For 30,000 Americans, a life of isolation and rising tension
Tehran-based employees of Bell Helicopter International sported grimly humorous T shirts last week. They were emblazoned with the slogan KEEP A LOW PROFILE and a row of bullet holes across the chest.
Macabre as the garments seemed, the wonder was that there was any joking at all among the 30,000 U.S. citizens remaining in Iran. For most of them—Government employees, military advisers, businessmen, technicians, teachers—life has been a matter of steadily rising tension, isolation and harassment as the anti-Shah demonstrations have taken on an ever more anti-American tone. Most have endured it anxiously but stoically. Says a U.S. oil executive in a southern oil-producing region: "So many of us have sent our families away and are half packed that there aren't many more measures we can take."
If the Shah were to go, of course, there could be a mass exodus, especially if a new regime proved actively xenophobic. For now, Americans generally try to stay off the streets and out of harm's way. Such precaution has become more and more sensible as they have been increasingly subjected to threats, insults and assaults by Iranians angered at Washington's support of the Shah. Many Americans have received threatening letters, shoved under a door or placed under a car windshield wiper. One anonymous letter warned several American families in the central city of Isfahan: "If you think of yourself as a human being, quit your job as soon as possible and leave our country. Otherwise you will be blamed for the consequences."
Other forms of intimidation have been more direct. School buses full of American children have been stoned. One executive's Cadillac was burned, while an Exxon employee narrowly escaped injury in southerly Ahwaz when a Molotov cocktail was hurled at his car. The entire U.S. community was thrown into its deepest shock two weeks ago by the assassination of Oil Executive Paul Grimm in Ahwaz.
Almost as nerve-racking as the worries about physical safety is the overpowering sense of isolation. Communications in Iran are unreliable, with the result that the country has become a vast rumor mill. Says an elementary school teacher at the U.S. compound of Shahin Shahr, near Isfahan: "We alternate between panic and being very blasé. Some days we don't get a thing accomplished." Desert picnics, once popular, are now regarded as too big a risk for families to take. Says one American housewife: "It's a big social event to sip coffee and listen to the BBC." Armed guards patrol the gates and grounds of American compounds, and at Shahin Shahr, colored flags alert residents to the state of security in the complex: a red flag flown means danger, yellow advises caution and white means all clear. Since the system was initiated some time ago, the white flag has not been used.