The Persian Gulf War in the eyes of Flora Giv

Living in Australia, Flora Giv comes to visit her cousin in California. At fifty-eight she remembers all the good and bad times that the two of them had together living through the Persian Gulf War. She enjoys spending her time sewing clothes that she designed herself. As she puts her glasses on, she pauses the sewing and reflects on the hardships she had endured. She worked in a medicine factory, “boxing up the drugs for the soldiers” while pregnant with her unborn child. She remembers all the repressive times that occurred all through the ten years. As she tries to take out the lanyard string she says “I felt like I was being deceived by the government and also by the authority; I was misled.”

A war started that we did have time to wait for. Khomeini just started to come to the land and he said that the war had just started between Iran and Iraq. I was maybe about 40 years old living with my uncle, my dad, my mom, my brother, and one of our neighbors that lived with us.

In the beginning of the war, it wasn’t really hard to find food. When the war started getting longer a lot of thing started getting expensive and the government would sometimes give coupons so that we could buy things from the market for less than what a rich person would give. The coupons were given every 3 months from the government. The rich people didn’t think to stay in the long line for coupons, they would go and buy there necessities for more money making the ones that didn’t have money stay in the line.

We went through really bitter times and saw hardships go through. As time got longer, everything opened up and became horrible. My family and I were forced to get out of our homes so that the debris from the bombing wouldn’t hit our heads. Saddam started throwing bombs over our heads, not only one or two but seven at a time! We were forced to move to other cities that didn’t have bombs. That caused a lot of people to die on the roads.

There were many posters encouraging the war. The posters were manly about Khomeini trying to encourage the war. The Government wasn’t giving the truth about why the war started at all. So we listened to BBC and heard things from then that was the truth about our government. We used to hear all these things from other radio stations. All of the TV stations were talking about the war and how good Iran is doing and that the war was going to end soon. But we all knew that it wasn’t. Also our Communication was easy to get to. We had telephones, I mean, our communication wasn’t completely closed, we could talk over seas to our people.

I stayed the whole ten years of the war. I saw the whole thing. When the war started it started with bombs, and then gradually cruised into missiles. Those were much stronger. When they came by, with all truth, they were REALLY scary. They came by with this huge blow making them explode, one from another down the sky and the back was filled with fire. When the bombs were about to come down from the front, the house was equalized; ground to dirt.

For the fall of Shah it was very shocking in other words we were surprised that the king, with his strength, with his power, he fell, it was very shocking for us. Shah gave us a lot of freedom to people, mostly women. You had a choice. You could wear whatever you wanted to and could talk freely. The second king was not very good for the country but when Khomeini came he made the system turn up side down. He suddenly changed the system. He forced women to wear chadors. We had to wear our cloaks. The other religions that were being practiced were suddenly supposed to be stopped like bah-hi. The government killed many of them. And many of them fled to different countries because they did not believe in his way of ruling. Many smart men and women like doctors, architects, engineers they all fled the country and left. This country was left in the hands of the people that were not educated. That’s when the not educated started controlling the country. Iran, by all truth has become very expensive, filled with drugs and the people that want to get out of it cant.

You know it’s not easy for someone to get out of there country and leave there parents and there job and get out. When some one takes power you don’t know if there going to make the government better or worse. At that time not many people were thinking. Then after it’s too late, you can’t get out because the government won’t let you go to America or Australia. You had to have a really good reason to go to those countries. I for one did not want to go to a foreign land not knowing my surroundings. I thought that if I stayed in my country then the war would go away in a short while. I didn’t think it was going to take ten years.

By Linette Keshavarzi