Monsters Under the Stairs (Part 1)

Post-Revolutionary Memories from Jahan Koodak Middle School in Tehran, Iran

My buddies—I’m the one with the balloon and the funny face in the middle

The school smelled of pencil shavings, chalk dust, and the sharp citrus of oranges we peeled during recess. The playground, a patch of concrete, echoed with the shrieks of girls playing dodgeball and netless volleyball. From my classroom window, I could see the tall cypress (sarv) trees lining the busy street that fed into Vanak Square. Jahan Koodak Middle School sat in North Tehran, and for the most part, it looked like any ordinary school. But it was 1982—three years after the revolution—and nothing felt ordinary anymore.

To the left of the school entrance, stood a small two-story building. The first floor housed the school groundskeeper, who we called baba-ye madreseh (the school’s father). The rest of the building was a plain staircase that opened into a big sunlit room on the second floor. A solid windowless brick wall blocked our view of the busy street and on the opposite wall was an all-glass window overlooking what appeared to us as the freedom of adult lives walking the streets of a residential neighborhood.

We began having access to this room sometime during 7th grade. The school district decided it was high time school children learned how to do their daily prayers. The school administrators refurnished the space and began strong-arming us into learning how to pray and attending prayers at noon every school-day. I was interested. Any chance to leave the profane and repressive existence I was leading was a welcome reprieve and I had always been drawn to the sacred.

During those early years after the revolution, the regime was busy indoctrinating everyone in how to be a “proper” Muslim. A large swath of younger and city-dwelling Iranians had only a rudimentary knowledge of their official religion during the Shah’s time. The Shah, which literally means king, was the monarch before 1979. For many in the growing middle class of my parents' generation who were born into an Iran that was secularizing, Islam had become, a cultural trait, characteristics they associated with art, architecture, and their parents and grandparents. I’ll venture to say that a sizable portion of the population of Vanak Square either didn’t know or had forgotten how to pray, or had little appetite for the state policing their religious habits.

Our principal, Mrs. Mostajabian, was a 4 foot 9 inch ball of tension determined to change this fact. Outside the school grounds, she wore her black chador, the sheet-looking covering that hides the whole body, the most conservative kind of hijab in Iran. When inside, she wore a long black manteau, a long tunic that reached almost to the ground accompanied by a long maqna’e, a head covering concealing all the hair, the neck, the chin and most of the forehead. A couple of years after the revolution, the regime demanded women and girls wear the maqna’e instead of the more casual, babushka-style roosari which tied under the chin and allowed for some hair to be shown.

Mrs. Mostajabian had a reputation for being nasty. She elicited equal parts ridicule and terror wherever she went. The beloved sixth grade Assistant Principal, Ms. Husseini, stood in relative contrast. She wore light colored maqna’es and manteaus, adding to her chill factor and rebellious allure. She was an undergraduate Math student, biding her time at our school while the university system underwent a two-year cultural revolution to create a new “Islamic curriculum.” I had spent many hours talking to Ms. Husseini about philosophy and life and she had become a confidante, the only grownup at the school who felt safe. Sometime during seventh grade, however, she began to avoid me and refused my invitations to chat during lunchtime. “I’m super busy, Banafsheh jaan (‘dear’ in Farsi),” she would say. And I believed her.

Ms. Karimi was another administrator, the 8th grade Assistant Principal whom we called the Ice Queen due to her height, thin stature, and uncaring attitude. She pushed and criticized us during morning rituals: “Get in line!” “When the Qur’an is recited, you will bow your head down! You will follow the rules!” she barked over the loudspeaker. Every morning her harsh, dominating tone distanced us more from the gentle respect we had all been brought up to have for the Qur’an.

To circumvent this authoritarian morning treatment, I arrived late to school, every school day. We received a grade specifically for orderliness and behavior (enzebaat), and every semester I got exactly the grade I needed to pass. Early on, I figured out they couldn’t “fail” me for not being orderly. How does one make that up in the summer? Do they send the kid to “order bootcamp?” There was no such thing. They couldn’t fail me, and neither I, nor my parents cared that it brought down my grade point average.

Once they transitioned us over to wearing the maqna’e, I refused and kept showing up to school with my navy and white argyle roosari. One day, the groundkeeper, who, despite his fatherly title, showed zero interest in the student body, refused to let me into the school.

“They’ve instructed me to not let you in until you put your maqna’e on,” he said.

“Well, I don’t have one,” I said, with my usual defiant attitude.

“Can’t help you, get your parents to buy you one,” he said, disgusted by my uppity behavior.

The working-class baba of the school, who wouldn’t have dreamt of back-talking a child from a well-off family before the revolution, now had the ability to put me in my place. The sense of empowerment the working-class felt in those early years, was one of the very few positive byproducts of the revolution. “Bargard boro khooneh. Baa een ghiyaafeh raat nemeedam! (Go back home. I’m not letting you in looking like that!)” he said, with a healthy dose of self-righteousness to end the argument.

I went home that day feeling like I had won one last battle, yet knowing that I had finally lost the war. How could we ever win any wars in this system? I arrived at school the next day wearing a blue maqna’e. I had insisted on sewing it myself. My mother accompanied me and apologized once again for my combative behavior, commiserating with the authorities. Some of the kids showed my mom deference and said hello to her as we walked up to the office. She still jokes that she visited the school so frequently for my “behavior issues” that students began mistaking her for an Education Ministry administrator.

Shortly after the maghnaeh incident, I was sitting in class when Mrs. Mostajabian, Ms. Husseini, and Ms. Karimi collected me for a disciplinary conversation. “Thank you for letting us borrow her. Banafsheh will be back soon,” Ms. Karimi said to my teacher as I was leaving the classroom. I looked over my shoulder at my friends with a sly smile. They rolled their eyes and held back their laughter, wondering what I had done this time. Mrs. Mostajabian and Ms. Husseini were also waiting outside the door. One is not enough to handle me, I thought, feeling self-important enough to drum out the worry.

We went down the stairs, passed the office, walked through the playground and towards the school gate without words. This must be serious, I thought. Perhaps they’ve finally decided to throw out the trash. They'll open the door and just chuck me out into the street for good. The fact that they didn’t know how to control me was a point of pride. Standing up to the system inside the school was a safe way to stand up to the regime. I stood tall and kept my cool, walking between them in silence. I was going to go out in style. My mom will kill me if I get expelled, I thought. She works so hard to keep me in school…

We made an unexpected sharp turn before reaching the gate, right into the prayer room building. Mostajabian directed my body into the tight space underneath the staircase, filled with extra furniture. It smelled like years of caked dust. The lights were off. What was their plan in this dark space? I could sense that Ms. Husseini, my kind, smart and open-minded former confidante, was uncomfortable. Seeing her discomfort and feeling claustrophobic under the stairs brought the situation home and butterflies were starting to wreak havoc in my belly. I was finding it difficult to breathe. Still, I kept my eyes defiant, projecting disgust and ridicule for the authority the other two had not earned. I really didn’t like Mrs. Mostajabian and I let myself show it. What bullshit are you going to heap on me now, I communicated through my eyes. What cruel, irrational game are you going to play with me today?

Make sure to read Monsters Under the Stairs (Part 2).