The Writing Tutor and the Persian

The man, like me, was middle aged. We were both old to be students, but the school accepted us, and we were both grateful. He was studying to be some sort of engineer. He lived in student housing and seemed fine with with having five hundred very young men and women from around the world as roommates. He had been married, had teen aged daughters, and was negotiating some sort of angry divorce. He spent his weekends in one of his professors’ lab. He had been some sort of highly skilled technician, had seriously hurt himself at work, and the company was paying for his retraining. The man was delirious with joy; he couldn’t believe they’d pay to make him an engineer. He had been doing okay in his classes and was happy. He knew how to do whatever it was he did, and he was a passionate student. The problem was that now he had to pass the Writing Competency Test, and he could not. He was taking a series of academic writing classes that would take the place of the test if he passed them all. At the beginning of his last class, he appeared at my table in the Writing Center. Essentially he still had to pass the test at the class final.

I may actually never have known his name. He was Persian; I’m sure I saw it in passing. I’m sure it was strange and unpronounceable. I did not care; getting him through those classes became a hopeless crusade. I did not think he could pass, and I was sorry for him because he was so determined to do this thing I was pretty sure he could not do. Again, I was faced with a foreigner with whatever experience they brought with them, trying to pass that damned test. This man only had one story. No matter what the assignment was, he told the same story in the same horrendous English.

He was a Baathist. He told me about over and over how gentle and peaceful his religion was, how much the Ayatollah’s people hated them. His people were hated by other Persians; he had been forced to leave school in third grade. I used to wonder whether his lack of educations was what made it impossible for him to read the prompt and write about it, no matter how badly. He told his one story over and over again. Was the assignment to read and compare and contrast two essays on the influence of TV advertising on the young minds? He read the prompt, underlined things in the essays, and then told his story.

At first, I calmly explained to him that he needed to read the prompt, make sure he understood it, read the material no matter how long it took, figure out a one sentence response to the prompt, figure out four sentences that led to the thesis sentence, and write the essay. No five paragraph essays allowed. I don’t want to see a five paragraph essay in any form: 8 page five paragraph essay, personal narrative five paragraph essay, no five paragraph essays. What is a five paragraph essay? You don’t know? Good, one problem down. By the way, spend the 50 cents, or go to the library. You’re on campus all the time anyway, and read the editorial pages in the Los Angeles Times. You don’t have to understand them or agree with them. Just read them. You’ll get the rhythm of formal English in your head. Forget the story. I don’t want to see that story again. He laughed. I went over it in detail again and again. I did not think he could do it. I liked the man; his story was first person and fascinating like all the first person stories I heard from all over the world. He said okay. He would see me in two days.

He had two standing one hour appointments with me a week. He made the standing appointment early in the quarter to make sure he got them. He got the hour because he had a disability, I think.

No,no. Read that sentence. What does it say? Do you see your father’s name in there anywhere? Then don’t write that story again. The point of telling a story is to communicate it. I know that story. If you want to pass this class, you have to write about the influence of media images on women’s identities in Western culture! When you come back, that’s what I want to see! I can tell you about grammar problems, but what difference does it make if you don’t follow the prompt! Okay, let’s talk about it. What is the essay about?

Two hours a week after my regular job and before my class or after my class or instead of a class, week after week for two years. I yelled at him; people turned around and looked at us. At one point a woman sitting at one of the computers turned around and told me to be quiet; she was trying to work. I looked up at her, stunned. Where did she think she was? It was too much trouble to deal with her; I lowered my voice. When I got loud again, she went to the counter and complained. The Director told her this was a tutoring center; not a computer lab. I was tutoring. If she wanted quiet, she needed to find a lab.

The man’s story was this. His family was the wrong religion, Baathists. The rest of Iran hated his people. The Ayatollah’s police made their lives very hard, but they did the best they could. They were very poor. One day, his beloved father was working outside their house. The police came and killed him in front of his family, hitting him over the head with a club so hard that one blow killed him. It was very fast. The man was a teenager, and he saw it. There lives were even harder after that.

That was his one and only story, no matter what the prompt. It was the first thing he told me. I tortured him and yelled at him and wrote quick outlines on margins of the story about his father that did not respond to the prompt. Sometimes, I thought he was irreducibly dumb; sometimes I thought his lack of education had prevented him from learning to think the way students and teachers think. I knew he was traumatized, but so were lots of people I saw. He drove me nuts. I felt very sorry for him that he was so happy to be in school and so innocent. This was not Harvard, but I did not see him getting his engineering degree. He broke my heart.

Then he disappeared.

Once in a while I wondered what had happened to him. I figured he’d finally left, failed. Then one day, I saw him working with another tutor. Jealousy is not my thing, but I was jealous. He had been my project. Then he disappeared again. I forgot about him.

One night, I was sitting at my table, with my little name plate, and he came in, sat down as if he’d never left. He was leaning on a cane, hard. I said, What happened; where have you been? He put his essay on the table and told me in his heavy accent that he had hurt himself and been in the hospital. He had been in a lot of pain and still was, but thank god, he was back. By the way, he’d graduated. He passed the test, and since engineering didn’t involve a lot of writing, he was fine, and now he was working on his Masters. Had I gotten my flowers? I said, No, what flowers? He pointed to a huge, elaborate bouquet on the counter. I said, O, they are beautiful. He picked up his books and papers and said he would be back. I went to work with a student on the computer and forgot about him. When I got back to my table there was a stunning, unique decorated black vase full of black roses. No note, nothing. I figured I’d thank him when he got back, but he never came back. I ran into him a long time later with his teen aged daughters in the library. He paid for my copies.