Wednesday, January 11, 2006

A little something to lighten up the mood a bit. This is dedicated to my cousin Shadi, whom I used to share a bed with during our school summer holidays by the Caspian and whom I used to have massive fights with over leaving the light on until the early hours of the morning (as she read Daeejan Napelone and the Chain of Love for the hundredth time) which attracted all the mosquitoes of that area to our bed and who lately has been calling me every night to see if I’m ok which is very sweet, even if she does put me on hold at least once during our conversation.

‘Psssd’ I heard ‘are you awake?’
I was but I didn’t answer. Even as an eight year old I liked my asleep and waking up so early in the morning that was still dark outside, during my summer holidays, was not my idea of fun.
‘Hey’ Shadi whispered again, ‘Are you awake?’ and that was followed by her giggling to herself.’
‘What?’ I said irritably; I was not a morning person.
‘Are you awake?’
‘Well I am now, what is it?’
‘I don’t know, I woke up a few minutes ago and then I thought if you’re up as well, we can go on the beach and watch the sunrise.’
I looked out of the window. There was a little bit of pink in the sky but it was still very dark. ‘Are you insane?’ I said turning my back to her. ‘It’s still dark.’
Before closing my eyes I looked at the nail on the wall where I had hung my red, Hatch the Honey Bee bag. My bag was not there.
Shadi was still pleading with me to go out on the beach with her, ‘Come on, it’ll be fun.’
‘Ok where is it?’ I suddenly asked her sitting in my half of the bed and putting my most serious face on.
‘Where is what?'
‘You know what I’m talking about. What have you done with it?’
‘With what?’
‘My Hatch the Honeybee bag. Where is it?’
‘I don’t know’ she said, sitting up in the bed and looking around, ‘I haven’t taken it.’ I looked under the bed where we both kept our suitcases. There was nothing there. I was getting really annoyed with her now and so climbing back to the bed, I pulled the covers over my head saying, ‘Very funny. But you’d better not have put my stuff in the cupboard; I don’t want the mice munching through my clothes.’
‘What?’ She exclaimed jumping off the bed. ‘I haven’t taken your stuff.’ she said, looking around the small living room. I sat up in the bed again to see what was going on when I heard her cry out, ‘Oh no’ and point to the coffee table where her cassette player used to be ‘We’ve been burgled.’
Suddenly I got a real fright as I thought what if he is still around. I jumped and grabbed hold of the stick that we used for the fireplace in the winter. ‘What are you doing?’ Shadi asked.‘What if he is still around?’ I whispered.
Armed with our stick, we tiptoed around the living room, looking in all the dark corners until we came to one of the windows that was wide open. On further inspection we noticed two batteries on the floor on the other side of the window. Shadi recognised them as the batteries that were inside her cassette player.
We are upset about loosing our stuff but we are also very excited. Our grandparents (Mamanjoon and Babajoon) whose place we were staying at, had been burgled many times but it had never happened while we had been there.
We ran towards the one bedroom of the house where our grandparents slept in, passing my other cousin on our way who was fast asleep in his favourite pose: laying on his front with his head tilted to one side, his mouth half open, holding onto his private parts, very tightly with both hands (as if somehow he had known that we were going to be burgled that night).
When we got inside the bedroom (still traumatized from that time when I accidentally woke babajoon up and gave him such a fright that he had to go and pop Nitro-glycerine pills) I stood back and let Shadi deal with the whole waking up process.


‘We’ve been burgled again.’ we blurted out in unison (maybe a bit too eagerly) as Mamanjoon took out her earplugs and Babajoon turned his bedside lamp on.
So turning in their beds and looking a bit miffed (as you would be if you were woken up with that kind of news) and also a bit uninterested (on account of them getting robbed left and right) they mumbled something like, ‘What do you want us to do about it?’ and turning off the light, they said ‘Just go back to bed, we’ll deal with it in the morning.’
As we turned to go, Babajoon suddenly jumped up and turning on the light again, looked under their bed. All that was followed by a, ‘Oh, damn'
‘What is it?’ Mamanjoon asked.
‘My briefcase’ Said Babajoon while pulling up his trousers and putting on his glasses.
The morning breeze was nice and cool. Shadi and I held hands and as our feet got soaked from the morning dew, we skipped faster to try and keep up with Babajoon who charged down the narrow pathway that went to the beach. The raspberry bushes on either side of the path were littered with our belongings. Shirts, shorts, swimming trunks, towels, trousers, sandals, socks, notebooks with secret pirate maps drawn in them and even Babajoon’s briefcase had been discarded by the thief in his haste to find more valuable items.
But Babajoon still wasn’t looking happy. Which meant whatever he had jumped out of the bed for, must have been inside the empty briefcase that we had found.
Suddenly he bent down and picked up a piece of damp paper and then his face lightened up a bit. Then he turned round to us and said, ‘If you see any papers lying around, pick them up.’ So happy to be able to help, we ran around picking up pieces of damp paper from the ground.
After a while, Mamanjoon came to the window and Babajoon waved the papers at her with a smile and a look of relief.
By the time we got to the beach, the sun was coming up. Babajoon sat on the rocks looking through his papers while Shadi and I ran as far as we could towards the sea when the waves went back, and then ran out again as fast as we could, when they came back to get us wet.

17 comments:

Anonymous said...

Oh gush. I flied back to those days. Your painting from the bedroom made me smell the house. It reminds me of my mum when she has put all of our precious belongings in a bag during the missile attacks to Tehran and we had come to you in the caspian. On our arrival she was told about the robberies and she really didn't know what to do with her bag. She attached it to herself whenever she went even on the beach she was always with her bag.

Anonymous said...

Oh, I love you. The illustration is perfect.

m rasoulov said...

hey, I enjoyed browsing through your website, weblog & your husband's photoblog. will link all 3 in my blogroll.

www.moosville.com

Anonymous said...

About twenty years ago, I told my aunt (Ammeh Minou), that I envied their generation, as it seemed from their stories that they had lots of fun. But then I realised that we've had even more fun, and we were even luckier, as we had them for parents!! Honestly, it was a tragedy to have our first ever stereo stolen, but that was soon forgotten, and all that is left is excitement, and fun memories. May the force be with you my dear.

Anonymous said...

very nice..it's really amazing how u're Babajoon got so used to those after midnight visitors.btw,what was in the papers ;;)))
the "picture" is really homey.

Em said...

Hey Shirin

Such adventures u had as a child...Too bad about the being burglared bit tho..

Btw did u get ur stuff back?

jarvenpa said...

It is interesting how children can go through very harsh and unusual things and in some way take it for granted. You had quite a childhood--I am glad to read about it, though sad about sad happenings.

Shirin said...

Oh I remember that Ostan. That must have been terrible for your Mum. I think at one time the thieves did strike when you guys were there as well but I can’t remember if it was that time or some other time.

I love you too Shadi :-) Glad you liked it.

Thanks a lot for that m rasoulov. I tried to look at some of your photos but it only showed me the last one for some reason. I will try again a bit later as I think it might be our connection that is playing up.

Well Foulla, I think those papers might have been all the papers to do with our grandparents’ home and car and everything. I don’t know exactly why that was but I think that time for some reason my Babajoon had put all the documents that he had in that briefcase and under the bed. Maybe he wanted to go to the bank the next day to get a loan or to register something I don’t know. It was good that we managed to find them all though.

Yes Em, I got all my stuff back as none of the things I owned at the time were of any value and so the thief had just left them all out in the garden. He did take my cousins little cassette player though which was quite sad because we didn’t have any more music for the rest of our stay there.

Hi Jarvenpa. Thanks for your comments and yes it’s very strange how kids can find something to get excited about even at the worst times. For example I remember during the Iran and Iraq war, we were always praying for Iraqis to start bombing Tehran again! It meant we could die but we liked it because our schools would be shut for a while!

amanda kay said...

i am still waiting for your autobiography

nyx said...

:-) lovely post. thank you.

Anonymous said...

Hey Shirin; your prose is even more bewitching than your story. You should not let it go at that. I don't know you may have already published something, if yes, I would be happy to know and take pride in. I don't know how much labour is behind each piece (post) but whatever the beauty of it is that none is seen. It runs so smoothly naturally that one cannot but enjoy its ongoing stream. I am lost for words. I also learn alot. My hat's off to you. Am I allowed to envy your English prose?

Shirin said...

Well dodo, that comic was taking up a lot of my time and so I had to leave it for a bit while I did some other things. Hopefully I’ll be able to go back to doing the rest of it soon though.

Thanks Nyx ;-)

Thanks Behrooz, you’re always so kind to me. No I’ve never had any writing published. It’s good to have you back and thanks for the link in Maze. I’ll link you too.


Hmm, I wonder if I need to be worried about the fact that my last three posts each have 13 comments on them!

GazanKhan said...

The picture is really beautiful Shirin and the story is quite frightening and exciting, you were two brave kids I suppose, and yes I must say it again, the picture is great my dear.

Shirin said...

Yes Gazankhan, we were brave kids, my cousins and I. And thanks for leaving that comment because it means I no longer have 13 comments on all these three posts ;-) This was very spooky really; I checked my blog on Friday the thirteenth and noticed that I had exactly thirteen comments on each of my last three posts!

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