Earlier this summer, while we were in Turkey, an alleged Coup d'etat against the regime was unfolded, US consulate in Istanbul was attacked, 3 German mountain climbers were kidnapped in Eastern Turkey, and Turkish supreme court was contemplating the banning of the country's ruling Party. None of these, however, seemed to have much perceptible effect on the mood of the crowds having dinner in the alleys off Istiklal Caddesi, or bikini clad ladies sunbathing in the fashionable resort of Turkbuku. Perhaps, Turkey is used to fundamental changes and social, religious, and political upheavals. After all its four thousand years of history is full of such changes: from Hittites to independent city states, to a Persian Satrapy, to Alexandrian Rule, to a Roman Province, to a Christian Byzantium Empire (the first such empire), to an Islamic Ottoman Empire, and finally to a "secular" Republic under Attaturk. The recent history has also been a see-saw between a secular elitist ruling class and a majority moderate Islamic populace. One walk on Istiklal Caddesi in Istanbul demonstrates the full spectrum of religious observance. The street features women in full overcoat and scarf, fashionable young ones in jean and clingy designer T-shirts, and middle ground represented by strikingly good looking girls in stylish pants and tunics and full make up with scarves fastened in an elaborate style of a turban or hat. What is evident, however, is that Turkish Islam is not aggressive. It is tolerant and moderate, at least in Istanbul and the Western Turkey. Walking in the back streets of Sultan-Ahmet, where the majority of women are covered, a woman in western clothing and without head cover, is not met with angry and disdained looks that would have been rampant in Cairo. The shop owners in the traditional green grocers or small out of town farmers Markets do look an uncovered woman in the eye and are comfortable dealing with her. May be it is the lessons of Mevlana, that promotes tolerance, or the mild weather, or the location of the country as the bridge between East and West. Whatever it is, Turkey is determined not to become another Iran.
In a country where the Call to prayer (Azan) can be heard simultaneously and harmoniously with westerns and Turkish pop music and Jazz, it may be (just may be, mind you), be possible to achieve an Islamic democracy. That would be a victory for all moderate, freedom loving Moslems anywhere.
Tuesday, August 5, 2008
Friday, July 18, 2008
A Gentle Passing
The receptionist at the hair salon asks me how my day is going so far. “Fine”, I say, neglecting to tell her that I just got news that my aunt has passed on. Telling her the truth, and thus making myself subject to false sympathy from a total stranger, would be hypocritical, and that I don’t want to be. My aunt has passed away quietly, 6000 miles away, as quietly as she had lived. Manzar was a typical middle child, shy, mild, kind, and forever in the shadow of a glamorous sister and two larger than life older brothers: the remarkable Ali-Reza, and that true force of the nature: Mohammad Reza. My earliest memory of her is of her setting the table and cutting the bread for large Friday lunches in my grand parent’s house in Amiriah[1]. I remember watching her cutting bread neatly, in identical sizes with immaculate attention to details, amongst the chaos of the house on Fridays. She loved such neatness. In her own way, she also loved that happy chaos that engulfed the house every Friday. That was her way of getting energy and the light from her big, boisterous family.
I am told she was a decent but unremarkable student. There was a picture of her with in school uniform with starched white collar on my grandmother’s room. In the picture, she is smiling timidly, her braided hair fashioning a large white bow. I can imagine that with her neat hand writing and penchant for order, she would have been liked by at least some teachers. After high school she dawdled around the house for a few years. She helped out with parties given by my grand mother or my mother, baby sat for my younger sister Shirin, and continued to refuse the slew of suitors asking for her hand. The only friend of hers I remember was our neighbor in the enclosed alley, Ensieh (I think that was her first name) Sarshar, who had a slight cleft lip. Then Ali-Reza, newly returned from the US, opened an engineering consulting firm, Tehran-Boston, and hired her (literally dragged her) to work as a draughtsman there.
Working at Tehran-Boston, she flourished. She lost weight. First my mother, and then me, made her fashionable clothing (she was my first customer as a budding 13 year old fashion designer!). My mother’s hairdresser cut her hair short and highlighted it and she started putting make up on. She became pretty with her delicate features extenuated by the make up. The two of us started going to movies on Thursday afternoons, we saw James Bond and Charade and My Fair lady and the Sound of Music. We cried at the end of “Love Story”, got swept in the Russian steps of “Dr. Zhivago”, and fell in love with Peter O’ Tool in “How to Steel a million dollars”. She subscribed to Javanan[2] and Zan-e-Rouz[3](for which I had started writing for). She had money, she was free. She was happy. The fire, for the first time in her life, was coming from within.
It was then that she fell in love with a young engineer at work. There was talk of marriage. My mother and grandmother were cautiously optimistic. My grandmother was a bit more pessimistic, the prospective groom was younger than Manzar, he wanted to go away for a few years to study in the US, he may break her heart, she thought. My mother was the more optimistic one: Manzar looked a lot younger than her age of late 20’s or early 30’s, the guy sounded like a good person. It was my grandmother who turned out to be right. My aunt waited 3 years, and then got a letter, and he was gone just like that. He was the first of many loved ones to be lost forever to either the US or death.
Years passed, Tehran Boston was sold, Manzar lost her job, stayed home, quibbled with my grandmother, stopped wearing fashionable clothing and getting nice haircuts. We stopped going to movies on Thursday afternoons. She spent time with the kids in the family: Shirin, Pouneh, Sayeh, Majid and Ghazel. She was the one who always remembered every one’s birthday or anniversary, the one who always had gifts neatly wrapped for everyone. Gradually, my grandmother gave up the hope of marrying her off and give away the “Terme[4]” she had put aside for Manzar to one of her nieces who was getting married in a rush. Then one bright and sunny fall morning, my grandfather died in a fluke accident. For the first time that I remember, my powerful grandmother broke down. Overnight she aged. Overnight she became an old woman. Manzar was dazed; she never thought her father would ever die.
The event that broke her down, forever, however, was the next: Fourteen months after my grandfather’s death, my uncle Mohammad Reza died of Leukemia. I remember Manzar crying quietly under her veil at Khatm[5], I remember her vacant and pained face. Ironically, even her grief, as heavy as it was, was foreshadowed by that of a mother, a wife, and an older sister. The picture people would take away from the memorial service in my grand parent’s house was that of the 2 year old Cyrus on the lap of grief stricken Tahereh, my uncle’s wife, or that of my grandmother’s body shaking uncontrollably, my mother’s moaning, and Ali-Reza’s dignified but absolute grief. Manzar, crying softly, however, was the one who made sure all kids are fed and ushered to bed that night.
Two years after my uncle’s death, the exodus to West (mostly America) began: I left in 1974. My younger uncle, Gholi, followed a year or so later. Manzar came to visit me in Cambridge. There is a picture of the two of us outside my apartment in winter clothing. It was a rather happy visit, even though her suitcase went missing for days leaving her with one set of clothing in New England winter. My grandmother died in 1977. When I went back to Iran in December, she was already settling into the life she would led for the next 30 years: alone in the big apartment left as though my grand parents were still living there, their bedroom and the rest of apartment all intact. Everything looked as though my grandparents have just stepped out for a few hours, perhaps to go to one of their usual Thursday excursions to Shah-Abolazim[6].
My parents left Iran just before revolution, my aunt Pouri, and my cousins: Pouneh and Sayeh left just after. Manzar came to visit us in the US. She, was here when the hostages were taken. We urged her to stay: “what is there to go back to?” we asked. But she was determined to go back, to take care of her shrine of memories to the family that had provided her with the will to live. “Abdi is going back too”, she said in reference to my younger uncle. Once she was in Iran, the borders closed down and she couldn’t come back. she was trapped. Her last trip to Paris to get visa to come back to the US was a disaster that broke her spirits for good.
We continued correspondence. I sent pictures of my wedding, of my sons: Darin and Sebastian, and called her when Shirin died. My cousins did the same. She built a little display from smiling wedding and baby pictures of her live but away and dead relatives, on the living room table. Then one day she went missing. After a week of searching, my uncle found her unconscious in a public hospital. She has been victim of a hit and run accident. Her bones were shattered. For awhile it was touch and go, but she got better and went home to my uncle’s house. It took months for her to walk, and as soon as she did, she insisted to go back home, to her shrine, to her memories, to be with the ghost of her loved ones. After the accident, she stopped writing and started calling. It was easier for her as she didn’t want to walk to the front of the house to get her mail. For a while, we called her every Sunday. Mostly my mother would just listen to her. Sometimes she would call in the middle on the night, having forgotten the time difference between Tehran and Boston. Even when we were told she doesn’t remember much, she still remembered me, the kids and Lee, although in her mind my kids were still in the elementary school, the same age as the last pictures we had sent her! Most of the time, it was hard to understand her, but the weekly conversations was a treat for my mother and her.
The calls from both sides stopped about 10 months ago. She, no longer able to care for herself, had stopped calling. My mother, descending into her own fog, didn’t want to call. We found out that she is in a nursing home and doing ok, but didn’t know how to call her there. I was in my way back from Turkey when I get the call from Pouri that she is in grave condition, and Abdi is trying to get back. An email from Ghazel a few days later made the final announcement: She is gone, died alone, and buried in Behesht Zahra along side my grandparents. I thought of all the good times we had in Amirieh and Abu Rayhan, and all the heartaches and sad times in Zafar. In the end, we all had loved her and we all had abandoned her.
The hairdresser asks me if I like my new cut. I nod. I pay the bill. The receptionist wishes me a good day. I walk outside to a sun filled Boston summer and merge into the crowd in Newbury street
Boston, July 18, 2008
[1] A neighborhood in Tehran
[2] An Iranian popular magazine
[3] A women’s magazine in Iran
[4] A hand made cloth used in Iranian wedding ceremony
[5] Religious memorial service in Iran
[6] A religious shrine in Iran
I am told she was a decent but unremarkable student. There was a picture of her with in school uniform with starched white collar on my grandmother’s room. In the picture, she is smiling timidly, her braided hair fashioning a large white bow. I can imagine that with her neat hand writing and penchant for order, she would have been liked by at least some teachers. After high school she dawdled around the house for a few years. She helped out with parties given by my grand mother or my mother, baby sat for my younger sister Shirin, and continued to refuse the slew of suitors asking for her hand. The only friend of hers I remember was our neighbor in the enclosed alley, Ensieh (I think that was her first name) Sarshar, who had a slight cleft lip. Then Ali-Reza, newly returned from the US, opened an engineering consulting firm, Tehran-Boston, and hired her (literally dragged her) to work as a draughtsman there.
Working at Tehran-Boston, she flourished. She lost weight. First my mother, and then me, made her fashionable clothing (she was my first customer as a budding 13 year old fashion designer!). My mother’s hairdresser cut her hair short and highlighted it and she started putting make up on. She became pretty with her delicate features extenuated by the make up. The two of us started going to movies on Thursday afternoons, we saw James Bond and Charade and My Fair lady and the Sound of Music. We cried at the end of “Love Story”, got swept in the Russian steps of “Dr. Zhivago”, and fell in love with Peter O’ Tool in “How to Steel a million dollars”. She subscribed to Javanan[2] and Zan-e-Rouz[3](for which I had started writing for). She had money, she was free. She was happy. The fire, for the first time in her life, was coming from within.
It was then that she fell in love with a young engineer at work. There was talk of marriage. My mother and grandmother were cautiously optimistic. My grandmother was a bit more pessimistic, the prospective groom was younger than Manzar, he wanted to go away for a few years to study in the US, he may break her heart, she thought. My mother was the more optimistic one: Manzar looked a lot younger than her age of late 20’s or early 30’s, the guy sounded like a good person. It was my grandmother who turned out to be right. My aunt waited 3 years, and then got a letter, and he was gone just like that. He was the first of many loved ones to be lost forever to either the US or death.
Years passed, Tehran Boston was sold, Manzar lost her job, stayed home, quibbled with my grandmother, stopped wearing fashionable clothing and getting nice haircuts. We stopped going to movies on Thursday afternoons. She spent time with the kids in the family: Shirin, Pouneh, Sayeh, Majid and Ghazel. She was the one who always remembered every one’s birthday or anniversary, the one who always had gifts neatly wrapped for everyone. Gradually, my grandmother gave up the hope of marrying her off and give away the “Terme[4]” she had put aside for Manzar to one of her nieces who was getting married in a rush. Then one bright and sunny fall morning, my grandfather died in a fluke accident. For the first time that I remember, my powerful grandmother broke down. Overnight she aged. Overnight she became an old woman. Manzar was dazed; she never thought her father would ever die.
The event that broke her down, forever, however, was the next: Fourteen months after my grandfather’s death, my uncle Mohammad Reza died of Leukemia. I remember Manzar crying quietly under her veil at Khatm[5], I remember her vacant and pained face. Ironically, even her grief, as heavy as it was, was foreshadowed by that of a mother, a wife, and an older sister. The picture people would take away from the memorial service in my grand parent’s house was that of the 2 year old Cyrus on the lap of grief stricken Tahereh, my uncle’s wife, or that of my grandmother’s body shaking uncontrollably, my mother’s moaning, and Ali-Reza’s dignified but absolute grief. Manzar, crying softly, however, was the one who made sure all kids are fed and ushered to bed that night.
Two years after my uncle’s death, the exodus to West (mostly America) began: I left in 1974. My younger uncle, Gholi, followed a year or so later. Manzar came to visit me in Cambridge. There is a picture of the two of us outside my apartment in winter clothing. It was a rather happy visit, even though her suitcase went missing for days leaving her with one set of clothing in New England winter. My grandmother died in 1977. When I went back to Iran in December, she was already settling into the life she would led for the next 30 years: alone in the big apartment left as though my grand parents were still living there, their bedroom and the rest of apartment all intact. Everything looked as though my grandparents have just stepped out for a few hours, perhaps to go to one of their usual Thursday excursions to Shah-Abolazim[6].
My parents left Iran just before revolution, my aunt Pouri, and my cousins: Pouneh and Sayeh left just after. Manzar came to visit us in the US. She, was here when the hostages were taken. We urged her to stay: “what is there to go back to?” we asked. But she was determined to go back, to take care of her shrine of memories to the family that had provided her with the will to live. “Abdi is going back too”, she said in reference to my younger uncle. Once she was in Iran, the borders closed down and she couldn’t come back. she was trapped. Her last trip to Paris to get visa to come back to the US was a disaster that broke her spirits for good.
We continued correspondence. I sent pictures of my wedding, of my sons: Darin and Sebastian, and called her when Shirin died. My cousins did the same. She built a little display from smiling wedding and baby pictures of her live but away and dead relatives, on the living room table. Then one day she went missing. After a week of searching, my uncle found her unconscious in a public hospital. She has been victim of a hit and run accident. Her bones were shattered. For awhile it was touch and go, but she got better and went home to my uncle’s house. It took months for her to walk, and as soon as she did, she insisted to go back home, to her shrine, to her memories, to be with the ghost of her loved ones. After the accident, she stopped writing and started calling. It was easier for her as she didn’t want to walk to the front of the house to get her mail. For a while, we called her every Sunday. Mostly my mother would just listen to her. Sometimes she would call in the middle on the night, having forgotten the time difference between Tehran and Boston. Even when we were told she doesn’t remember much, she still remembered me, the kids and Lee, although in her mind my kids were still in the elementary school, the same age as the last pictures we had sent her! Most of the time, it was hard to understand her, but the weekly conversations was a treat for my mother and her.
The calls from both sides stopped about 10 months ago. She, no longer able to care for herself, had stopped calling. My mother, descending into her own fog, didn’t want to call. We found out that she is in a nursing home and doing ok, but didn’t know how to call her there. I was in my way back from Turkey when I get the call from Pouri that she is in grave condition, and Abdi is trying to get back. An email from Ghazel a few days later made the final announcement: She is gone, died alone, and buried in Behesht Zahra along side my grandparents. I thought of all the good times we had in Amirieh and Abu Rayhan, and all the heartaches and sad times in Zafar. In the end, we all had loved her and we all had abandoned her.
The hairdresser asks me if I like my new cut. I nod. I pay the bill. The receptionist wishes me a good day. I walk outside to a sun filled Boston summer and merge into the crowd in Newbury street
Boston, July 18, 2008
[1] A neighborhood in Tehran
[2] An Iranian popular magazine
[3] A women’s magazine in Iran
[4] A hand made cloth used in Iranian wedding ceremony
[5] Religious memorial service in Iran
[6] A religious shrine in Iran
Thursday, June 19, 2008
A New Identity
In a foreign land you can buy yourself a whole new past in a local flea market. Once, in Budapest, I calculated that a whole family history can be bought for under $100. That included pictures of your chosen grand/great grand parents, aunts and uncles and all the sibllings you have ever wished to have. Add to that the nick knacks, old toys, medals, lace shawl, old soviet lighters, even a whole bunch of post cards from your traveling new/old relatives, and you have a full history. You can even select what kind of relatives you want, may be a WWII veteran for a great uncle, a spirited bohemian aunt, a cautious grand mather, all yours for under $100, what a bargain, a whole new life, for less than the cost of a dinner for two!
It would be a bit more expensive if you are in some tourist Mecca like Paris (because of all the American tourists), but still reasonable. A new identity to start a new life. You may not be younger, better looking, thinner, or richer, but new neverthless. Better yet, in this new life, you are in control of not only your name, but your parents, grand parents, and all of your family. Pretty cool.
Monday, June 16, 2008
Living like a local
When I travel, I like to rent an apartment. It is, off course cheaper, and if you have kids, more convenient. But for me the best reason to get an apartment is "living like a local", and not any local, but the one of my own imagination and choosing! You can imagine yourself being a Russian Prince (or Princess) living in a small walk up near opera in Paris, or an American writer looking for inspiration in Rome. You can create your own persona, a whole new identity, a whole set of new habits, and hang outs: a favorit cafe to take your morning coffee, the perfect Ice cream stand, the neighborhood bar perfect for your new persona. If you like, you can even give your self a new name, too. It is the perfect scape!
Unlike hotels who bank on being predictable. apartments can, and do provide surprises. Each is different. Some are shabby, some are well cared for, all have taken on multiple personalities of the poeple who have stayed there. Sometimes people leave food items, boxed ceral, tea, coffee, tomato sauce. You can make a game of guessing who might have bought and left Mango Chai (Ahmed brand), or a half eaten box of Coco Crisp. People leave behind books and board games too. May be they think what is the use of taking the paperback you have already read? You can also try to guess what kind of person have left behind "the book of Ruth", an Oprah Book Selection.
But the best part of living in an apartment is to go food shoping with locals. Nothing provides more insight to people than observaing the way they shop for food, what they buy and where they buy it from. In the US almost everybody shops at a supermarket. In Italy, supermarkets are only one stop out of many for the housewives (and most shoppers are women). Supermarkets do sell meat, fish and vegitables, but all self respecting locals go to their favorite shops or stands for those. In France, Monoprox sells everything including children's clothing and make up, but the Cheese is too precious to be bought from Monoprix. The selection there is too meager, good only for tourists like me. All self respecting Frenchmen or women patronize the specialty shops. Selection also tells you what people care about. Italian supermarkets carry an enormouse variety of water, both sparking and still. But the choices for toillet paper is limited.
More importantly is the way they shop. Italian women touch every tomato, smell every bunch of parsley, inspect every cut of fish. Their faces are intent, focused. Shopping is not a chore to be done with after work. It is the work. Italian women while shopping do not talk, do not smile, the gravity in their face demontsrtae concentration and dedication. In Italy no one makes a shoping list, they see what is good and they buy it.
One of my favorits place to watch people shop for food is the food market in Budapest. From Caviar to Safferan, You can find everything there. To me it is the last reminder of a long gone Empire, and the refuge it used to be for poeple beyond the iron curtain. The market is bright and cheery, no trace of the melancholy of the city. People inspect, taste, haggle and buy. The market tells you that it is a city that takes its food seriously.
Unlike hotels who bank on being predictable. apartments can, and do provide surprises. Each is different. Some are shabby, some are well cared for, all have taken on multiple personalities of the poeple who have stayed there. Sometimes people leave food items, boxed ceral, tea, coffee, tomato sauce. You can make a game of guessing who might have bought and left Mango Chai (Ahmed brand), or a half eaten box of Coco Crisp. People leave behind books and board games too. May be they think what is the use of taking the paperback you have already read? You can also try to guess what kind of person have left behind "the book of Ruth", an Oprah Book Selection.
But the best part of living in an apartment is to go food shoping with locals. Nothing provides more insight to people than observaing the way they shop for food, what they buy and where they buy it from. In the US almost everybody shops at a supermarket. In Italy, supermarkets are only one stop out of many for the housewives (and most shoppers are women). Supermarkets do sell meat, fish and vegitables, but all self respecting locals go to their favorite shops or stands for those. In France, Monoprox sells everything including children's clothing and make up, but the Cheese is too precious to be bought from Monoprix. The selection there is too meager, good only for tourists like me. All self respecting Frenchmen or women patronize the specialty shops. Selection also tells you what people care about. Italian supermarkets carry an enormouse variety of water, both sparking and still. But the choices for toillet paper is limited.
More importantly is the way they shop. Italian women touch every tomato, smell every bunch of parsley, inspect every cut of fish. Their faces are intent, focused. Shopping is not a chore to be done with after work. It is the work. Italian women while shopping do not talk, do not smile, the gravity in their face demontsrtae concentration and dedication. In Italy no one makes a shoping list, they see what is good and they buy it.
One of my favorits place to watch people shop for food is the food market in Budapest. From Caviar to Safferan, You can find everything there. To me it is the last reminder of a long gone Empire, and the refuge it used to be for poeple beyond the iron curtain. The market is bright and cheery, no trace of the melancholy of the city. People inspect, taste, haggle and buy. The market tells you that it is a city that takes its food seriously.
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