Teachers

I have been living in a circle of teachers all my life....my parents, my sister, my uncles and aunts, cousins and not to forget my lovely wife....You can say that there are teachers in every generation of my extremely extended family....In fact my great grandfather (Al-Marhum Bilal Hj Hassan Abdul Salam) was a religious teacher who came to the Malay Peninsular from the Java Island at the turn of last century.

I met a special person today...going back to the hotel from work.....

I took a cab (as usual) from Ekbatan to the hotel....and it turned out that the cabbie, Sadiq, is a retired teacher. He is two years into his retirement.....God knows why he chose to be a cabbie...maybe he doesn't have any fruit orchards like my parents do.....but the more interesting thing is that he was a high school English teacher.

We talked about families.....he has two daughters.....the eldest is a mechanical engineer, married to an engineer (civil, I think)....the youngest is studying computer in one of the colleges in Tehran....."she's furthering her studies"....he said with utter pride. His hometown is in Shiraz....900km south of Tehran.....he moved to Tehran upon retirement because all his daughters are here.....He wanted to be near them.

He said, he bought an apartment (actually a duplex) in the Ekbatan area. It cost him 140Mil Rials....about USD14000...and he still maintains two houses in Shiraz where most of his relatives reside. The four-room duplex in Ekbatan houses the whole family....him & his wife, his married daughter & her husband and her bachelorette daughter.

He's a very nice and well-learned guy....we talk about oil prices....about development in our respective countries.....about our wives (I told him, to his amazement, that my wife is also a teacher). His wife is a tailor..."the best tailor around...and she even makes more I do.." he said. She has a shop back in Shiraz and still does the tailoring from their home in Ekbatan....He is her un-official promoter, armed with her calling card.

But, him being an ex-teacher still amazes me.....his English is very good for an average Iranian.....above all...I felt I have lot of respect for this guy....a retired teacher...driving a cab....and still maintaining that demeanor most teachers have..... confidence, respect for others and friendliness. It made me fell proud that I, myself, come from a family of teachers....and I am also married to a teacher.

Listening to him talking proudly about his children....made me think about how proud my parents (who are also retired teachers) are, when talking about my siblings and me. I hope one day, my wife and I would do the same about our children.

We parted company at the hotel.....and for the first time in my Tehran days, I tipped a cabbie.....not out of pity....it's because of respect.....He drove through the Tehran's rush-hour traffic without ever complaining.....

Well....he was a teacher...is still a teacher and will forever be one....

That's what being a teacher is all about.....once a teacher, forever a teacher....

To all the teachers out there.....you'll always have my eternal respects.....

Happy World Teacher's Day (Oct 5th, 2008)