I had written a couple of pieces about the war between Iran and Iraq, which started in 1980, after Iraq attacked Iran. I had spent those years in Iran, and both the war and its consequences were a part of my life, but I ended up deleting those sections because they included content that could be considered political, and, although I have strong opinions about wars in general, I didn't want Languages & Life Lessons to be about that. This is one of those pieces... without my opinions:
On May 24, 1982, a typical Monday for me, my father dropped me off at the language school in the afternoon for my English class. One hour and fifteen minutes later, class ended, and my father was standing in front of the building as I exited the school. It was loud, and thousands of people were dancing in the streets -- streets which had been empty when I was going to class. I looked at my dad, and he explained that Iran had taken back the city of Khorramshahr, which Iraq had captured at the start of the war. He thought this was excellent news and it would mean the end of the war between the two countries, but he was wrong, sadly, and the killing continued for another six years, and not only in the war zones. As Iraq attacked Tehran, the capital of Iran, I learned vocabulary no teenager should ever learn -- from types of shelters to bombs and missiles and rockets and warheads -- and facts about attacks and how these weapons worked and whether they were heat-guided or radar-guided.
