Interview with my Father- Vrej

Vrej Nazari lives in Glendale California with his family of five. He was born in Sabe, Iran and lived in Tehran until the age of 37. Through out his life his goal has been to get his family to a better place. Now sitting on the edge of his bed, he reminisces on the old days when he was young and unlike many, trapped under a repressive government. He remembers it like it was just yesterday.

I remember during the revolution I was working and I remember the day the Shah left, all the people were happy, celebrating, The place I worked was by a post office, the main post office, it was a very important government building. The people were everywhere that day, on the roof ripping pictures of the Shah, throwing all the papers out the window. They all wanted a change. When we got off work, the streets were so full that we had to walk all the way home and couldn’t use out cars. The people were all happy and dancing. And on the very day that the government changed I was out of Tehran and by the time I got there I couldn’t get home and I had to spend two nights at a cousin’s house until everything was settled.

I was 17 years old during the revolution and it didn’t make a difference if Shah or Khomeini governed Iran. Both were the same. But Shah was a little bit better because that time the people, they had it a little bit better than now as financing.

The life style of the people at the time of Shah was a little easier compared to the lifestyle now. As for the work conditions, at first it was okay, during the time of Shah, the pay was good but afterwards things became difficult. Sometimes there was no pay for months and then things got a little settled and they paid people monthly but when everything became expensive, that pay wasn’t enough. The government there mostly controlled the big business but like here you could have your own business. Still the government has control of big, big companies; the government gets its way.

I think Women are the most unfortunate people in Iran. A lot of the rights that women have here they don’t have there. With Islamic rules a woman isn’t allowed to come out of the house without her husbands consent. If she wants to go shopping she has to ask her husband first. If she wants to go out of the country she need her husbands written consent or she can’t leave the country. A woman has to cover her entire body and head before leaving the house. A lot of government places and made so that a women can’t get in. Women can’t even be soldiers. Before, I’m not sure how it is now but when I was in Iran, in courts one man as a witness equaled two women. That’s how it is in everything, in Iran it takes two women to equal one man.

Their main religion is Islam and they say that they accept five religions that one is Christianity, but they never do the things they say they will do and allow them [other religions] to practice freely. Like when I was a solider, during their time of prayer they came and told us to go and when we said we were Christians they bothered us and kept saying you have to come. Every minute they would try to persuade us to go do their prayers. For example, there was this one time it was the time for their Ramadan. From the time the sun comes out till it goes down they can’t eat anything. If a Christian was to eat or drink in the streets they would bother him a lot. There was a lot of stuff like that. One day in my shop we were sitting around eating, with the door closed, one of those man came in and gave us a lot of trouble, why? Because in my store with the door closed a couple of Christian were eating their lunch. It took a whole year until they left us alone and the problem was resolved. That’s one example of how the Islamic people bothered Christians. There was a lot of stuff like that. Umm for example if something happened if a Muslim killed a Christian. If a Muslim killed a Muslim for example the money for the body would be $10,000, if a Muslim killed a Christian the money for the Christian’s body would be $1000. That’s how much of a difference there was, that’s where Christians stood. Recently when there was a lot o force form the U.N. they made a little equal.

I didn’t vote very often because I knew it never counted. They put what they wanted. There was voting, you could go vote but those votes never count. Many people went to vote by force because they thought if they didn’t vote the government might take things from them or that it might cause them problems in the future or else if that wasn’t on their minds the majority wouldn’t vote but they did it so that they wouldn’t have problems with the government. For example, one person that had a lot of problems with that was Mahsoode Rajabi, the first vote there was in Iran that they put was a yes or no vote on the Islamic government, he didn’t vote. Afterwards when he wanted to be a candidate for president umm they took him out of the running because he didn’t vote.

When Khomeini first came he tried to get rid of the movies but then they realized they could use them to keep people busy. They started to make movies bigger. For example there were a lot of problems for the actors or the directors. For example, there was a husband and a wife in a movie but they couldn’t touch or hold hands. Because with their Islamic way of thinking, a man and woman can’t touch if they aren’t married or family. It caused a lot of problems. The man and wife are just actors they aren’t married, they have their own families. It made it hard to make a movie. If there was an old man in a movie that supposedly had a daughter but he couldn’t even hug his “daughter” to show that he was a father. There were so many ridiculous problems like that. The government tires to manipulate people with the movies, a hundred percent. So many situations where they try to mess with peoples heads, try to get them to do things or think things.

The biggest thing I know that the government tries to use for manipulation is drugs. The filled the country with drugs. They kept people busy with that so they don’t care much about what the government is really doing.

That’s why I came here, for my daughters.

Interviewed by Dalar Nazari