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.
Wednesday, 17 September 2008
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
Wednesday, 13 August 2008
Visit to Imam Khomeini's House and Jamaran
Last Monday, as a friend and I were leaving a meeting somewhere in Niavaran Avenue, in the north of Tehran, she asked if I had ever visited Jamaran, the village at the foot of the Alborz mountains where Imam Khomeini lived and where several members of his immediate family, including his widow, still live.
I said that, like millions of people, I had only seen the interior of the Hosseiniyeh (prayer hall) on TV broadcasts.
“Well, then, we must go! It’s only five minutes away,” my friend said.
We drove to the end of the road and turned left. Immediately the feel of the place changed: in place of the wide Niavaran avenue with its luxurious blocks of flats covered in ochre marble and granite, we found ourselves in a village road lined with one-storey mud-brick houses and little shops. We parked the car and turned into a narrow alley with more brick houses. A half-open iron gate revealed a curtain with a flowery curtain billowing in the breeze. Next to it, ivy flows over a high brick wall, telling of life inside the humble courtyard. A few metres beyond, an ancient plane tree overshadows the alley. It is, obviously a couple of centuries old, since new sprouts sprung from its trunk and grew stout and gnarled in turn, next to the mother trunk. A group of boys played football in its shade.
Just beyond the tree, tucked at the end of another narrow alley lies a small heart disease unit, where the Imam was hospitalised when he suffered a heart attack in 1980. After the heart attack, his physicians recommended that he move from Qom to Tehran, where the weather would be more beneficial. But he had no house, so Ayatollah Jamarani, who had in his endowment a small house adjacent to the Hosseiniyeh Jamaran, gave it to the Imam and it has been the Imam’s family home ever since.
The Hosseiniyeh and Imam’s house are literally next door to the heart unit. As we crossed the entrance to the complex, the call for the midday prayer was being broadcast. We carried out our ritual ablutions and entered the Hosseiniyeh.
For those friends who are not familiar with prayers, these are the two Quranic surahs (chapters) used during every prayer. The first one is compulsory, but the second one can be substituted by any other, usually short, surah.
Surah 1: Fatiha (The Opening)
In the name of Allah, Most Gracious, Most Merciful.
Praise be to Allah, the Cherisher and Sustainer of the Worlds;
Gracious, Most Merciful;
Master of the Day of Judgment.
Thee do we worship and Thine aid we seek.
Show us the straight way,
The way of those on whom Thou hast bestowed Thy Grace,
those whose (portion) is not wrath, and who go not astray.
Surah 112: Ikhlas (The Purity of Faith)
In the name of Allah, Most Gracious, Most Merciful.
Say: He is Allah, the One and Only;
Allah, the Eternal, Absolute;
He begetteth not, nor is He begotten;
And there is none like unto Him.
(Translation by Abdullah Yusuf Ali)
The Hosseiniyeh is quite unlike any other place of worship I have seen. The walls are finished with a mixture of mud and hay, like peasant houses and there are no carpets, only thin, woven traditional kilims in blue and white, called zilou. I was told that the Imam resisted any move that could be seen as luxury, such as plastering and painting the walls or replacing the zilous with thicker carpets. He eventually agreed to lining the lower parts of the walls with marble slabs, but only because people who came to listen to him leant on the walls and got their clothes dusty.
To the right, the raised platform famous from TV broadcasts on which the Imam appeared to speak to his followers is never used now. His chair is covered with a white sheet, just as it used to be.
“What is that door on the left side of the platform?” I asked my friend.
We put on our shoes, walked up to the back of the Hosseiniyeh and turned left through a metal gate into a small yard. The other side of the door to the platform, now locked, is linked to the eivan (terrace) in front of the Imam’s reception room, by means of a raised ironwork bridge covered with a length of cheap fitted carpet.
Large French windows open on to the eivan from the reception room. Actually, ‘reception room’ is too grand for this room; I only call it so because this is where the Imam received his guests, otherwise it’s a smallish room lined with a coarse carpet in green background, with a sofa at one end covered in a white sheet and a mantelpiece with a round mirror and a stack of books. His worn-out slippers are paired next to the sofa.
“And to think,” my friend mused, “that from this little room he shook the world.”
The place has such an air of utter simplicity and homeliness that although I had never been here before, I had the feeling I was visiting the house of a beloved grandparent. I thought of how much he could see that we never even dream of and how far we are from his vision of the world.
By the front gate, as I turned my face inwards to take in a last image of the yard, I caught a scent of roses.
I said that, like millions of people, I had only seen the interior of the Hosseiniyeh (prayer hall) on TV broadcasts.
“Well, then, we must go! It’s only five minutes away,” my friend said.
We drove to the end of the road and turned left. Immediately the feel of the place changed: in place of the wide Niavaran avenue with its luxurious blocks of flats covered in ochre marble and granite, we found ourselves in a village road lined with one-storey mud-brick houses and little shops. We parked the car and turned into a narrow alley with more brick houses. A half-open iron gate revealed a curtain with a flowery curtain billowing in the breeze. Next to it, ivy flows over a high brick wall, telling of life inside the humble courtyard. A few metres beyond, an ancient plane tree overshadows the alley. It is, obviously a couple of centuries old, since new sprouts sprung from its trunk and grew stout and gnarled in turn, next to the mother trunk. A group of boys played football in its shade.
Just beyond the tree, tucked at the end of another narrow alley lies a small heart disease unit, where the Imam was hospitalised when he suffered a heart attack in 1980. After the heart attack, his physicians recommended that he move from Qom to Tehran, where the weather would be more beneficial. But he had no house, so Ayatollah Jamarani, who had in his endowment a small house adjacent to the Hosseiniyeh Jamaran, gave it to the Imam and it has been the Imam’s family home ever since.
The Hosseiniyeh and Imam’s house are literally next door to the heart unit. As we crossed the entrance to the complex, the call for the midday prayer was being broadcast. We carried out our ritual ablutions and entered the Hosseiniyeh.
For those friends who are not familiar with prayers, these are the two Quranic surahs (chapters) used during every prayer. The first one is compulsory, but the second one can be substituted by any other, usually short, surah.
Surah 1: Fatiha (The Opening)
In the name of Allah, Most Gracious, Most Merciful.
Praise be to Allah, the Cherisher and Sustainer of the Worlds;
Gracious, Most Merciful;
Master of the Day of Judgment.
Thee do we worship and Thine aid we seek.
Show us the straight way,
The way of those on whom Thou hast bestowed Thy Grace,
those whose (portion) is not wrath, and who go not astray.
Surah 112: Ikhlas (The Purity of Faith)
In the name of Allah, Most Gracious, Most Merciful.
Say: He is Allah, the One and Only;
Allah, the Eternal, Absolute;
He begetteth not, nor is He begotten;
And there is none like unto Him.
(Translation by Abdullah Yusuf Ali)
The Hosseiniyeh is quite unlike any other place of worship I have seen. The walls are finished with a mixture of mud and hay, like peasant houses and there are no carpets, only thin, woven traditional kilims in blue and white, called zilou. I was told that the Imam resisted any move that could be seen as luxury, such as plastering and painting the walls or replacing the zilous with thicker carpets. He eventually agreed to lining the lower parts of the walls with marble slabs, but only because people who came to listen to him leant on the walls and got their clothes dusty.
To the right, the raised platform famous from TV broadcasts on which the Imam appeared to speak to his followers is never used now. His chair is covered with a white sheet, just as it used to be.
“What is that door on the left side of the platform?” I asked my friend.
We put on our shoes, walked up to the back of the Hosseiniyeh and turned left through a metal gate into a small yard. The other side of the door to the platform, now locked, is linked to the eivan (terrace) in front of the Imam’s reception room, by means of a raised ironwork bridge covered with a length of cheap fitted carpet.
Large French windows open on to the eivan from the reception room. Actually, ‘reception room’ is too grand for this room; I only call it so because this is where the Imam received his guests, otherwise it’s a smallish room lined with a coarse carpet in green background, with a sofa at one end covered in a white sheet and a mantelpiece with a round mirror and a stack of books. His worn-out slippers are paired next to the sofa.
“And to think,” my friend mused, “that from this little room he shook the world.”
The place has such an air of utter simplicity and homeliness that although I had never been here before, I had the feeling I was visiting the house of a beloved grandparent. I thought of how much he could see that we never even dream of and how far we are from his vision of the world.
By the front gate, as I turned my face inwards to take in a last image of the yard, I caught a scent of roses.
(Belated) End of School Year Report
Over here life is a bit too busy now because we are trying to tie up loose ends (like this blog post) before the family long holiday which starts on Monday 18 August.
School lessons ended on 20 May and Athena’s and Yusef’s end of term exams were over on 14 June. And after that, three months of uninterrupted leisure (boredom?) until 23September, when the new school year starts. Iranian children usually sign up for classes of swimming, painting, English, pottery and all sorts of things they don’t have the time to do during the school year. Athena and Yusef would like to divide their holidays between London and Greece, but we are not millionaires (yet), so we are going to Greece. We are flying via Istanbul because there are no direct flights from Tehran to Athens, which makes the fare quite expensive anyway. We’ll spend four nights in Istanbul and then fly on to Athens on Friday 23 August, where we’ll stay with my parents for a month.
Although this is going back a bit, I haven’t mentioned what happened with the children’s new schools. I’ve mentioned before that they spent a year at the special Adaptive School, which caters for children who’ve come from abroad, like them. They both did extremely well, exceeding everybody’s expectations: Athena got an average grade of 19.85, coming top of her class (even among students who had been at the school for more than one year) and Yusef 18.79, coming second after a boy in his second year at the school.
With such grades Yusef enrolled in the third and last year of Rahnama’ei (Guidance) School at a small private school twenty minutes’ walk from our house. He’ll only be there for a year before he moves to High School proper (Dabirestan), so another search will be on next spring.
Athena faced a tougher choice: having finished the first year of Dabirestan, she now had to choose among four academic directions (Islamic Studies, Humanities, Maths/Physics, Life Sciences) or Art/Vocational High School. Although I would dearly have liked her to study Humanities and Hossein Maths or Sciences, none of the academic directions appealed to her, so eventually we agreed that she could go to Art School (Honarestan) to study what is here called ‘Graphics’, but includes freehand drawing, calligraphy, working with colour, professional photography, hand printing and other lessons up to a professional standard. So by the time she graduates from Honarestan, she will have all the technical skills she will need to work in design at the same time as continuing her studies at university. She would have taken Art for GCSE if she were still in England, and she would probably have continued it at A level, so, all things considered, she is better off here.
We looked around a few Honarestans and eventually we settled on one not too far from our house. Our initial visit was not very encouraging. To begin with, no men were allowed inside the school grounds (all schooling is segregated in Iran), so Hossein and I sat at a small security office by the front gate and waited for the headteacher to come out to us.
When Hossein explained that Athena was currently in the Adaptive school this year, the headteacher said she regretted that they do not enrol girls from there, because the school is a mish-mash of people and in the past girls who came from there were problematic. Hossein explained that in our case we had no other option but to enrol her there; also when he visited the school the year before he had got a very good impression of it, so he didn’t look further. He added that Athena had been a very good influence on others in her class rather than learning bad things from them.
The headteacher softened; she asked whether Athena dresses modestly like her mother and whether she follows religious precepts. If she doesn’t, she will find difficulty fitting in with the girls of the school.
By the end of the interview she was quite changed. She invited me inside to view the school, spoke to me in English, offered me ice-cream and showed me into the library “We’ve got a foreign visitor,” she told the librarian. There are other foreign mothers in the school too, she said, and she hoped that I would be able to be involved in the affairs of the school.
So it now remains to be seen how well they will both settle in their new schools.
School lessons ended on 20 May and Athena’s and Yusef’s end of term exams were over on 14 June. And after that, three months of uninterrupted leisure (boredom?) until 23September, when the new school year starts. Iranian children usually sign up for classes of swimming, painting, English, pottery and all sorts of things they don’t have the time to do during the school year. Athena and Yusef would like to divide their holidays between London and Greece, but we are not millionaires (yet), so we are going to Greece. We are flying via Istanbul because there are no direct flights from Tehran to Athens, which makes the fare quite expensive anyway. We’ll spend four nights in Istanbul and then fly on to Athens on Friday 23 August, where we’ll stay with my parents for a month.
Although this is going back a bit, I haven’t mentioned what happened with the children’s new schools. I’ve mentioned before that they spent a year at the special Adaptive School, which caters for children who’ve come from abroad, like them. They both did extremely well, exceeding everybody’s expectations: Athena got an average grade of 19.85, coming top of her class (even among students who had been at the school for more than one year) and Yusef 18.79, coming second after a boy in his second year at the school.
With such grades Yusef enrolled in the third and last year of Rahnama’ei (Guidance) School at a small private school twenty minutes’ walk from our house. He’ll only be there for a year before he moves to High School proper (Dabirestan), so another search will be on next spring.
Athena faced a tougher choice: having finished the first year of Dabirestan, she now had to choose among four academic directions (Islamic Studies, Humanities, Maths/Physics, Life Sciences) or Art/Vocational High School. Although I would dearly have liked her to study Humanities and Hossein Maths or Sciences, none of the academic directions appealed to her, so eventually we agreed that she could go to Art School (Honarestan) to study what is here called ‘Graphics’, but includes freehand drawing, calligraphy, working with colour, professional photography, hand printing and other lessons up to a professional standard. So by the time she graduates from Honarestan, she will have all the technical skills she will need to work in design at the same time as continuing her studies at university. She would have taken Art for GCSE if she were still in England, and she would probably have continued it at A level, so, all things considered, she is better off here.
We looked around a few Honarestans and eventually we settled on one not too far from our house. Our initial visit was not very encouraging. To begin with, no men were allowed inside the school grounds (all schooling is segregated in Iran), so Hossein and I sat at a small security office by the front gate and waited for the headteacher to come out to us.
When Hossein explained that Athena was currently in the Adaptive school this year, the headteacher said she regretted that they do not enrol girls from there, because the school is a mish-mash of people and in the past girls who came from there were problematic. Hossein explained that in our case we had no other option but to enrol her there; also when he visited the school the year before he had got a very good impression of it, so he didn’t look further. He added that Athena had been a very good influence on others in her class rather than learning bad things from them.
The headteacher softened; she asked whether Athena dresses modestly like her mother and whether she follows religious precepts. If she doesn’t, she will find difficulty fitting in with the girls of the school.
By the end of the interview she was quite changed. She invited me inside to view the school, spoke to me in English, offered me ice-cream and showed me into the library “We’ve got a foreign visitor,” she told the librarian. There are other foreign mothers in the school too, she said, and she hoped that I would be able to be involved in the affairs of the school.
So it now remains to be seen how well they will both settle in their new schools.
Monday, 11 August 2008
A Visit to Maman Jun's old House
This visit obviously happened before the operation, but I have only been able to write it up now that I can sit at my desk for longer than ten minutes at a time.
Haj Nasser’s blacksmith workshop was at no. 214, 24 Metri Avenue, Shahrerey (Shabdolazim). This twenty-four metre wide avenue, hence its name, radiates to the east of Shabdolazim square and ends at the ancient fortress of Qal’eh Gabri. Haj Nasser married Maman Jun (my mother-in-law, God rest her soul) and moved to Shabdolazim in the mid 50s. After a few years he managed to buy a house plot at no 214, where he had the workshop built, with the house at the back.
I learnt the story of the house in scraps, from bits of memories Maman Jun recalled now and then. At the end of the long corridor that ran the length of the workshop and opened up to the front yard was a small room and the toilet. When I first visited the house in 1989, the small room was used to store Haj Nasser’s work-clothes (too dirty to be let into the house) and to house two washing machines, one AEG automatic and one top-loading, twin tub machine with the instructions in English and Arabic. Why did Maman Jun have two washing machines? I asked. She used the twin tub for her everyday laundry: she filled up the tub manually, making sure it didn’t overflow, set it to wash and went back to the house, only to return in a bit to change the water. The AEG machine was only used on special occasions, such as washing bedlinen, so that it would last longer. (When Maman Jun passed away in 2002 and Haj Nasser moved to a flat, the AEG machine moved too, until, upon his death in 2007, it was given away to a family friend.) This small store room was the birthplace of Mansoureh, my sister-in-law, while the main house was still being built.
To the left of the yard was the outdoor toilet, with a washbasin just outside the toilet and a jasmine tree climbing round the water pipe on the wall. But Maman jun’s favourite part of the yard was the ornamental pool, lined in green, orange-veined marble with a little fountain in the middle. This pool was sometimes transformed into a flower bed, whenever Maman-jun fancied flowers rather than water, and after some time it was turned into a pool again.
The house was sold in the spring of 2002, and with it went a lifetime of memories. The buyer only bought it for its central position: Aqa jun’s sooty blacksmith’s workshop is now turned into a dazzling shop selling chandeliers, crystal and fine china. One evening Mansoureh and I went to buy a gift for a friend. I could hardly believe that this was the very same shop where Aqa jun spent his whole life working.
‘And what about the house?’ I asked the owner.
‘It serves as the shop’s storage area.’
‘Can I go round and have a look? I asked again.
‘By all means; this is your own house,’ he said. He opened the side door on to the yard corridor.
‘Are you coming?’ I asked Mansoureh. She nodded no.
The yard was not as I remembered it. It was now covered by cheap, corrugated plastic sheets, to keep out the dust, and stacked to the roof with carton packaging. I tried to make out where the yard ended and the room began.
The large living room window had no frame anymore, but the marble window sill where I used to sit in the absence of chairs was there, covered in dust. Boxes filled the room too: it was hard trying to remember where the fitted cabinet with Aqa jun’s documents had been; Maman jun’s chest of drawers; the mantelpiece which carried her wedding mirror and candlesticks and which she eventually had removed because it served as a dumping ground for keys, pens, loose bits of paper, detritus of everyday life (Hossein still carries the family tradition using a bronze bowl on top of the shoe cabinet).
The living room light was on. Maman jun’s lampshade in the shape of a flower still hung there, in the middle of a decorative plaster motif.
I pulled my scarf down towards my forehead and made a hasty exit.
Haj Nasser’s blacksmith workshop was at no. 214, 24 Metri Avenue, Shahrerey (Shabdolazim). This twenty-four metre wide avenue, hence its name, radiates to the east of Shabdolazim square and ends at the ancient fortress of Qal’eh Gabri. Haj Nasser married Maman Jun (my mother-in-law, God rest her soul) and moved to Shabdolazim in the mid 50s. After a few years he managed to buy a house plot at no 214, where he had the workshop built, with the house at the back.
I learnt the story of the house in scraps, from bits of memories Maman Jun recalled now and then. At the end of the long corridor that ran the length of the workshop and opened up to the front yard was a small room and the toilet. When I first visited the house in 1989, the small room was used to store Haj Nasser’s work-clothes (too dirty to be let into the house) and to house two washing machines, one AEG automatic and one top-loading, twin tub machine with the instructions in English and Arabic. Why did Maman Jun have two washing machines? I asked. She used the twin tub for her everyday laundry: she filled up the tub manually, making sure it didn’t overflow, set it to wash and went back to the house, only to return in a bit to change the water. The AEG machine was only used on special occasions, such as washing bedlinen, so that it would last longer. (When Maman Jun passed away in 2002 and Haj Nasser moved to a flat, the AEG machine moved too, until, upon his death in 2007, it was given away to a family friend.) This small store room was the birthplace of Mansoureh, my sister-in-law, while the main house was still being built.
To the left of the yard was the outdoor toilet, with a washbasin just outside the toilet and a jasmine tree climbing round the water pipe on the wall. But Maman jun’s favourite part of the yard was the ornamental pool, lined in green, orange-veined marble with a little fountain in the middle. This pool was sometimes transformed into a flower bed, whenever Maman-jun fancied flowers rather than water, and after some time it was turned into a pool again.
The house was sold in the spring of 2002, and with it went a lifetime of memories. The buyer only bought it for its central position: Aqa jun’s sooty blacksmith’s workshop is now turned into a dazzling shop selling chandeliers, crystal and fine china. One evening Mansoureh and I went to buy a gift for a friend. I could hardly believe that this was the very same shop where Aqa jun spent his whole life working.
‘And what about the house?’ I asked the owner.
‘It serves as the shop’s storage area.’
‘Can I go round and have a look? I asked again.
‘By all means; this is your own house,’ he said. He opened the side door on to the yard corridor.
‘Are you coming?’ I asked Mansoureh. She nodded no.
The yard was not as I remembered it. It was now covered by cheap, corrugated plastic sheets, to keep out the dust, and stacked to the roof with carton packaging. I tried to make out where the yard ended and the room began.
The large living room window had no frame anymore, but the marble window sill where I used to sit in the absence of chairs was there, covered in dust. Boxes filled the room too: it was hard trying to remember where the fitted cabinet with Aqa jun’s documents had been; Maman jun’s chest of drawers; the mantelpiece which carried her wedding mirror and candlesticks and which she eventually had removed because it served as a dumping ground for keys, pens, loose bits of paper, detritus of everyday life (Hossein still carries the family tradition using a bronze bowl on top of the shoe cabinet).
The living room light was on. Maman jun’s lampshade in the shape of a flower still hung there, in the middle of a decorative plaster motif.
I pulled my scarf down towards my forehead and made a hasty exit.
Thursday, 7 August 2008
Hospital stay
On Saturday 26 July I was admitted to Mehr Hospital for an obstetric operation. I had a private room with its own bathroom. If it wasn’t for the hospital gown and the oxygen outlet over the bed, one would almost mistake it for a hotel.
Private rooms are paid for at double the rate of a two-bed ones, primarily because patients want a relative to stay with them overnight and not, as in the case of freaky foreigners, in order to be alone. On the Saturday nothing much was happening, so I welcomed the opportunity to finish off some reading and some writing I had started. Except for the two hours of visiting (3-5 pm) when Hossein and the children came to see me that afternoon, I spent a day of perfect solitude, except for the nurses, the catering lady and the cleaner who came and went in the course of their duties, repeatedly asking, “Haven’t you got a companion tonight?”
Sunday morning I was scheduled for the operation between 8 and 8.30 am. I had hoped that Hossein and his sister, who had kindly offered to stay the night with me, would be there before that. As it happened, the doctor came in at 7.30 to say hello and shortly afterwards I was wheeled into the operating theatre. I had to take off my glasses in the room, before getting on the wheeled stretcher (incidentally, why can’t patients walk to the operating theatre?), so from that point onwards the whole thing is, literally, a blur. I looked at the ceiling of the lift, at people’s heads looking down at me and felt like a scene from Casualty. The first porter handed me on to another, as far as I could see, younger one. “Are you in for a Caesarean, lady?” he asked me. Well, I don’t blame him.
“No, thank you,” I answered.
“But you are scheduled for no. 6, which is a Caesarean room,”
“Well, please make sure…it’s not a Caesarean,” I stuttered.
“The doctor knows anyway,” he answered.
The young man left and a nurse took over. She chatted warmly, trying to help me relax while she tried to find a vein for the drip.
“Not very easy,” she said. “Your arms are chubby. But then, Iranian women are chubby, just like me,” she joked.
“Firstly, I am not Iranian, and secondly, you are not chubby,” I retorted.
“Oh, aren’t you? So how come you speak Persian so well?”
The doctor came in at that moment, dressed in green.
“My husband is Iranian,” I answered.
“So,” the doctor asked, “are Iranian men good?”
“Well, mine is; I don’t know about the others.”
“Excellent,” the doctor said, “that’s a fine answer. There are good and bad people everywhere.”
The clock showed 8 am when the needle for the drip went in.
The next time I remember looking at the clock it was 5 pm: I was back in my room with an oxygen mask on my face. I was feeling sick and very thirsty, but at least I had survived the anaesthetic. I had been worried about that.
That night passed without major problems, except that I couldn’t sleep comfortably because of the drip. I came home on Monday afternoon and I was advised to rest in bed as much as possible for the following two weeks. Today is the eleventh day after the operation. I am feeling much better but I get tired easily and if I stand or sit for too long I feel the internal stitches pulling, just like now. I’ll sign off now and take it easy until Monday 18 August, when we are flying to Constantinople, where we will stay for five days on the way to Athens. Fingers crossed, I’ll be all right by then.
Private rooms are paid for at double the rate of a two-bed ones, primarily because patients want a relative to stay with them overnight and not, as in the case of freaky foreigners, in order to be alone. On the Saturday nothing much was happening, so I welcomed the opportunity to finish off some reading and some writing I had started. Except for the two hours of visiting (3-5 pm) when Hossein and the children came to see me that afternoon, I spent a day of perfect solitude, except for the nurses, the catering lady and the cleaner who came and went in the course of their duties, repeatedly asking, “Haven’t you got a companion tonight?”
Sunday morning I was scheduled for the operation between 8 and 8.30 am. I had hoped that Hossein and his sister, who had kindly offered to stay the night with me, would be there before that. As it happened, the doctor came in at 7.30 to say hello and shortly afterwards I was wheeled into the operating theatre. I had to take off my glasses in the room, before getting on the wheeled stretcher (incidentally, why can’t patients walk to the operating theatre?), so from that point onwards the whole thing is, literally, a blur. I looked at the ceiling of the lift, at people’s heads looking down at me and felt like a scene from Casualty. The first porter handed me on to another, as far as I could see, younger one. “Are you in for a Caesarean, lady?” he asked me. Well, I don’t blame him.
“No, thank you,” I answered.
“But you are scheduled for no. 6, which is a Caesarean room,”
“Well, please make sure…it’s not a Caesarean,” I stuttered.
“The doctor knows anyway,” he answered.
The young man left and a nurse took over. She chatted warmly, trying to help me relax while she tried to find a vein for the drip.
“Not very easy,” she said. “Your arms are chubby. But then, Iranian women are chubby, just like me,” she joked.
“Firstly, I am not Iranian, and secondly, you are not chubby,” I retorted.
“Oh, aren’t you? So how come you speak Persian so well?”
The doctor came in at that moment, dressed in green.
“My husband is Iranian,” I answered.
“So,” the doctor asked, “are Iranian men good?”
“Well, mine is; I don’t know about the others.”
“Excellent,” the doctor said, “that’s a fine answer. There are good and bad people everywhere.”
The clock showed 8 am when the needle for the drip went in.
The next time I remember looking at the clock it was 5 pm: I was back in my room with an oxygen mask on my face. I was feeling sick and very thirsty, but at least I had survived the anaesthetic. I had been worried about that.
That night passed without major problems, except that I couldn’t sleep comfortably because of the drip. I came home on Monday afternoon and I was advised to rest in bed as much as possible for the following two weeks. Today is the eleventh day after the operation. I am feeling much better but I get tired easily and if I stand or sit for too long I feel the internal stitches pulling, just like now. I’ll sign off now and take it easy until Monday 18 August, when we are flying to Constantinople, where we will stay for five days on the way to Athens. Fingers crossed, I’ll be all right by then.
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