Thursday, November 24, 2005

Seeing that the last post was all about the Iranian television, I thought I would write this little thing here as well.
There was this girl at our school that fancied that presenter guy that read the poems on Fridays afternoons. It took us a while to work out who she was talking about even when she first told us this because she was using his proper name while we all just knew him as the annoying presenter guy. That killed me. She must have really fancied him if she had even gone through all the trouble of finding out what his name was and everything.
Apparently his name was Mustafa something (something that I never learnt but it was ok because) straight away we all started using the nickname that this girl had very affectionately made up for him, Mosi. It was quite sad really and we used to make fun of her every time she showed us another picture of Mosi that she had so lovingly cut out from some magazine or when she told us gossip about his family life and everything. But the truth was that I was kind of jealous as well. The rest of us had crushes too but ours were on foreign movie stars or pop stars that seemed to live in a completely different world to us; people that we would probably never ever meet in our lives whereas hers was on a real person that was on our television screens every night and spoke the same language as us. Sure he was terribly annoying, pretty unattractive, wore lime-green suites with white collarless shirts and had bad hair that was cut into a bit of a mullet, but he was real and if she waited outside the Jameh Jam television building in Valiasr Street long enough (as she often did) she would be able to satisfy herself by catching a glimpse of him as he drove into work in his white Peykan.
That I thought was really something. The only time I had ever done any celebrity spotting in my whole life was once when my friends and I waited for about an hour in the hot sun to see the president of Mozambique or Tanzania or something like that go past. And he hadn’t even stopped or waved or anything. He had just shot through Tadjrish in a black Mercedes with an escort of four police cars. Thinking about it now, there is a big chance that this poor president of wherever had taken all this the wrong way and had thought that we were demonstrating against him or something. I mean I doubt this president of Mozambique or Tanzania or something had ever dreamt of getting this kind of reception in his own country even, let alone Iran. There must have been nearly a thousand people standing in Tajrish that day waiting for him to arrive.
Yes back in those days there was a serious shortage of celebrities in Iran. I mean there were some people who weren’t terrible-looking (like that horsey-looking guy that read the news and always looked like some people had taken his family hostage and had told him that they would shoot one of them every time he showed even the slightest bit of emotion) but no one you would want to idolise or throw your knickers at.
That is until the sudden appearance of Ahmadreza Abedzadeh, the Iranian football team’s invincible goalkeeper that blocked all those penalties against Saudi Arabia (I think it was). I was about thirteen then and I think every girl in our school had a crush on him.
I just want to say, ‘Thank you Abedzadeh for making the beginning of my teenage years that much more exciting.’

9 comments:

linda said...

Shirin I think the Poetry reciter dude was " Hussein Aahi.." I had no idea an actual human being could stand watching him for more than 5 mins, let alone having a crush on him!!!!
Me,my sister, my cousins and my friends used to mock him, I think we even had an impersonation contest...
But yeah me and the rest of the gals in our school had a crush on Abedzadeh too... I guess we used to read, "Donyaye Varzesh" and stuff.. and that's how I became Esteghalili....
We even knew that he was a high school drop out!!!!
Good old dayz...
Nowadays everyone in Iran has a crush on "Mohammad Javad Golzar!!!"

Anahita said...

argh teenage crushes...what can we do with them....they add fun to otherwise boring days I guess..but isnt it weird when u look back at who u liked...i think I blame hormones, they must affect your vision and judgement and everything. when i have no job in feb i will do a proper research rpoject on teenage hormones and how they make us like weird people...lol

amanda kay said...

definitely qualifies in the category of a potential future HPB ;-) seriously, you shouldn't expose me to links of hot boys when shahin's been in tehran for two weeks! my mind is not functioning correctly. i think i never grew out of my teenage hormones.

Anonymous said...

hehe Linda, that's exactly how I became esteghlali too!

Shirin said...

Linda do you recon that guy was called Ahi then? That’s a good name for him actually since he did do a fair bit of Ahing whenever he got the chance ;-) All I know is that this Mustafa she fancied was a television presenter and had a beard (surprise surprise). And they all used to read poems didn’t they? O they really knew how to get on Mellat’s nerves.

Anahita please don’t do that. I can’t think of anything more terrifying than hanging out with a bunch of teenagers and doing research on them. Have you not seen Brat Camp? Teenagers scare me and I should know what I’m talking about because I used to be one and it wasn’t a pretty.

Sorry about that a.k.g. Please don’t tell Shahin I showed you this.

You too Negar? Aabiyeteh ;-)

Anonymous said...

that's not a comment but since i couldn't find u're email address i'm sending u this message here:
Shirin nanaz,( jan,nanaz,..what's going on?,)
skinhead..humm.guess didn't help..lol..but who cares,i always say if a person still allows herself to make jugement and generalize,then hey,let her die stupid!!
know what,i'd like u to read my blog about "is it really about islam" and tell me what u think about it.
khoda hafez;)

Em said...

Hey der

Was bloghoppin

Wanted to tell you that I like how you describe urself...

And ur post abt celebs that we liked.Reminded me how much I luv Duran Duran ...

Thanks for the reminder...

Shirin said...

Would love to Foulla. I’ll be over as soon as my eyes stop trying to pop out of my head ;-)

Hi Em, thanks for the comment. Duran Duran, ey? Sexy :-)

Em said...

Ya mate

Duran Duran dey were like Good looking gods wen dey were younger..