A Persian interlude

The Iranian Islamic Revolution took place in 1979. We were, at the time, in England where M was nearly at the end of his doctoral study. When he finished it successfully, we left for his hometown in Mashhad, Iran. At the time I was preggers with our first child. Our daughter B was born in September 1980, at the same time that the Iran-Iraq war started. What a welcome to the world for her!

Mashhad, 1980

B and her Babah in Mashhad (CNB 1980)

Little B (CNB 1980)

M had to serve his previous university in Kermanshah (renamed Bakhtaran, then later reverted to its old name). So I lived in Mashhad for a while until baby B was ready to travel the very long distance between these two places. In Mashhad I lived with my mother-in-law QJ, together with 2 brothers-in-law. Here we did not really feel the signs of war. When B and I moved to Kermanshah to join M, the war had escalated and this town is that much closer to the enemy. Daily we would watch the tanks and war machinery trundle past the town to get to the war front. All our windows had to be blacked out so that the bombs would hopefully not find their targets. We would watch the 'fireworks' at night from our balconies and rooftops. It was my first (and hopefully the only) experience of living in war time.

Celebrating B's first birthday in Kermanshah (1981)

Then our daily living needs started being rationed. We were able to warm up only one room with the fuel oil ration. Food had to be bought with coupons, so also cleaning materials. There were long queues for these necessities, so baby B and I were also in these queues - for chicken (once a week), for meat (two days a week), for 'Tide' (common name for a detergent) and for roghan or cooking oil (every so often).

B in Kermanshah (CNB 1981)

At home in Kermanshah (CNB 1981)

Living in a new country, despite the war, was a pretty interesting experience for me. I  had learnt to speak a bit of the Farsi language (from a Teach Yourself  book), so I went about quite independantly doing what needed doing in our daily life. I went to the bakery (read: hot underground ovens) for our daily bread or naan - usually sanggek (baked on pebble stones) or barbari (salted); to the sabzi furushi for our vegetables; the mive furushi for our fruits; to the 'super' (market) or smaller shops for everything else. I took baby B to the doctor when necessary - like when I was too enthusiastic about introducing her to solid foods that I caused her to have diarrhoea.

A Kermanshah studio photo of me & B (1980)

After two years, the war looked like it would never end, so M and I decided that it was better for us to leave for my home country of Malaysia.

Footnote: The 1988 ceasefire between Iran and Iraq only happened after eight years of  a full scale war that resulted in a severely disrupted economy, and which saw 1,000,000 dead and 1,700,000 wounded.

1980-1982