Part 4
OK, I found it and pushed myself inside. The owner was an old man who was immensely terrified. First, he made sure that I am really a student looking for ANYTHING written in English. The book store was like exploded with a bomb! It was almost burned to ashes. Burned books and black walls everywhere! Then, He led me to the basement where some half-burned books he kept and asked me to look for anything I am interested in. I found many stage readings and a grammar book by L. G. Alexander "Longman English Grammar" in a beige paperback with a beautiful font. I devoured this book of 200 something pages in a few weeks and started reading my simplified English readings, one book each day. After a year, I had read virtually 400 of them. Thanks to Mepso bookstore owner who kindly sold them to me secretly like something prohibited by law! Ali also told me that I can order a free magazine from the UK called 'Plain English'. I took the address and sent them a snail mail, as there was no email in 1980! After a month or so, I received a copy of the magazine and a letter to confirm that I am officially subscribed to this magazine and can receive a copy monthly at the door. I cannot describe how much I was happy in words. It meant a lot to me. It was beyond my imagination to see a colorful glossy paper magazine before my eyes in ENGLISH! I am sure that the revolutionaries were too busy to check the contents of these packages! Later, of course, I realized that this magazine was actually advertising Christianity and that was why it was free. However, it was doing it in the most indirect manner that you cannot even imagine. You had no idea, as the reader, that you are learning the Gospel through nice real-life incidents, reports, and stories in simplified English. I loved it so much especially because I could order many books through this magazine for free. I had no one abroad to send me English books and no one could even send money to foreign countries from Iran for a few years! Even if I could, the value of Iranian rials had become one-tenth against foreign currencies! I could not afford it at all! One of these books that I received was the actual complete Bible in plain English including both the Old and New Testament. I could read it easily without using a dictionary. And, boy, I loved its stories so much. They were all like fairy tales to me, many of which not believable at all! I read this almost 400-page book from cover to cover several times, even the footnotes about the meanings of the biblical names in Hebrew. But, I was never converted to Christianity, probably because I was not a good Muslim in the first place!
OK, I found it and pushed myself inside. The owner was an old man who was immensely terrified. First, he made sure that I am really a student looking for ANYTHING written in English. The book store was like exploded with a bomb! It was almost burned to ashes. Burned books and black walls everywhere! Then, He led me to the basement where some half-burned books he kept and asked me to look for anything I am interested in. I found many stage readings and a grammar book by L. G. Alexander "Longman English Grammar" in a beige paperback with a beautiful font. I devoured this book of 200 something pages in a few weeks and started reading my simplified English readings, one book each day. After a year, I had read virtually 400 of them. Thanks to Mepso bookstore owner who kindly sold them to me secretly like something prohibited by law! Ali also told me that I can order a free magazine from the UK called 'Plain English'. I took the address and sent them a snail mail, as there was no email in 1980! After a month or so, I received a copy of the magazine and a letter to confirm that I am officially subscribed to this magazine and can receive a copy monthly at the door. I cannot describe how much I was happy in words. It meant a lot to me. It was beyond my imagination to see a colorful glossy paper magazine before my eyes in ENGLISH! I am sure that the revolutionaries were too busy to check the contents of these packages! Later, of course, I realized that this magazine was actually advertising Christianity and that was why it was free. However, it was doing it in the most indirect manner that you cannot even imagine. You had no idea, as the reader, that you are learning the Gospel through nice real-life incidents, reports, and stories in simplified English. I loved it so much especially because I could order many books through this magazine for free. I had no one abroad to send me English books and no one could even send money to foreign countries from Iran for a few years! Even if I could, the value of Iranian rials had become one-tenth against foreign currencies! I could not afford it at all! One of these books that I received was the actual complete Bible in plain English including both the Old and New Testament. I could read it easily without using a dictionary. And, boy, I loved its stories so much. They were all like fairy tales to me, many of which not believable at all! I read this almost 400-page book from cover to cover several times, even the footnotes about the meanings of the biblical names in Hebrew. But, I was never converted to Christianity, probably because I was not a good Muslim in the first place!
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