A Cemetery Visit

SATURDAY 8 MARCH 2008

I still continue to have problems with signing in the blog and posting new entries. I’ve finally decided to write up the entries in Word and post them whenever I’m lucky enough to be able to sign in, so you may notice that the entry date and the posting date may be out of sync. As the Iranians say, forgive me in your kindness.

Yesterday Hossein, the children, my elder sister-in-law and her family and I went to visit our dead at the Behesht-e Zahra Cemetery. Aqa jun and maman-jun, my in-laws, are buried in a two-storey grave (don’t imagine a tall grave; both storeys are below ground) with a granite gravestone level with the ground. It was a triple occasion: a Friday, the anniversary of the Holy Prophet’s death and of the third Imam’s martyrdom, so the cemetery was full of people giving out pledges of thick potage (ash) and saffron rice dessert (shollehzard).

Hossein spread a rug on the next grave and sat square-legged to read the Ar-Rahman chapter from the Holy Quran. This is a chapter about the blessings that God has given the world. A little girl came round and offered us sweets in exchange for a prayer for the dead. A little boy with torn trousers scattered wheat seeds on aqa jun’s and maman-jun’s grave. My brother-in-law gave him some money: the good deed of feeding the birds gives comfort to the souls of the departed.

Beyond a few rows of graves, a young man bent down to a grave and kissed the gravestone. Than he sat square-legged and started crying his eyes out. I listened to Hossein’s reading for a bit, and looked at the young man. The weight of the whole world on his shoulders, he remained bent over the grave, one hand spread on the gravestone as if trying to reach out to those he’s lost.

Two women with faded, patched chadors came over and exchanged hellos with us. They had known aqa-jun when he used to come to visit maman-jun’s grave every Thursday. One of them, Zahra khanum, told him that she had no heating in her room. Aqa-jun promised to get her a small gas stove she could use for cooking and heating. (Aqa-jun was an informal but well-known charity worker: many gave money or things to charity through him, as he knew many needy people and helped out whenever he could.) A few days later he brought the stove in his decrepit pick-up truck (if you haven’t read this blog since the beginning, see entry 28 July 2007) and waited for her for almost two hours at the grave to give her the stove. He was a good man, she said. May God rest his soul and give health and prosperity to his children.

Taxi drivers

Taxi drivers don't usually talk with female passengers, but sometimes I come up with some interesting types.

Two days ago, I got off the Mosallah metro station on my way to the publishers I do some work for. An old Paykan car (modelled on the British Hillman- remember those?) is parked outside. The battered boot bears this inscription:
"Everybody fears Death; I a dishonest friend"

I flag him down. A few minutes later we get stuck in traffic.
"Don't know where all these people are going in the middle of the day," he gripes.
"Shopping for the New Year maybe," I answer, and commit the mistake of giving away the fact that I am not Iranian. Maybe I smile too much.
"Are you foreign, lady?"
I assent, bracing myself for a round of questions.
“So what are you doing here? This is not a country fit to live in.”
“Well…I like it...your culture is interesting,” I venture.
“What’s so interesting about it? We live here because we’ve got no choice, but you?” He pauses. “Is your husband Iranian?”
“Yes, we only came seven months ago.”
“Before he gets too involved, pack up and go. This is no place for you.
Last week, I came across a really funny taxi driver; he managed to extract a free introductory tutorial on modern Greek language and culture. He asked how we say hello and good morning, whether Greeks have a special sensitivity about their wives and daughters (used to, I said, but nowadays less than before). So, we are quite similar, he concluded, and I agreed.

Imagine having to drive through this traffic all day long. One needs to find something to occupy the mind. And what I find quite remarkable is that the vast majority of drivers are SO calm. Iranians and Greeks are unlike each other in this respect at least: Greeks lose their cool very easily when they drive, as if they feel the world is out to get them and they damn and blast their way through the crowded streets. On the contrary, Iranians are mostly unruffled by traffic and by the impudent motorbike who's just shot out of a side street and cut across them without even looking. What will be, will be.

Still Here!

The translation of the teenage novel was finished last week and now my focus is on preparing a taster session for a series of English workshops I am planning to run with a friend.
I finally got my belated copy of MSLEXIA magazine ('for women who write'; if you haven't come across it, do check it out on www.mslexia.co.uk) for Jan/Feb/Mar and I was very pleased to see they published the letter I had sent them when I read the previous copy. Here is the letter dated Dec 07:

"Dear Mslexia

Trust Mslexia to have the finger on the pulse –or is it synchronicity? I moved to Tehran last summer and I received my Oct/Nov/Dec issue only last week with its main feature on Iranian women’s literature. This issue, along with the Writer’s Diary, have been the first items I received in my new PO Box; to me, this was a message of connection at a time when I am working on a non-fiction book aimed at making Iranian everyday culture more widely known to the West. Check out my blog www.movingouteast.blogspot.com (erratically updated, thanks to good old dial-up connection and other ‘technical difficulties’).
Many thanks for a great magazine!"

Talking of the book on Iranian culture, I hope to hear from the North American branch of a British publisher, who have shown strong interest in it. The bulk of the research is now completed and I'm waiting for the offer of a contract before I get down to writing the whole thing. Fingers crossed.

More everyday news: Hossein is in London since Saturday evening but he'll be back in about two weeks. The snow is slowly melting, but we had another white night the night before last. At least the temperature is higher now, so the snow turns to mud instead of ice.

Will be back soon (that's what I always say.)

Snowed Under

Christmas didn’t really feature much here, although we put up our tree from mid december until 6 January. The children were meant to be in school on Xmas day and New Year’s day, but Athena persuaded her other four classmates not to turn up on Christmas. Then, when children in Englsnd went back to school, it started to snow.
Tehran has been under the snow since Thursday before last, and school has been closed too, which felt like a belated New Year holiday, only enforced and unplanned. This has had an impact on my work, which is home-based, but thankfully, schools have re-opened today.

My news on the professional front: I am quite busy, and may soon be busier still with interesting things. I am doing freelance translation for a government publishing company where a friend of mine works, and who have just given me a teenage novel to translate from Persian to English. The publishers think that this novel stands a chance of doing well at an international competition.
Another friend of mine, a Clinical Psychologist, has proposed that we prepare a series of ten English workshops for Clin. Psychologists. If it proves successful , we might repeat the same pattern with different content for different groups. On the whole, and despite the negative aspects of life in Tehran (traffic, pollution and overcrowding mainly), things are much bettter than I hoped, for me at least (Diet Coke is widely available too.)

I’d love to update the blog more often, but the dial-up connection is so slow that I get fed up with it. Today luck was on my side, but, to be fair, I woke up before everyone else, before the server gets overwhelmed.

Fiddler

Every Thursday evening a lonely fiddler walks along the Niloufar Avenue, turns into the Ninth Alley and then into our street. All along his route, he plays the fiddle, a sad, nostalgic tune that reminds me of Greece, and of lost love. He stops by the small park square facing a building on the other side and keeps on playing, even if nobody comes down to give him money. He plays on and on, until a moment he only knows and puts down his bow for a bit. As he walks off, his song of a cruel heart starts again: life must carry on.

A conversation

Conversation between Hossein and his brother on the subject of an older male relative, who grew up in Shahrerey (or colloquially, Shabdolazim), their traditional, religious hometown in the south of Tehran but now lives in a classy, westernised and very expensive north Tehran area.

Brother: Mr X (the relative) says that if he doesn't visit Shabdolazim at least once a week, he feels as if he's lost something; he's in love with the place.

Hossein: I know; I'm a bit like that. As soon as the car turns into the Shabdolazim central square, my heart leaps up with joy.

Sofia (aside, thinking of tiny Greek home island of Kassos, in the south Aegean): Lucky them, that the object of their love is within their reach.

Long time no write

Would you believe it's been more than a month since I wrote last? So much for my resolution to make regular postings. My excuses: moving house (at last!), a temperamental, snail-speed dial-up connection, a server that most of the time cannot access the blog for new posts, and Hossein's absence in London since 21 October, which means that I have to do everything, including helping the children with their homework (not easy since my experience of the Iranian educational system is rudimentary).
Oh, since I wrote last, I have become the proud owner of a PO Box in a central Tehran post office. This is no mean feat: the first time I went to ask, I was told there were more than 2,000 applicants on the waiting list. But I wasn't deterred: next time I went in with Hossein, the Problem-solver, who managed to sort one out for me in a matter of minutes. How? Believe it or not, I still don't know how he managed to sway the very same person who told me about the waiting list. Bless him. And just for the record, the address is Sofia A. Koutlaki, PO Box 15875-1937, Tehran, Iran. So now I can take out subscriptions to my favourite magazines.