On page 148 of the book Technocracy and Economic Policy in Iran, Dr. Reza Nazam describes an interesting memory of industrialists during the Shah’s era, which is not unlike the forgiveness of great people like Bill Gates and the head of Twitter and Facebook:
One night, Mr. Khayami had given an elaborate party and invited a lot of people to dinner. I, who almost never went to such parties, participated in this party. It was half way through the party when Mrs. Khayami came to me, introduced herself and said, I have a request from you, I told you to tell me, he said, I have been asking my husband Mr. Khayami for a long time to buy a sofa for our house, but he doesn’t buy it and instead loves to buy machines for the factory. I am asking you, Khayami. Order him to buy a set of sofas and I won’t be so ashamed of my guests. I was really surprised that Khayami, with so much income and with so much love for his wife, prefers shopping for the development and improvement of the factory to buying a set of sofas?! (Of course, I did not interfere in this work)
After a while, Dr. Mojtahedi, the head of Alborz High School, called me to say that he has built a building for a laboratory and wants to teach all the students how to build and repair cars and electrical industries such as electric refrigerators and televisions, etc. Mojtahedi asked me to help him in this way. I told the matter to Khayami and Haji Hajri on the phone. A few months passed. Mujtahedi said that one day on your way home, visit this high school and look at our laboratory. It was ten times what I had in my mind, the teacher was also given to Alborz School to teach and every year they gave scholarships to a large number of gifted and poor students. Someone who was not willing to buy a sofa for his home had built a familiar car laboratory for the students of Alborz High School at an exorbitant cost.
Another event that I witnessed closely was that one day Khayami came to the Ministry of Economy and told Alikhani and me that he decided to devote 95% of his wealth to the establishment of industrial schools throughout Iran and to build an industrial school in every city and all the capital costs I asked him what the number 95% means? He said that 5% is the inheritance of the wife, children and other heirs. There, I understood that the artisans are not only interested in the development of their industry, but they are also interested in everything that develops the industry and creates prosperity.
Khayami, the father of Iran’s automobile industry and the father of Iran’s electronics and household appliances industry, who had the largest industrial complex in the Middle East (at that time, Iran’s Pars Industries exported TV parts and lamps to Samsung, South Korea and Germany), was recognized as a capitalist by the revolution courts after the revolution. They were harassed and their property, including factories and personal properties, were confiscated, all their assets, including their bank accounts, were frozen and looted, and they were somehow expelled from the country. Khayami spent his life in England until his death, but he never forgot Iran and built hundreds of well-equipped schools even after the revolution in Khorasan and deprived areas, and also enjoyed the grief and oppression that was unfair to him after years of fruitless and unanswered efforts. Suffered from amnesia and died after a while
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This post is written by J_hdn