"From Penthouse to Dungeon” Chapter 2
“I did not have sexual relations with that woman Ms. Lewinsky” Chapter 10
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“The Colors of My Life” Chapter 1 (The morning of 9/11)
Only Abdullah was still sitting with Khadija next to him, stern, tedious and gloomy. His mouth was shut and his upper lip was covering his missing teeth.
“Is Khadija O.K.?”
I never presumed to ask Khadija herself. I must ask the husband.
“Oh, nothing,” he replied and turned to look at his wife.
“Do you have a question for me Abdullah?”
He kept looking at me with his blazing eyes.
Khadija rose and got ready to leave. Abdullah’s face was disfigured with rage and anger. He drew himself up and began following Khadija.
“JEWS DID IT… BASTARDS… DIRTY JEWS! ”
It did not feel like I was working in an office. It was more like working in a social club. I met many notable and prominent people, cabinet members, senators and congressmen, the power brokers, bankers and engineers. Uncle Cooper knew them all. His favorite was Senator Edward Kennedy of Massachusetts. He was the light and the life of the party. Very pleasant, very loud, and he always smelled splendid. Ted drank like a tipsy, chubby fish. He liked to start with two or three goblets of whisky, then a glass of vodka. He finished with red wine. He always wrapped an arm around Uncle Cooper and thanked him.
Henry Kissinger was an infrequent visitor. He never smiled and his voice sounded like it was coming from a dark, cold basement. He wore his windshield glasses low on his pumpkin head. Do not ask me about his ladies.
“My Catholic Confession” Chapter 3
“It was quite early when I arrived at Highland High School. I stood in the middle of the just-washed, shining, empty lobby. Someone grunted.
“Why are you here so early?”
A grumpy, paunchy and nasty janitor appeared from a bathroom somewhere. The smell had followed him.
“Good morning. I’m new,” I said in high-pitched voice. I realized immediately he was not going to shake my hand. A hug was out of the question. I guess my red tie did not help me. He interrupted me. Hearing my accent, he spoke very loudly.
“EVERYBODY IS NEW HERE. THE SCHOOL IS NOT OPEN YET, AMIGO!”
“We’re not deaf asshole!” yelled the little brown boy.
“Our Tiny Revolution” Chapter 4
The first bell rang. I asked my students to stand and introduce themselves to me. Most of their names were those of the elite and ruling class families. They were the Kennedys and Rockefellers of Iran.
Mehran stood up first.
“Nice to meet you Mehran, do you have a cowboy hat to match your fine boots?” I asked teasing. We spoke only Persian. His father was a powerful Iranian Senator.
Mehran corrected me, “Shit Stompers.”
“Mehran, we do not say those words out loud in school.”
A beautiful girl sitting in the front row interrupted, “Mehran has decided to become a sheep farmer in this hell hole,”
“And what is your name my dear?” I asked.
“I am Shirin, The Sour One”
Shirin could have been on the cover of Cosmopolitan Magazine. The Iranian girls were the best dressed in the school and they wore shorter shorts. They were Khomeini’s proof that the evil of the west was corrupting the ‘Children of Islam.’
“Scattered in The Wind” Chapter 5
“Arya!”
His name echoed one more time across the auditorium. No one moved, thick silence. The announcer called the next name. I wondered where Arya was. I wondered if he’d seen the pictures of the dreadful bullet wounds across his father’s temples, half his chin blown away and blood flowing from his smashed chest. Arya’s father was executed by firing squad, machine guns.
“Please Call me Canadian” Chapter 6
“Me no chief. You no chief. Senator Kennedy be so proud of you!” Now the little brown boy was hopping around doing an American Indian dance.
Of course that was a big lie, but I was not at fault if they believed me. I was only exercising my constitutional right, the right to free speech, freedom to bullshit!
They bought it. I felt a cool breeze in the room. They seemed happy to sit there and listen to my absurd but believable tales. They did not ask about my teaching credentials, my lesson plans or after all, my teaching philosophy.
There was no way I was going to tell them I was from Iran.
***
“You’re a liar!” she screamed. “You are not Canadian, you’re an [ah-ray-nee-uhn].” I did not like her attitude, but the sentence sounded poetic. I imagined her busting out in rap in the middle of the parking lot.
“You are not a Canadian. You’re a damn [ah-ray-nee-uhn]!”
“Is that right?” I said without betraying my distaste for this woman.
The little brown boy began chanting. “Damn Iranian, damn Iranian, damn Iranian!”
In my best Middle Eastern accent, I hit her with the most butchered English I could think of in the moment. “Me very so sorry. Is it my language barrier of misunderstand?”
Her face twisted and changed color. My mission was back on track.
“That’s my God damned point. How can you teach English when you can’t even speak it?”
“‘Undesirables?’ I Was The One Who Killed Jesus” Chapter 7
“Where is South High?” I asked.
I had not yet ventured much past my east-side schools. I assumed “South” meant south of the city, more conservative, more religious.
“State Street downtown, Payman,” Spencer reminded me.
Instant panic! Of course I knew the school. It was the eyesore on the main drag on the south side of downtown Salt Lake City.
“It’s a dump. That’s where they put the ‘undesirables.’” Spencer said.
“What is an undesirable?”
“The World Is Definitely Not Flat” Chapter 8
The only Cuban I knew was Fidel Castro. The day Jardi arrived I was anxiously waiting for him. He had been adopted by a young LDS family and we had already read about his heartbreaking story in the newspapers.
Jardi stopped coming to class. He was diagnosed with tuberculosis. The bad news spread around school and the city like a house of card set on fire. Tuberculosis in Highland High School! It became headline news in Utah. And the whole calamity had started from my small classroom. Was I responsible? Some thought so. Some blamed it on Father Ivan. I decided the real guilt lay with Fidel Castro. The disease was his gift to us. He was as responsible as was Nixon when I lost my job in Washington
“Rats With Hats” Chapter 9
The night before his scheduled execution, Arash was let out of Gohar-Dasht, a notorious Iranian prison. He came to us on a rainy day. He was a wet, dead-man-walking.
“We sold the family house to bribe the warden. He opened the prison gate and said, ‘Run!’ You have only purchased one ticket for your freedom!”
“What did you do?”
“Simple, I ran. I ran at night and hid in safe houses during the day.”
“How did you get out of Iran?” I wanted to know.
***
“Khomeini made me hate Islam.”
Arash disconnected from religion while in prison. Not long after his arrival, as class was ending, Arash pointed to the poster of Martin Luther King, which hung in my room.
“He was my teacher in prison. Morality and justice do not come from religion. They are born of men and persist in spite of religion. Religion rarely creates greatness. My religion has created only hell.”
“I did not have sexual relations with that woman Ms. Lewinsky” Chapter 10
One morning Eesa waited until all the students had taken their seats. Then he stood up, walked around and stood behind my small podium. Then he leaned forward and with his finger wagging at the class, he said, “I did not have sexual relations with that woman Ms. Lewinsky.” He said it with his thick African Arabic accent. He walked back to his seat as the class erupted in laughter.
It was hard not to laugh. Even the Muslim women in full black Hijab lowered their heads to hide their snickering.
“Tell Him I Am Not Muslim” Chapter 11 (The afternoon of 9/11)
By the afternoon, most everyone was out in the halls talking, crying, and arguing about who and why. I was on the down escalator.
“Fucking Muslims did it!”
“Goat fuckers!”
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