Marker Complex re-opened

On Prophet Zarathushtra’s birthday (March 25, 2008), in the presence of more than 500 local Zarathushtis, the Marker Orphanage in Yazd and other parts of this complex were re-opened. The renovation work, supervised by Cyrus Khosravi and sponsored by Mehraban and the late Fereidoon Zartoshti, took six years to complete, notes a report on the ZNA website. Its new computer lab is equipped with six PCs and named after the late Mirza Soroush Lohrasb, a prominent director of the complex in the past.

The event featured talks by Khosravi, Bahram Demehri, Mr Daneshmand, Dr Ekhtiary, the new Zoroastrian member of the Iranian Majlis, and Dr Dabestani, a former member. The Marker educational complexes in Yazd and Tehran had been originally established by the great Parsi philanthropist Peshotan Dosabhoy Marker of Bombay.

As it happens, the Hamazor (issue #1, 2008) features an article by the doyen of international diplomacy Jamsheed Marker, who recalls his grand uncle Peshotan, a bachelor of spartan habits, "an earnest, kindly old Parsi gentleman, impeccably dressed in a buttoned up dagla or frock coat, coupled with a grey pheta placed with geometric precision on the dead centre of a white haired head. The image persists to this day as Pestonjee Kaka never seemed to get either older or younger.”

Though Jamsheed’s recall of Peshotan’s business is nebulous, it was known all along that he had a passionate interest in the affairs of impoverished Iranian Zoroastrians, buttressed by his association with Iranian Zoroastrian owners and waiters at the Irani restaurants in Bombay where he invariably lunched. And annually he took a second class cabin on one of the British India Steam Navigation vessels from Bombay to Basra or Bandar Abbas. Once there, he took a bus to Yazd.

Writes Jamsheed, "In this small, dusty Iranian city Peshotan Dosabhoy Marker composed and fulfilled his life’s magnum opus. He started an orphanage for impoverished Zoroastrian children, and developed it into a full fledged school which in due course grew in size and sophistication and took in children of all faiths. I was unaware of the importance and outreach of the Peshotan Marker school in Yazd until in the 1970s I came across, at two different posts, Iranian ambassadors who were my colleagues and had been to the Peshotan Marker School in Yazd. As the school developed and expanded, the area came to be known as ‘Markerabad,’ and the edifice was embellished with a clock tower donated by my grandfather (Peshotan’s brother) Ardeshir.”

Between the brothers was "a bond and understanding that was deep and profound and extended even to their similarity in physical appearance and sartorial choice… Ardeshir’s encouragement of Pestonjee’s work in Yazd included a regular and substantial contribution of lakhs of rupees at a time when a lakh was a lifetime inheritance and when there were no deductions for charity,” states Jamsheed.

When Jamsheed’s father, Kekobad Ardeshir Marker, fluent in Farsi with a distinguished position in the community, was appointed honorary consul general for Iran in Quetta, Peshotan’s "emotional, child like delight and tearful gaze that lit his eyes when he saw the Iranian flag fluttering in the garden of our residence,” is a picture that his grand nephew has never forgotten.

After the Islamic Revolution the school was nationalized, the property requisitioned and the family expected an inevitable end to the institution. But to their surprise, the Islamic government made "a generous compensation by creating a large and beautiful park in the city and named it Peshotan Marker Park. To compound this spontaneous act of generosity, the park was inaugurated by no less a personality than the Grand Ayatollah Khomeini, the supreme figure in Iran. This is a turn of events which, I am sure, would bring a smile of quiet satisfaction to dear Uncle Pestonjee.”