Just Escaped - Shahla 

After living in Iran for almost twenty years under the Shah Chief Mohammed Reza Pahlavi, Shahla just escaped the clutches of Ayatollah Khomeini’s Regime through her overseas college in U.S.A.  Sitting at home being interviewed she says all the details about living in Iran before and after the Shah.  Now she has two children: a daughter studying at college and a son in the high school.  Now she enjoys her time hiking and spending time with her sister and children, but she will never forget the time spent in Iran.

In a general day, we would go to school, go home, and watch a little bit of TV at night.  When I was little, we would listen to the radio.  Then in junior high and high school, we had TV stations and we would go home and watch TV.  It wasn’t very different from here. Education was pretty good.  Education was free so you didn’t have to pay and it was basically like all western countries.  People go through high school and they were going to colleges, and the college education was pretty good.  Private schools were also allowed.

The leader of Iran was Chief Mohammed Reza Pahlavi, we referred to as the Shah. Shah ended up in office because he was the son of the previous Shah. His father was a general in the army and he became the king.  Well, he staged a military coup and then he declared himself king.  So he became in power.  So then, after him his son became the king.

Depending on where you were, if you were in the public speaking badly about the Shah they would arrest you and probably take you to jail. I don’t think that private calls were monitored.  When people were thrown in jail, I don’t think there was a trial.  It was all kind of secret.  They would find them guilty if they wanted to.  There were signs promoting the Shah.  At the beginning of the movies in the movie theaters, they would play the national anthem and praise the Shah.  There was a slight improvement in the economy, but not as much as there should have been, because Iran was producing a lot of oil, but most of the income was probably was going to, well  most of the income was not be spent in the country. The wealthy families of the Shah probably would get a lot of it and they keep in their banks and go to private parties.  A lot of the money stayed in the royal family.

At the time of the time of the Shah, women’s rights and men’s rights were equal.  Yes, the government ran newspapers; wait, no they were being monitored not run by the government.  There were elections for I think Prime Minister.  We just cast our ballet. I don’t think voting was very popular, it wasn’t kept confidential.  A lot of times, it was like fake voting and they would pick the person the wanted in office.

People were allowed to own their own businesses.  There was no big black market.  To some degree, the employed have workers rights.  They had insurance benefits, but unemployment was high, not as high as it is now.  Islam was the national religion and back then, it didn’t affect us.

I was here at the time the Shah was in power.  I came to study in college over here and to go back.  After I moved here, the Shah was not in power anymore.  There was a military revolution.  Not a military, but it was a revolution and Ayatollah Khomeini went to Iran, and the regime changed.  The government become a modern government.  Iran definitely become more restricted and more corrupted.  The government is the same now one now.  They were fanatic Muslims who want Muslim law. The clergy rule.  Women have no rights, they need to cover their heads and women cant wear make-up.  Boyfriends and girlfriends can’t even be seen together.  It became every corrupt, so I did not go back.

I definitely preferred to live there during the Shah.  It wasn’t the most ideal but it was okay.  We didn’t have any limits.  Yeah it was not a true democracy like it is here,  but people had rights.  As long as people never said anything bad about the government it was okay. It wasn’t too bad,  it was a very decent kind of life.

Interviewed by Alan Janoyan