Macau casinos insider on fleeing the Ayatollah’s Iran, finding love and his movie obsession
- Alidad Tash only sees films at a cinema, has a database of every one he has seen since 1990, with whom, and a rating – and a log of his kids’ movie watching
I was born into a prosperous upper-middle-class family in Tehran, the capital of Iran, in November 1965. My mother ran a girls’ primary school and my father was an agricultural engineer and entrepreneur.
I had what can only be described as an idyllic childhood. Every summer we would spend a couple of months at my grandmother’s house, and sleep on her roof looking up at the stars.
In those days Iran was ruled by the shah and there were none of the religious restrictions that are enforced now. Women wore bikinis and miniskirts, and people could patronise casinos and bars.
Short notice
Everything changed in 1979, after the shah fled to the United States and was replaced by a religious hardliner, Ayatollah Khomeini. Life got tougher for people like us, who were associated with the old regime, as the laws became more strict, and many people started looking to leave.
That summer, my parents told me that they thought my elite school, which had been set up by Queen Farah Diba, the shah’s wife, might be closed down and said I had 24 hours to decide if I wanted to stay in Iran or go to boarding school in the US.
My cousin had already gone there, so the idea wasn’t scary for me. I told them I didn’t need time to think: I wanted to go. Looking back, it was a huge step that was to change my life completely.
A family divided
I started at the Athenian School in San Francisco that September. I was not quite 14, spoke very little English and had only been to Europe before, so the US was like another planet.
