Revolution Watcher

Most people are content to read about revolutions in the newspaper, but not Gene Garthwaite, associate professor of history at the College. When Teheran started burning last November, and when most foreigners were trying to leave Iran, he hopped on a plane in London and flew to the Shah's capital. "I had to see for myself what was happening," said the Middle East specialist.

His first trip to Iran in 1959 was on an archeological dig with the University of Chicago, and it converted him, a graduate student in English, to the study of Middle Eastern history. Since arriving in Hanover in 1969, Garthwaite has been back to Iran repeatedly, visiting friends and continuing his research of official and family documents given to the leaders of the Bakhtiyari, a tribal confederation, during the 18th and 19th centuries. This summer he was completing a book on the topic.

Garthwaite's most recent visit to Iran was this past May when he and his wife took a two-week trip to Teheran and Isfahan. "The level of violence had gone down from last November," he said, but vestiges of violence remained: Cinemas still were burned out, for example, and the plate glass windows of banks had been replaced with metal grills.

Although Iranian friends warned the Garthwaites to stay clear of places such as the bazaar, the Garthwaites went and found the rumors of trouble for Americans unjustified. While his dark-haired wife might easily pass as. an Iranian, Garthwaite's light hair and complexion give him away as a foreigner. "I was never concerned about our security at all," he explained. Instead of encountering anti- American hostility, Garthwaite found that people were curious. They stopped him on the street to lecture him in Persian on American politics.