I was at university in England during the Iran hostage crisis. Jimmy Carter was the President and I was living in a dorm populated by British students. It was my “Junior Year Abroad”, a semester spent at the University of Exeter to study Literature and culture, immersed in life in a different country. By day I was the “American student”, swallowing large doses of John Fowles and D.H. Lawrence. By night, my British friends and I would sit around the kitchen table and debate the politics of American foreign policy. My British friends were highly critical of my government, critical of the way we had comported ourselves in foreign affairs and critical of the failed attempt to rescue the hostages that were held captive for so long in the embassy. Never one for political debate, I listened with great interest to those conversations that often went late into the night. I was fascinated with the different perspective, the opportunity to see life from the outside in; an opportunity to see us as others saw us, not as we saw ourselves.
A couple of weeks ago, an older gentleman joined our writing group. He had salt and pepper hair that was brushed back from his tanned face and he was dressed neatly in slacks and a button down shirt. His hand shook as he extended it to shake mine. I couldn’t place his accent when he introduced himself to me. “Where are you from?” I asked.
“I am from Iran,” he said, his voice slow and deliberate.
We chatted for a while. It’s part of the ritual of the group. We chat. We check in and share our day.
Connect.
Where in Iran?” I asked, as if the towns in Iran are household names in my home. My kids hate it when I ask them questions, those whatdidyoudoandwhydidyoudoitandwhodidyoudoitwith kind of questions. My husband calls it the “third degree.” I call it curiosity.
“Tehran,” he said.
Ding, ding, ding went the little bell inside my brain. “Were you there when the Shah was there?” Clumsy, I admit, but it served its purpose.
“Oh yes,” he said, nodding. “The Shah. I was there until the revolution government came and changed everything and then I went to England."
Ding, ding, ding.
This was too weird. Too much of a coincidence. Now I was really curious. “Tell me about your life there,” I said. “Tell us about where you are from.”
And this is what he wrote:
“I am from Iran. I live in the Tehran, the capital of the Iran.
After I finish high school I go to university of the Tehran and after four years I get engineering degree of the electricity. At that time my father and big brother established electric factory and I go work together with them and we do the job about 15 years.
After that we closed the factory and established a contractor partnership and go around the country. We do government electric work. For example, we made electric factory for government in countries and we work until the revolution government came and everything changed and we moved to United States.”
I knew part of that story. My family had a friend who lived in Tehran during that time. He worked for a big electrical engineering company that was doing contract work in Iran, building electrical plants and power lines across the country. “Did he know them?” I asked. They had lived there for a number of years and I remember hearing that when the revolution came, all of the work that they had done had been destroyed.
“Of course.” He nodded. “Of course.”
It was one of those moments when you realize life’s synchronicity, the odd twists and turns that occur when you realize that you are two parts of the same story. Me, a young, naïve college student debating the pros and cons of a failed helicopter rescue attempt in a country I could hardly find on a map and this man, a piece of that history, a man who’s very life had been changed forever by that moment in time.
He told us how he came to live here, how he escaped and traveled to England on his way to a new life in this country. How he had gone back to Iran to take care of his ailing mother and how he got stuck there, unable to leave. He was separated from his family who had engineered their own escapes, some of whom he would never see again.
Last night he brought a photocopy of a picture to writing group. A couple of weeks ago, while shopping in town, he was approached by another Iranian woman. “I know you,” she said in Farsi. “My mother and your mother were friends in Iran.” She had a picture she wanted to show him. “Can you come for dinner?” she asked and without hesitation, he said yes.
“This is my family,” he said as he showed me the black and white image from long ago. “Can you find me?” I searched their faces for the man who now sat beside me; this one time stranger who now was no longer.
A part of history. His, mine and ours.
Image from here.
