Mrs. Karimi

Persian
When she told me that she had studied theatre at Tehran University, my eyes bulged! I could neither refrain from being surprised nor even from expressing it. She said: ‘I studied theatre. I’m married and have a kid. I was lucky that I could get a card.’ 

Khavar-Shahr is a quarter inhabited by Afghans, situated near Khavaran road in the southeast of Tehran. It is inhabited by Afghans because it’s cheap compared to other regions of the city. Also, because of its factories where men, women and even children can work. Mrs. Karimi however has established an independent school in this area. A warehouse that used to be a factory but then became useless. With the efforts of Mrs. Karimi and her persistence and chaffer with the owner of the warehouse, the warehouse turned into a place for the children of Khavar-Shahr to gather.

During the winters of Tehran, warming the warehouse is the most challenging thing to do. There are two oil heaters that don’t warm up enough. Three classes are held in the warehouse simultaneously. These so-called classes are separated from each other by plastic curtains. In each section, they laid an old carpet on which the kids can do their homework. There is also a blackboard set on a chair. The teachers are the young girls who live in the area and help Mrs. Karimi to hold the classes. If you close your eyes and just listen to the teachers and the students, it sounds like a melody; harmonious and rhythmic; without a conductor; the first teacher, the third one and then the second; with or even without this sequence. The teachers never talk simultaneously. Even the students ask questions, recite their lessons in a harmonious pattern.

Mrs. Karimi says that if even these classes don’t exist, these kids don’t have a place to study or play; they will get wasted in the lamp factories or on the farm fields around.

At the beginning of each month, the owner of the warehouse puts in an appearance, walks around, grumbles and wants to raise the rent. Mrs. Karimi then repeats her explanations that this place is for kids. Supplication is hidden in her words when she implores him not to raise the rent, for the sake of the rewards in this life and hereafter; for the prayers these children will have for him... or maybe for awakening his conscience... for Mrs. Karimi’s being lost all alone under the burden of these kids being ignored.

The school closed; in fact they shut it down. Even if the owner of the warehouse had accepted each time despite the pressures to let the school go on, there are always other owners... It’s here that the supplications of Mrs. Karimi turns into protest and the protest results in her arrest and imprisonment.

Mrs. Karimi has a husband and a kid. She says: ‘How much can my husband accept or tolerate this situation? The parents of those children were waiting at the lockup all the time. They came, left and protested so many times that they let go of me.’ She smiles as she says this, as if she’s recalling a sweet, far memory; as if she knows that it would never happen again; like an experience in youth.