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Frances Zoeckler interview, 1987 at Women’s Association of St. Andrew PC Albuquerque, NM, side 1.
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- speakerThis is a recording of a talk given by Dr Francis Zoeckler,
- speakerwho was a missionary to Iran under the Presbyterian board of Foreign
- speakerMissions. It was recorded by Carolyn Atkins at the
- speakermeeting of the Women's Association of the St Andrew Presbyterian
- speakerChurch in Albuquerque New Mexico on November
- speakerseventeenth nineteen eighty-seven. Doctor
- speakerZoeckler is speaking of the place where her parents were
- speakersent as missionaries in Iran.
- speaker[Zoeckler, Francis Louisa] Seat of the government and sometimes it was Malayer when the seat of the government was moved
- speakerelsewhere. They were the only foreigners in that town
- speakerand they were in the unique position of having been invited to come and work
- speakerthere by the populace of the town. That is very unique in a Muslim country
- speakerto have Christian missionaries invited to work there.
- speakerThey were part of the station known as Hamadan station sixty miles away
- speakerand we frequently traveled there for
- speakervarious things for Thanksgiving,
- speakerChristmas, for mission station meetings that were
- speakerof great importance or for mission meetings so that as a
- speakerchild I went back and forth between the town of
- speakerMalayer and Hamadan frequently particularly after I got to be
- speakerschool age and the missionaries of the Hamadan station decided they needed
- speakerto hire a teacher because too much time of parents was being
- speakertaken in teaching their children. So that they couldn't do their
- speakerevangelistic work as well. As a child I
- speakeroften went with my parents when they went on itinerating trips to the
- speakernearby towns and villages. This meant that we would go
- speakeroff in our Model T. Ford and set up
- speakera house. We'd rent a house from a villager and set up there
- speakerwith my mother running a clinic in one section of the house while my father
- speakerpreached the gospel in another or even outdoors in the yard depending on the weather.
- speakerI don't remember too much about those because after the age of seven I
- speakerwas away at school most of the time but I had the opportunity of going on
- speakerone itinerating trip as a missionary myself
- speakerwhich is probably the most
- speakersophisticated evangelistic trip that has ever been known. Because
- speakerwe were going to villages owned by the prime minister. And in order to go we
- speakerhad to get his permission. And when he gave his permission, he insisted that we
- speakertake his steward and his cook along with us. So that
- speakerin each village we stayed in the house in the village that was
- speakerwhere he stayed when he visited village and was kept just for his use
- speakerWe had our meals all cooked by his cook so that
- speakerthey were the finest type of meals you could get in the country.
- speakerAnd we had his steward, who saw to it that we had
- speakerplenty of villagers to talk to and to treat.
- speakerUsually we don't get that sort of treatment. You go in and
- speakeryou may get a crowd, you may not get anybody.
- speakerAs a child I grew up speaking the language before I did English
- speakerbecause the only people around who spoke English were my parents. Everybody else spoke Farsi
- speakerso I had to learn it. And as I spent most of my time
- speakerwith our cook's children. He had eight
- speakerand played with them. I became very fluent in the language.
- speakerIn fact, I not only knew the language but I had the colloquial
- speakerlanguage, some of which I had to unlearn when I started to study
- speakerFarsi as a missionary. But I also
- speakerhad the local pronunciation so that when I was
- speakertalking to somebody if they couldn't see me they didn't know I was not an Iranian,
- speakerwhich was an advantage in many respects. And knowing the colloquial Persian was an advantage
- speakertoo because, although I might not speak the
- speakerdialect that was spoken in that particular village or in that particular area,
- speakerknowing the colloquialisms from other areas and the way
- speakerwords were put together, I could often figure out what the patient was
- speakertrying to say even though I didn't fully understand him. And,by rewording my
- speakerquestion, I could often get a good answer. In fact on this
- speakerparticular itinerating trip I was speaking of,
- speakerMrs. Murray, a nurse who was the wife of one of our other doctors,
- speakerwas assisting me. And she turned to me one day and said, "How do you know
- speakerwhat they're saying?" Well, it happened that they were speaking a
- speakerdialect which was similar to, but not the same as, Kurdish,
- speakerwhich I had learned in Kermanshah. And therefore I was
- speakerfamiliar with the word order they used. and I was familiar with some of the
- speakerways they would answer questions. And by putting the same question two or three
- speakerdifferent way, I could be sure that the answer I got was what they
- speakermeant not what I was guessing at. I explained this woman. She said,
- speaker"I would never be able to do it." That was the difference. She had learned the language as an
- speakeradult. I had learned it as a child. And furthermore I had had the experience of
- speakerlearning two of the dialects that are used in the country.
- speakerKurdish which I studied. Kylikya, which I picked up to a certain
- speakerextent in my nine months in the Resht area.
- speakerI never was fluent in that but I did get so that I could understand it.
- speakerMost of the dialects in Iran are based on the ancient Persian
- speakerand how they have varied depends on the amount of
- speakerTurkish or Arabic influence on the language.
- speakerFor instance the Kurdish that is
- speakerspoken in the Kermanshah area is laced with a lot of Arabic
- speakerbecause those tribes wander back and forth across the border between Iraq
- speakerand Iran. Kurdish spoken up in the Tabriz area
- speakeris has a lot of Turkish in it because they go back and forth into
- speakerTurkey. There's one
- speakerKurdish group on the east border of Iran
- speakerwhere they kept some of the Turkeman and Pakistani
- speakerwords in their language. They were a tribe that were transferred or
- speakertransported there and planted there by the king about three hundred years
- speakerago to protect the borders because the Kurdish people are very warlike.
- speakerNow part of the Iranian people like.
- speakerMost of them are rather quiet
- speakerpleasant people to live with. Most of them are very
- speakerintelligent. They pick up languages very very quickly.
- speakerYou rarely find an Iranian who
- speakerhas been where he could learn another
- speakerlanguage who hasn't picked it up and become fairly fluent in it.
- speakerThey are
- speakervery friendly and very hospitable
- speakerHowever one thing which one must always remember in dealing
- speakerwith Iranians, and, I think, probably with most Near and Middle East
- speakerpeople is that they will say what they think you want to hear
- speakerrather than telling you exactly, telling you what the
- speakeractual truth is.
- speakerThat's part of their hospitality.
- speakerThey feel they must make people happy.
- speakerAnd a problem that you have with patients
- speakeris that the families don't want you to tell them what's wrong with them.
- speakerThey would prefer that you tell them a lie than tell them the truth about what
- speakertheir condition is. But isn't very helpful when you're trying to use what
- speakerthe actual facts are to get either, to get more information or get a decision as
- speakerto whether they will accept treatment or not.
- speakerThey often will not tell a member of the family who is
- speakernot living at home about a death in the family
- speakerfor months afterwards. They continue to let that
- speakerperson continue to feel that that member of the family is still living.
- speakerThey don't want to hurt anybody's feelings. They don't want to upset anybody.
- speakerThis sometimes causes a great deal of problems.
- speakerSometimes it smooths things over but
- speakerthat's their way of doing things. Also you have to be
- speakervery careful in what you say about things
- speakerin a person's home or things jewelry or anything like that a
- speakerperson is wearing. You may admire it but you'd better not
- speakersay that unless you want to receive a gift of it and
- speakerreally hurt the feelings of the individual if you don't take it because they
- speakerfeel that if you if you admire anything that you're asking
- speakerfor it. You have to find a roundabout way of saying that you like that you
- speakerlike something, that something is beautiful or something like that. The same way you have
- speakerschool in a roundabout way and praising children because
- speakerthey feel that to praise a child may be may bring the evil eye on the
- speakerchild. The
- speakerMuslim people are perhaps among the most difficult
- speakerto evangelize for several reasons. I like
- speakerto say one is that they have been inoculated against Christianity
- speakerbecause Islam accepts Christ as one of its prophets.
- speakerThe Moslems claim that
- speakerboth the Jews and the Christians received God's word
- speakerfrom him but then that they didn't
- speakerkeep it. They twisted it. They changed it so that
- speakerGod had to send Muhammad to bring the word
- speakeragain. And therefore, although they revere Christ,
- speakerthey revere the Jewish prophets, they do not consider Christ
- speakeras the Son of God. That, for instance, they claim that Christ was not
- speakercrucified. That God would never have permitted him to be
- speakercrucified. That he was
- speakersomehow taken away and a substitute was put into his place for crucifixion.
- speakerAnd it's very interesting to see the way many of our
- speakerstories from the Old and New Testament have been changed
- speakerin the Koran so that they are slightly different. They're similar but
- speakerdifferent from. One can understand this when one realizes that
- speakerMuhammad could not read or write. He was a caravan
- speakerdriver and as he drove, as he led his caravans
- speakerfrom this town to that to the other, he came in contact with Christians and with
- speakerJews. And, as he listened to them talked with them, he
- speakerrealized that their idea of One God
- speakernot a lot of idols and miscellaneous gods,
- speakerappealed to him.
- speakerWe felt that that was probably the true thing. But
- speakerhe never had a Bible to read, either Old Testament or New
- speakerTestament, so that he never heard those
- speakerstories more than maybe once. And then he had his memory to go by,
- speakerand he began to put these tales and probably he never
- speakerhad a consistent overview of
- speakerthese or Judaism or Christianity. He got a little here, a little there, a little somewhere
- speakerelse. And he sort of put these all together and then thought about it
- speakerand made up his own religion which incorporates a lot of things from the
- speakerJewish and Christian faith but leaves out a lot too.
- speakerBut there's just enough in the Koran and in the teachings
- speakerthat Muslims get that they are, as
- speakerI said, innoculated against Christianity. They
- speakertreat Christians Jews and Zorastrians differently than they do
- speakerall other people, because they are people
- speakerof one god. And they consider that
- speakerthat God is Allah. But they still
- speakerput pressure on Jews or Christians
- speakeror Zoroastrians in their midst to become Muslims
- speakerof Islam teaches
- speakerthat it is permissible to lie,
- speakerif by lying one is going to save a life. Well, that
- speakercan be interpreted very very widely. As a result,
- speakermost Muslims have no objection to lying.
- speakerAnd they will lie even over relatively small things
- speakerif it's to their benefit. And yet they will put it in their own
- speakerminds as being perfectly permissible because they
- speakersay they're saving somebody from something.
- speakerIt's one very interesting fact which I think very few
- speakerMuslims know and even fewer Christians probably there is a verse in the
- speakerKoran that says if there are any contradictions in this book it is
- speakerfalse. And there are con. There are
- speakercontradictions in the Koran. So you may say the Koran has proved itself to be
- speakerfalse. But most people won't accept. Most Muslims won't accept that.
- speakerI learned that from one of our Christians
- speakerwho had studied the Koran quite a bit. In fact even all the time I knew him,
- speakerhe was reading studying passages of the Koran and comparing
- speakerthem with the Bible and so forth. But he brought that to my attention,
- speakerThere is this verse that says if the Koran has any
- speakercontradictions in it it is false and then pointed out some of the contradictions.
- speakerThe Iranian people have been conquered
- speakermany times conquered by the moguls. They were conquered
- speakerby the Arabs. I don't know all the other people that have conquered them.
- speakerTheir way of dealing
- speakerwith people who've conquered them is to, on the surface, seem to go
- speakerall go along with them do whatever they want. But underneath
- speakerthey rebel. And they do it in subtle manners. For instance, one of the
- speakerone of the ways they rebelled against Arabs was to
- speakertake on the the Shiite form of Islam rather than the Sunni form
- speakerwhich is the orthodox. They do
- speakerthat very it's very subtle the way they rebel. And yet they do. And they
- speakerhave kept their own integrity that way.
- speakerThe Muslims. I mean the Iranians will if you will treat
- speakeranyone who is a guest in their home with utmost respect. There's nothing they
- speakerwon't do for you if you're their guest in their house, that is within their means to do.
- speakerThey ply you with tea and cakes and cookies and food
- speakerall day long so you will almost wish they would quit.
- speakerThey will they go out of their way to see that you can see what you
- speakerwant or do what you want but,
- speakerif you happen to be an enemy they may treat you that way as long as you're in their home. The
- speakerminute you go outside, watch your back because
- speakerthey do carry enmities too.
- speakerThey believe in the idea of an eye for an eye and a tooth for a tooth.
- speakerAnd that's one reason why there was so much
- speakerkilling went on immediately after the revolution.
- speakerBecause many people were getting even for
- speakerthings that had been done to them often in a much more vicious
- speakerway than what was ever done to them. But still
- speakerpeople were paying off their grudges by
- speakertelling the authorities that their enemies had done
- speakersomething against the government rather than by just saying I have a
- speakergrudge against him.
- speakerThe country is larger I think most Americans
- speakerthink of it. For instance from north to south it reaches
- speakerfrom central New York to the tip of Florida. And it's
- speakerwide. It's as wide or wider than it is north and south.
- speakerSo you can see it's a fairly large country.
- speakerMost most of Iran
- speakeris at a height, an altitude of three thousand to five thousand feet.
- speakerThere are a number of mountain ranges. The Alborz range,
- speakerwhich goes across the entire north part of the country, is really the
- speakertail end of the Himalayas range of mountains. And the highest
- speakermountain in the country. Damavand is ten thousand feet.
- speakerThere are vast desert in Iran,
- speakerparticularly in the eastern section of the country
- speakerwhere there is very little water and much of
- speakerthe land is not usable. The Iranians have a very
- speakeringenious system of irrigation. Will start up in the mountains
- speakerand dig a well. Ten or fifteen feet farther
- speakerdown, they will dig another well. They will dig a series of wells down to the plain
- speakerconnecting them with underground channels. And when they get down to their
- speakernear the village for which this particular
- speakerwaterway is being built, they will gradually bring that to the
- speakersurface. Well all these series of wells all going downhill
- speakercollect water and they end up with a fairly good sized stream of water
- speakerfrom which they can use for various purposes if the village has
- speakerno well water of its own and will use this Qanat. They call this
- speaker"Qanat." They use the qanat water for their drinking and cooking
- speakerpurposes as well as for iirigating. They are not are usually
- speakerowned by the landowner and of course any of
- speakerhis property will have first choice for water but for instance if
- speakerthere is a smaller land owner in the same area who can't
- speakerafford to drink his own cannot he may rent one from the
- speakerbig landowner. This is where one of the problems
- speakerwith trying to turn the land over to the peasants,
- speakerwho is going to be responsible for the upkeep of the waterways.
- speakerNo individual peasant could do it. And even
- speakera cooperative of the peasants in the village couldn't always do it.
- speakerAnd it is one of the reasons why the land reform wasn't as
- speakersuccessful as it might be.
- speakerOur work in Iran was started in the eighteen hundreds
- speakeras a mission to the Nestorians. Now the Nestorians are a
- speakergroup of Christians who have been
- speakerChristians since about the third century. And they
- speakerspeak a different language than the Iranian people.
- speakerAramaic language rather than the Arabic or
- speakerArian language of the Persians. They were
- speakeralthough they were Christians many of them had no idea what they believed, because
- speakertheir liturgy was all in the ancient Aramaic,
- speakerwhich none of them could speak or understand.
- speakerThey could many of them could not read or write, but they clung to their faith,
- speakerdespite severe persecution. And, at one time,
- speakerthey were a sufficiently evangelised group that from their
- speakermembership, missionaries went to China and started, among the first Christians in
- speakerChina. So that the original
- speakerpurpose of the mission in Iran was to
- speakerbring the Christians already there to a better
- speakerunderstanding of their faith and to hopefully bring them back to
- speakerbeing an evangelist force in the country.
- speakerUnfortunately
- speakerthose who followed the missionaries
- speakerbecame segregated from their own church and
- speakerhad to break away from it and became an Evangleical church while their
- speakerown colleagues stayed relatively
- speakerignorant. Mostly villagers doing
- speakerthe farming jobs in the area.
- speakerAt that point our mission decided they needed to expand. And they
- speakerstarted working for Muslims, as well as for the
- speakerNestorians. Very early in the
- speakerwork, they opened schools. They started medical
- speakerwork. And the doctors they had, said they couldn't work without
- speakerhospitals. Hospitals and nursing facilities were very quickly added.
- speakerAt one time we had eight hospitals in Iran. Each one had
- speakerits nursing school. And, one. And sometimes, they
- speakeralso trained physicians. But at the
- speakertime I was went back as a missionary in Iran. We had
- speakersix hospitals, I believe. When I left we had none.
- speakerBut there was good reason for this. When our work
- speakerstarted in Iran, there may have been a
- speakerhalf a dozen physicians trained in modern
- speakermedicine in the whole country. And most of those were in Teheran.
- speakerThere were no government schools of any sort.
- speakerThere were no hospitals of any sort.
- speakerSo that what our missionaries did was to start an
- speakereducational program to bring in modern medicine. Even to
- speakertrain some physicians as well as nurses.
- speakerWhen I left the country,
- speakerthere were seven universities all with medical schools
- speakerThe government had hospitals in every major city
- speakerand most of the smaller towns with an
- speakeroutreach to the villages surrounding the smaller towns. So that, as
- speakerfar as a need for medical care, we didn't have it.
- speakerAnd we felt that the only justification for us to continue medical work in
- speakerthe country, at the tremendous expense that it was, was to
- speakerbe connected with the university and be
- speakerable to influence the training of the medical students.
- speakerAnd at one time we thought we were going to be able to do that.
- speakerWe had some connections with the university in Tabriz
- speakerAnd some in Meshed, but we had an internship program
- speakerin Meshed for students. But, unfortunately,
- speakerthe costs are high, and they, as
- speakerthe dean of the medical school said to us, I would like to continue this because I
- speakerthink the training you're giving our interns
- speakeris excellent, but the cost is tremendous.
- speakerAnd my advisors insist that we should
- speakerturn to our own hospitals to get the training,
- speakerwhere we can do it at a cheaper price. And we had to agree with
- speakerthem. That they could do it more cheaply in a government hospital.
- speakerThey could do it differently.
- speakerAnd look at the conflict, too between the fact that we used the
- speakerAmerican type of medicine, and they were trained in the French
- speakerschool of medicine. And there's a lot of difference. The French School of
- speakerMedicine is very great on theory. But they don't seem to care what the
- speakerresults are. You could often say the operation was
- speakera success. The patient died because all of that operative technique was fine.
- speakerThe follow up care was non-existent.
- speakerAnyway we found that we could not really get into
- speakerthe medical school programs.
- speakerAnd we didn't feel that we were justified in keeping our hospitals open. So in nineteen
- speakerseventy, we closed out our medical work.
- speakerDuring all of my childhood
- speakerand most of my missionary life in Iran, we were called
- speakermissionaries. But about the last seven or eight
- speakeryears we were out there, we were no longer a missionary; we were fraternal workers. The
- speakerdifference was that we felt the church had reached the point where it should take
- speakerover the responsibility for
- speakerevangelizing in Iran. And that the
- speakerchurch here in the States should help them to the extent of providing
- speakerthe type of services they felt they needed.
- speakerRather than sending out people who did everything.
- speakerFrankly I think we left it a little too late to insist on their
- speakertaking over their responsibilities in Iran.
- speakerIn Korea we know that they took over that sort of responsibility
- speakeralmost immediately. As soon as they had a church going, it began to
- speakertake over the responsibilities for nurturing the congregation,
- speakerfor evangelists, and so forth. Of course, in Muslim countries,
- speakerthat was not quite as possible because of the
- speakerresistance of the people. Because of the persecution.
- speakerThe. The early Christians needed the support of the
- speakermission. They needed to be considered rather employees of the mission,
- speakerrather than being out on their own, because as employees
- speakerof the mission they were protected. If they're out on their own.
- speakerThey're open to all kinds of persecution. And it is very
- speakerdifficult in a country where death is
- speakerconsidered the punishment for leaving the faith in
- speakerIslam. Too.
- speakerFor people to leave that, leave Islam. Our church in Iran
- speakerat its height, which was
- speakerabout the time I left the country, was about one third
- speakerof Jewish converts.
- speakerWell, maybe a little. And one third or a little more
- speakerNestorians. And one third converts from
- speakerIslam. Possibly less than a third from Islam. And
- speakeractually they were divided into three synods, not
- speakergeographically, but ethnically. Because there were
- speakerconflicts between the Nestorian Christians, the
