Life in Golbazar - Gohar Ghadari

Gohar Ghadari is a seventy-nine year old woman who still has great memories of growing up in a small town Golbazar, which is located in Iran. Growing up, she went through many hard-ships and struggles, such as having to live months while her mother was sick in a different town. Although her father was the mayor of this small town, not everything came easy for her. She said “I learned how to make her own clothes and food which made her the woman she is today.” The struggles she went through led her to realizing that life right now is less complicated and a lot easier to manage. “Living in a house,” she says, “Is more comfortable and easy take care of things.” Her memories don’t hold every detail of living in this village, but she remembers most of what it was like having to help take care of many things that occurred. She understood, and still up to today understands the meaning behind having to work for what you want and need.

My father would have to be the most famous person in our town. He was the town’s mayor. When he was a small boy, they had killed his father. When he was six years old, he had to take care of his mom and grandma. He lived a heroic life and was the head of our town. Others from the different villages would look up to him and come to him when they were in need of certain crops. He grew a lot of crops and grains for everyone. He made the flour by his hands and would bring it home and make bread. The workers worked for six months, and they were off for three months in the winter. He was very nice; he didn’t have any grudges against anyone. Even though he was a very small man, he helped out all the people with water, etc. if there was a fight, would come and help solve it. He had a lot of land and area, and he gave it to the people in need. He had a lot of grapes, crops, and he grew them. For that, they recognized him greatly.

No, there weren’t any newspapers in our town. The news traveled in another way, if it was in another city, someone would write a letter and send it with whoever was traveling. If not that, my father was the town mayor; he knew mostly everything that occurred. The people from the other towns would come and ask him what happened with certain things. We didn’t have any post offices. When we wrote a letter, whoever was traveling, we’d give the letter to the person to take it for us. They would also bring letters from different villages.

There weren’t many markets. We had everything we needed within our own homes by growing them. There was a small market though, that if you needed tea, sugar, rice or something small, you would go buy it from there. There was another city near our village called Araq; people went there for things they couldn’t grow such as rice. We grew our own potatoes, tomatoes, onions, grains, and different vegetables for winter. During the fall, we had our own hand-made ovens made of stone. We grind the grain and made it to flour. From the flour we made dough and baked our bread for winter.

There was a very small school. We only went to school three months of winter so it was cold. Not every girl was allowed to go to school, but since I was the mayor’s daughter, they allowed me to go for two years. Later, my younger sister went until fifth grade. If we weren’t at school, we had a big grapevine and a big place where we would grow crops.

We lived near the mountains. They were big mountains full of snow and we had two or three months of snow every year. When it snowed it was very hard for us to get water because we used to get it from the wells. We had to use shovels for the hole on the roof and the snow was on the streets, it was very hard for people to walk. The transportation was very hard. It took a few months for the snow to melt because it was so cold.

There weren’t really any doctors, but if someone was really ill, they took the person to another village with doctors to cure them. Sometimes big trucks would come so they can take the person to Araq. Speaking of Araq, it was a big city by the village, they used to sell everything. We did most of our shopping there. For example; sugar, tea, hard sugar, and rice. There was a sickness that many people died from. It was horrible. There was an illness which is now called pneumonia that affected the lungs of many people. Many died because of that. They tried to go to Araq to get better, but still many people died. In a day two or three people would die.

If we wanted to go from village to village, it was with donkeys. Sometimes we would walk which would take two or three hours and sometimes we would take the donkeys for further places. If there was someone that was very sick, or an emergency, they called trucks to come and take that person to Araq. I remember my mom was very sick and we took her to Araq, she was in the hospital for six months. We were very young; we couldn’t go see her because we didn’t have the transportation as children.

There was a soldier named Reza who was very brave and during the Iranian and Russian War, he asked Armenians to leave Russia and come to Iran to live a better life. Most Armenians wouldn’t believe him, but he helped people start new lives and he protected the country from foreigners. Slowly the Armenians settled in Iran and they started new lives during that war. One more thing I remember about the war, my grandfather was a brave soldier and some soldiers from other villages wanted to take my grandpa’s ships and he didn’t let them, and so they shot him and he was killed. The soldiers were all around our village and they were kidnapping many girls .That is why my father didn’t let us go outside a lot. Rezashah came and kicked out the soldiers from the country. He was a very brave soldier and he helped people have a better life, have new constructions, and a modern life. He helped people make construction on the roads so all of the cities and villages could have clean roads and easy transportation. With many other great qualities, people called him Rezashah kabir, which means King Reza.

I know that there are people still living in that village, but in my case I was twenty-six years old when I left my village, which was when I got married and had my first son. I moved to Tehran.

Interviewed by Narine Ataian