Orna Melamad was seven years old when she left Tehran in January 1979. With her father an army engineer under the Shah, she had a Jewish schooling in Persian and Hebrew, and enjoyed a privileged childhood.
She says: “In Iran, my family were very rich. We had a driver. Our apartment was beautiful: the Persian rugs, the marble.”
The Tehran she knew was vibrant and modern, busy with parties, theatre and live music, until the revolution. The family left Iran on the same day as the Shah.
She remembers of those harrowing final days before she fled: “People were being murdered and hung outside. I just remember being very scared. We always heard gunshots outside our windows so I remember constantly running under the table from fear. For many years after I had dreams that masked men were chasing me and my family. The nightmares happened for quite a bit after.”
Leaving in haste, the family took almost nothing. “I don’t have any photo albums, none of my childhood toys so it was very hard as a kid as I left without any of my memories.”
With the air campaign by Israel and the US against Iran’s despotic rulers under way, she says: “I hope they overthrow the regime, not only because of me being Iranian, but for Israel. Iran has been the octopus with its tentacles all around us. If you cut off the head of octopus, it will make the Middle East a safer place. After the downing of the regime, Israel will be the safest place in the world for Jews. It would be so great for Israel to have peace.”
She longs to revisit her childhood home: “We had a very good life. Our Muslim neighbours were good to us. I want to see the house I grew up in, the places we used to go to, the neighbourhood.”
Beni Sabti, an Iran expert at the Institute for National Security Studies, recalls his mother and sister being beaten for not wearing hijab as restrictions tightened after the Islamic Revolution.
He says: “I was torn away from my homeland. We never said goodbye. It happened so fast escaping there, so I wish to go back and feel the place again, see my neighbourhood.
"I have many good memories, good food. You just walk in the streets in the winter and you smell hot nuts, you see the beautiful shah palaces, the tree-lined boulevards. People are very welcoming and helpful, warm people.”
Beni Sabti as a child in Tehran park in 1977 with father Yehuda (left), mother and uncle[Missing Credit]
Sabti is unable to talk anyone in Iran because of strictly enforced laws that make it prohibitively dangerous to be in contact with Israelis. Still he dreams of returning there, and has even studied to be a tour guide for visiting tourists from Israel when the hoped-for day comes.
He says: “I hope Iran will be released from the regime and the best way is what’s happening now. We have to continue this war until the whole radical regime as a whole is over, and not just by bombing and giving up after a few days.
“We cannot let them have another leader. I would love to take tourists to Iran, and turn these bad memories into good ones.”
Born in Iran, David Motai was 14 years old when he made aliyah with his family in 1975, thanks to his avowed Zionist father. Four years later the revolution brought in a tyrannical theocracy.
David Motai[Missing Credit]
He recalls Jews and Muslims living side by side in the Iran he knew: “Life was easy, we were playing, going to school, visiting the bazaar, it was a good life. Life was full and we were really a part of society, all of us together.”
He particularly cherishes the childhood memory of ice-cream in Iran: “It was served like a large cube on a plate, like a blob of cream, served with an ice-cold glass of water. I never found ice cream like that in any other place.”
Amid the fast-moving backdrop of the current conflict, Motai says: “If there is peace I would be very happy to go and visit, but I’m not so optimistic about the future there.”
