The Effect of the Iranian Revolution

Vahan Malekian, a father of three, was born on October 4, 1931 in Iran, Tehran where he experienced the very hard times of the revolution. He currently resides with his wife and three Children in Glendale, California. He seemed to like Iran where he used to call home but that’s before Khomeini came and changed many lives dramatically. Now he sits at his home far away from his “home” where he wonders every day how life in Iran could have been if the revolution never occurred.  

About 15 years before the revolution Khomeini was exiled by the Shah to Iraq. 15 years later, Khomeini started sending massages to the head Mollahs who lived in Iran. Saying the people of Iran should burn the liquor stores, banks…basically to show Shah that they are against him and do not want him there. I remember that the Mollahs would gather the people in the mosques and would encourage them to follow Khomeini’s massages.  

  Before the revolution, everything was great. People had jobs and the Shah had created a good relationship with all the countries in the world. During the revolution the economy was not that good because the people had burned a lot of stores and banks. People couldn’t buy food like they did before the revolution, everything was very expensive and people couldn’t afford it. After the revolution, when Khomeini had come and the Shah had left, the economy slowly got better. A lot of stores that had been closed down opened again, the price for food went down to normal.

Everyone had medical before the revolution and the prices for medicine and hospital were very decent so it was not a problem. During the revolution, the hospitals were always crowded because everyday, hundreds of people who get shot were taken to the hospital. After the revolution, which was during the war against Iraq, thousands of soldiers would get shot or hurt everyday and so they would bring them back to the city hospitals. The hospitals were again always crowded at that time because of that. The prices went up and there wasn’t enough medicine left for the people because they had to use most of them on the wounded soldiers. The doctors would not accept people’s medical papers because the government wouldn’t pay the doctors and they wouldn’t work on the patients for free. There were a couple of hospitals that was the government’s but people would have to stand in line for so long because there were so many people trying to go to the same doctor.

Everything was great in my opinion before the revolution. Women had the same rights as men. From all that I know, my mom, my wife and my daughter did not have any problems or complaints. Although after the revolution, a lot had changed. Women had to cover their hair and skin except their face when they were in public. Even in the summer when it was really hot. I remember how much your grandmother complained about how hot it was and she had to wear all those clothes to cover her self up. Women were not allowed to be cops at that time. They did not have the right to be in politics by any chance.    

There were a lot of people who liked the Shah actually especially the none-Muslims for example the Jews and Armenians. The reason that most Muslims hated the Shah was that they didn’t like the fact that he had a very good relationship with a lot of Christian countries for example the U.SA. The Muslims in Iran did not like the U.S.A. Also, the poor people disliked the Shah as well because they thought that the Shah was the reason why the lived in such bad places and had no money for food or clothes. 

Some people liked the Shah so they were disappointed although on the other hand a lot of people disliked the Shah so they were happy about it. The economy was bad when the Shah had left and so most people didn’t have a lot of jobs at that time but then eventually the country started to build a good environment for the people living there and everything came together.

Most people that had lost their jobs started to use drugs to get out misery. Before the revolution, not too many people were addicted to drugs. People who were addicted to drugs got what they needed from the government. After the revolution, a lot of people started using drugs. People started to bring a lot of drugs to Iran from the east which was the countries of Pakistan and Afghanistan. In Afghanistan, there were a lot of people who were in the drug business. For example planting the drugs and selling the drugs. The sellers in Afghanistan realized that more people are getting addicted to uh, drugs in Iran so they started bringing more drugs to Iran and selling them. From when the revolution ended until now millions of people have been getting addicted to drugs. Most of the people over 18 did not have any thing better to do. They had lost their jobs and there weren’t any clubs or hang out places for them to go to and so they just started doing drugs for fun.

The most important thing that I remember is that before the revolution we had a few meat producing companies who got the meat from pork. But after the revolution, because of the Islamic rule which was written in the Koran, porn is forbidden to eat by the human so they had to burn all the pigs. I remember I read in the news paper that they had burned over 100,000 thousand pigs just because it was said in the Koran that humans are not suppose to eat pork. After the revolution the prices for meat went up because there weren’t many cows in Iran and they had burned all the pigs. Uh, every time a pig was pregnant she would have eight to ten babies but they would kill all of them. And a cow would only have one baby every time one was pregnant. You can see how that would have turned out for the people. Cow meats were very rare and expensive that most people couldn’t afford it. I remember that the price went up ten times from what it was before and right now in Iran I believe the price has gone up a thousand times since the revolution. Another thing that the Islamic people were not allowed to eat was the Estrogen fish because it was also written in the Koran that the fish is forbidden to be eaten by humans because it doesn’t have any bones.

  Well when the prices went up for food and clothes, we were devastated. My family didn’t eat as much as we used to. We had to watch how we would spend our money because we didn’t have as much as we used to. I was lucky that I worked in a bakery because most of the stores that sold food did not close down. I was lucky because I could earn some money to feed my children and wife so we would survive. It was also hard for my children because they couldn’t go to college after they graduated high school.

                                                                                                                                                                         Interviewed by Leonar Malekian