At a very young age, I practiced skiing in Switzerland where my father
was a diplomat. Upon our return to Iran, towards the end of World War
II, I was the lucky owner of a brand new pair of Swiss skis with
"Kandahar" safety bindings and metal edges to cut the snow, something
unique at the time. It was state-of the-art, the Ferrari of skis. Not
even the young Shah who had been trained in Switzerland, possessed such
up-to-date equipment. I was then a teen-ager at the Razi School in
Tehran and belonged to club "Niroo va Rasti," (Force and Justice)
where, because of the skis, I remained the envy of many.
The club organized weekend ski outings to the high hills of Lashkarak near Tehran and sometimes further away to Abe-Ali when we had enough gasoline. At five in the morning, together with other youngster from the Alborz and other schools, we waited impatiently for the chartered rickety buses to take us to destination. We must remember that we were smack in World War II. Most of the better buses had been requisitioned by the occupying Allied forces and what was left was decrepit, had grinding gears, asthmatic motors, worn-out tires and barely enough gas to take us to the nearest slopes.
With my father and sisters in Lashkarak in 1945
Lashkarak was very near Tehran, but neither the runs were good nor the snow condition. When we clamored for the bus driver to go further on to Abe-Ali, he would not budge. Later on, we received more gasoline and could finally drive further. The young Shah, who must have been 25 years old at the time, was a frequent visitor together his with lovely wife Queen Fowzieh, sister of King Farouk of Egypt. They used to mingle openly and freely with the skiers, and the Shah was always cheered enthusiastically by the throng of youngsters and local peasants who saw in him the symbol of Iranian continuity during those dark days of foreign occupation.
Early Abe-Ali slopes without the lifts - Circa 1945
Ski-lifts, were unknown and alike the rest of us, the Shah democratically carried his own skis to the top of the hill. It took an hour of hard climbing for a descent of just a few paltry minutes. After a few runs down the "paste" we were totally exhausted, that is to say, until the day someone named Flapper had the bright idea to design a makeshift lift with an old truck engine and a long rope! Flapper, an excellent skier and a white Russian emigre residing in Tehran, received the gratitude of everyone of us including those of the Shah.
Sometimes toward the close of the day, the Shah would invite all of us under his tent, where samovars belched steam and hot tea and cookies were generously served by a "gomashteh." Once in a while, my father and mother came with their car to see how we were doing. They spread a carpet on snow; had a picnic; and watched us skiing. By the way, there were only a handful of girls skiing at the time. One of them, my cousin Khadijeh Sepahbody anda few years older than I was, became the lady ski champion of Iran. As an oddity, she was all over Tehran's newspapers.
Passing my glider license in 1949 (right) and walking
to the ski runs in 1953 (left) both in Switzerland.
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