In the winter of 1316, when we arrived in Barghan, schools had reopened. My father enrolled me and my sister in school. At that time, I was fourteen years old, and they initially didn’t accept me, but somehow, I went and sat in the first grade. Everyone in the class was younger than me, and I said, “I won’t stay here.” I went to the principal and said, “I want to go to a higher grade.” He replied, “Now that you don’t have the literacy for the higher grade.” I said, “I have a little, I’ve been to school.” I knew how to read but not write. They accepted me and placed me in the second grade.
One day, when I was there, I saw the situation was the same. I went to the principal again and made the same request. One of the local teachers convinced the principal, and it was agreed that I could go to the third grade, but on the condition that if I passed the first quarter, I could stay, and if not, I would leave the school. I had been studying diligently for those few months. I read day and night without any help, although Mr. Rafii, our teacher, helped me a lot. In the second quarter, while studying in the third grade, I also studied the fourth grade. My academic performance in school was better than everyone else’s; I was the top student.
In the same third grade, I was appointed as the class monitor. My sister was in the second grade, and she was also a monitor. Our school was co-educational, with both boys and girls. One day in the schoolyard, I was talking to one of the girls who happened to be my sister’s classmate. Because my sister was also a top student, she came and slapped the girl and said, “Go and study properly.” She didn’t talk to me; my sister was upset. I felt like I needed to retaliate. Later that afternoon, she was playing with the girls in the schoolyard, jumping over each other. I went and slapped her, saying, “Does a girl who plays like this deserve respect?” She immediately started screaming. Our house was close to the school, and my father came and scolded me. This incident marked the end of that chapter.
Our school had four classes. In the Karaj region, Borghan was the first place to have a school, an old one called Abureihan. I passed the third grade with very good grades and a lot of knowledge. Simultaneously, I successfully completed the fourth grade. That summer, the school principal went to Tehran and Karaj to try to open the fifth and sixth grades. The educational authorities accepted this on the condition that each class have at least six or seven students. In our school, there was no fifth-grade class at the time. They found some students from the nearby villages who had completed fifth grade and brought them in. However, there was still one student missing. It was decided that I would study fifth grade during the summer, and in the new academic year, I would sit in the sixth grade.
Mr. Rafii asked me to go to Karaj and buy the fifth and sixth-grade books together. There was a stationery store on Karaj’s Faculty Street, and I was familiar with the owner because of my father. I went there and bought all the books. On the way back, I hired a donkey for three tomans. Barghan was about thirty kilometers away, and at that time, there were no cars for transportation; it was done on animals. During that summer, I studied both fifth and sixth grades. Two students from Tehran had come to Borghan for summer vacation. They were in the ninth grade. I had a rifle and a hunting dog. I carried my books and went to the mountains. Those two boys came with me because of the rifle and the dog. One went hunting for partridges, and the other touter me. My sister was in the second grade at the time, and she was also an excellent student.
Our school had a dress code where students were required to wear short gray pants made of Kazroni fabric. Barghan was a mountainous and cold region, so short pants were unusual, and I wore long pants. One day, at school, they cut my pants with scissors, and I had to go home with embarrassment. Our house was close to the school. After that incident, I wore the short pants with long woolen socks my mother had knitted. They didn’t consider the mountainous and cold climate of the region. Short pants were European attire, designed for cloudy European weather where people needed sunlight on their skin. We don’t have a shortage of sunlight here in Iran. This practice was not based on reason or science; it was merely imitation. One should not imitate blindly.
In the new academic year, they did not allocate fifth and sixth-grade classes to our school anymore, and there were no other schools for me to attend. Unfortunately, I had to leave school and start working.