A rebellious 8‑year-old fights boredom during the revolution.
“Soldiers patrolled the streets with guns and tanks. We all heard the horror stories of being caught out after curfew.”
Transcript
Sevanne Kassarjian — Bedtime In Iran
I carefully felt my way into the completely pitch-black living room and in the silence I could hear my parents breathing. I took a moment and I said, “It’s my bedtime.” I was about 8 years old and we were living in Iran. We had moved there when I was 2 and my father had built a business school and my mother had built a women’s college and then a university. And it was dark and silent because the Iranian revolution, which had been brewing for years, had begun. And every night at 9 o’ clock, a curfew was imposed. All the electricity in the country was turned off and you were not allowed out of your house.
Soldiers patrolled the streets with guns and tanks. And we all heard the horror stories of what happened if you were found out after curfew. So, we spent a lot of quiet, restless nights and my parents would just sit in the dark, sometimes talk and sometimes not. And I would say, “Well, what are you doing?” And they would say, “We’re thinking.” And I’d say, “What are you thinking about?” And they’d say, “Lots of things.” And I’d say, “Well, why don’t you light a candle, tell me a story, why don’t you talk? What are you doing?” And finally I brought in an old game, the bedtime game. You see, I didn’t have a bedtime I never had. And a few years before, we’d gone to America to visit friends and family and we’d stayed with several families that had kids my age. And they all had all sorts of things I didn’t have.
They had Flintstones, vitamins and Fruit Loops. But they also had a lot of rules and I didn’t have any rules. They had chores they had to do and they had words they couldn’t say. But worst of all, every night at some point in the evening when there were other kids, someone would announce, “Okay, it’s bedtime.” Everyone has a bedtime except for Sevanne. So, when we got back to Iran, I started announcing at random moments, “Okay, it’s my bedtime.” And the first night it was about 10 o’ clock, and then the next night it was about 7 o’ clock and a few days later it was about 3:00 in the afternoon. And every time my parents would always say, “Okay, sweetie, if you really want to,” as they did that night in the silent darkness, “Okay, if that’s what you want to do.” And of course that was no fun at all.
So, I felt my way in the dark house into the hallway and kicked our overnight bags. We had to keep these emergency overnight bags for the last few weeks by the door, just in case we had to leave suddenly. And every day I’d repack mine and I’d choose a different stuffed animal that was going to make it out alive with me. And I rattled around the empty house feeling sort of caged in. You see, I’d come from this long line of pioneers, of free thinkers, of mold breakers. And, I mean, all sorts of members of my family. The most famous one, Margaret Mead, was my grandmother.
And you’ve heard about a lot of her mold breaking. But it was throughout her life. I mean, when she got married for the first time, she made headlines all across America because she said she was going to keep her own name. And then in college, when her anthropology professor suggested that she go and study Native Americans, she said, “No, I’m going to the South Seas.” And when she had a baby, she insisted that a man come in and film it in the delivery room and the nurses would have nothing to do with that kind of delivery. When she got older and she hurt her ankle and a doctor said, “You’re going to need help walking.” She refused to be stooped over a cane and instead decided she was going to have a thumb-stick and stand tall.
And I was trying to stand tall in that house, feeling my way around. And I very carefully felt my way through this large black velvet curtain that hung and protected us from the cold wind through the back door. And our dog had started peeing on this curtain. And my mom said it was because he felt the tension in the household. And I pushed my way through the curtain to where the back door was. And I put my hand on the knob and I opened it. And the street was just as dark and quiet as the house was. And I tried to look down the alley. It was a dead-end alley behind our house at the back door. And we were at the dead end and at the open end was Mariam’s house. And Mariam was my favorite neighbor. I would go and knock on Mariam’s door, and she’d open the door and take me into her arms and hold me against her huge bosom. And then she’d pinch my cheeks until they turned purple and tell me she wanted to eat my liver, which was a very common endearment to children. [audience laughter]
And then she’d take me into her house. And Mariam loved me, and, I mean, I was really cute. But I think it was because she had 18 sons. And I always knew what to expect at Mariam’s house. She always just played with my hair for a while and then she let me help her out with the duties around the house. And there were all sorts of things that we were all expected to do, me and whatever sons happened to be around that day. And as I looked out into the cold night and imagined I could see Mariam’s door down at the end of the alley, Suddenly, I heard a low grinding sound far off. And I kept listening, and it got louder and louder. And as I looked down the alley to the open end, all of a sudden, as it got really loud, I saw the arc of flashlights that showed a tank rolling by. And I suddenly closed the door. A few minutes later, I saw the flashlights on the door on the frosted glass of our back door.
And I waited, and they went away. And the grinding sound went away. And I opened the door again and just ran out. And I ran out into the alley, and I ran down the alley, and there was a slight incline. You know, when you run at night, you feel like you’re running faster than you ever run during the day. And I ran all the way to the end and got to Mariam’s door, and I knocked on the door and nothing happened. So, I knocked again and nothing happened again. And all of a sudden, I realized where I was. And I realized that at any moment the soldiers could come back. And our door seemed really, really far away.
So, I knocked again and I screamed out, you have to let me in or the soldier would kill me. And someone inside screamed back “Boro gom sho,” which was the worst thing I’d ever heard at the age of eight and it basically means get lost, only really mean. And so, I knocked again and I said, “Please,” and nothing happened. And then suddenly the door opened and an arm came out and pulled me in. And I could tell it was Mariam, only she didn’t hug me and she didn’t pinch my cheeks. She started pulling me back into the house, and she smelled kind of sour, and she was mumbling and so swearing under her breath. And she pulled me to the back of the house, where I’d never been before.
And down some stairs, I didn’t know we were there, so I stumbled and I kept bumping into walls and furniture. And finally, we got into this back room and she threw me up against this really soft surface. And I realized it was that pile of mattresses of futons that exist in every middle-class Iranian household. And she lifted up a futon and shoved my head down and shoved me inside the mattresses and stuffed my feet in behind me. And it closed behind me, and all I could think of was the princess and the pea. Only I’d always been the princess, and now I was the pea. [audience laughter]
And I look back now and I see and understand what was happening in Iran during that revolution in a whole new way. I mean, they were struggling with freedom and oppression, and people were worried about secret police and spies all over the city, and they were worried about what they could say and what they could do. And then there were the forced freedoms. Women were forbidden to wear veils that covered their faces by Reza Shah. And my mother worked at a women’s college. And the women there were always in conflict. Some of them, with their families, were wearing miniskirts and short sleeves, and their families said it was indecent and they were showing too much skin.
And some of the students were in conflict with the university who said they couldn’t come to class if they were wearing veils. And of course, we think, how great a woman’s college in Iran, that’s terrific. But when you’re a nomadic people and your children are suddenly forced to go to school, you’re not free to move anymore. And I reached my hand out from the mattresses to try and find the air of where I’d been pushed in. And suddenly something came in and grabbed me by the leg and yanked me out that way. And it was Reza, one of Mariam’s sons. And he was also mumbling and swearing under his breath.
And I was fluent in Persian, and I couldn’t understand a word he was saying. And he pushed me back through the house, and I stumbled down the same stairs that I didn’t know were there. And we got to the front of the house, and Mariam was there, and she said in a very, very loud whisper, you go home. You go home very fast. You are not our friend. You are dangerous. And they opened the door and pushed me out and closed the door. And I ran as fast as I could, and I was crying and my knees were shaking, and I fell against the walls as I went up the alleyway, and I almost fell against someone else’s door.
And I thought, “No, no, I can’t knock on their door either. They’ve always been really nice neighbors, but I better not bother them right now.” And I got back up to our door, and I opened the door and I went in and I pushed through the velvet curtain. And my dad was standing in the hallway, and he saw me and he came and he grabbed me and he started crying, too. And he said, “Oh, my God, I didn’t know where you were. Are you okay? Are you okay?” I said, “I’m fine.” And I was crying. I’m fine. It’s okay, Daddy. I’m back. And he said, “I was so nervous. I didn’t know what happened.” And then he got very angry. They said, “Don’t you ever, ever do that again. I need to know where you are every minute.” And I felt really safe. I said, “Daddy, I think it’s my bedtime.” And he said, “Yes, it is.”