Read Online Camelia by Camelia Entekhabifard - Free Book Online

would stay right where I was, sitting at the dining room table, doing my homework. When the windows rattled, I would step out into the courtyard and try to guess how close the explosion was by surveying the volume of smoke and in which direction it was blowing. But early one morning, I was woken by shots fired right past our house. My mother, overcome with excitement, exclaimed, “They’re the Shah’s supporters! It’s a coup d’état! I told you that a reliable source indicated that, by the end of the month, they would . . .” Kati cut my mother off.
    â€œShhh! Shhh! Be quiet. Let’s hear what they’re saying over the loudspeaker.”
    Someone on the street with a megaphone announced, “Respected neighbors, kindly remain in your houses until further notice. A group of troublemakers is operating in your neighborhood, and our brothers in the armed forces are working hard to flush them out of their nest. You are in no danger.” The Mujahedin-e Khalgh had turned against the government and were engaging in street warfare, bombings, and assassinations. The renegade mujahedin hid in residential neighborhoods in timi houses. We could hear machine guns and the
megaphones asking the munafiqin to surrender. “The whole area is surrounded by our brothers in the army. Place your weapons outside on the ground and give yourselves up.”
    We went to the window and saw that all of our neighbors were at their windows watching, just like us. I waved at my Zoroastrian friends Nasim and Bahareh who lived across the street. Would the discovery of the timi house mean that we wouldn’t have classes that afternoon? Our crowded schools now operated in two shifts. One week we’d go in the morning, the other in the afternoon. Every week we’d have new additions to our already-full class of nearly forty students, most of us sitting three to a bench. They’d be warscarred girls from Ahvaz, Abadan, Khorramshahr, or elsewhere in the south. Our director would stand at the blackboard and present an olive-skinned girl with black eyes and dark eyebrows, looking from head to toe like a product of southern Iran. We all put on false smiles, but the girls sitting two to a bench would shoot daggers from their eyes, knowing they’d have to share their places with this new student, not knowing whether she’d be lazy or smart, or whether she’d have bad breath.
    Since I was scheduled for the afternoon shift, I was happy when the sound of the clash intensified, as being forbidden to leave the house would mean there was no hurry for me to do my schoolwork. But it wasn’t noon yet when the bearded man with the megaphone in his hand returned and pronounced, “Dear sisters and brothers, we are very grateful for your patience and cooperation. The area has been cleared of dangerous elements, and you are free to come out of your homes. Allahu Akbar! Khomeini rahbar! (God is great! Khomeini is the guide!) Death to the opponents of the velayat-e faqih !” We hurried down from the fourth floor, dying with curiosity. A neighbor who saw the whole thing was narrating the siege with great flair and bombast for an audience that had arrived on the scene before us. She described how the young men and women had
been brought out of their hiding places in the house blindfolded with their hands tied behind their backs.
    My own Uncle Ali had been accused of turning against the revolution and had disappeared. On June 28, 1981, his young wife, Iran-Dokht, called my father in tears. “For God’s sake, come,” she cried. “They’ve taken Ali . . .” He’d served in the Revolutionary Guard for less than two years when he was dismissed from the outfit. He told us that the conduct of the new government was incompatible with the Islam portrayed in their propaganda and that he was unable to serve in the ranks of thieves and liars. After that, Uncle Ali stayed home, absorbed by his