Interview with my Grandfather - Shiran

My grandfather, Shiran , is a 74 year old man who lived a long and interesting life. He has overcome many obstacles and hardships during his life time which have made him become a unique and influential individual that he has become today. Since he has seen and experienced many thing in life one of his favorite hobbies is gardening. He lives with his wife and children in Glendale. He still recalls on memories of how he lived his life in Davudabad and compares it to his current life. Davudabad is a small town in Tehran. He remembers how he worked so hard in his town by making sure the farm was clean and full of trees with various fruits and vegetables during the whole year. He left that small town in 1950 at age 16 moving to seek better opportunities. He says life was hard but we had to do our job to keep our family and be able to buy food, etc. When he compares it to todayas life he says, awe are lucky to live in a country where it is full of opportunities and gives us the ability to be educated and be able to live a comfortable life.a

I was born in Davudabad, Tehran on January 10, 1934. There were approximately 200 people living in the town of Davudabad. There were about 37 houses in our town. The houses were made out of mud and drywall was used for the ceilings, windows, and doors. All the houses were stuck to each other. The houses were so close to each other that people were able to go from one house to the other from the roofs. The house we lived in had only one floor. The streets of Davudabad were covered with dirt.
This was our daily routine. We would get up, wash up, go to the farm take the cows out and to the field. Then we would send the sheep to the sheep herder to take it to the field and we would go to our farming job, which was planting grain, and growing potatoes. This would take up most of our day and at night we would come home and all the town people would take their own cow home with them. After the women completed their tasks they would come home and milk the cows. Then we would all have family dinner and after we would either go to our neighbors house or stay home and spend time with our family.

I remember how the relationship between the people were very well and if there was any problems or fights we would go see the boss of the town, known as the (katxude). He was the most well known person in our town because he would handle the problems and come up with solutions to the peoples questions. He would also meet the people that would come from other cities or towns and they would discuss together. The boss was in charge of the military and he would collect the people and decide who was good as a soldier and whoever wasnat right for the job they would send him back home. And this boss had to do everything in our town.
In our town we didnat have any newspapers so we would get news from one another. We would go to each others houses at night and discuss about things that happened and spend time.
There were attractions that we would take people to see in our town. Usually we would take them to the gardens or fields, forest and whatever the town life was.

We had one school in our town and everyone was taught until 7th or 8th. You had to go until 7th or 8th to graduate, depended when you got out. Everyone had the same religion and they would teach you how to pray and etc. They taught 2 languages including a little English. There was one church in our town and we would got every Sundays and Easter, Christmas, other holidays and happy events, or weddings and funerals.
There werenat any stores in our town so we would have to go 3 kilometers away until we would reach a city to shop. We would get there by donkey, walking or whatever chance we got. Sometimes people would say if you go please get me this or that, they would help one another out. And we would get our money from planting onions, potatoes, we had fruits, we would take for example, chicken, eggs, cows sell them and get money and go to stores in the city to buy shoes, clothes, things we needed like books, and the foods we had our own from our fields. For example we had milk , eggs, meat, and cows. In our town we had bulls, cows, horses, donkeys, sheep, and chicken.
I started working in our farm from the age of 7 or 8, when my father died. I had to work and help my family out. It depended on your family, for example someone had good money so their son didnat work, others didnat have much money and they worked.
The bad thing was that there wasnat any hospital in our town. If anyone got injured or something happened they would treat it with home made medicine or take them to the city, the middle. Since there wasnat any pharmacy they would treat it with home made herbs or plants. There was only one incident when I was a young kid and we were cutting grass and the blade cut my finger. So I tied something around it, then I went home and saw it wasnat comfortable so I opened it and realized my finger was stuck bent. Stuff happens like this sometimes because this is the town life and there wasnat medicine or a hospital to reach fast. You had to go a 3 -4 miles until you would reach the city and there was everything there, stores, hospital and everything was safe.

In our town we didnat have board games so we would have to go outside and play.
In our town we had all four seasons of the year. We had the rain which kept our crops growing. During spring our trees would blossom, during fall we would collect wood to prepare ourselves for the winter cold.

There has been many changes that have taken place from when I use to live in the small town until now. One simple thing now is that there is electricity which back then there wasnat, now there is gas back then there wasnat, the houses people remodeled into brick houses, these were all changes made. And they used the bulls to dig the dirt and straighten it or with hand back then, but now there is tractors and everything, it has changed a lot. Because we did not have helpful equipment we had to work really hard to accomplish something. Now it is a lot easier.
While I was there I enjoyed living there because that is all I had seen so everything was normal for me and I thought that is the way things should be. I hadnat seen the other cities lifestyle so therefore I did not know that there is room for improvement.

After living there for sixteen years I was ready to move into something bigger and better even though it was very hard. The reason why I decided to move to Tehran was because my uncle lived there and told me to move there because there was better opportunities for us. Since my father had past away, I felt like there was no reason for me to be there any longer. At Tehran I saw that the life was different and improved just the way I had imagined it to be. Then from Tehran after I got married and had four children we decided to move to Armenia and lived there for eighteen years. Now that I compare my life here and the life I lived there it is very obvious that I enjoy it better here.

Interview by Andre Keshishian