The official, Iranian government line on the US presidential election has been that they don’t mind who is elected, as long as they deal with Iran on a basis on fairness and respect, and recognise Iran’s national rights. After last week’s victory, President Ahmadinejad sent Obama a message of congratulations, in a first for an Iranian president since the victory of the Islamic Revolution (Feb 1979).
Let’s all hope for better things.
Sunday, 9 November 2008
Saturday, 18 October 2008
SUCCESS AT LAST!
A few days ago I received a formal offer of publication for my proposed book Among the Iranians and two days ago I received the contract by email. All I have to do now is print it out, sign it and return it to the publishers in Boston, Mass.
It’s been so long since I sent in the proposal (March 2007 – before we left London, in fact) that I am used to waiting for a response and I find it hard to believe that the wait is over and that I now need to get down to work. The manuscript has to be ready by 15 June 2009, more or less the time when the children’s examinations are over, very conveniently.
Today I made a start with a new chapter on clothes.
It’s been so long since I sent in the proposal (March 2007 – before we left London, in fact) that I am used to waiting for a response and I find it hard to believe that the wait is over and that I now need to get down to work. The manuscript has to be ready by 15 June 2009, more or less the time when the children’s examinations are over, very conveniently.
Today I made a start with a new chapter on clothes.
Wednesday, 8 October 2008
Back to Tehran (20 September 2008)
We got back to Tehran around midnight on Saturday, September 20th. Although we had made sure all the windows were shut fast, the house was full of dust. Drama Queen just had to do the dusting at the time and would not be persuaded to leave it until the morning. Hossein went out in search of essentials, like milk (you’ve got to hand this to Tehran: you can find shops open at this time of night) and came back with a roast chicken for the pre-dawn meal, this being the 20th of Ramadan.
Schools started two days later, on Tuesday 23rd September, which barely gave us time to pick up schools things and uniforms, shorten trousers, label and cover school books. Since then, it’s been non-stop work clearing a huge ironing backlog, clearing out wardrobes and cupboards, shopping and doing myriad other things around the house.
Then there was some work checking against copy waiting for me from the publishers I work for and the final check of the chapter I’ve written for a collection of essays (Face, Language and Social Processes, forthcoming in 2009, Equinox Press). Oh, and a huge chunk of my time and energy goes into comforting frantic Drama Queen, who on the first day back from her Art High School decided that everything is too difficult for her and she won’t make it and everybody is better than her, and she’ll fail the year and people will laugh at her… Two weeks on, she is admittedly better, but still needs practical help and psychological support. Thank God that at least Yussi absolutely loves his new school and has made a very good start.
And I thought I was meant to be writing.
Schools started two days later, on Tuesday 23rd September, which barely gave us time to pick up schools things and uniforms, shorten trousers, label and cover school books. Since then, it’s been non-stop work clearing a huge ironing backlog, clearing out wardrobes and cupboards, shopping and doing myriad other things around the house.
Then there was some work checking against copy waiting for me from the publishers I work for and the final check of the chapter I’ve written for a collection of essays (Face, Language and Social Processes, forthcoming in 2009, Equinox Press). Oh, and a huge chunk of my time and energy goes into comforting frantic Drama Queen, who on the first day back from her Art High School decided that everything is too difficult for her and she won’t make it and everybody is better than her, and she’ll fail the year and people will laugh at her… Two weeks on, she is admittedly better, but still needs practical help and psychological support. Thank God that at least Yussi absolutely loves his new school and has made a very good start.
And I thought I was meant to be writing.
Vienna, 19-20 September 2008
On the way to Tehran we had to spend the night in Vienna, thanks to the lack of direct flights between Athens and Tehran. Athens had just started cooling down (meaning that the highest temperature was 31C), but Vienna was already wintry (8-13C with rain the day we were there), which was a bit of a shock. I had anticipated something like that and had packed three hoodie jackets for Hossein and the children, but I was literally left out in the cold.
As soon as we got out the airport train station in Vienna, I popped into a small supermarket and bought a pashmina shawl, an unlikely but necessary souvenir.
In fact, the overnight was not much use: we had woken up at 3.30 am that morning in order to catch the 7.15 flight to Vienna. We left our suitcases at the airport so that we could hang around a little and have lunch before checking into our hotel room just after lunchtime. The plan was that we would rest for a bit after lunch and then go out in the evening, but we were so tired, that we slept until after 6 pm when it was already dark. To be fair, we prepared to go out and we did walk along the street where our hostel was. A supermarket was still open. We went in to have a look and ended up buying snacks and a bite for supper. Coming from Athens, the streets looked deserted, even though it was Friday evening, and Hossein had a cold, so we went back to our room: we were simply too tired to go anywhere.
The following morning we had just two hours to look around the historic centre of Vienna, so we got off at Museums Quartier, walked through towards the Hofburg and St Michaelsplatz and caught the underground again back to the hostel to retrieve our bags and get to the airport.
Last time I was in Vienna (1986, half my life ago) I was twenty-two. I was travelling on an Interrail student ticket with my then classmate and now good friend Anastasia, who was in love with the city. We had stayed for a whole week then, but I now find I can’t remember much of the city as it was then. This is the mystery of the human mind. I wonder what Anastasia remembers of our stay.
As soon as we got out the airport train station in Vienna, I popped into a small supermarket and bought a pashmina shawl, an unlikely but necessary souvenir.
In fact, the overnight was not much use: we had woken up at 3.30 am that morning in order to catch the 7.15 flight to Vienna. We left our suitcases at the airport so that we could hang around a little and have lunch before checking into our hotel room just after lunchtime. The plan was that we would rest for a bit after lunch and then go out in the evening, but we were so tired, that we slept until after 6 pm when it was already dark. To be fair, we prepared to go out and we did walk along the street where our hostel was. A supermarket was still open. We went in to have a look and ended up buying snacks and a bite for supper. Coming from Athens, the streets looked deserted, even though it was Friday evening, and Hossein had a cold, so we went back to our room: we were simply too tired to go anywhere.
The following morning we had just two hours to look around the historic centre of Vienna, so we got off at Museums Quartier, walked through towards the Hofburg and St Michaelsplatz and caught the underground again back to the hostel to retrieve our bags and get to the airport.
Last time I was in Vienna (1986, half my life ago) I was twenty-two. I was travelling on an Interrail student ticket with my then classmate and now good friend Anastasia, who was in love with the city. We had stayed for a whole week then, but I now find I can’t remember much of the city as it was then. This is the mystery of the human mind. I wonder what Anastasia remembers of our stay.
Wednesday, 17 September 2008
Temple, Church, Mosque
If you stand at the north-west corner of Monastiraki Square in Central Athens and direct your gaze towards the south, you will be rewarded with an image worth a thousand words.
Far in the background, stands the holy rock of Acropolis, and over it, one of the most famous buildings in the world, the Parthenon. Visible from many parts of the city, it was dedicated to the temple of the virgin goddess of wisdom Athena in 5th c. BC, at the height of Athenian civilisation.
In the foreground, in the middle of the square is occupied by the Byzantine-style church of the Passing of our Lady (Koimisis tis Theotokou) and in the middle distance between the temple and the church is an Ottoman period mosque, now housing the Museum of Folklore Art.
These three religious influences can be seen all over the culture, the food, the music, and reflected in the tourist souvenirs sold around the area: polymer clay replicas of the Parthenon and gods of the ancient Greek pantheon, Byzantine icons of saints and the Holy Mary, antique silver jewellery and semi-precious stones similar to the ones sold in the Tehran bazaar.
All these under the cyan blue Attic sky, today dotted with fluffy clouds that remind me of Vatican frescoes.
Far in the background, stands the holy rock of Acropolis, and over it, one of the most famous buildings in the world, the Parthenon. Visible from many parts of the city, it was dedicated to the temple of the virgin goddess of wisdom Athena in 5th c. BC, at the height of Athenian civilisation.
In the foreground, in the middle of the square is occupied by the Byzantine-style church of the Passing of our Lady (Koimisis tis Theotokou) and in the middle distance between the temple and the church is an Ottoman period mosque, now housing the Museum of Folklore Art.
These three religious influences can be seen all over the culture, the food, the music, and reflected in the tourist souvenirs sold around the area: polymer clay replicas of the Parthenon and gods of the ancient Greek pantheon, Byzantine icons of saints and the Holy Mary, antique silver jewellery and semi-precious stones similar to the ones sold in the Tehran bazaar.
All these under the cyan blue Attic sky, today dotted with fluffy clouds that remind me of Vatican frescoes.
Friday, 5 September 2008
A Hafez Augury
Athena, Yusef and I had pledged to give some money to the poor so that our trip would be sorted. On our last night in Tehran (Friday 22 August), Hossein’s niece and nephew came round to say goodbye, so I grabbed the chance to put the money pledge in an envelope and send it over to my sister-in-law to pass on to a relative and on to the poor.
As I scrubbed the cooker ready for our departure early the following morning, I was going over the adventure we had with this year’s Greek holiday. Then I remembered what happened the previous Thursday (14 August) when Hossein’s brothers and sisters and their families and we four took a picnic in a park in central Tehran by way of a goodbye.
I sat on a bench with two of my sisters-in-law. A beggar came by holding a small box with folded pieces of paper in the one hand and a parakeet on the other. Each paper carries a lyric poem, a ghazal, by Hafez, Iran’s most famous mystical poet, and an augury relating to the poem and presumably giving advice to the reader of the augury. Without warning, the deaf-and-dumb beggar put the parakeet on my hand and proferred the box to it; I was startled, felt some humidity on my hand, motioned to the man to take the bird away. It picked out an augury and the man indicated that I should take it.
I can’t remember the poem, but the augury said: a journey is on the cards, but it will be problematic; however, the problems will be solved by giving money to charity.
As I scrubbed the cooker ready for our departure early the following morning, I was going over the adventure we had with this year’s Greek holiday. Then I remembered what happened the previous Thursday (14 August) when Hossein’s brothers and sisters and their families and we four took a picnic in a park in central Tehran by way of a goodbye.
I sat on a bench with two of my sisters-in-law. A beggar came by holding a small box with folded pieces of paper in the one hand and a parakeet on the other. Each paper carries a lyric poem, a ghazal, by Hafez, Iran’s most famous mystical poet, and an augury relating to the poem and presumably giving advice to the reader of the augury. Without warning, the deaf-and-dumb beggar put the parakeet on my hand and proferred the box to it; I was startled, felt some humidity on my hand, motioned to the man to take the bird away. It picked out an augury and the man indicated that I should take it.
I can’t remember the poem, but the augury said: a journey is on the cards, but it will be problematic; however, the problems will be solved by giving money to charity.
Athens At Last
As I explained in the previous post, we weren’t able to travel on the flight to Istanbul on Monday 18 August as planned. The passport hitch was resolved the following day, but the bigger problem was finding free seats on any flight to Istanbul. This proved impossible, mainly because of huge overbooking on Turkey flights (Iranian nationals don’t require visas to travel to Turkey), so .eventually, we returned the Istanbul tickets and had new ones issued via Vienna, thanks to the unstinting efforts of a travel agent (“the friend of a friend”), who bent over backwards to issue the tickets on Friday 22 August.
We flew to Vienna on Saturday 23 August. We had a five hour stopover there, so we were able to take the CAT train to Vienna and walk until Stefansplatz, teeming with tourists, a festival of Turkish music attracting a fair crowd.
We got to my parents’ house in Athens at 1 am on Sunday morning and have generally been relaxing and doing nothing much since, apart from last Thursday when it was my daughter’s fifteenth birthday, and she was to choose the outing. A sign of the times that the shopping-starved youngster would choose visiting an American-style shopping mall, named rather predictably, The Mall in Athens, near Neratziotissa metro station last.
Athena found all the familiar shops she hadn’t seen since we left London: Zara, Bershka, Funny Fish, Carpisa, Tie Rack, M&S, Nine West, Monsoon, Accessorise. As we sat eating our KFC (the ultimate culinary blasphemy in the land of souvlaki), I looked around at the people and the place. The scene could have been anywhere, from New York to Dubai to Hong Kong. The Mall has been built to cater for Greeks in the same way that ancient Roman emperors provided bread and spectacles to keep the mob quiet. At the same time the traditional areas of Monastiraki and Plaka in the centre of Athens attract tourists in search of a Greece that is fast becoming a museum attraction
We flew to Vienna on Saturday 23 August. We had a five hour stopover there, so we were able to take the CAT train to Vienna and walk until Stefansplatz, teeming with tourists, a festival of Turkish music attracting a fair crowd.
We got to my parents’ house in Athens at 1 am on Sunday morning and have generally been relaxing and doing nothing much since, apart from last Thursday when it was my daughter’s fifteenth birthday, and she was to choose the outing. A sign of the times that the shopping-starved youngster would choose visiting an American-style shopping mall, named rather predictably, The Mall in Athens, near Neratziotissa metro station last.
Athena found all the familiar shops she hadn’t seen since we left London: Zara, Bershka, Funny Fish, Carpisa, Tie Rack, M&S, Nine West, Monsoon, Accessorise. As we sat eating our KFC (the ultimate culinary blasphemy in the land of souvlaki), I looked around at the people and the place. The scene could have been anywhere, from New York to Dubai to Hong Kong. The Mall has been built to cater for Greeks in the same way that ancient Roman emperors provided bread and spectacles to keep the mob quiet. At the same time the traditional areas of Monastiraki and Plaka in the centre of Athens attract tourists in search of a Greece that is fast becoming a museum attraction
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