americans, three german, two french, and one finn all pilots. two american mechanics. but we'll treat them all as british if necessary."
"dependents?"
"four, all wives, no children. we got the rest out three weeks ago. genny's still here, one american at kowiss and two iranians."
"you'd better get both the iranian wives into their embassies tomorrow with their marriage certificates. they're in tehran?"
"one is, one's in tabriz."
"you'd better get them new passports as fast as possible."
by iranian law all iranian nationals coming back into the country had to surrender their passports to immigration at the point of entry, to be held until they wished to leave again. to leave they had to apply in person to the correct government office for an exit permit for which they needed a valid identity card, a satisfactory reason for wanting to go abroad, and, if by air, a valid prepaid ticket for a specific flight. to get this exit permit might take days or weeks. normally.
"thank god we don't have that problem," mciver said.
"we can thank god we're british," talbot went on. "fortunately we don't have any squabbles with the ayatollah, bakhtiar, or the generals. still, any foreigners are liable for a lot of flak so we're formally advising you to send dependents off, rickety-split, and cut the others down to basic for the time being. the airport's going to be a mess from tomorrow on we estimate there are still about five thousand expats, most of them american but we've asked british airways to cooperate and increase flights for us and our nationals. the bugger of it is that all civilian air traffic controllers are still totally out on strike. bakhtiar's ordered in the military controllers and they're even more punctilious if that's possible. we're sure it's going to be the exodus over again."
"oh, god!"
a few weeks ago, after months of escalating threats against foreigners mostly against americans because of khomeini's constant attacks on american materialism as "the great satan" a rampaging mob went berserk in the industrial city of isfahan, with its enormous steel complex, petrochemical refinery, ordnance and helicopter factories, and where a large proportion of the fifty thousand-odd american expats and their dependents worked and lived. the mobs burned banks the koran forbade lending money for profit liquor stores the koran forbade the drinking of alcohol and two movie houses places of "pornography and western propaganda," always particular targets for the fundamentalists then attacked factory installations, peppered the four story grumman aircraft hq with molotov cocktails, and burned it to the ground. that precipitated the "exodus."
thousands converged on tehran airport, mostly dependents, clogging it as would-be passengers scrambled for the few available seats, turning the airport and its lobbies into a disaster area with men, women, and children camping there, afraid to lose their places, barely enough room to stand, patiently waiting, sleeping, pushing, demanding, whining, shouting, or just stoic. no schedules,
no priorities, each airplane overbooked twenty times, no computer ticketing, just slowly handwritten by a few sullen officials most of whom were openly hostile and non-english-speaking. quickly the airport became foul and the mood ugly.
in desperation some companies chartered their own airplanes to pull out their own people. united states air force transports came to take out the military dependents while all embassies tried to play down the extent of the evacuation, not wanting to further embarrass the shah, their stalwart ally of twenty years. adding to the chaos were thousands of iranians, all hoping to flee while there was still time to flee. the unscrupulous and the wealthy jumped the lines. many an official became rich and then more greedy and richer still. then the air traffic controllers struck, shutting down the
"dependents?"
"four, all wives, no children. we got the rest out three weeks ago. genny's still here, one american at kowiss and two iranians."
"you'd better get both the iranian wives into their embassies tomorrow with their marriage certificates. they're in tehran?"
"one is, one's in tabriz."
"you'd better get them new passports as fast as possible."
by iranian law all iranian nationals coming back into the country had to surrender their passports to immigration at the point of entry, to be held until they wished to leave again. to leave they had to apply in person to the correct government office for an exit permit for which they needed a valid identity card, a satisfactory reason for wanting to go abroad, and, if by air, a valid prepaid ticket for a specific flight. to get this exit permit might take days or weeks. normally.
"thank god we don't have that problem," mciver said.
"we can thank god we're british," talbot went on. "fortunately we don't have any squabbles with the ayatollah, bakhtiar, or the generals. still, any foreigners are liable for a lot of flak so we're formally advising you to send dependents off, rickety-split, and cut the others down to basic for the time being. the airport's going to be a mess from tomorrow on we estimate there are still about five thousand expats, most of them american but we've asked british airways to cooperate and increase flights for us and our nationals. the bugger of it is that all civilian air traffic controllers are still totally out on strike. bakhtiar's ordered in the military controllers and they're even more punctilious if that's possible. we're sure it's going to be the exodus over again."
"oh, god!"
a few weeks ago, after months of escalating threats against foreigners mostly against americans because of khomeini's constant attacks on american materialism as "the great satan" a rampaging mob went berserk in the industrial city of isfahan, with its enormous steel complex, petrochemical refinery, ordnance and helicopter factories, and where a large proportion of the fifty thousand-odd american expats and their dependents worked and lived. the mobs burned banks the koran forbade lending money for profit liquor stores the koran forbade the drinking of alcohol and two movie houses places of "pornography and western propaganda," always particular targets for the fundamentalists then attacked factory installations, peppered the four story grumman aircraft hq with molotov cocktails, and burned it to the ground. that precipitated the "exodus."
thousands converged on tehran airport, mostly dependents, clogging it as would-be passengers scrambled for the few available seats, turning the airport and its lobbies into a disaster area with men, women, and children camping there, afraid to lose their places, barely enough room to stand, patiently waiting, sleeping, pushing, demanding, whining, shouting, or just stoic. no schedules,
no priorities, each airplane overbooked twenty times, no computer ticketing, just slowly handwritten by a few sullen officials most of whom were openly hostile and non-english-speaking. quickly the airport became foul and the mood ugly.
in desperation some companies chartered their own airplanes to pull out their own people. united states air force transports came to take out the military dependents while all embassies tried to play down the extent of the evacuation, not wanting to further embarrass the shah, their stalwart ally of twenty years. adding to the chaos were thousands of iranians, all hoping to flee while there was still time to flee. the unscrupulous and the wealthy jumped the lines. many an official became rich and then more greedy and richer still. then the air traffic controllers struck, shutting down the
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