A Blessing in Disguise , livre ebook

Xlibris US - Trudy Love , Peter Love

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35 pages

English

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Action, suspense, and transformation begin when Peter travels to Tehran, Iran in 1978 to teach social studies in a private international school. Five months later, his abrupt return to the U.S. is driven by the need to escape the terror and violence erupting in Iran as the country becomes embroiled in civil war. Providentially, he was able to fly home ten months before the American hostages were seized. What appeared at first to be his salvation, forced him more dramatically into the face of death and the greatest decision of his life.

Sujets

Personal Memoirs

Peter Love

Biography

Autobiography

Informations

Publié par	Xlibris US
Date de parution	03 octobre 2022
Nombre de lectures	0
EAN13	9781669849179
Langue	English

Informations légales : prix de location à la page 0,0200€. Cette information est donnée uniquement à titre indicatif conformément à la législation en vigueur.

Extrait

A Blessing in Disguise

Peter and Trudy Love

Copyright © 2022 by Peter and Trudy Love.

ISBN:
Softcover
978-1-6698-4918-6

eBook
978-1-6698-4917-9

All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying, recording, or by any information storage and retrieval system, without permission in writing from the copyright owner.

Unless otherwise noted, all Scripture quotations are from The Holy Bible, New King James Version by Thomas Nelson, Inc.

Scripture quotations marked “NKJV” are taken from the New King James Version. Copyright © 1982 by Thomas Nelson, Inc. Used by permission. All rights reserved.

Scripture quotations marked AMP are from The Amplified Bible, Old Testament copyright © 1965, 1987 by the Zondervan Corporation. The Amplified Bible, New Testament copyright © 1954, 1958, 1987 by The Lockman Foundation. Used by permission. All rights reserved.

Rev. date: 09/30/2022

Xlibris
844-714-8691
www.Xlibris.com
839884
Contents
Acknowledgment
Teaching in Tehran
Escape from Iran
In the Cockpit
Back in the Cabin
Breaking News
A Strange Reunion
The Texans
Other Survivors
A Haunting Conversation
Paradigm Shift
Peace at Last
About the Authors
Dedication
To the only One who truly matters
Acknowledgment
I WANT TO THANK my precious wife, Trudy, for all her hard work and sacrifice in order to bring this book to completion. Her creativity and attention to detail have helped us achieve the vision put before us. We both want to give a special thank you to our friend, Cyndi Fortuna, for her input and editing skills.
Teaching in Tehran
I T WAS MIDDAY, but the streets were deserted. As we hurried across Shah Reza Boulevard, we noticed a group of angry Iranian students rolling a giant wooden spool for electric cable out into the street. They began pouring gasoline over it as they were attempting to set it on fire.
“Tony,” I exclaimed, “Let’s stick around for a minute and check this out.”
“Are you crazy, man? Let’s get out of here!”
With that remark, we raced back to our school compound. Within moments of leaving that site, we heard the sound of machine gunfire from that direction. We could only assume the worst. The Shah’s soldiers had returned in their troop carrier and ambushed those students.
It was September 8, 1978, a day that would be remembered by Ayatollah Khomeini as “Black Friday”.
Tony and I were two American teachers employed by the Community School, one of several private schools located in Tehran, Iran. We had been out on the deserted streets about a half mile away to escort another teacher back to her apartment.
Earlier that morning, a number of us living nearby had been awakened by the firing of machine guns in our neighborhood. We had hurried to the school grounds in order to notify our headmaster of the commotion.
John, the headmaster, heard the teachers clambering down below his quarters. He suddenly appeared on his upstairs balcony porch, groggy and rubbing his eyes. Half asleep, he muttered, “What seems to be the problem here, people?”
“John,” one of the teachers responded, “you can’t believe what’s going on out here this morning! There’s gunfire and…”
“Come on, you guys,” the headmaster shot back. “This is nothing, just a little unrest. The Shah’s got everything under control. You guys have nothing to be…”
At that exact moment, a barrage of bullets interrupted him. Visibly shaken, he momentarily lost his balance and almost fell off the balcony. The blasts heard were only a few blocks away. Looking as white as a sheet, John sheepishly exclaimed, while ducking under a guard rail, “Maybe there is something going on!”
We ended up spending the rest of the day inside the brick-walled school compound as sporadic gunfire continued throughout the day, only blocks from where we were.
My mind began to drift back about a month. I had arrived in Tehran at the first of August from San Francisco. I remember thinking what a great school this was going to be. The campus included grades from elementary through high school. The faculty primarily consisted of teachers from the Unites States and the United Kingdom. Though the student body was international in flavor, all the teaching was conducted in English. Children, from the local elite Iranian families were represented as well.
Living in Tehran was going to be a great adventure. My senses were being stimulated by all the foreign noises, fragrances, and sights. The open air market places, and the smell of exotic spices made my mouth water. The women were dressed differently; some in chic European dress, but the majority were clad in long black chadors . All the big hotel lobbies in Tehran had huge oil paintings of the Shah, regally mounted on horseback, or in loving domestic scenes with his family. It seemed like the Iranians really loved their leader, for his picture was displayed everywhere.
Within two weeks, however, I noticed that the mood was shifting. On August 16 th , a large Persian restaurant named the Khansalar was bombed. At the end of August an inferno roared through a theater in Abadan (a city in southwestern Iran) killing over 400 people.
Today, September 8 th , I was living in the midst of a violent revolutionary demonstration. What we had just heard were the Shah’s troops gunning down the demonstrators in the local neighborhood, cementing our earlier assumptions. Truly, here in Tehran it was Black Friday. Later we learned thousands of protestors had been killed. Ironically, media coverage back home, claimed only minimal casualties on this day. They also reported that the government was still stable.
We were upended again only ten days later when the country was hit by the most devastating earthquake ever remembered. The oasis town of Tabas, located a few hundred miles southeast of Tehran, was flattened as well as several nearby communities. The overall death toll from this one catastrophe approached 25,000 people. I tried to imagine a natural disaster of this magnitude in the States. This was something far beyond the scope of my comprehension and experience.
The month of October was relatively quiet, a bit of reprieve from the last two months. Weekends and evenings became pleasant reminders of my old fraternity days back in college. Tony and I, along with a handful of other faculty members, reverted back to our lifestyles of nightly beers and weekend parties.
On October 5 th , The Shah of Iran loosened the reins of control. Freedom of the press was allowed. He began making tokens of peace by offering amnesty to some political prisoners. He made attempts to appease the international community, as well as the Iranian people, by having his chief administrators, including the former head of SAVAK, imprisoned. (SAVAK was the secret police organization known for their extreme torture of those who opposed the Shah.) However, his plan backfired. Seizing their opportunity, the newly-freed prisoners went directly to the press, and exposed the brutality they had received from the secret police.
Freedom of expression in Iran ended as quickly as it had started. By all accounts, it was probably the shortest “freedom of the press” in the history of the world.

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Personal Memoirs

Peter Love

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