Paris Was Ours by Penelope Rowlands

Author:Penelope Rowlands
Language: eng
Format: epub, mobi
Publisher: Algonquin Books
Published: 2011-10-07T04:00:00+00:00

ROXANE FARMANFARMAIAN

Out of the Revolution

February 26, 1980

I could taste the creamy strawberry of a lait fraise. Hear the crunch of the fine sand underfoot on the sidewalks of the avenue Montaigne. Feel the first savory spoonful of soupe au pistou vert against my lips. Picture an afternoon over a café crème at the Deux Magots while glancing sideways to see exactly what the parisiennes were wearing this spring. I daydreamed of Paris as I stood waiting, surrounded by people escaping the Islamic Revolution.

The noise in Tehran’s Mehrabad Airport was deafening, the departures floor a sea of bags filled with treasure—carpets, silver, photographs, painted Persian enamels in blue and green, Korans, anything that could be transported out to create a life elsewhere.

There were no lines, for lines mean nothing in the Middle East. People bunched, surged, shouted, and, when there was space, kicked forward the bags that held their packaged lives. Everyone around me was fleeing forever. Only I was coming back.

My fiancé remained in Tehran. I had a reporter’s job lined up with Newsweek upon my return. I was going away only for a vacation, to Paris—to shop for shoes, to eat steak tartare, to walk museums, and to see friends and family I hadn’t seen while living through the demonstrations and shootings and power outages of a revolution.

I eased at last through the check-in counter with my father’s trusted servant Shirghan at my side. He’d bribed someone somewhere and walked into the waiting lounge with me, wheeling my hand luggage behind him. I still had one hurdle to go—the passport desk—and he wanted to see me through. In Iran, unlike anywhere else I’ve ever been, as a native you don’t go to the airport with your passport. Instead, two weeks before you leave, you send it in to the Ministry of Interior to get an exit visa. It was one of the few things that hadn’t changed with the shift in regimes: just as you had paid fifteen hundred dollars to the official who had the Shah’s picture hanging on the wall, you paid fifteen hundred dollars when that picture was replaced by the scowling portrait of Khomeini. And as in the past, you paid the money without getting the passport back. Instead it disappeared for two weeks—to be checked at least once by Intelligence—until it surfaced at the passport desk at the airport, right next to the security boarding gate. That is, if you were lucky.

These days, many people were not. Instead of receiving their passports and immediately leaving, the passports went missing. Their names would be listed on a grimy sheet of paper as Mamnoon Khorouj—“forbidden exit.” Bearded police would suddenly appear, and instead of being allowed to board, the passenger would be marched off, thrown into a van, and sent to Evin Prison for trial, and sometimes for execution. The passport desk had become a place of dread. It was where people disappeared, leaving expectant friends and family waiting eight hours later at Charles de Gaulle Airport, or Heathrow, or Frankfurt International, until the awful truth slowly dawned upon them.

Download

Copyright Disclaimer:
This site does not store any files on its server. We only index and link to content provided by other sites. Please contact the content providers to delete copyright contents if any and email us, we'll remove relevant links or contents immediately.