dear life 77

dear life,
yesterday as we volunteered to serve food for the needy in a community shelter, i was really amazed by these people's characteristics. they stood in a line to get to the counter, they did not kill themselves to get more food (have you seen the scene when food is being served in Iranian wedding ceremonies?) and one even asked to get less pasta cause "i can not eat all that, i don;t want to ruin the food", and they were all so nice and friendly, greeting us and chatting with us with open hearts and smiles - a huge black guy with a problem in one of his eyes said as he waited to take his plate, "Oh, what is this, a beauty pageon with models serving us?" and as they asked of whether our team was related or not (as it was a party and we were trying to get to know each other, no social borders in between), another asked one of us among his laughter, "so, you are available for a date?" and i was ashamed of myself asking so much of you and of god when i saw how they did not resent us or you or god for where they were, when i saw how they had accepted you as you were, making peace with you. we met an Iranian too there, his face a proof to all the hardships he surely had undergone, yet he too smiled, a smile that touched you to the bottom of your heart. wish i could have just a small portion of the peace they had inside.

dear life 76

dear life,
this is the story of my first trip to New York two weeks ago. it is some kind of a report, it did not came out like i wanted it to, but anway, better than nothing to remember the journey by:

"Ok, everybody knows New York, and everybody whom we know and don't know who has visited the city talks of its strangeness and uniqueness and everybody whom we know and don’t know who has not visited the city dreams of once visiting it. The metropolitan is of worldly fame – some loving it for its artistic venues, some for the night life, some for its money and stock markets, some for the shopping, some for the sake of the famous residing there, some for the towers blown up, some just for the fact that others do so, yet there are just those who can’t stand all the life going on around the city, the population, the uncleanness, the traffic, the noise; however, the point is that you have to see New York at least once in your lifetime – who can decide your view of the city better than yourself?
I was doubting the lovely remarks of the city more and more as I drove toward it, pollution hanging over it like a brown feathery giant spreading its wings over the flesh and blood running through the veins of the city, traffic jam creeping in every lane of the several-storey maze of George Washington Bridge like the thousand-head snake of old fables. We were not sure of the route we were driving in, as it did not match the map we had in hand. Passing underneath several stone bridges which looked like the older segments of a not-so-long- history, with cars congested together in the somber air peculiar to the 21st century, it felt strange, not good strange, but saddening, as when you start to doubt modernity in its whole and feel sorry for the human kind altogether, and of course it felt frightening, being lost in a craze that you don’t know to where is taking you.
To be lost feels really bad, doesn’t it? Yet, there always comes that sign which tells you of your next step and with it, comes that sigh of relief which takes away all the pressure. So came the sign and we drove to Connecticut, an hour north of the famed city to drop off one member, park the car – everybody knows parking in New York is a problem of its own – and lead back toward the city to unravel it up close and personal hours later with a train.
The house of the family we went to in Connecticut can have a story of its own, so I will not tell it here, not to ruin the fun of both stories.
As the train started its journey toward New York passing through several small towns and then quarters before our destination, the images at the other side of the window were as unwelcoming as the scenes when we were nearing the city – industrial areas, houses with backyards filled with unwanted objects and children's stuff scattered here and there, even with clothes hanging on ropes in some, Harlem and its apartments, its graffiti and narrow streets, and the narrow green space in between the rails and the fences separating them from the social atmosphere behind which were spotted with garbage among the not so fresh trees which we could assume were craving for the once good old times.
Then the train arrived in the Grand Central Station, the oldest of its kind in all US. It was … - I am trying to find the right adjective - giving you that first image of the New York you know from movies.
That half a day and the next whole one spent in the cosmopolitan city served quite well to change those first images and you thought to yourself, "so, that is the reason why New York has become New York, why it is there in the books, in the movies, and in people's thoughts."
As we put the first step out in the street, the heavy rain forced us to open up umbrellas. With our host in New York we walked through Fifth Avenue and Broadway, people moving around attending whatever business they had, umbrellas touching each other's arms as they swept by each other.
The Rockefeller Center rising high into the sky welcomed us in, as we walked in the hallways to look for the two spaces dedicated to the sale of part of Elton John's closet to aid the kids suffering from AIDS. We watched through the window the group inside who were going through the stuff – one coat was priced just 25000 dollars, another … - we made our jokes as we passed by the eager buyers who looked strange enough New Yorkers. "So can’t he just spare some money for the aid and also give away the clothes as another form of charity?" (but then who can make use of those fancy clothes? So guess he has made the right choice!) or "Maybe he has just bought the clothes cheap and is selling them with a higher price."
Lights in Time Square were beginning to be turned on one after another when we arrived there. We opened our way to go downstairs to Hard Rock Café. As I was walking in, I heard this father behind me telling his son, "Look," and I looked too with the boy, "Have you seen a TV as large as that anywhere before?" I hadn't; the screen had three sections to cover the whole façade of the building in front. Both I and the boy were amazed of the gigantic pictures imposing themselves to the passersby.
The Café has branches all around the world, so you almost know what to expect. Guitars of the famous, teddy bears with the name of the city over their blouses as souvenirs sold, rock music played loud, … but here the guitars on the walls belonged to ones like AC/DC and Kiss to name just a few and in a window installed just down the stairs, the Beatles' suits and their backpacks (which looked so ordinary and somehow ugly, like the uniforms of schoolboys) showed off.
Our friends' house was in East Village, where we took a short rest before going out for dinner. An Italian restaurant, full of young and old trying to have a good time in the small but friendly atmosphere, to whom we joined, enjoying ourselves for the next one or two hours.
The club we headed to afterwards was the complete opposite of the grand several-storey ones found in DC or California. The small space created a somehow cozy atmosphere where you could relax and dance a few steps to the international mood enhanced by the music playing in the air.
Walking back toward home, we stopped at a small bar to amuse our ears to the soft live jazz music played inside before dropping dead after such long hours of driving and tourist walking to get ready for yet another day of New York sightseeing to come.

The second day we were the exact embodiment of tourists with little time and lots of things to see in a city with so much to see. A friend from Toronto whom we had not seen for some nine months joined us and our four-strong group started our tour from in front of the oldest pub in New York where they served beer out of those old-style wooden barrels.
Another friend, a Columbian woman whom I had come to known while she was living in Tehran joined us too for a few hours. Not only was seeing her and talking of nothing but everything great, but also what was fabulous was her actually being a tour leader; so from then on we were real real tourists in New York.
East village toward Greenwich, George Washington Square with its first Roman-style arch, the vicinity of New York University – its library, Islamic center, the alley where the faculty houses were located, its law department, etc – then to Soho – where artists presented their art, mostly paintings and photography works, on the sidewalks, one having his CD player with a bunch of CDs over his car parked just behind him, the other with her storage room in the back of her van – then toward little Italy – where the Italians, whom we found were the second most prosperous group of immigrants after the Jewish in the US, had settled in the first time they had arrived in the city years ago; tables were awaiting customers on the sidewalks in front of the restaurants and cafes, waiters setting them and inviting the tourists in, just to give you the feeling of being in a Europe in the middle of the US; the quarter however has today some sort of Chinese identity to it, as the Chinese population from the neighboring China Town has crept into the area over the years – the China town is something like Iranian bazaars, where you can find no matter what: duplications of many famous brands, copied DVDs of the latest movies, etc. all in apparently cheap prices , and lots of lots of people packed together moving around like a swarm of bees going from shop to shop to satiate their self thirst with some money spending; we couldn’t wait to get out of here and our Columbian friend bid us farewell giving us directions for the rest of our tour.
We then headed toward the Ground Zero, an unusually void space in the middle of high-rises and congested city life. Once here stood two towers, high into the heart of the skies, boasting to all others around of their grandeur and of being a symbol of New York. Today, only posters rest to tell of that one-time glory and add to it the story of how they were gone, in just minutes, taking with them lives endeared by many, the story of how people united to soothe the pain, and the story of the new baby to be born out of the sadness, suffering, hatred, love, and passion, to let the future generations remember the two buildings which turned into ashes and whose ashes changed the history of not only a city and a country but the whole globe.
Each of us told our own story of where we were and how we reacted when the planes hit the first and then the second tower. None of us had believed the incident to be true, but today it felt truer than anything else around us, as wars have been started and are to be started, just because some fundamentalists chose to prove themselves right as they did on that particular day. And now years after, it was just announced in the news the day before we visited the site that remains of bones from those people exploded in the towers had been found on the roof of another high-rise nearby which was to undergo renovation (and we thought "How come? Is this another version of remnants of our Iran-Iraq war martyrs still being found from time to time, reminding us of the brutality and invigorating the pain and sufferings?")
Next we walked through Wall Street and its famous bull statue, then we went on a fairy to Staten Island to see at least from a distance the Statue of Liberty; afterwards we had lunch on the Fishermen's port where people and tourists were enjoying the sun and the show by an African-American who seemed to have no bones in his body as he moved around more like a snake than a human (He surely did not have any bones in his body!) on a weekend. We rested for a few hours next to the water, facing Manhattan and Brooklyn Bridges.
With too much still to see and tiredness gradually taking us over, we decided to skip the upper town Central Park and the museums, and to get back to the Village; this time walking through Greenwich and the West Village.
What made these neighborhoods noteworthy was of course their structure and buildings as if reincarnated from another time and space, but also the people walking around: The punk guy with his cock like blue hair and black t-shirt and shorts took you back to the eighties; the chic ladies in the latest fashions took you the glamorous prêt-a-porter runway shows; the gay lovers walking hand in hand presented you with a reality you had till now just read in books about, and the hippy girls and boys made you envy the carefree life they were living. The characteristic features of the area that could otherwise be paradoxical combined as shades of one color, the color of New York: people queued up to the next corner in front of the most famous cup cake store in all the city; a bookstore graced another corner with its large sign of Biography Bookshop; the boutiques of stylish brands seduced shoppers with their unique window arrangements, and a restaurant with an odd setting served a Brazilian-style sushi, a new innovation bringing good fortunes to the owner.
Then there were all these small flower booths all around the streets we walked by, fresh flowers which painted the sidewalks with fresh rainbows of color and a taste of nature in the middle of modern life. And the petit cafes and bars all around were just incredible; with styles as diverse as the nationalities residing there, none were empty, all hosting at least one or two guests: the Irish pub, the Chinese bar, the French café, the one whose owner's apartment was next door and as he chatted with a neighbor, the door ajar let us pick inside, where his baby son was playing and the hall windows opened to a small yet beautiful backyard, and the Moroccan one which we took special interest in, with its eastern-style tiled tables and seats set outside just a few steps lower than the sidewalk level in which a middle-aged man and a gypsy-dressing woman sat to relax while amusing themselves with some guitar playing.
The next stop was another European-style (a New-Yorker reading this would probably get offended, "European-style, ha!") attraction of the city. In Union Square artists of all ages set tables at one side of the place selling paintings, t-shirts, pins, and in another part, a farmers' market was set up, where you could buy the freshest vegetables and fruits and various types of bread direct from the producer, or could freshen up on a glass of grapefruit juice from the flask of a not-so-young woman who also sold home-made cookies and cakes.
And although we were running out of time, the fatigued group of ours decided not to leave the metropolitan with a taste of its famous cheesecake. We waited in line for some time as the bakery was packed with people coming from far and near to prepare for the Easter celebration the day after with rabbit chocolates, cookies, and cakes.

A taste of New York cheesecake still in our mouth and the experience of things both strangely odd and familiar becoming a new part to our entity, we bid farewell to our great hosts, wishing to return to the city to discover more of what still remained to be explored."

dear life 75

dear life,
tonight we went to the stand-up comedy show of Ebrahim Nabavi. you know him of course and his famous funny stories on the everyday problems of Iran's society and politics.
I was sitting among this crowd of some two hundred Iranians and felt such an stranger to the place and people. i listened to his words, i laughed, but yet my heart cried bringing tears to my eyes and ache to every muscle in my body. whatever downside he refered to of the country with so much problems made me think of why i have left to come where i don't belong and made me miss the place like hell. i feel so lost here, i just want to be there, sit in the bus, be stuck in the crazy traffic of tehran, be furious over people just throwing their garbage here and there, be sorry for all the hardships, but be there, just be there.

dear life 74

dear life,
it is raining cats and dogs outside. the window opens to a beautiful lake with trees all around, spotted by a few cherry blossoms here and there. the music is playing in the living room - so close so far - and i am feeling so close so far from home. Thousands of miles away, i have chatted with a friend, talked to another, and i have felt this damn distance, yet i feel somehow calm, as i have all of it - the places, the people, the love, the craziness, the whole life - in a safe corner of my heart, and that is mine forever and that gives me joy as i try to embrace the new beauties you are presenting with open arms. just need some strength, so you have to help me out and wish me luck.

dear life 73

dear life,
this is the story of my carry-on which got lost during my trip to DC. hope you enjoy it.
"Oops, where am I? Have we already arrived?" I look around, paying as much attention as I can with my sleepy head. I hear some mumbling and as I listen more carefully; I understand English spoken around, so, guess we are there – but wait a minute, the accent is not American, it is pure British mixed with some Hindu-British, and so I start wandering. Weren't we supposed to go to the States? Where is my mom? Where are the ones I made friends with during the flight?
I eye everywhere, but no sign of mom, no sign of familiar faces; wait, there is one far away. The little black boy who sat next to me in the plane as we talked of our first experience of a trip so long. He was funny ok, yet he had that sense of having it inside him to turn into a great bully one day, soon that he had traveled enough to be able to boast of it to others. I open my mouth to call him to see if he knows what is going on, but before I can say anything, someone reaches for him from out of nowhere and takes him away, smiling as she welcomes him. So gone he is! The others around are big guys, mostly on the verge of explosion of so much food they have stuffed inside before leaving for the trip as to assure for a safer stay in an unfamiliar land. They are all busy looking for their loved ones scattered around in the airport. The good thing is they can not leave the spot and have to wait for their loved ones to pick them up, so I have more time to search for a familiar face, not feeling as lonely, even though I am trembling of fear as I am starting to feel left behind and lost, yet do not dare to raise my childish voice to get some attention.
One by one they are gone into tired but familiar arms - some are welcomed by a big hug, some by just a smile – the kind that comes when you see your family after a while - some are taken off their feet with excitement, and some are just simply gone. And suddenly I am left all alone.
Tears start to fall down my face, over my red dress we had bought new for the trip with my mom, which is now wrinkled and not so much fresh, exactly like my own features.
I remember just a few hours ago when I parted my mom in another airport where we began our journey into the unknown. We were supposed to sit next to each other, but then the airport official asked her to sit me in another section where I would have more space to play around, assuring her that I would be in good hands and she would have me back safe and sound when we arrived in our final destination. I saw the perplexed look in her eyes for a moment – the look she has whenever she is not sure and is afraid yet does not dare to reveal - then she took out something she had put in my bag to keep for her and kissed me goodbye, whispering in my ears soft words, "Go find some friends, have fun, and promise to be a good girl. See you when we get there," she concluded as she straightened my dress and handed me to the young man standing at the foot of the plane stairs waiting for me and other kids to be taken to the playground at the lower level of the plane. She once more asked the officer to make sure that I would be taken care of till the final destination where she could have me in her sweet arms. And as such we had parted!
And now here I am, left alone, tears all over my face, asking for my mom while sobbing and running out of breath. Then a lady in airport uniform nears me with worrying eyes. "Why are you crying, you little beautiful girl? What a nice red dress you have! Where is your mom?" she asks in her British accent and I continue to sob with even a greater enthusiasm. Caressing me with her soft manicured hands, she starts to look for the identification card given to me before getting into the plane. "Oh, so that is why. You were supposed to go on yet another plane. They just thought your mom was taking off here. Don’t worry, I am gonna take good care of you. Come on, don’t cry now. Let’s wash your face and give you some … what do you like to eat? Icecream? Or a hamburger?" she takes my hands in hers and off we go.
So she does as she promised, she takes good care of me for the next 24 hours until she gives me to another officer to put me on a plane straight to DC, to my mom.
Passing through that day is quite hard, considering it is my first flight out of the country, actually my first flight at all; hard it was, even with the nice lady trying her best not to let me miss my mom, yet as I sit in the next plane, I think to myself, "Wow! I not only did my first flight, I did a whole day all alone without my mom! I have grown big now!" I smile to myself, my eyes shining with an unknown pleasure as the stewardess offers me an orange juice and some cookies.
That day was hard for my mom too, I find out later. After such a long journey, she had waited and waited for a long time for me to come out and join her in the airport, but as all passengers had embarked, she had finally come to the understanding that I was missing. Cursing herself for taking not good care of me, thinking that she had not explained well to the officer where I was destined, thinking all the worst with herself, she had explained the situation to an officer of the airline, who had told her to go to the office and file a missing report.
So she had left without me, passing through customs and finding dad at the other side of the line. They had hugged and kissed, seeing each other after such a long time, but her thoughts were with me, so they had gone straight to the office and did as she was told. "It would take at least 24 hours until we find any clues. We will contact you," the officer had said.
Those hours and minutes had passed so slowly for her, yet she had all the luck as a friend back at home with some friends in the airline searched for me from there and found, before the officer called her, that I was mistakenly in England, but I was safe and sound and would be flown to her the next day.
So she just had to wait.
And she waits until finally the call comes, "I am calling to see if anyone is at home for the delivery of your baby girl in the next four hours," the voice on the other end says. "Of course!" so she waits some more four hours, and then the door bell is rang, and there I am, in the same red dress my mom had left me in with the officer at the airport home, with a smile on my face and a candy in my hand. I throw myself into her arms, saying with all the excitement boiling in my voice, "Mom, I have grown up! I did my first flight without you, I lived one day without you!" and she kisses my hair as she thanks the delivery man, signs for my receipt, and closes the door to our new home miles and miles away from home.