Camelia Read Online Free Page B

him in the fall, following the construction of our villa in Karaj. My father wanted to stay close to his mother, and my parents were full of false hope for a coup d’état. The schools opened, and I went to my first class at Chista No. 1 elementary school, where Katayun was enrolled in the fourth grade.
    There was no sign of boys in my class—the new Islamic government separated the sexes in school. The most revolutionary girl in our school was one of Katayun’s classmates. Everyone called her by her last name, Torkan. Head coverings were not yet mandatory at elementary school (the law went into effect when I started 3rd grade) and no one wore the hejab , but this coarse, olive-skinned girl wore a long black veil. She had a mustache on her upper lip and a hoarse voice, and would read the Qur’an and start chanting slogans at the beginning of each day as we lined up in the courtyard before class. Her family had come from southern Tehran and lived in a rough-hewn house in a slum along the main road in Shahr Ara, across from the Bulvar-e Gulha. It had once been a wide, open area and seemed to have been settled by fiery revolutionaries overnight. My mother hated Torkan and would argue with her when she came to pick up Kati and me up after school. Her brother had died in the revolution,
and years later, we heard that Torkan had gone to medical school on the compensation paid to her family for his martyrdom.
    The mood of Iranians, regardless of group or faction, had heated to the boiling point. The burning and looting had come to an end, and the demonstrations against America weren’t enough to quench the people’s thirst. When my friends and I reached the front gate of our school one morning, we saw custodians with buckets and giant brushes in hand, painting something on the ground. Before we could take another step, they turned to us and said, “Go that way to go in. The painting is wet, it’ll get ruined. In sha’ Allah , tomorrow you’ll be able to walk over it.” I asked, “But what is it?” My friend Mozhgan Tokaldani answered quickly, “The American flag.”
    A few days before, the American embassy had been occupied by youths who called themselves Students Following in the Line of the Imam. They had taken sixty-six Americans hostage, demanding that America return the Shah to Iran. Ayatollah Khomeini announced on the radio that he supported their gesture. I gleefully clapped my hands, certain that we would have a special program before our lessons and that the first few hours of class would be canceled. The bell rang and we all lined up. Torkan had taken her place in front of the microphone and called out with great excitement, “Our motto of the day?” And we had to respond, “ Marg bar Amrika ” (Death to America or Down with America). And Torkan asked again, “The motto of the oppressed?” And we had to respond, “ Marg bar Amrika! ” She chanted, “ Marg bar Amrika! ” and we repeated it, Marg bar Amrika , our voices like a hammer hitting the courtyard.
    Khanum Nuri, the faculty representative of Omur-e Tarbiyati, stepped up to the microphone. “Young ladies, you certainly must have heard that the ‘nest of spying’ was occupied by the Students Following in the Line of the Imam. We would like to go stand outside the spies’ lair to show our solidarity. Those who want to come may, in an orderly fashion, get on the minibuses in front of the school
when the morning program is finished. You have your teachers’ permission, and we aren’t having classes today. The rest of the students who aren’t interested in participating in the demonstrations can call home and have their guardians pick them up or stay at school and go over their lessons.”
    The students burst out clapping and yelling with joy. I prayed that I would be allowed to go. I imagined the hostage takers as a bunch of young girls and