The Woman In The Letters

Niosha Dance Company performs in their Mother's Day Celebration, May 12, 2008. Photo by Faranak Ravon, Iranian.com.

I saw a picture somewhere and I was sure I had seen it before in one of the "forwards" I routinely receive. I went to my hotmail account to search for it, and typed in a word I thought would bring up that email. I wasn't ready for the flood of memories which were displayed on the screen. For some reason, the search had resulted in a list of my old emails, dating as far back as 2001. They were mostly love letters, exchanged between me and a man I once loved. I guess they hadn't been detected during a "clean-up" project I had done a year ago.

I sat in my chair, transfixed, rolling up and down the list, page after page, looking at the subject lines of the notes, the only thing evident from the messages inside. I didn't want to look at those messages again, containing sentiments and feelings and thoughts a few years beyond their "best by" date. The mystery and the joy inside those notes had long disppeared, and now all the feelings expressed inside were represented by a simple "I love you," "I miss you," and "Thinking of you," and a whole lot of "no subject" notes, which had obviously been written and transmitted in haste, telling the other something which couldn't bear the extra seconds it would take to type a subject line.

My eyes welled up with tears, running down my face. Why was I crying? They weren't tears of regret or sadness, I thought. I didn't miss the man behind those notes, not anymore. Where were those tears coming from then? And then I understood the reason, all of a sudden. I was missing myself, the woman that I was in those letters, loved and in love. I longed for the simplicity of expressing love and desire for someone who had a real presence in my life, someone worth the trouble of writing to everyday. I missed the woman in the letters. I dried my eyes long enough to select those notes and click on "delete."

Rosewater and Flowers

Poppies in Kashan's Niasar Gardens, March 31, 2008. More photographs here.

Faati and Hadi loved each other. Everyone knew their story. They were inseparable. Faati couldn't bear children, and in their lower middle class families, there was immense pressure for Hadi to divorce Faati or to remarry, so that he could have a child. Hadi angrily rejected all such talk and continued his devoted life with the beautiful Faati. He would always tell her not to worry about a thing, because he would always be with her and take care of her. When Hadi suffered a massive heart attack and died suddenly at 51, Faati was devastated. Sad and distraught, every Thursday morning, she would take several buses to arrive at Behesht-e Zahra Cemetery to visit Hadi's grave, each time carrying a small bag containing rosewater and flowers. She would lovingly wash the tombstone first with water and then with rosewater, putting the fresh flowers she had brought from her small garden on Hadi's grave, sitting there, talking to him and crying. She would finish her weekly ritual by noon and would take all those buses back to her small house on Hafez Avenue.

A whole two years had gone by, when one Wednesday night Faati received unexpected guests from out of town. In the morning, she had to wait for her guests to wake up and serve their breakfast and see them off. She was feeling anxious about running late with her "date" with Hadi. Her guests took their sweet time and by the time they left it was already 11:00 o'clock. Faati took her buses and arrived at the Cemetery at around 2:00 p.m. She started her ritual of washing the grave in a rush, anxious to make up for lost time, lest Hadi would be worried about her whereabouts. A man was silently praying at a grave in the next row. When he was finished, he came over and greeted Faati. She had never seen this man before and was irritated at his sudden appearance in the middle of her ritual. The man said to her that his wife had also died a few years ago, and that every Thursday afternoon he came to visit her gravesite. Once in that area of the cemetery, he always noticed Hadi's grave so clean with the beautiful flowers on top. He said he had always wanted to see the devoted visitor of that grave, and this was the first time he had been able to see her. Faati was polite but short with the man, who stooped to do a Fateheh prayer on Hadi's grave. The man who introduced himself as Habib, waited patiently a few steps away and when Faati was done with her ritual, asked her if he could give her a ride into town. Late and exhausted, Faati accepted the ride.

A year later, Faati and Habib got married. They would go and visit the gravesites together now, knowing by now that Habib's wife and Hadi had both died on the same day all those years ago.

This is a true story.

The King's Ring*

"Suspended Tulips" in Dena Mountain's outskirts, Kohkiluyeh & Bouyer Ahmad Province, March 31, 2008.

Heeh! I'm taking it easy, so no elaborate posts today! I will tell you an old Persian tale, which I have shortened and edited.

A king received a beautiful ring with a large precious stone on it. He asked the wisemen around him to come up with a sentence which could be engraved on the stone. His requirement for the sentence, however, was a tough one. He said "I want a sentence which I can read both when I am happy and when I am sad, and for the sentence to have meaning and relevancy for me during both times." One of the wisemen finally came up with the winning sentence: "This, too, shall pass." In his moments of sadness, by looking at the ring the King was filled with hope, and in his moments of joy, by looking at the ring the King would remember not to get too full of himself and to keep his perspective on life.

*This story is for Ahmad, my friend in Texas.

Boy Meets Girl (III)

View from the 29th floor Boardroom, 44 Montgomery Street, San Francisco, today at 3:00 p.m.

One day Mehrdad called to see if I wanted to have lunch the next day after school. Things were a bit easier for me now with my mother, so she gave me permission to go out for 2 hours after school. The next day, when he picked me up 45 minutes late in his banged up Jian, I was shocked to see Mehrdad! His left eye was shut, swollen, and black; his lips had a gash in them and his clothes were crumpled and soiled. “Oh My God! What happened to you?” I asked! He wouldn't say, as he started the car, driving fast and recklessly. I decided to play it cool and wait. Taking a deep breath, I asked where we were going. He said: "Somewhere where nobody knows us." So we went to Baghcheh Evin, an old-fashioned tea house in Northwestern Tehran, where the only food served was deezy. I ordered food and tea, and got Mehrdad a wet Kleenex and handed it to him with a mirror, telling him to check out the blood on his upper lip. He did and returned the mirror to me, saying "If my lip didn't hurt so much, I would laugh right about now!" So, that was a good sign for me to ask him what had happened.

He said it had all started with Vahid's telling him yesterday morning that he had had a brainstorm and had come up with a brilliant idea to finally "meet" that girl and start talking to her, except that his plan needed Mehrdad's help. Mehrdad had listened intently when Vahid explained his scenario to him. "Mehrdad, I think girls like heroes. How about if something happens and I come to her rescue? She's got to start talking to me then! I have a brilliant plan. How about if as she gets close to the bus station tomorrow, you approach her very quickly, run into her, and make her lose her balance and drop her books? I can then arrive on the scene, push you around a bit, then bend to collect her books and hand them to her, and then I will introduce myself and we can start our friendship together."

Mehrdad told Vahid it didn't sound like a very good idea, and there was no way he was going to be "pushed around!" Vahid kept begging Mehrdad and Mehrdad eventually agreed, in return for 20 toomans and Vahid's promise that he wouldn't be too rough to him when "pushing him around."

Mehrdad and Vahid waited by the school that day. The minute the tall girl appeared, Vahid gave Mehrdad the orders to start walking toward her, with Vahid following him a few steps behind. Mehrdad was heading straight for the girl at a fast pace, gaining speed and force as he approached her. He aimed and hit his shoulder against the girl's opposite shoulder, startling her, and causing her to lose her balance, her books and bag flying out of her hands and falling strewn all over the sidewalk. Several bystanders saw this and stood frozen with the shock of the event. At this time Vahid descended on Mehrdad, grabbed him by the collar, and slapped him hard across the face twice, punching him in the stomach. Dizzy with the shock and pain of the strike, Mehrdad looked at Vahid perplexed and confused for a minute, doubling over with pain. He looked at Vahid and yelled: "Vahid, namard, to keh gofti yavash mizanam!" (Vahid, you S.O.B., I thought you told me you won't hit me hard!).

The crowd gathered around the spectacle hissed with surprise and dismay at hearing this. Vahid who had bent over to pick up the girl's books looked up and saw the girl's anguished and angry face. When he stood up to hand her her books, he was faced with a slap across the face from her. Some other people bent over and picked up the girl's remaining books, handing them to her, and she took off toward the bus station, shaken up and pale, without a word. Vahid turned around and looked at Mehrdad who was in pain and anguished, too. But Vahid had no sympathy for his friend at this time; he saw him as the cause of his loss of that girl forever, so he got busy, beating poor Mehrdad up! That's how Mehrdad got the black eye and the bruised and cut lip. Add to that his bruised ego and his disappointment in the way his best friend had treated him, the young man was a sight, above and beyond consolation.

Our food and tea arrived, but it was quite evident that Mehrdad was in no shape to eat and drink anything. So, I encouraged him to drive us home and go have someone take a look at that lip. As he started looking and feeling better several weeks later, and for years to come, every time I saw him, our inside joke was for me to whisper to him: "Vahid, namard, to keh gofti yavash mizanam!"

The End

Confessions

Flowers of Iran by Shahireh Sharif.

My cousin Mahtab was two years older than me, so when I was 15, she was a voluptuous and daring 17-year-old, expert in the arts of makeup, hair styling, and fashion. She kept failing her classes, and seemed to have no worries about this. The only thing I, the scrawny, late-bloomer that I was, had to show for myself was a loud mouth full of words and smiles and a good pen. Mahtab and I who had grown up together with our other siblings, became partners in crime around this time of our lives. Well, sort of.

Mahtab had met a boy a couple of years older than herself on the street, when she had been looking for a coin to call home on a public phone. The two of them had started a secret courtship which lasted for several years. I used to run to my aunt's house to find a quiet, private corner where Mahtab and I would smoke cigarettes and she would tell me about her boyfriend, Bahman. She seemed so grown-up and worldly to me! The whole concept of a real boyfriend, a stranger, was so awesome to me! A year or so later, on one of my almost daily visits to Mahtab's house, I found her in bed, crying her big black eyes out, telling me that Bahman was leaving Tehran to go live in London, where he was to pursue his education. Mahtab was inconsolable, missing the love of her life already.

A few days after Bahman had left, she called me and asked me to go visit her immediately. I obliged. She showed me a blue aerogramme (do you remember those? A piece of long blue paper which would be folded and sealed to comprise both the letter and the envelope...I am so old!). It was a letter from Bahman. She begged me to read it. It was a love letter, written in a beautiful masculine handwriting, confessing undying love for Mahtab, asking her to write soon. I handed the letter back to Mahtab, asking her if she would like to use some nice writing paper I had with matching envelopes. She shook her head, crying. I asked her what was wrong and she showed me a hundred balls of crumpled paper--letters she had attempted to write to Bahman, hating every one of them because her writing skills were so poor, both in composition and in spelling. She begged me to write Bahman a letter from her. I told her I couldn't oblige, because a love letter was from the person who loved the other person, and I didn't love Bahman in the same way she did, so I couldn't write a love letter to him! She said she would tell me what to write, and all I had to do was to shape it up and make it sound beautiful. For good measure, she told me if I accepted to write her a letter, she would curl my awfully flat straight hair in curlers and style it for me. I pulled out a paper and started writing: "Bahman-e Aziz Tar Az Janam....."

Two years went by like this. I wrote Bahman two or three letters on Mahtab's behalf every week, where she would tell me: "Tell him I love him and I can't wait for him to come home and marry me," and I would write: "Bahman Jan, not a night goes by when I don't dream of you, and not a day when I don't see your handsome face in my mind, and not a second without dreaming of our union one day soon." With Mahtab's reciprocal help and my own eventual growth spurt, I had started to look pretty good, if I may say so myself! My hair was always nice and fluffy, my eyebrows had started to vanish and take shape, much to my mother's chagrin, and Mahtab was teaching me how to use makeup.

Eventually, Bahman came home and came to Mahtab's khastegari, and the lovers got married. I never forget their wedding day. After the formal ceremony, aghd, someone asked the bride and groom what had convinced them to choose each other for marriage. Mahtab said her "certainty of Bahman's love," and poor Bahman said: "all the love letters I received from Mahtab in London, which kept me sane and helped my resolve to come home and marry her." I had to leave the room and go die in a corner with laughter and shame!

This is how I learned to write about other people's feelings. Sorry, I wished I had a more honorable tale to tell, but the saving grace of this confession is that it's true and it was for a good cause--love... A very good cause indeed.

The Lost Legend

Afshin Mofid with Darci Kistler in New York City Ballet's Afternoon of a Faun, 1982.

Three thousand people watched the New York City Ballet performance every night, a performance which invariably ended in standing ovations and a crowd that simply did not want to leave the packed New York State Theater. The promising young ballet dancer took his bows, with each bow intensifying the crowd’s applause and noises of approval and adoration, singling him out as “The Star” of the show.

He was born to a family of artists, poets and writers in 1961. Afshin Mofid was one of two children born to the legendary Bijan Mofid and his wife, Farideh Fardjam, the first female Iranian playwright, prize-winning author, poet, and director. He started ballet training in Tehran when he was nine years old, moving to New York to attend School of American Ballet, becoming the star of New York City Ballet under George Balanchine’s training and direction, and appearing as the star of the New York City Ballet on numerous occasions, nightly packing adoring crowds in the New York State Theater.

While his career and his sensitive and powerful performances in New York City Ballet’s productions were copiously covered in The New York Times and trade publications of note, we never knew about him. It is now time to know about the multi-dimensional and fascinating life of a man with not just one, but hundreds of stories to tell of himself and his accomplished and interesting life.

Afshin Mofid is one of the warmest, most down-to-earth people you would know. He speaks a perfect Farsi, devoid of English words, is affable, articulate, and very funny. He speaks honestly about his achievements, his decisions, his family, his good times and his bad.

"I was nine when I started Ballet in Tehran. I had never seen ballet before in my life. My uncle, Ardavan Mofid, was friends with Bijan Kalantari, who was a ballet dancer and a choreographer himself, and wanted to start the first Iranian ballet company from ground up, entirely with Iranian dancers, hoping to be able to perform internationally. Of the 14 students in the newly founded ballet program at Tehran's Music Conservatory (Honarestan-e-Ali-e-Moosighi), there were 12 girls and only two boys. I was one of them."

This story was published in Iranian.com today. If you can't access it in Iranian.com, you can read the rest here. Please leave any comments you might have primarily in Iranian.com for the artist to see, or here. Enjoy!

The Beautiful Old Lady Next Door

The beautiful old lady told me in Tehran: "Nazy Khanoom. I have a grandson who is a ballet dancer.....in New York." She reached behind her chair and from tens of pictures of several members of her family performing onstage, picked up a black and white picture and handed it to me. My eyes rested on a handsome young man in great form in ballet attire. There was something really amazing about the young man's eyes. He was looking directly at the camera, with a sense of purpose, with great poise, and with haunting eyes.

Among the thousands of memories I have kept in my head and in my heart, that day, that little chat over tea, that lovely old lady's face filled with pride, and the picture of that young dancer, found a spot and became lodged. It was another 14 years before I pulled that memory out of my head and got started looking for the dancer. I looked and I searched, and I couldn't find him. But the memory wouldn't let me forget him. I wanted to find him. I wanted to talk to him. I wanted to know why he was lost to the rest of us. I wanted to know why he wouldn't make an effort to be found. I wanted to know about him and feel proud, for he was not only that young man in the picture, he was the one looking at whose picture had brought a huge tear drop of sadness and pride to the old lady's eyes. I wanted to find him and tell him that. I searched and searched until I found him. He now wanted to be found. I told him my story. He told me his.

زلف بر باد مده

Let not the wind into your tresses or I will go into the wind

Let not seduction be your way or I will lose mine

Drink not with any old contender or I will drown in pain

Savor not your wine or I will turn red in sobriety

Lock not your hair or I will be locked in remorse

Twist not your hair or I will get twisted

Become not the rival's friend or I will become mad with rivalry

Feel not for others or I will cease to feel

Open your face and I won't need a flower

Stand tall and I won't need the air of heights

Paint not the town red or I will shed blood for tears

Cherish not the other's company or I will perish

Steal not the limelight or all light will leave me

Ogle not or I will melt beneath your gaze

Be kind to this poor suitor and come to my aid

For me not to appeal to the Messenger

Hafez will never turn away from you

For he became free the day he was entrapped by you.

"Hafez"

I'm listening to Mohsen Namjoo. My heart is listening.

The Story We Never Heard

He says: "I was 9 when I started Ballet in Tehran. I had never seen ballet before in my life. My uncle was friends with Bijan Kalantari, who was a ballet dancer and a choreographer himself, and wanted to start the first Iranian ballet company from ground up, entirely with Iranian dancers, hoping to be able to perform internationally. Of the 14 students in the newly founded ballet program at Tehran's Music Conervatory (Honarestan-e-Ali-e-Moosighi), there were 12 girls and only two boys. I was one of them."

Seldom in my life have I felt such passion about a story, whether I have heard it, or I have told it myself. I am getting ready to tell you the story of a fascinating man. I have never met him. On the phone, he has one of the kindest, most honest, most confident voices I have ever heard. His winning charm is in his story, true, but there is something so Iranian about him, so belonging to the land I love. Brace yourselves. Soon you will see a gem uncovered, and I should hope that you know me modest enough to believe me when I tell you that the beauty of this story is only in the person who is at the center of it, nothing to do with the storyteller. I will just tell you the story. Give me a week. Be good y'all.