Revolutionary Iran: A Day in the Life of an Elementary School Student

A Short Story

It’s the early 1980s. You get out of the car onto the sidewalk to trudge sleepily inside. There is a catch. You must show loyalty with your feet. It’s hard to reach the doorway without placing the bottom of your shoe on a flag. America represents the mortal enemies of your people, the faculty has explained. As a second grader, you must do the opposite of what they say. So you jump over the flag. Damn, you almost made it this time, except your right heel landed on one of the white stripes. Oh well, there is always tomorrow.

The bell rings cacophonously, spreading dread through every cell in your body. Being late to the spectacle outside means a visit to the dean’s office. A shiver runs down your back at the thought. You breathe heavily as your legs do their best to get you to your destination. You run across a long hallway and take a right at the corner. You see sunlight through the glass door. There it is, the stairwell down to the yard. You take two steps at a time, cognizant that you could catapult head down to the bottom. Sweat gushes out of every pore when you land. You look up reflexively. He is standing there in his signature green camouflage coat. You momentarily freeze as the dean gives you the stink eye. There will be hell to pay, maybe not now, but this man will not rest until you are as obedient as the others.

You dash to join the end of the queue. There they are! Grades one through five, all of them boys. Five straight lines of children, as if drawn by a ruler. Each child’s arm on the shoulder of the one in front. You gaze up once more. He’s forgotten about you, having shifted his attention to the neat rows of the obsequious next generation below him. Looking back, years later, you can only imagine the sense of power that display must have bestowed upon him. Once satisfied that his rows of future revolutionaries were as straight as can be, he bellows into the microphone.

“Good morning,” the dean says.

“Good morning” comes the raucous reply from down below.

“We’ll start with the national anthem” the dean commands.

The petrified ranks of the next generation start to sing, paying attention not to create a kink in the line in front or behind them. Even as an eight-year-old, you understood that the greatest sin in the world you inhabited, for five hours a day, was to disrupt the recitation of their narratives. It was the one thing that got under their skin more than all else. This motivates you to constantly search for imperceptible little acts of rebellion. You go right up to the edge, but never over the line. Why? Because on the other side of the boundary is a beating. It was always handed out with alacrity by that dutiful servant of the revolution, the dean of students.

It’s hard to remember his name now, after so many turns of the earth. His face, however, is etched into the deepest crevices of your hippocampus. He had a short scruffy beard, along with thick heavy brows. His nose was bulbous, and his mouth formed the perfect scowl. The most haunting thing about this man sat under those furrowed brows. So much disdain poured out of those fierce brown eyes. It was as if he could see through the brave visage you tried so hard to project. His glance penetrated your skin to search for every nook where fear tried to hide.

One by one, the dean yelled out the slogans to be repeated by you and the other boys.

“Neither East nor West, only the Islamic Republic.”

“America can’t do a damn thing.”

“Death to Israel, death to America, death to the Soviet Union.”

With time and wisdom came the realization that revolutionary Iran was the only place on earth where the US, Israel, and the USSR were all lumped in one corner as a common enemy. On that day however, you decided to tempt fate. You pulled the earlobe of the kid in front with the very hand which was supposed to keep the line straight. This prompted him to lose his balance which he tried to correct with the arm he had propped on the shoulder to his front. So began the chain reaction from hell. Within seconds the entire second grade line was a mess. The fiery eyes were gazing at you once more with steely focus.

“You, in the back of the second-grade line,” he spoke into the microphone with an eerie calm.

You tried to play dumb by pointing at yourself in disbelief. He would not let you off the hook that easily.

“Yes you, up to my office on the double,” he said in front of the entire school as a pulsating wave of panic caused instant paralysis. You wished you were invisible, but everyone stared as you moved hesitantly from the safety of the pack towards those stairs.

When you opened the door to his office, he was still facing the students outside. It was ten past eight, there were another twenty minutes of acrimonious slogans to repeat. You take a seat on the other side of his massive desk, wondering what he would do. Waiting, waiting, waiting. It was the longest twenty minutes of your short existence. Finally, he sat sideway on the edge of the desk facing you. Thus began the interrogation.

“What were you thinking pulling a stunt like that?”

“Me?” you said trying not to laugh.

“Don’t play stupid.”

“It wasn’t me.”

“Who shifted that perfectly formed line?”

“I don’t know, it wasn’t me.”

His hand moved so rapidly you had no time to react. It was similar to a sting, at first. Seconds later, half your face turned hot. Finally, your cheek went numb as your ears rang. You wanted to soothe the side of your face with your hand but decided not to give him the satisfaction of knowing he had hurt you. It was almost impossible to hold back the tears.

“You think you’re funny?”

“No”

“You think the other students find this amusing?”

“No”

“Then why did you cause a disruption?”

“I don’t know.”

“You do know, you think you’re a barrel of laughs,” he said before grabbing your ear with a viselike grip while pulling straight up as if picking up a sack of potatoes. He pulled so hard he yanked you out of the damn seat. Your entire ear was on fire. The son of a bitch would not let go. He held you in that position for an eternity until you wished your ear would just fall off.

“This isn’t the first time you pulled a stunt like this,” he said. He was right, of course.

“I spoke to your teacher the other day.”

Oh lord, what is he hinting at.

“You know what she told me?”

You stare back silently.

“She said you think it’s funny to mock revolutionary slogans. It seems that you’ve been rhyming profanities into our cherished words. Chants that represent the blood of countless martyrs.”

That son of a bitch, the guy who sits next to you in class was the only person you sang to. That snitch turned you in. That traitor is a typical teacher’s pet. Always raises his hand to answer the tough questions. Always gets the top grade in class. You thought you could impress him with some wisdom of your own by rewriting a war slogan. Instead, he stabbed you right in the back. Probably thought he could get in better with the teacher. He’ll get his, you promise yourself. That is, if, you make it out of here alive.

“Our country is not only Islamic, it’s also revolutionary. Our enemies in the West are fascists. The global imperialists in Washington, along with their masters in Tel Aviv, want to crush us. You know why?”

“No sir,” you say rapidly before he feels the urge to slap you again.

“Because just like the blessed Imam Hussein, we’re soldiers in the army of justice. Our enemies, the global arrogance, are not only unjust, they’re also oppressors. You either fight for justice on our side, or you choose to oppress our people on theirs.”

You shake your head in agreement. He continues without missing a beat, “everyone must contribute to this fight, including the children. Your job is to absorb our slogans so you can help defend our values. You know what my job is?”

You move your head rapidly to indicate that you do not. It was the truth this time.

“My job is to make sure that you learn our values, by repeating our slogans. This process will enable you to one day sacrifice your pathetic body in service to the Islamic Republic and in service to justice.”

Wow, where did this guy come up with all this shit?

“The last thing I’ll tolerate is a student preventing others from learning our values. If you were an adult, I’d have you shot. Since you’re only eight years old, I’ll have mercy on you,” he said as he dragged you across the room by the ear. “Up against the wall with your left leg raised.”

You spent the rest of the school day in his office, alternating between a raised right and left leg every five minutes or so. He would periodically come by to slap the nape of your neck. The only problem was that each time, there was no warning. He didn’t want you to clench up, thus depriving him of the pleasure of connecting with bare skin, creating that thunderous explosion that left your neck burning in agony.

That incident left you deeply suspicious of all kinds of so called “revolutionaries.” Decades later, as a grown man in America, you recognize a new revolutionary movement. This one has many names, but its claim to defend justice against oppression is hauntingly familiar. It too calls anyone who disagrees a “fascist.” In contemporary America, activists, anarchists, corporations, celebrities, journalists, bureaucrats, and billionaires seem determined to create a new society in the name of justice.

What was once a free country rapidly tumbles toward an unrecognizable tyranny as people are “canceled” and speech is censored to combat “misinformation.” Instead of the Qom Seminary, the architects of this revolution spawn out of the ivory tower of academia. In an act all too familiar, they excoriate anyone who disrupts the recitation of their narratives. Very few natives seem to notice. But you’ve seen this play before. Whenever self-proclaimed guardians of justice start taking rights away in order to fight oppression, you know instinctively that tyranny is around the corner. 

MJ Javani is the author of the Janusz Soltani series espionage novels available on Amazon.