, returned from his exile, and immediately began to set up an Islamic religious state. While most of the western infrastructure had been removed in time, the next year 52 American citizens were taken hostage. While he officially denied involvement, it was clear that Khomeini had approved the taking of the hostages. They were held in captivity for over a year before finally being released after the election and inauguration of Ronald Reagan in 1981.

My mother’s final year of high school was unique. While most American high school seniors worried about finding a job or getting into college, my mother worried about guns and bullets, hostile religiously motivated government takeovers, and getting hold of that elusive plane ticket home. When the ticket finally arrived she was overjoyed to be returning to the United States and wanted to put Iran behind her. Now, she appreciates her Iranian experience. She believes it gave her a different perspective on the world and America’s place in it.

It’s only a week or two into my senior year, and here I am, sitting by my mother, watching as the second tower joins the first. And now, perhaps I’m gaining my own new perspective. At school it’s the only thing anyone can think about. No math, no chemistry, or economics. Just televisions tuned in to CNN and Fox News and quiet classrooms full of students and teachers watching, and listening, and waiting, and wondering what happens next. Is this how my mother felt, lying on the floor in the dark with her family as a hostile city erupted around them? A week ago all I was worried about was impressing college football scouts, studying for AP Calculus tests, and hanging out with friends. Now, my friends and I have found something new to be worried about. And for a few moments, as I sit there surrounded by a quiet classroom in a suburban high school, joined together with an entire nation sitting glued to the television like it hasn’t been since B.J. left Hawkeye in a helicopter, I think about being afraid.

I think now about my conversation with my mother. About that night she spent on the floor of her living room in Tehran. I imagine I’ll get the question some day, “Dad, do you remember the towers?”

“Yes,” I’ll say. And I’ll tell them about that morning, and that day at school. About the football game two days latter, and how my normally hated opponents were on that night my brothers. And of course I’ll tell them about my mother. And then I’ll get that other question. “Weren’t you scared?”

“You’know,” I’ll say, slurring the two words together like a true Northwesterner, “I probably should have been a lot more scared than I was."