"I went to army...but I served army just for fifty days."
my other friend, another Persian, motioned him to continue.
"There was regulation in Iran that when you finish high school...or after the university...then you have to serve in army corps two years. I finished. It was the beginning of the revolution.
I was a secretary. One day, the general came to our base and reported to us that the next day is our time to go to the street and shoot the revolutionary people. Those people were making riots, breaking glass. We were supposed to warn them, then separate them so we could shoot them. And I just couldn't do that. I never even shot an animal before.
Some people liked the Shah...and they would kill. Many people committed suicide, they could not shoot the people. I chose to escape.
I bought very fast, expensive car two days before. I drove to the mountains near Tehran, but not too far. I changed my clothes, buried my army clothes.
I cut the fence to escape and the guards saw me and warned me to stop. In the army they only shoot after the third warning. The guards warned me again when I finished cutting through it. I got up and started to run. The guards, they were young and didn't want to shoot anybody.
I ran, and walked, about eight miles. (Unfortunately), I had army haircut, so everybody would know I was a soldier...so I went to a shop and bought a wig.
I drove home. My father kept me in hiding for two months. Then, one day, I went, with my wig on, to downtown Tehran.
I was walking and I saw a bunch of revolutionaries rioting. My fellow soldiers were there....ninety of them who used to sleep in the same place as I did...and they were shooting the revolutionaries. None of those people had the same faces, all of them were sad, some were crying and shooting.
You could not find a square foot of wall not painted with slogans like Death to the Shah, or Welcome Khomeini. In Tehran, two million people came from the villages into the city because Khomeini promised them everything, 'I will give you free house and free food, and free this and free that.' So, everyone who was hungry came to Tehran. Khomeini promised "In six months, I'm going to make this country like a garden." Many people were Leftists, and they were trying to get rid of the Shah, and with the force of Khomeini, they thought they could. They thought they could get rid of Khomeini too, but he liked the position.
When Khomeini came and the Shah left, everything was mixed up, nobody had records of anything. So, I was able to get a passport and have all my papers work out."
He took some papers out of a drawer. One document had a list from the religious courts banning Mr. Nadir from studying in a school because he was Bahai, not Muslim. The other document contained the names of many executed for their religious beliefs. There were several detailing mass executions, all done on the grounds of "not being a Muslim following Sharia law."
Forty years later, this interview I did as an undergrad, once presented to a writing class, no longer sits neglected in a file labelled "Historical Accounts." For this history has come full circle, as Israel and the United States attempt to cause the removal of that revolutionary regime, the one the Leftists could not control...
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