Barsin Mohammad Awali / Staff reporter
For my elder I interviewed my grandma because I felt that her story was interesting and should be shared, she gave me permission to share her story and even while telling me about her story she would get emotional and teary eyed but was comfortable and happy to share.
My grandma Shahla was born and raised in Tehran, Iran. She was the second oldest of eight siblings, four boys and five girls. In 1973 at 18 years old she got married to Mahmood Shir, a 28-year-old businessman.
After marriage she gave birth to her first daughter at nineteen, Elham Shir. Then one year later to Neda Shir, but four years later a big change came to Iran, in 1978 the king of Iran was exiled from Iran after many Iranians took to streets for protest and were upset on how the king was “westernizing” Iran.
After the exile, a new leader by the name of Ayatollah Khomeini was given power, who had led the revolution to overturn the king. Ayatollah Khomeini was determined to declare Iran as a Islamic state after he was put into power. He had hundreds of people who worked for the king executed and required new laws: women would now have to wear a hijab, western music was banned, alcohol was banned and a women could go out with a man only if it was her husband or father.
Shahla was frightened by these new laws against women and worried for her two daughters. It was hard leaving the home as women with police all around the city watching to make sure they followed the new laws. Her brother Morteza had left to go study in Turkey, he had arrived back to Iran to visit his parents when at the airport they detained him and sent him to evin prison. He didn’t know why he was detained and without going to court he spent three years there; this brought great sadness to the family, and they tried getting reasoning behind his arrest, but no reasons were given. Morteza had to share one cell with 40 other guys and would get tortured by the prison guards. They would put a black blindfold on the prisoners, then ropes around their necks and hang them up. Then after a few seconds bring them back down.
After three years of living through that the prison guards came in one day and took him to the office in the prison, they went through the prisoners files and found nothing on him they asked why are you here and he didn’t know why he was, later he was released and Morteza found out they arrested him because they thought he was speaking against the revolution in Turkey, after that Morteza left and came to Canada.
One day Shahla took her two daughters out for shopping, she followed the rules and had her hijab on, no makeup, covered up clothing, no nail polish and wearing proper shoes. While they were walking around, a big green van pulled up, and out of the car came the morality police. They had these big guns and started yelling at these women to get in the van; as Shahla was walking away one of the women yelled at her to get back and forced her into the van leaving Elham and Neda scared and stranded. In the van Shahla saw women crying and guns being pointed at them. Shahla asked the woman next to her ” women why are you arresting me? What crime have I committed? I have followed the dress code! What is wrong with it?” The women looked at her and told the van driver to stop the car. They left her in the middle of the road and drove off. Shahla walked all the way back to see her daughters sitting on the ground with a bunch of women surrounding them to trying to contact Mahmood; when Mahmood came to grab them, he asked Shahla ” why did you go with those women? Your clothes are good” she replied with ” either I go, or they drag me out in front of my daughters”.
One year later Iran and Iraq declared war on each other, Shahla’s two younger brothers Siamak and Saiid were forced to go to war. They were only twenty and twenty-two. Shahla’s mom pleaded to her sons to not to go but they said, ” either we go to war and die, or they kill us for not going”. They were scared and didn’t want to go but they said their goodbyes. What they didn’t know was that they were put in the frontlines between Iran and Iraq. While hiding in the trenches they got lost, they had no food and a little bit of water and were freezing, only a couple of days later they found an animal and ate it. They were stuck there for two weeks, until the government told the families of the men who went to war in front lines to come to identify and take the bodies of the men who died home.
Shahla’s mom went looking at all the faces of other dead boys trying to recognize if it’s her sons. There were hundreds but no one knew they were lost, that’s until other soldiers found them. When they brought them home Saiid and Siamak had learned the news that while they were gone their father had a stroke, and was now paralyzed from the neck down. They were miserable and traumatized from what they had witnessed and went through for two weeks, after that they weren’t sent back to fight.
As the war continued smaller cities in Iran were under attack, still not reaching Tehran. One morning after Shahla dropped her two girls off at school for their first day. She returned home to cook for them a few hours after the war Sirens started to play in the streets then she heard an explosion; a bomb had been dropped at the airport where they lived nearby. She right away got into her car and drove to the girls school, when she got into the school everyone was gone and the building was empty, she realized that their in the underground shelter from there she went down to the shelter to find all students and teachers huddled together in the dark.
She saw Neda and Elham and grabbed them as she was leaving, she heard a little girl crying saying “lady take us with you we are your neighbor we live next to you” Shahla said “whoever lives in my street come with me.” Shahla and her daughters and nine other girls ran to the car to drive home; when pulling up on their street the mothers were standing outside crying and trying to figure out how to go get to their daughters, the girls ran out of the car jumping into their mothers arms and everyone ran inside their own homes to go underground.
This was just the beginning, Elham and Neda were no longer attending school and Mahmood was scared to go to war. Shahla found out she is pregnant with her third child and in 1981 she gave birth to her first boy Ali. Two years went by with war on and off, Elham was now thirteen years old, and Neda was twelve and Ali was already two years old.
Mahmood had went out of the city to a farm they owned and Shahla and the kids stayed home; as they were getting ready for bed Shahla heard what sounded like planes hovering over them, she looked out the widow and watched a missile hit a home in neighborhood; all the windows shattered and Shahla flew across the room on the ground. She quickly got up and told Elham to grab Neda and to go to the underground shelter; she went to go find Ali and he wasn’t in the living room where she left him, she thought he might have gotten frightened and went to hide, she shouted his name till she saw the front door open; she opened the door to see Ali wandering the streets she went and grabbed him and ran back into the home to the shelter, they stayed there till morning.
In the morning, the rest of the family learned about the missile and could not get Shahla. They called Mahmood and he rushed back to go to see if he’s family was still alive; while trying to get back into the city they had checkpoints, the officer told him he could not get back into the city, he told the officer he’s situation and that he didn’t know if he’s wife and children were still alive, the officer aloud him and Mahmood rushed home to see his family sleeping the bunker.
He woke up Shahla and told her it was time to leave their home. Leaving their home was hard as you can imagine, they did not know if they would see their home again, they told a couple neighbors and family members to come as well and anyone that needed to seek shelter. One hundred people ended up coming to stay on the farm, it was so pact they had people sleeping on roofs and in the barns, they had to keep lights off most of the time, so they were not spotted by the planes.
For one year they lived in that barn until in 1988 Iran and Iraq’s war was officially over, but Shahla did not want to stay in Iran anymore she did not want her kids to be raised here. Mahmood arranged a plan to get his wife and children to leave but Mahmood was not willing to go, he had a big business in Iran and did not want to leave that behind. Shahla wanted to go to Canada since Morteza was already living there in Hamilton, Ontario. She travelled alone when Elham was the first to go, and a couple of months later they sent Neda; at last, it was time for Shahla and Ali to go as well.
They were all finally all together in Hamilton living with Morteza and his new wife, they finally felt safe and ready to start a new beginning, but every new adventure comes with challenges. Shahla had to raise three children alone now while still supporting them and getting a job was not easy for her, she could not even speak English but luckily Shahla had her brother and he help to support her while Shahla went back to school.
Five years went by Shahla, and her kids moved to Vancouver, they bought a small apartment in Richmond. Elham and Neda had graduated; Elham went to BCIT to study business and Neda went to Toronto to study nursing, more family members moved to Canada from Iran; Mahmood and Shahla started losing connection and did not talk as often. Now it has been thirty years, they worked hard to build a future in Canada and gave me and my cousins a happy childhood something they did not get to experience.
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