Haleh Esfandiari - My Prison, My Home

In the winter, Grandmother would set up a traditional Persian korsi in her sitting room, which consisted of a low wooden table, measuring about four feet by four feet, placed over a charcoal brazier and covered with a large square quilt. Narrow mattresses were arranged around the quilt, and cushions were placed along the walls to lean against. On winter evenings, the family practically lived around the korsi , snuggling under the quilt to keep warm, eat, read, chat, play word games, recite poetry, and occasionally sleep. Grandmother always retired to her bed, but sometimes allowed the grandchildren to sleep under the korsi as a special treat. The servants had their own korsi , but it was off limits to the children.

Every Monday a mullah would come to the house and conduct a rowzeh-khani , a recital of religious martyrs’ tales. This was the only time we children were not allowed into the sitting room, when adult family members joined the mullah and the servants sat cross-legged by the entrance as he somberly recited the heart-rending tale of the martyrdom of brave Hossein, the Prophet’s grandson and the third Shi’ite imam, on the plains of Karbala in the seventh century.

My time with Khanum Jan helped shape my Iranian-Islamic identity. She read the Quran and explained religion to me as best she could. However, like many in my own and even in my father’s generation, I remained a secular Muslim. Father came of age during the reign of Reza Shah. The king regarded religion and the clergy as obstacles to his furious modernizing. He saw to it that the school curriculum glorified Iran’s pre-Islamic past, not its Islamic heritage. For my father and other Iranians like him, education abroad took care of the rest.

Khanum Jan, whom I loved dearly and who was the most important woman in my early life next to Mutti, was extremely tolerant, despite her religious upbringing. Generally speaking, she was broad-minded and receptive to modern changes—with one striking exception. When the veil was banned by government order in 1936, she stayed home for five years rather than go out into the street unveiled, a reaction not uncommon among women of her generation. The ban was another of Reza Shah’s Westernizing measures. He wanted to bring women into the public space, schools, and the workplace. But the abolition of the veil was a highly radical measure, shocking to traditional society and bitterly opposed by the clergy. One of the first steps taken by the Islamic Republic after the overthrow of the monarchy in 1979 was to reimpose hijab , or Islamic dress, on women. But by then, the situation was reversed. Middle-class women now fought the imposition of the veil rather than its removal.

Despite my grandmother’s own protest, her progressive mind-set was evident in the fact that she let her daughters, my aunts, go to school and did not object that they went unveiled. And when I married Shaul in 1965 , when marriages between Muslims and Jews were highly unusual, she gave me her blessing, along with a beautiful pair of pearl earrings.

I don’t recall ever seeing Khanum Jan in a black chador. Her personality was mirrored in the light colors she loved, and she often donned white, flowery chadors, allowing a bit of her hair to show beneath her headscarf. She was kind and welcoming to both her foreign-born daughter-in-law and son-in-law, and with her death in 1973, a piece of the cherished Iran of my childhood vanished along with her.

In December 1945, when I was almost six years old, Mother took me to Europe. She had not returned to Vienna since coming to Iran—Europe had been at war—and she had been longing to go back. Her youngest brother had died in the war and her two older sisters had moved to the United States. Her older brother, my uncle Max, was a successful merchant in Prague and she was eager to see him and her beloved Vienna again.

Father arranged for us to fly to Moscow on a plane that was taking Iran’s new ambassador to the USSR. From Moscow we were to take the train to Prague. For a child who had seen only Karaj and Tehran, taking an airplane, staying in a hotel, and traveling by train was a sensational experience. Yet all I remember of Moscow are the dreary, dark afternoons and the large, cavernous hotel. In the evening, Mother would take me downstairs to the near-deserted restaurant for dinner. There were always one or two couples on the dance floor, but they looked forlorn in the empty dining room. We would rush through dinner and hurry back to our room.

On the day of our departure for Prague, the Iranian ambassador arranged for his car to drive us from the hotel to the train station. A woman from the Russian Intourist Agency, who had made our arrangements, put us in a first-class compartment and gave us food for the long journey. There was none to be bought on the train. The conductor who checked our tickets told Mutti to keep the door of our compartment locked at all times. We were also given a small cooking lamp, which Mutti could use to warm our meals. I can’t remember how long the trip to Prague took, but I was glued to the window. Images from the journey remain etched in my memory: a desolate, gray landscape; burnt and demolished towns and villages; people lying huddled in the snow along the railway tracks; signs of hunger and illness evident even to a young child. At each stop, a mass of people rushed onto the train and banged on doors. I huddled against Mutti, crying in fear. At the Czech border, the conductor carried our suitcases to the crossing as we walked beside him in the snow. We were among the first passengers crossing here since 1940.

Prague, to my eyes, was a miracle of a city. My uncle Max picked us up at the train station. He was a tall, handsome, and very elegant man. He wore his hat tilted to one side, unlike my father, who wore his hat flat on his head. Uncle Max’s wife, Inka, was a beauty. They lived in an apartment of large rooms and high ceilings: there were Persian rugs on the floors, antique furniture, walls covered with paintings, closets full of very fine china. A plump maid in a neat black dress and white apron came every day. Mother, who did not believe in idleness, immediately enrolled me in the neighborhood school, where I learned to speak Czech. (I promptly forgot it once we returned to Tehran.)

Uncle Max took Mutti and me to the biggest toy store in Prague and bought me a fair, blue-eyed doll. I was bedazzled. I had never seen so many toys. After two hours Mutti and Uncle Max had to drag me out kicking and screaming.

The food in Prague was also a revelation. There was ham and salami and sausages for breakfast and fat-laced meat and different sauces for lunch and dinner. I loved the dumplings and the black bread covered with lard. Uncle Max even took us to Spiendelmuehl, a very posh winter resort in the mountains. I had never seen so much snow! A carriage drawn by two horses would take us from the hotel to the ski slopes. I learned how to sled, and Mother, elated to be back in Europe, skied the whole day.

Mutti was impatient to get to Vienna. Uncle Max tried to dissuade her or, at least, to prepare her for the devastation the city had endured from bombing during the war. But she was adamant. She wanted to visit her mother’s grave and look up some of her old friends. Finally, he bought us first-class train tickets and packed two suitcases full of food to take with us. Food was scarce in Vienna, and people could not be expected to share their meager rations with visitors or strangers.

The train departed in the evening. At first, Mutti and I were the sole occupants of the first-class compartment. Uncle Max warned Mutti not to accept any packages from strangers and not to engage in conversation with other passengers. A lot of counterfeit money, false documents, and contraband were being smuggled from Czechoslovakia into Austria.