A Broad Abroad in Iran: An Expat's Misadventures in the Land Of Male Dominance

It’s July,1977; a year before the bloody start of the revolution, and two years before the U.S. Embassy take-over, when Dodie Cross finds herself in a strange world, somewhere between the Old Testament and the Space Age. Her life takes on twists and turns as she tries to acclimate to the soaring changes in temperature and altitude, culture and attitude. She suffers indignities as she’s pinched on the bum at the bazaar, grabbed on the breast by a motorcycle passenger—who doesn’t let go for a block—as she crosses the street with her arms weighted down with groceries; chased and rocked by angry country dwellers as she rafts down a whitewater river, and comes across the stoning of an adulterous woman in a place she should never have been: the bowels of the bazaar. In 1978 she takes a job as secretary to the head of Security at Bell Helicopter International. She soon learns of the civil unrest going on in the capital as thousands of fist-waving radicals gather in the streets and scream for the removal of the U.S. puppet, Shah Reza Pahlavi and his evil Western ways. She now has second thoughts about staying in Iran. As the riots escalate in her small town, and marshal law brings in tanks, she knows it’s time to leave. Her wake-up call is a Polaroid picture that comes across her desk showing a fire-bombed bus with bodies lying about—the same type of bus that transports her children to school every day. She tries to convince her husband’s company friends of what’s to come, but they laugh at her paranoia, while the company offers the men a ten thousand dollar bonus to sign on for another year. She handles most things thrown her way, but as the revolution becomes a reality, and her children are in danger, she gives her husband an ultimatum: “Stay here, or leave with us. Either way, we’re gone.”