Perhaps the best thing about living and studying at the TTC was the pocket money we received monthly. It was exactly 7000 rials. At the time of the Shah, it was exactly equal to 100 US Dollars, but in 1982 (3 years after the revolution) its value was only 10 Dollars! Now (2014), it is only 25 cents! This money was good for using public transportation once a week to get home, ordering books from the UK once a semester (mainly for buying original dictionaries), and eating out. We could write a mail to the publisher to get a proforma invoice, then we had to take this paper with our student card to the ministry of higher education and visit several offices to get approval that it is not against Islam or the regime. Then, we had to go to the currency section of a bank to transfer money to the publisher abroad! The whole tedious process would take 3 months only for a dictionary or a teaching methodology book! But we liked to hold an original UK printed dictionary at hand with onion-skin- thin pages. Iran does not respect copyright law. Therefore, Iranian publishers print and publish any foreign books freely and some have even become tycoons by making huge amounts of money by doing so. However, due to the quality of their paper, their dictionaries were too bulky and heavy to carry around. They would not survive even a semester due to their quality either.
Nutrition-wise, we were almost always hungry as they did not give us enough food. Once, I remember that all students couldn't take it anymore and revolt. It was late at night that they summoned for the director. The director was a librarian but only because he had studied in the US for his MA in book-keeping, he was teaching us English teaching methodology and was the director of the TTC! He arrived in half an hour and was circled by the mutineers who were mainly poor students coming from very far cities and could not afford extra food that we could buy by sneaking out the campus. He listened to their complaints about a few seconds. Then, he suddenly started yelling loudly saying Allah-o-Akbar (Allah is the greatest) three times! Students were scared! He continued, the country is at war and people are dying but you want more food to fill out your filthy stomachs?!!! You must be ashamed of yourselves. The ministry has not given me enough budget to spend on your bellies, you worthless creatures. We were ashamed and left with empty stomachs and broken hearts! When we asked for a calm down remedy, he suggested we pray more to forget hunger and ask Allah to give us patience and power to endure hunger! We did, but the more we prayed the more hungry we got, maybe our faith was not firm enough, a classmate suggested. Later, we realized that he was lying as when he was leaving his position, in a valediction ceremony for his retirement, his higher-up manager coming from the minister's office announced that his services are muchly appreciated by the minister personally especially because he has saved and returned 20 million rials back to the ministry in his only one year term as the director. It was a lot of money at that time. One could buy two big houses with it with a swimming pool in Tehran. We looked at each other and realized why we had to suffer hunger and freezing cold water! Because of this kind of treatment, I started developing ulcer and migraine that I still suffer from. I was very thin and feeble at that time but this kind of food and meal service at TTC caused an eating disorder in me and a kind of uncontrollable desire for food that I am still suffering from. This had caused a kind of complex in me. Whenever I could get a chance to get out of that cursed place even for an hour, I ordered food for exactly four people and could eat it in no time! Whole barbecued chicken with bread and rice or 8 skews of kebab with a lot of bread, onions, and basil per meal were just a few!
Hossein became my best friend. I later discovered that he not only recites the Koran very well but also is a religious eulogist. He could make people cry in no time by reciting poems about the martyrdom of Imams and the tortures they had to suffer with utmost sorrow that was extremely heartbreaking. He was in the center of attention, but his English was not good at all. He needed me for teaching him the English lessons and I needed his prestige and influence among the religious fanatics. This fact glued us together. Haji, the person who was teaching us all these religious rituals and was the associate director in cultural matters was also in charge of our Islamic education. He liked us both. I believe he liked me for Hossein's sake. As a young man, I was learning to be a hypocrite to gain favors, attention, and positions. I could not forget why I failed in the medical school entrance examination and did not want to repeat the tragedy. I once asked Hussein about his feelings as I was so concerned. I was so simple-minded and naive. I thought he becomes extremely grief-stricken by reciting Imams' afflictions and stories of their martyrdom. He laughed and said that he is just pretending. When I objected, he said that all of his colleagues do the same and have the same feeling. It is just a show! But, he was acting so naturally. I did not believe him until once in the middle of his crying, he smiled and winked at me. I still do not think that his generalization holds true. I had to know how much pretending is allowed in Shia Islam, so I asked Haji. He said if it is for a good cause, it is valid; for example, when you are not fasting during the month of Ramadan for any reason, you have to pretend that you are fasting or when you are at the Imams' mourning anniversary and the eulogist is reciting sad poems, you have to pretend that you are sad and even cry even if you do not feel like that. I was baffled and speechless but took it as Islamic law. After all, Haji was our source and resource of Islam.
To improve our English in a situation that there were no English books available, no English daily newspapers published, and no on-campus library with English books around, we could only listen to the radio (VOA special English or BBC) or cassette tapes. But, we had no cassette players! Export and import had been suspended after the revolution, hostage-taking, and during the war. Moreover, cassette players were considered among non-essential and luxury goods mainly because people might use it to listen to music. The regime's authorities considered it a blessing as they advertised that it will lead to self-sufficiency. Portable cassette players were too expensive, and we could not afford it at all! Buying cassette players was our next mission. We wrote a letter to the director and took his approval for the ministry of education. It took us a month to get an official letter from the ministry of education to the ministry of commerce introducing us to give us a license for buying and owning a portable cassette player. Later, it took two months and lots of comings and goings to the ministry of commerce so that they issued an official letter for us to go to their warehouse outside the city to purchase two cassette players with government price. We were so happy that after three months of painful trips to several offices and meetings with suspicious authorities, we finally succeeded. When we informed our dormmates about what we did, they decided to the same but alas that was too late. The director told them that the ministry of commerce has announced that he cannot continue this favor anymore. Our dormmates never believed it and accused the director and Haji of favoritism. They told us that you are Haji's spies and pets. That is why you have cassette players and we don't.
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