VidaKashizadeh

Outsight and Inside Out- A Travelogue of an Outer and the Inner Landscape

Part 7 -

The Magic Lamp and my Headache

In those days I used to watch Shindig and other similar programmes which were shown on the American TV channel. This and a local American radio on shortwave were meant to entertain the US army members who were stationed in Teheran.

I am not sure when exactly this army had become a part of the scene, perhaps with the establishment of SAVAK (political police) in 1957 or in early 60’s during the so called ‘White Revolution’ by the last shah’s regime? They certainly had not been around during the coup in 1953, which was nevertheless backed by CIA.

In Teheran the coup was performed by the Iranian army together with the thugs led by Sha’ban Jafari, nicknamed Sha’ban Bimokh (= the brainless).
Both these elements were financed by the CIA.
The Islam religion’s leader Ayatollah Kashani and his followers on the other hand were backed by MI6, as religions and their role in politics had been the speciality of the British Empire in the region for some time.
In this way they all disposed of the democratically elected government of Mossadegh through arrests /massacres and the cowardly execution of the foreign minister Dr Fatemi.*

In Abadan however it was a different story altogether.

Despite all troubles it is about time the Iranians and other third world countries stopped accusing the first world for all the bad things that happens to them.
As long as there are influential corrupt politicians and/or shareholders in all countries, they will feed from each other’s hands no matter which world they are from.

Back to the TV programmes, I remember the dancers were usually placed on high platforms held by scaffoldings.
Some interesting shots of the musicians captured also the dancers in the background. This scaffolding business is supposed to be the original idea behind the later go-go dancers. But in retrospect I think Elvis Presley had done it already in the 50’s, with scaffoldings representing a jail’s cells on the top floor.
But by this time the girls on the scaffoldings danced Monkey, Jerk and Surf.

The Iranian radio DJs tended to play mainly Italian and French songs and of course also the Beatles, as they were too famous to be ignored.
I believe the taste of these DJ’s influenced in turn the way the Iranian pop developed in the 70’s. I didn’t know any Italian pop singers by name but I noticed later that an Iranian 70’s pop star seemed to have imported some Italian pop singers’ stage mannerism and made it her own.
The music on the American radio station however was more to my taste. Two songs of Them made me always get up and dance.

I also used to watch the Ed Sullivan Show with my parents. I think his show a kind of symbolized the peace and understanding that was possible between two very different generations. I believe it was on that show that I saw the Rolling Stones for the first time and had an instant crush on Mick Jagger
After all the tidy looking bands up to then, he was a real break. Their appearance and the avoidance of uniforms was a sign of a transition starting to take place, which was more of my generation. And there was something international and open about the band. All my friends liked them.

I remember one evening I got a very bad headache when I read that he was going out with Marianne Faithful.
But at the same time I wasn’t sure if the headache was not caused by Aladdin.

This was the manufacturer’s name for a more modern version of an oil heater or wick stove. It was 40-50 cm high usually in very faint light green enamel.
There was always a kettle of water placed on top of the stove to keep the air moist, but the hot water was also used whenever needed.
In the past there used to be an older version of these wick stoves around called ojaagh nafti or cheraagh nafti. But the bottom of the Aladdin’s oil container looked more like a flying saucer with 3 legs I believe

Aladdin being in my room was not usual.
It was an exceptionally cold evening in Ghaitarieh and there was something wrong with the large oil stove or more likely with the chimney.
Knowing my sensitivity to open gas heaters today, of course I am sure now, that the cause of my headache was Aladdin and not Marianne Faithful. She was so lovely.

On these TV programmes there were of course other bands I had seen before, e.g. Animals, Yardbirds and Kinks.

And there was a band called Herman’s Hermits that really amazed me, especially with their song called No Milk Today.
It was only years later that I realized the significance of this song and the importance of milk for the British people, especially after the WWII.

But at the time his innocence seemed quite out of touch and puzzling. It evoked compassion and sympathy in my friend and me. I even remember the moment I looked in the dictionary for the word ‘hermit’ and being very touched by the meaning. Their version of Jezebel was even more puzzling, as even at my age I could see they looked more like the sons of a Jezebel rather than her lovers.
There were of course bands that I knew nothing about, they were completely out of sight.

During these times there was also an ongoing trend amongst English speaking musicians concerning numbers and spellings. This was reflected either in the name of the band or in the songs.
It was only much later that I realized this must have been reflecting the ongoing problems faced in schools amongst the English speaking nations.

One of the two songs by Them which always made me dance was destined to be played by various bands, reaching eventually its catharsis when played by Doors (not this one though), who exposed the connection between the spelling and the underage groupies.
By the late 70’s its reincarnation had kept only the title, and the rest was an afterthought, anticipating the old song but never reaching the point of complete recognisability. The moral was high. And every time the singer tried to start the spelling he changed his mind and the note got longer, so much so that the word eventually reflected a very religious confidence.
I believe the trend as regards to songs started with Manfred Mann ’s 5 4 3 2 1.

In between there was Respect - as the last song in the spelling series - by Aretha Franklin, which was more about assertion than spelling. And in a way it put a full stop on new songs with spelling parts being written since. Well, as far as I know.

Now hearing Bob Dylan was a completely different experience.
I heard him first time on the American Radio singing the words ‘everybody must get stoned’ which made me literally think of people throwing stones at someone, which of course later in 1980 started to happen in Iran (I only learned about the other meaning some years later).
His voice and the use of words were so striking that I froze in order to listen, thinking wow this is different. I still remember that very moment of my ears pricking up towards the radio and the freshness of the realization.

For a well read teenager that I was, he had the wildness of Arthur Rimbaud and the inner solitude of a potential character in an unwritten book by Albert Camus.
And later I even thought he resembled the two writers combined.

About 8 months before leaving Iran my friend found a black kitten in their garden. The kitten’s mother had not turned up for some time. My friend, who was leaving Iran in order to study in Italy, asked me if I would take the kitten to my home, which I did. The kitten had beautiful green eyes and I called her Zimmer derived from Bob Dylan’s surname by birth.

Bob Dylan was never shown on the American TV in Teheran, which also proved his significance. I bought some German pop magazines in Teheran which had his pictures. His look was such that it inspired me to doodle or draw his image from memory. Once I even drew a life size mural of him - with his dark glasses and the harmonica - on the wall of an unused room in the back of the garden of my friend’s house.
It looked impressive, so that when my friend’s father turned up unexpectedly at the door while we were smoking cigarettes, he paused, looked at the picture on the wall and left quietly without telling her –and through her me - off (Iranian teenage smokers in particular girls are usually forced to smoke secretly, away from their parents. It used to be a question of authority and male chauvinism rather than a concern for health, as the extend of the harmful aspects of smoking was not as much a common knowledge then as it is today).

In photos Bob Dylan had that lost and drugged poet/musician look that can be so satisfying for rebellious teenagers who have nostalgia for something unknown, something not yet lived. For those who still hadn’t broken out of their own skins he was the one who had.
And most importantly his work had such force. It was inspirational and incredibly timely.
I saw him in motion only some years later in Munich in the film Don’t Look Back.

The album that followed his unfortunate accident showed a complete end of a chapter of his life.
After the accident some friends thought that it might have been set up as an attempt on his life, and there was even concern about a possible brainwash during his treatment. I can’t say exactly though if the latter was everyone’s concern or my very own.

But when later in Munich I listened to his album I was sure that the change had been justified for him as a person, and that through the shock he had moved to a new stage of his life.
However I was sad for the loss of that potential character unrealized. The timeliness had become irrelevant and while he was at the stage of ‘lay lady lay’, I was in my phase of ‘get up and go woman’.
Not long before I left Iran, two songs by Jefferson Airplane could be heard frequently on the American radio station.
One didn’t need to be in the scene to realize that a new phase had started.
The youth in California may have been on LSD listening to their psychedelic music, but my friend and I felt cool enough smoking cigarettes while looking at Bob Dylan’s image on the wall and hearing White Rabbit and Somebody to Love on the radio.
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* As the Iranian people have suffered continuously under the rule of various corrupt politicians the use of the title Dr for Mossadegh as well as for Fatemi should be seen in a completely different context as in other countries. Many Iranian politicians may have had PhDs but in my opinion the popular use of these titles for Mossadegh and Fatemi were in fact not only a sign of acknowledgment of their education but also the extent of trust the public had in these politicians and in their integrity. Normally in regards to untrustworthy politicians Iranians are not bothered about using these titles at all. In fact many might even assume that these guys have bought their titles or got them through favouritism, which is historically not unlikely.