maraga
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Iran: the beginning
We landed at night, it was raining and the tarmac looked slick and black, shiny from the rain, with the airport lights reflecting on the wet surface. It had been a hard flight for me, I’d been sick from the take off in Vancouver, the flight change in London with running through the airport to catch the connection they were holding back for us, security looking through Dad’s two violin cases, one holding his violin the other full of Pampers for Paul, to the stop in Beruit on the day everything blew up in Lebanon, with tanks turning their guns towards our plane and men with guns coming on board to do I don’t know what. I was only six and didn’t understand any of what this was all about until I was much older and understood the timing of our flight. I only knew I would give anything to stop dry heaving into barf bags and for us to finally get off the plane once and for all.
We ran through the rain to a Dodge van, red, all Dodge vans and trucks in Iran were red, never knew why, they just were and that I would always associate red Dodge vans with Iran. We all managed to fit, all seven of us, with our luggage to follow. I looked out the window at that black tarmac and the lights reflecting on it and thought finally, now the adventure will begin, now things will be different and I won’t want to vomit any more.
The hotel was tall and imposing, as only good hotels can be. I had to share a room with Allen on one of the upper floors, and wasn’t happy about it and tried desperately to be put some where else. However, there was no getting out of it, and Allen let me know as soon as we were alone that my efforts did nothing but earn me a punch in the stomach. As I went crashing to my knees holding my stomach with both hands I had the horrible feeling that things were indeed going to be different but that I wouldn’t like the difference. My adventure had started for better or worse we were here and things were already different, I was now going to be share a room with my tormentor.
I laid in bed that night with my hands folded under my head and watched the sky turn a glorious pink and thought that this wasn’t what I wanted, this wasn’t what I had hoped when we moved here. I had hoped that it would end, I don’t really know why I thought it would, but I had and it was a rude awakening that nothing was going to change, that it was only going to get worse.
The next morning over breakfast we all learned our first word of Farsi, namak which means salt. We also got our first taste of malaria pills, which were tiny but bitter beyond anything, and this was before the lovely coatings we have now, and it would dissolve before you could swallow it every single time. Jessica, who cannot take a pill without gagging, decided to dissolve it into her hot chocolate. Which only made the hot chocolate bitter and undrinkable, couldn’t gag it down, until more and more hot chocolate was added to it until it was hardly bitter before she could drink it all down. We kids decided to look out the front doors of the hotel to see what was out there, we weren’t to go farther than the steps, which is too bad because I hadn’t finished vomiting after all, and proceeded to all over the hotels front steps. Which didn’t go over well with Mom who was embarrassed and ended up giving me a couple of smacks later in her room. Was not exactly an auspicious beginning, with Allen having easy access to me and Mom already doling out smacks, nothing was different at all.
We only spent several days there, days that were spent in the huge park across the street, and nights forced to perform oral sex on Allen. But after he was done with me I would make my way to the top floor of the hotel and look out over this enormous city. Would look down at the park and see people walking its paths, watch cars stopping at lights and then zooming forward again, watched lights spread out like a blanket of stars, watched and emptied my mind. Watching the city at night is quite hypnotic and found it helped quiet my chaotic mind. I was soon to be 7 in only a few days and all my hopes that things would be different here had been squashed that first night and morning. My mind tried to grasp that while things weren’t different here, they were still going to be different, just a different from what I had hoped. That the different was going to be a bad different, a different filled with nightmares and silent screams. The last night in the hotel after another hour or so of servicing my brother, I found my way to that window again on the top floor and found it open this time, open and the drapes billowing with this warm fragrant breeze. I walked to the window and peered out the opening and put my hands on the sill and looked down to that sidewalk so far away, looked down at it and my mind emptied and all I could see was the sidewalk, all I could hear was the wind and all I could smell was that warm fragrance, and I had one leg over the window sill and was climbing out the window when a pair of hands grabbed me and pulled me back inside. A guest on his way to his room had seen me a little 6 almost 7 year old climbing out the window to her death and stopped me. He asked me what I was doing and I looked up at him and said I wanted to fly and to be free just once. He looked down at me with these brown eyes full of lingering fear and growing concern and saw something in my eyes that made him nod at me just once. He carried me to my parent’s room and told them he had found me sleep walking in the hall way. As he walked away he stopped at the corner looked at me, nodded and was gone. I never knew his name or anything at all except for those brown eyes and hands firm but gentle keeping me from leaping to my death at the tender age of 6 almost 7 years old.
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12/18/2003, 7:26 pm
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maraga
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Re: Iran: the beginning
We drove to Bandar Pahlavi, a long torturous drive, full of screaming, crying, and stinging smacks from Mom. There was also the accident we had to stop for, bodies stretched out on the road with blankets covering them, nameless and faceless, but the red soaking through the blankets told all we needed or wanted to know. We pulled into the hotel that would become our home for the next 2 months late in the evening, tired and cranky. With 7 of us, the company just hadn’t found a place large enough to hold, 2 adults and 5 kids, ranging in age from almost 1 to 14. So we were to be put up in a lovely hotel right on the beaches of the Caspian sea, until they found one. Once again I was sharing a room with my tormentor, with no idea of how long I would be there.
Whatever changes I had thought would happen to my life when I boarded the first plane in Vancouver it had never occurred to me that it could get worse. While walking towards that open window on the top floor I had only thought things were never going to change, they were never going to get better. That they were going to get worse just didn’t enter my mind, at 6 almost 7 things were bad enough without the fear of things becoming so much more worse than they already were.
I turned 7 within a day or two of moving into the Sefid Kenar, there was nothing remarkable about my birthday, except the basket of chocolate that I received from and older foreign couple staying at the hotel as well. Paul turned 1 three days later and Allen turned 14 a week later.
Life at the hotel was different from anything I had experienced before, a maid tidied your room and made up your bed, the dining room was open until late at night, there were no dishes to wash, no clothes to pick up, and no Mother screaming and smacking to get things done before your Father came home. There was a pool and the sea to swim in, and the gardens and beach to roam and explore. Everything was new and different, except what happened at night in my room that didn’t change. We started going to school the first Monday we were there. It was in town, on the beach, and under a restaurant, there were 4 or 5 grades in each classroom, with only a couple rooms to use for a school. There weren’t many of us at that time, though the numbers grew every year. Recess and lunch took place out on the beach, lunch was sandwiches bought from the restaurant upstairs. I learned the Iranian national anthem and that erasers were also called rubbers, which made the older kids giggle for some reason. We bused into the school, a small mini bus that stopped and picked up the few other students living on the outskirts of town. Mostly they lived in the condos that belonged to the hotel, or the foreigners compound just down the main road from the hotel. No one lived in town in a normal neighbourhood amongst the Iranians. There were originally only the three compounds that were for foreigners to live, they were walled and had a gate and a security guard at the gates. As time went by and more foreigners were brought in more compounds were built, and still no one lived amongst the Iranians. The foreigners never bothered to learn more than the very basic Farsi, enough to count to ten and some names of food items, though mostly they would point. My parents wanted us to learn all we could and encouraged us to learn Farsi. Which we did, with the help of the hotel staff, who mostly spoke little or no English at all. In learning their language we became very popular with the hotel staff, and we were well behaved, well behaved or get the belt. Paul was a particular favourite and took his first steps into the arms of our favourite waiter, Bahman. Paul was fawned over by the hotel with his chubby cheeks and blond curls. We never needed a babysitter for him, some waiter or chambermaid, and even the hotel manager were all willing to hold him and keep an eye on him. He was forever in the kitchens with the head chef feeding him cake and fruit.
I explored, the hotel and its several floors, the banquet rooms, the roof everything, I knew where everything was and where everyone was supposed to be. I walked through gardens and found turtles and frogs, clung to the sides of the pool and paddled about in the sea. There was so much to see and do. At night laid in bed and hoped that Allen was through with me for the night and watched the sky pink before drifting into an uneasy sleep. A sleep that would soon be punctuated by new nightmares.
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12/21/2003, 1:58 pm
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maraga
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Re: Iran: the beginning
There were also bugs in Iran lots of them. Dad had always been interested in bugs and had a large butterfly and bug collection, and I used to help him, well mostly I watched, but all the different bugs were interesting to watch. It had crossed my mind whenever someone asked me what I wanted to be when I grew up, that something to do with bugs would be interesting and fun. Allen also liked bugs, was the type to pull wings off of flies or some other poor creature and watch it suffer. He was forever tormenting something.
There were two beds in our room Allen slept in the one closest to the door and I slept in the one closest to the sliding glass doors. He made the rules for the room, he got the bathroom first, he turned the light off when he wanted or on whenever he wanted. If he went to bed before me he would turn the lights off and I wasn’t allowed to turn them on. Everything was what he wanted, and it went that way or he was more than willing to punch until you understood the rules. One night I came to bed after he had gone to bed, I was always trying to stay up as late as possible in the hopes of him being asleep when I went to our room. More often than not he would wake up in the middle of the night and drag me from my bed kicking and struggling to his to be molested. Most nights this is what happened, if he was awake when I got to our room, then we would struggle and fight right from the minute I closed the door. I opened the door quietly, the room was dark, which usually meant he was asleep, and went into the bathroom to change into my nightie and brush my teeth, making sure to close the bathroom door before turning the lights on and turning them off before I opened it again. Barefooted I walked swiftly to my bed as usual trying to be quiet I slipped into bed. I had always liked my bed sheets to be tight and really tucked in, made it harder for Allen to just grab me without my waking if I happened to doze off, and it made me feel secure like I was being hugged. This particular night I climbed in and slid all the way down into bed before I realized something was wrong. Just as I was realizing what was wrong I heard Allen getting out of bed and the next thing I knew he was looming over me something in his hands. “Stop trying to hide in the lobby until I am asleep.” Then raised them and a bucketful of bugs rained down onto me to join the ones he had already filled my bed with. I stood up and began screaming, bugs were coming into my mouth, crawling up my legs and arms, and through my hair and over my face. Hundreds of bugs and spiders crawling and scuttling. I felt as those I were wearing a gown made of bugs. I had been so worried about waking him I hadn’t noticed that my bed was alive with bugs, teeming with them. I stood there screaming trying to swipe them off me flicking and scraping my hands down my arms and legs shaking and shuddering. Then there was Mom pounding on the door asking what the hell was going on, and then Allen was clamping his hand over my mouth, trapping bugs inside that crawled over my tongue and making me gag as they tried to crawl down my throat. He was telling Mom something about my having seen a spider, but he had taken care of it and everything was fine. Then he was removing his hand and whispering for me to confirm everything, confirm it or worse would happen every day, every night. I reached up and scooped out as many bugs as I could and spit the rest out and confirmed everything he had said, and told her I was sorry. Listened to her walk away and then Allen was telling me to clean up all the bugs before morning, then he climbed into bed and went to sleep. I stood on my bed still being crawled upon by bugs, shaking and trembling so hard I could hardly stand. I managed to climb down from the bed to the floor bugs crushing beneath my bare feet and hands. I slapped and swatted them off me and pulled them out of my hair, tears streaming down my face and lips pressed closed to keep any more bugs from crawling back in. I went down on my knees and began scooping handfuls of bugs up and dropping them into the bucket, shuddering with every wriggle and scuttling sound. When the bucket filled I went to the sliding doors opened them and walked tp the edge of the balcony and dumped them onto the grass, over and over I did this feeling under the bed and into corners in the dark trying to get every single bug and spider. Pulled more off me and out of my hair as I worked and as they scrambled onto me. Pulled my bed sheets completely off making sure there wasn’t any lurking in the folds of the blankets and sheets until I was sure they were all gone from the room. Went into the bathroom and stood in the shower with hot water pouring down on my trembling body and scrubbed until my skin was red and my head hurt from scrubbing my head and scalp. Rinsed my mouth out over and over and then gagged and vomited into the shower bottom and there amongst last nights dinner were several bugs, that had been swallowed whole or had worked their way down to my stomach. I stood there heaving and shuddering whimpering quietly as I watched them crawl through the contents of my stomach, having just been part of the contents and vomited again and again until I was dry heaving and watching as the shower water finally washed them and my dinner down the drain. I turned my face into the water and drank and drank and then stuck my fingers down my throat and vomited again, I did this several times until there was some blood in the water, from where my throat had torn from so much vomiting, I wanted to be sure there weren’t anymore bugs crawling in my stomach. Finally sure, I washed again and rinsed my mouth out brushed my teeth and tongue until my gums bled and my tongue was sore, still I could feel their legs moving in my mouth taste their hard shiny bodies on my tongue. But by this time it was now early enough that I could get up and get dressed and no one would think anything about it. So still trembling slightly I dressed and went to the dining room and drank glass after glass of juice trying to wash the taste of them out of my mouth and cups of tea to soothe my throat. Fighting the urge to vomit with every sip. Then the rest of my family straggled in one by one and ate breakfast and none of them asking why I was there early, as I often was the first to get there but always the last to leave. Then it was time to catch the bus and go to school and it was another day and another night was still waiting for me.
Mom slapped me later that day telling me to not be such a baby about bugs, that she knew I liked bugs had seen me with my Father and his bugs, and that our chamber maid had mentioned I had gone to bed with muddy feet as there was dirt smeared onto the sheets. Another smack for embarrassing her and making her look like a bad mother to these people for sending me to bed filthy. Night came and I went to the room late like always, and Allen was angry and did some punching and pinching, but I knew there wasn’t much he could do to me with so many people around all the time, and then it was the same old, sexual abuse and molesting as always. Then it was time for bed and I stood there looking at my bed watching for any wriggling and moving. Then just tore the covers and sheets all the way back and inspected them with Allen watching me and laughing at what I was doing. Finally satisfied I climbed into bed and laid there, tired from no sleep but terrified there would be another bucket. I did finally sleep near dawn as was usual but my sleep was punctuated with nightmares of bugs crawling in my mouth and stomach, and every stray feeling of the blanket brushing my skin or my hair I was wide awake and slapping at nothing but my paranoia. Every night after that was the same I always checked for the wriggling and pulled back the covers to make sure. Every night was also filled with paranoia and nightmares. Nightmares about bugs don’t come as often as they used to but the paranoia remains.
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12/21/2003, 7:57 pm
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maraga
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Re: Iran: the beginning
I had a reoccurring nightmare about my brothers and sisters pushing me from the ferry and being pulled into the propellor, chopped up and drowning. Once we moved to Iran from Vancouver Island I thought my nightmares about water were over, not so. I loved water and still do, love the feel of being in it, how buoyant you feel. We had lived at the hotel almost a month and all the staff knew us and adored us, and were much favoured over other guests, even the manager favoured us. We were welcomed where ever we went in the hotel and treated as honoured guests. We got the best seats at dinner and the chef would make special western meals just for us. All the pool staff and outdoor staff knew us as well, for we were always at the pool or in the gardens. The pool was large and had a bumped out section in the middle on the one side that was for the diving board and was 12 feet deep, with it gradually sloping to 3 feet on either end. I played in the shallow ends, but I also liked moving from one end of the pool to the other by moving around the outer edges even in the deep section. However, I couldn’t swim and never wore floatation devices. The hotel manager would often come out to the pool and greet guests and be sociable, and had often seen me in the deep section of the pool, which gave him the misconception that I knew how to swim. On one of his social visits to the pool I was in the diving section of the pool making my way around the pool, he beckoned me to come out of the pool and see him. I had made my way to the ladder by this time and got out and went over to see him, I had always liked him, he was nice and soft spoken and seemed genuinely kind. He was standing by the diving board and as I came to him he gave me this smile made a funny face at me and pushed me in. I had seen him do this time and again, playing with the guests who were children. He of course hadn’t any idea I couldn’t swim, after all I was always in the deep end. My eyes were open as I sank to the bottom, mouth full of water, and water streaming into my nose. I can still see the blue sides of the pool passing me as I went down and bubbles from my nose and mouth. I hit the bottom and knew enough to push off with my feet to get back to the surface, I just didn’t know what to do with my arms and legs, my legs I had clamped them together and weren’t moving them at all and my one arm rushed to my nose to plug it and the other arm just sort of flailed. I did rise to the surface but wasn’t there long enough to get more than a little bit of air before I sank back down to the bottom again water filling my mouth all the way down. Time slowed down and everything was in slow motion, I couldn’t have been under for more than a minute or so before I felt a hand grab my bathing suit and start pulling me up from my third trip to the bottom. I was carried over to a lounger and laid on it and the face dripping water on to mine was the managers. I could hear Rosanna screaming and Jessica shouting, and the hotel manager just kept wiping the water from my face and then held me over his arm while I spewed water from my stomach and water from my nose. He was white as a sheet terrified and looked as though he would kill me all at the same time. He was also sopping wet, he had dived in fully clothed to save me after finally understanding Rosanna’s screams that I couldn’t swim. I sat there coughing and coughing as he held me and swore in Farsi over and over. Everyone was crowded around and finally he just sort of sighed and raised an eyebrow and said that I wasn’t to go in the deep end without a floatation belt and that I wasn’t allowed in the pool again without one and that he wanted to see me learning to swim. Then he hugged me apologized for almost drowning me and kissed my forehead. Mom was furious and so embarrassed, got a serious belting for that one. But, the rules of the pool changed, no one was allowed in if they didn’t know how to swim without a floatation device of some kind. We were all surprised to see how many kids were suddenly wearing floatation belts, ones who like me had hugged the sides of the pool in the deep section.
Finally the day came to leave, the forestry division had finally found a big enough house for us. The good byes were tearful, but we would always end up there for big family dinners and special occasions. However, the 2 months of waiters, chefs and chambermaids had spoiled us and now we would be back to doing for ourselves. We were all excited and miserable at the same time then we just became miserable. We moved from a lovely hotel with everything at our beck and call to a house with a toilet that wouldn’t work and peeing in a bucket.
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1/5/2004, 5:43 pm
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maraga
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Re: Iran: the beginning
The house the company had found for us was leased from a relatively wealthy family, it included all the furniture and had 4 bedrooms, which with 5 kids we needed. We moved in the beginning of July only to find that the septic tank needed emptying and so we were using a bucket, with 7 people in the house was not a pleasant experience. When they finally came to empty the septic tank, it was unlike anything you can imagine, the men with rags wrapped around their lower face lifted off the concrete top. Then with shovels in hand and hip waders on proceeded to shovel out the tank, first into wheel barrows then from the wheel barrows into the back of a truck, and when they had filled the truck they shoveled it over the back wall into the alley and desert behind the house. We had every window closed and every door but we could still smell it. Jessica was breathing through her mouth next to me while we watched and making gagging noises every couple of minutes. We watched through the windows the entire time. Finally they were done and the concrete top went back and we could actually use the toilet, which Jessica did, finally vomiting what she had been holding in all day.
The house was set far back from the road with a long driveway and big steel gates that were a painted a bright orange. We were across the street from the main access to the beach and from the front porch you could see the blue of the Caspian sea. The front yard was all grass and bisected by the dirt driveway. There was a large circle of concrete on the one side that was the top to the well where our water came from, on top of it was a white iron swing. On the side of the house was a small garden and a very tiny house that the gardener, who was also the guard, his wife and his small daughter lived, they had come with the house. On the 3 other sides of the yard were 10 foot concrete walls, these were quite typical in Iran. On the one side we had a neighbour who I never saw or heard or even met, on the other was an alley, which was known as Hello Alley, because as the buses carrying foreign students or cars carrying foreigners went down it the children in the alley would wave and chase them shouting hello, which was the only English they knew. And behind us was just an empty section of desert that you walked through to get to town or to the cemetery. The house was comfortable, but in the 2 months we were at the Sefid Kenar we really had become accustomed to having everything done for us. Going back to having to wash dishes, clothes, taking out the garbage, and cleaning our own rooms was more difficult than you can imagine. We were back to Mom shouting and doling out punishments left right and center.
We were also the only foreign family not living in one of the compounds designed for the foreigners, with walls and guards at the gates. We were living right amongst the Iranians, which was quite shocking to the rest of the foreigners, but helped us learn Farsi much quicker and more fluently than any other family there. It also made the Iranians respect us more, since we could carry on a conversation in Farsi with little trouble by the time we had lived there 6 months. While other foreigners that had lived there for years could still do nothing but point in the bazaar at the things they wanted to purchase.
Despite the trials of readapting to living in a house I was thrilled, because now I shared a room with Paul, who was 1, and not Allen, and in such close quarters it made it difficult for him to grab me for anything. When September came he was going to a private school in Tehran and I was going to be free of him. Life became much better for me once we moved and it was worth all the slaps and screams from Mom.
That summer was filled with sun and meeting the children in Hello Alley and making friends with them. Paul spent all his time with the gardener and his daughter who was 2, the only draw back to this was that the gardener was Turkish, and so the first language Paul learnt was Turkish. It was also filled with fights and discovering all the things in the house we weren’t supposed to play with or touch. In the large bookshelves was a collection of exotic match boxes, I can still remember some of them, the one in the shape of a grand piano, and the one that was covered in nude women. There was the collection of little bottles of alcohol in the buffet, and the collection of large bottles in the huge safe, which Allen cracked with ease, the giant bottle of Jimmy Walker, that was almost as big as I was, and the giant bottle of Jack Daniels. Also in the bookcase were the books filled with erotica, which no one in the house should’ve been reading, let alone us kids. Then it was the end of summer and Allen was gone, and school started up again.
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1/20/2004, 5:52 pm
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