The life of an Armenian in Iran

Nerses Karapetyan, a sixty-six year old man now lives in Glendale with his wife and son. He was born in Govz, Iran and moved to Tehran in 1946 where he became the supervisor of a refrigerator company. Soviet Armenia didn’t allow immigration in the late 1946, so he stayed in Tehran and moved to Armenia in 1975. He patiently awaits in a small room to be interviewed about his life in Iran. Nowadays Nerses helps his son at his job. He enjoys reading historical books and poems on his spare time. He also enjoys spending time with his family as much as possible.

Life in Iran was normal, it was separated into three groups, high class, middle class, and low class. Whoever had a job lived their life. The King received a lot of advice from the house of advice, so it was not only him making the citizens happy. Not just pleasing the people but he improved the country and they way the people were living. He would change the roads, and he would add schools and universities. The job he did were good towards the people. The king was not chosen by us, it was not in our hands.

After the king, his son took over the throne. Overall Shah was a very good king for the Armenians. In the beginning of the 1950's they had some problems which got solved in the early 1960's. After 1965 economic and education level went up and changed the life style of Iran. Overall it was all good. Unless you did something tot the police they wouldn’t bother you, they were there for your own protection. If there were any fights they would break it up, or if it was something stupid they wouldn’t really do anything about it.

For voting you had to be eighteen years old, but I was about twenty-four years old when I first voted. We would vote for the members of the parliament.

Where I worked there were about four women. They put the rubber around the refrigerator doors. Until 1963 I did metal work and window work, but after 1963 I changed my job and worked at Philco refrigerator factory as the supervisor. I was thirteen when I started working but I was still a student. Until 1960 you could’ve worked when you were ten or twelve years old. I was a supervisor, so I would fix what the other workers had to do, I was very happy with my job and I enjoyed it very much. I would get paid 500 dollars a month which was enough to take care of my family.

From the age of eighteen you could’ve gone to work , but you were also sent to the army at the age of eighteen. You serve for two years, but before me it was three or four years. I served for only fourteen days because my parents were old and I was the only one that worked in my family.

Our house was a middle class home. The house had three rooms, it was a pretty good house and we lived there comfortably.

The education was very good, like I said the education and work level went up. Iran was a very good place, it was always heading toward improvement. Until 1974 when I still lived in Iran there were about forty Armenian schools but it was mostly elementary and middle schools, and there were about four or five high schools. I went when I was approximately seven years old, and I went to an Armenian school. I learned at Dana’s School until the sixth grade. grade.

We were Christians. In Iran there was a freedom of religion so many people practiced different religions. We were dedicated to our religion, and we tried to go to church as much as possible. Since the churches were closed on Friday’s and would work during the week, so we didn’t have that much of a chance to go, but on holidays we defiantly went.

There was freedom in my time, you had the freedom to wearing what you wanted, there was freedom of religion, freedom of traveling, and other things as well. Both men and women had a right to work, but indeed after 1960 the women had the right to work in factories. men and women had the same rights. It was heavy work that men did and women couldn’t do, but of course there was a difference in the salaries.

What we watched wasn’t up to us, so we watched movies but that was if the government allowed those movies, they would not let us watch sexual or violence related movies. See, here is the thing, if the violence or sexual part was a small section of the movie then they would censor it, but generally they weren’t shown at all. Whoever watched forbidden movies would get punished or sometimes even get sent to jail.

There were many Persian newspapers, but we also had Armenian newspapers like Alic and Louisaber. Some examples of things was the daily news of course, cross word puzzles and things like that. There was a radio at my time, and let me tell you something, Iran’s radio stations were broadcasted from different countries like America, Russia, Armenia, and more countries.