We were singing, "bye-bye, Miss American Pie."

I was 14 when I first heard "American Pie" by Don McLean in Tehran. I went by Ahang-e-Rooz/Beethoven, where Mohsen Agha Chamanara would generously play any song for us after school and would cheerfully help us choose which LP to buy with our allowance that month. In my heart, where my treasures of childhood, first loves, lost loves, complicated loves, and finished loves, along with all kinds of nostalgia are kept, this is one of the pieces of music that sits prominently and is never forgotten.

Tonight I was struggling with a piece of unpleasant work, something that just wouldn't end no matter how hard I tried to finish it! Then I heard the playful beginning notes, and then the whole song started strolling out of the side room, where my older son was listening to music behind a closed door. I don't know which one made those tears escape my eyes, the joy of an important piece of memorabilia of my childhood jumping out at me again, or the joy of knowing that my son might find that music appealing enough to play all by himself.

Life is good tonight. I am a fortunate woman with great memories in my past and absolutely precious treasures in the side room, behind the closed door. A long, long time ago...

I can still remember

How that music used to make me smile.

And I knew if I had my chance

That I could make those people dance

And, maybe, they'd be happy for a while....

Bouquet of Life

I found another rendition of Del-e-Koochooloo. Composer Anoushiravan Rohani plays the pinano with Mahyar Bahraminasab on Tombak with a symphony and opera singers. Delightful!

Life has been crazy for me lately. I know life is crazy, because I haven't been able to keep my blogs up, and this being my refuge, my home, and where I write from my heart, you will know that my life has been really crazy!

I wished I had something good to show for all the hard work and the distractions. I don't. I'm stuck in a whirlwind which saps all my energy and leaves me exhausted all the time, without any tangible fruit. It is getting to me and I hate it when anything gets to me. One of these days I will have to stop and go back to page 1, where I will have to re-group and re-prioritize my life. I know it has to be done and I've been putting it off. Not good.

On a happier note, my niece and her husband will arrive from Tehran tomorrow. There is something really exciting and a little sad about their move to the US. It's exciting because I love my niece who has been the last member of my immediate family still living in Tehran, and it will be good for all of us to be reunited finally. It is sad, because all of a sudden I am aware that Tehran will never be the same for me again. The thought of having no family to go back to is a sad one. I know I will still have secondary and distant relatives and beautiful new and old friends in Iran, but something important will be missing in my life from now on.

Anyhow, I have been so aware of my posessions in life recently. Mostly non-material, I hold a beautiful and colorful bouquet of assets in my arms these days--my relationships. I am all the more cognizant of that wealth these days, as I have been missing my friends and family a lot. I think I need to start making up for my neglect. I'll start here and work my way through all that I have to do to celebrate my bouquet of life. Have a good Thursday everybody!

Rain, Rain

Tehran's autumnal rain. More photos in the series by Abolfazl Salmanzadeh, Fars News Agency.

The windshield wipers squeaked across, losing fast to the pouring raindrops. The old Paykan wasn't well-insulated, so I could hear the rushing water running under the car, the huge raindrops hitting against the roof, and I could feel the cold wind finding its way into the car, reminding me of how safe, warm, and dry I was sitting in the back of that cab. I was going home, where someone waited for me in a warm environment. The apartment felt cozy and welcoming, with the delicious aroma of home-made food filling its every nook and cranny, and a fire burnt in a fireplace. I took off my scarf and raincoat, washed my hands, and sat to good food and good company, friendship and peace, and love and understanding. We sat by the window, watching the rain, and I felt safe for I was in the company of old, deep, and unpretentious friendship. I miss Tehran and I miss Mandana.

The Music of Life

Tehran, July 2007, photo by Parviz Forghani from Iranian.com. Where in Tehran is this, Parviz?

And so, it felt strange all evening to be here by myself! It didn't feel bad or lonely because I was engrossed in work, but it felt strange just the same. My sons are celebrating their youth together and it was a good opportunity for me to celebrate something, too! Some of my time this evening was spent researching some videos for a project I'm doing. Once that piece was done, I got to the quiet part.

Going through my tasks, without a sound in the house except for the clicks of the keyboard, I could hear so much of the life going on outside my windows. Passing cars, an airplane preparing to land in the small nearby airport, people talking to their dogs as they walked them, couples chatting companionably as they took an evening stroll, and the sprinklers going off at midnight to water the grounds outside. Blissful silence interspersed with sounds of life. Can it get any better than this? Quiet enough to think, but not isolated at all.

I'm exhausted now. My mind is full of sweet noises as I go to hit the sack. I'll go to a function after work tomorrow, so I doubt I'll be able to write anything until really late. I wish you all a good Friday and the beginning of a great weekend. Enjoy yourselves and those you love and confess your love to them every chance you get! Remember, the best things in life are free. No bank balance and no assets can buy true love and trust and respect. You have all that you need inside of you, share it and you will receive back in abundance, I guarantee it! That's what I think anyway. Money never brought me happiness. Love did. Be good y'all!

Dreaming of a Summer's Night in Tehran

Photo from Five Days in Tehran by Brian Appleton, Iranian.com, August 25, 2008.

Tehran nights are so special around this time of the year. Hidden inside homes and offices under air conditioners and water coolers during the long and hot days, people step out into the balmy evenings at night. Families, couples, young adults, older couples, everyone finds a park, an area of Tehran near a river, near some trees, to walk around or to sit on a wooden bed covered in rugs to have a meal of kebab and bread, a sandwich, or a home-made picnic. All around, you hear the sounds of laughter of grown-ups and the gleeful screams of young children. I remember seeing kids riding the playground sets and swings of Mellat Park, or playing badminton together into the small hours of the next day on a Shahrivar night. Those summer's night picnics are something I miss very much. The smell of barbequed corn, balal, and the sight of perfectly peeled fresh walnuts soaking in a jar of water are unforgettable smells and tastes and sights of my life in Iran. I miss it. Wouldn't it be nice if right now I could pack a picnic basket and go to Darakeh with my family, I wonder? It would. It really would.

Even if like me, you can't go have a summer's night's picnic with your loved ones in a city you love, you can still love your family and friends. Go do it. Have a good Tuesday everybody.

Hard Tuesday

Loris Tjeknavorian conducts The Armenian Philharmonic Orchestra and Shahram Nazeri, performing a Kurdish song in Tehran in 2006. Simply lovely!

Farshad says it's raining in Tehran. I remember the soft spring rains of Tehran so well. The rain that spreads the sweet smell of wet dirt in the air and washes the pollution, delivering a spotless, shiny city back to all those who keep forgetting what a breathtakingly beautiful city Tehran is, surrounded by all those gorgeous mountains to the north, the south, the east, and west. I miss Tehran so much today. Our weather was sunny today, but I'm so cold all the time these days. I swear if I could, I would take my blue blanket to work and wrap it around me and sit behind my desk, just as I'm doing all around the house these days!

Someone around me is suffering from a breakup. It's so hard to watch him suffer, unable to do much to help. 'Happened difficulties' are the order of the day! And it's painful even to watch the thin face, the pained eyes, and the requisite sad and quiet solitude of an ended relationship in which a person must wallow and think and heal and eventually recover. I have been there and I know better than to try. True, you can take the person out to dinner or a movie for a few hours or try and engage him in a discussion about politics or arts, but soon he will have to go back to the cocoon of sadness which is built almost overnight around a broken heart. Delam misoozeh barash. I'm useless, though.

And as though I don't have enough challenges facing my present these day, I have been visited by my past again this week. It's been an unwelcome surprise. Yes, I know what to do and what to say, but it's hard just the same. I wished the past would stay exactly where it belongs, in the past. If you are having a good week, please tell me about it. My kids are telling me good stories about their work and school, too, which is really a blessing. I think some days everyone can stand to be infused with the hope that only others can give.

Storms on Two Sides of The Earth

Storms building over San Francisco Bay, January 5, 2008. (I know this is not one of my best pictures, as I stopped the car in a precarious spot on El Cerrito Hills and snapped the picture in pouring rain, but if you click on it, you can see Golden Gate Bridge more clearly.)

Can you believe how much snow has fallen on Tehran? I read that all international flights into and out of Tehran have been cancelled and that the whole city is shut down. I hope all my friends in Tehran are staying warm and comfortable, enjoying the view from a window! I spent the day working not on what was on my list, but on the ad hoc list which just emerged as the morning progressed. I tried not to stress over it and go with the flow. As a result, I have a mixed bag of accomplishments and failures for the day (very typical, wouldn't you say?). My important writing piece received no progress today, but I'm glad to report that my house is clean and tidy, some of my emails have been answered, my plants have been watered, and my kids will have home-made food to eat for a couple of days. As you can see, at least some of my priorities are in proper order! I'm now going to see the movie, Charlie Wilson's War. If it's noteworthy, I'll be happy to report back. Happy Sunday Evening.

Snow in Tehran

I should have gone to bed a long time ago, but Halat also sent me this video clip which she took of snow on Tehran's Mirdamad Boulevard, as she and her father were driving to work this morning. I thought I would share it with you. It was fun to see my beautiful Tehran again. Well, it's beautiful to me. Thank you Halat Jan. Goodnight.

Warm Thoughts on A Winter Night

A Tehran street vendor's tray of piping hot red beets (laboo), January 1, 2007. Photo by Halat.

On my request, my wonderful reader, Halat, who is a blogger and an artist in Tehran has taken this photograph for me. Isn't it just beautiful? I cannot think about Tehran winters without remembering the look, the aroma, and the taste of laboo on street corners. Simply gorgeous! Thank you very much to Halat who is unique and is not at all Yeki mese hameh!

So, this was the last day of my winter break. I must return to work tomorrow and start on a few of those wishes and resolutions I shared with you yesterday. I will again have less time to spend on blogging, and you'll be somewhat rid of me, though not entirely! It has been a very exciting and relaxing couple of weeks, spent with family and friends both online and in real life, proving how the line in between the two lives becomes invisible at times. I took part in many gatherings and a wedding as you know. Warm memories of these days will be with me for the cold months ahead. I'm not sure I'm ready to go back (postham bad joori baad khordeh!), but I must try. Thank you all for being such good and generous readers, keeping me company through this holiday season with Yalda, Christmas, and New Year celebrations. Be good y'all.

Bacheh Mahal's

Chattanooga Restaurant, Tehran, in its days of grandeur

Life can be amusing! A group of my extended family who live in Europe are in our area for their winter vacation, attending our family reunion. The amusing thing about this family of four brothers and two sisters is that they were my and my sisters’ friends as we were growing up in Tehran. Their mother was one of my late mother’s best friends, too. We were each other’s “Bacheh Mahal,” riding bicycles in our neighborhood and taking the same bus to school together and learning life a few doors down from each other. One of their boys married one of my sisters. One of their girls married another boy, four doors down on our street.

Seeing them last night had all the joy of a family reunion, plus opening the floodgates of childhood and adolescence memories and nostalgia. We laughed hard remembering each other as the scrawny young boys and feisty young girls that we were. We reminded each other of the tricks we used to play on each other and on our parents, and how we would ward off our nosey neighbors who liked nothing more than to gossip about us! We reflected on some sadder memories and rejoiced in realizing that some of us had kept in touch with yet others from our neighborhoods. It was such a good time! It won’t come as a surprise to you when I tell you that I was one of the noisiest ones, telling the most stories and reminding everyone about our moments of mischief, discovery, embarrassment, and first love. We had a blast and that felt so good. Such is the texture and feeling of old friendships—even if you don’t see your old friends for a long time, when you do see them, it feels as though the years of separation never happened, such is the feeling of continuity in friendships. I am expecting my family for dinner tonight (yes, all those 30 people from last night), so I will go do what needs to be done about that. I will see whether I can also post another part of my Yalda story later today. With so much to do, I’m not hopeful. Happy Sunday!

Nostalgia In A Hotel Room

Autumn in Qom Province, Iran.

I am in a hotel room, exhausted from a very long day of driving to an intensive training class and "team building" with several colleagues from work. Unpacking, I realized I had forgotten to pack the book I was reading. Without a book, I will have a hard time falling asleep tonight. I searched the room and found nothing to read. I then turned on the television, hoping it would help. I laughed, as I couldn't remember the last time I had mindlessly turned on the TV! I switched the channels, feeling smug to have the remote control all to myself, absent my kids who usually hoard the device and the appliance! Switching from station to station, I found there was nothing I wanted to watch. I have simply grown out of the habit of television, it seems, and I don't mind it at all.

My room overlooks a man-made lake on which colored lights and fountains are creating beautiful sites and sounds in the dark. A thought grips me again, as it does everytime I find a moment to sit down quietly. What is happening in Tehran right now? It's early morning hours of a Tuesday there now. What are my friends doing right now? Who is driving through the streets that once used to be my neighborhood? Are the shops open now? Soon, the Haji Agha that runs the small produce market on the corner would set up the tray which holds heaps of large red beets, laboo, to be cooked and ready for sale by noon, clouds of steam rising from it, and the delicious and unparalleled smell of it filling that corner of the neighborhood on a cold November day. I am dead tired and my mind is filled with memories, sights, and smells of Tehran. I miss it again tonight.

Shahrivar

These days classes have started both at UC and at my kids' college, as well as in many schools. This marks the beginning of the Fall season in these parts. My mental calendar, however, still considers these days as the last weeks of summer. I am filled with images of rice harvest in paddies in Northern Iran. I know these days everybody in Gilan prays it won't rain. Rain would surely hamper the harvest. I have rice paddies (shalizar) in my thoughts.

I am also filled with memories of my childhood and all the work that was done in Shahrivar (August 22-September 21) in our house in preparation for Fall and Winter. We had to stop sleeping outside on the balcony in Shahrivar, because the air would get too chilly at night. Our home was filled with the hustle and bustle and smells of making homemade lime juice, tomato paste, pickles, and jams. My mother would lead the family in letting go of the sweet and easy air of Iranian summers, getting ready for the active seasons ahead.

Paying homage to my childhood memories, during the years we lived in Tehran, one day in mid-Shahrivar I would take my kids and their friends to Tehran Bazaar, where in Bein-ol-Haramain we would find wholesale stationery shops. We would buy school supplies and return home to celebrate the beginning of the school year, and I would help my children make memories they would cherish for the rest of their lives, just as I had done as a child. I miss the excitement of this time of year. I miss Shahrivar in Iran.

Tochal Last Friday, 7:08 a.m.

Looking at Tehran from Tochal. Photo by Alef Shin, August 10, 2007

I used to think that Tehran's air pollution was responsible for, among other things, people's hopelessness. I held that if the air cleared up and people could only see the mountains surrounding Tehran everyday, they would find new resolve to live, because you couldn't see those mountains and not want to live, to smile, to love. Living elsewhere and deprived of it all, I would say today that just knowing that those mountains are still there, the city underfoot, and the millions of people inside, even if I can see none of them right now, gives me the will to live to see them again, all that makes my Tehran, the city I love.

(Click on photo to see details.)

Tehran, Last Days of Spring

Source: Mehr News

Daydreaming

It's been a roller-coaster of a week, I'll say. I have gone through what probably is the widest range of emotions someone could have in just a week! You guys must be exhausted just reading about me (and you don't know some of the things I didn't report!). I feel overwhelmed. To add to the situation, whenever I get really sad, I start getting nostalgic and homesick for Tehran. Bia o dorostesh kon! I wander its streets and roads in my daydreams, and dream about being in Tehran in my sleep.

This is Modarres Freeway or Parkway in Tehran. It starts in Haft-e-Tir Square in Central Tehran and runs all the way to Northern Tehran. It is the second oldest freeway in Tehran, so the shrubbery and the trees lining it are mature and lush and gorgeous. It is a road I used to take home from work everyday. On smug-free days like the one in the picture, you can see the mountains located to the North of Tehran.

I miss my Tehran today, on top of all the other things going on around me. Right now, all I want to do is to take this freeway South and go down to Jomhouri Avenue, get lost in the crowds and the loud traffic of it, find my way to Pirashki Khosravi, have a pirashki (or two) with a bitter turkish coffee, the like of which no one else makes in the world. The store is now owned by an Armenian family, though there are pictures inside of the man named "Khosravi" and his Armenian staff in the 1950's and 1960's. There are no chairs for you to sit at Pirashki Khosravi. You must eat standing up and leave, though no one ever rushes you to leave. You can stay if you want and watch the hundreds of different people who come in every hour. I have done this so many times--just standing there in that small shop, watching people come and go. I miss it today, my city.

Tehran Yesterday, Washed by the Rain.....

Here's a picture of "my beloved," beautiful ugly city, taken yesterday by Mr. Karim Arghandehpour, who is a famous and wonderful journalist, author, and scholar in Iran. Those of you who read Farsi can visit his blog at http://www.futurama.ir/ .

Packing Begins......

The last time I packed boxes and suitcases, I was crying. I was reflecting on my long journey through life, packing boxes and suitcases for the past 28 years. Moving out of my parents’ house, moving to America, moving to Iran, moving back to America, moving back to Iran, moving back to America, moving back to Iran, and finally moving back to America, packing, leaving, crying. When I arrived at my sister’s house last year, I was thinking how tired I was of moving, moving, and moving, and never really arriving to stay for good. I reflected that everything in life gets better with practice; that you get used to everything. The only thing you never get used to, the only thing that the more you do, the worse you get at it, and the less you want to try it again, is saying good-bye. Each time it gets harder, because by now you are familiar with the pain that awaits you, loneliness, homesickness (wherever that home was), missing your family, missing your friends, missing the places and people you left behind. Over the past year, I have missed Tehran so much. It was a hometown I got to know again--on a very intimate level this time. I miss the afternoons of Tehran. In winter I miss the trays of piping hot red beets (laboo) on street corners. In spring I miss the green baby almonds (chaghaleh), and the gorgeous sweet fresh white berries (toot sefid) which come around in June, displayed in huge, heaping trays everywhere. I miss seeing the hundreds of happy families going for an evening picnic in Park-e-Mellat, carrying their food, their carpet, and their badminton sets. I miss the smug-ridden town, offering the deafening sound of honking horns on a constant basis. I miss the grid-locked traffic, where each car you pass has a group of young men and women in it, playing different kinds of loud music, talking in an animated fashion, and laughing. I miss the smell of nazri food, a gorgeous bowl of beautifully decorated sholeh zard. I remember when we were children, people offered this food to us in real white bowls with red-rose (gol-e-sorkhi) pattern. My mother always had us deliver the bowls to their owners with a red rose from our garden in it. Ah, the smell of those velvet roses and their nearby Persian Jasmines still have me drunk with memories of a childhood which was nothing short of perfect. I miss all traditions that make Tehran my hometown. I miss the vendors who, as you got ready to pay for your purchase, offered whole-heartedly, “mehman bashid,” be my guest. I have the boxes and the wrapping material ready. I’m sitting here looking at them. This time when I move, I won’t cry. I am going to a beautiful new home, a home that will have room for all of us to be and do as we are accustomed. It has beautiful trees all-around, and you can see the green hills from its windows. It is a home for which I have waited for many years, maybe my whole life. My own home. I already know where around that home I will plant my pomegranate and fig trees, the ones that will bring prosperity to my Iranian home. I don’t cry this time. I now live in my old, new, hometown; a place of which I have many good memories, and freer and lighter than I have been in years, I have every intention of making many many new good memories here. I still miss my beautiful ugly Tehran, but I feel my city of childhood, love, and so many memories, has blessed me with good wishes for moving on, for building this new life. I pick up a piece of bubble wrap, and carefully wrap the first item. I am smiling.