The Scorpion Stings

The Scorpion Stings relates a family's exploits while living in Iran whre they witnessed war, earthquakes, riots and assassination. A U.S. Army captain takes his pregnant wife and three year old son with him on their first overseas assignment. Shah Mohammad Reza Palavi is in power and is dragging his country into the 20th Century. He mandates that women should give up the veil and get an education; that the mullahs and wealthy families give their lands to the peasants; that the tribal nomads give up their weapons and take up farming. It is 1963 and he called the decree the White Revolution because it was intended to be bloodless. It was not! It only caused the rise of a charisamatic mullah named Ruhollah Khomeini. Against this chaotic background the family, but more especially the wife, deals with the everyday problems of inadequate housing, lack of potable water, failing electricity, and the hiring of necessary servants.(Our heroine has no idea how to manage servants and ends up with 27...one right after he other)