Shirin in Engelestan

2009-06-25T12:27:00.000+01:00

Saturday before last I became ashamed of being Iranian for the first time in my life. I just couldn’t believe that the people I call my fellow countrymen, had re elected Amadinejad. It was truly shocking. But then it all changed. What has been happening in Iran ever since that day, is so grand, so beautiful and so truly magnificent that you can’t help but be proud of having the same blood as those people running through your veins, even if you are thousands of miles away, only glued to your television and computer.
I wish I could be there. I have never wanted to be in a place as much as I want to be in Iran right now.

2007-02-20T11:46:00.000Z

I think I might have made my peace with banana at last. I’m glad of that. Banana and I go way back and I did not really like the idea of my unborn child coming between us.
As I’m sure anyone who grew up in Iran remembers, for many years after the revolution bananas disappeared from Iran. You just couldn’t find them anywhere. Years later they reappeared in the form of small, black, unappetising things that were sold by aggressive, suicidal men who would jump in front of your car and try to shove the overpriced fruit through your window.
Some time later a better brand of bananas called, Dole was imported to Iran. This meant that from then on, the suicidal men who would throw themselves in front of your car, would also order you to, ‘Eat Dole!’ This was not without its hilarious consequences since the word Dole is very similar to the Persian word for a little boy’s tinkle!
But before all this, there were no bananas in Iran at all. When I was little I had bananas twice a year. Once when my Auntie Leili came from Canada and once when my Auntie Maryam came from England.
They would each bring me a bunch of bananas, hugging them like a baby all the way on the plane and in transit so they wouldn’t get bruised. I was a very lucky girl. Most of my contemporaries had never even seen a banana in their lives or if they had, they had been so young then that they couldn’t remember it.
One day at school something very interesting happened. I think I was in third or forth year. At first it was like any other day. The bell rang and we all ran out into the school ground for our first break.
The sportys played volleyball. The older girls sat on the stairs of the pray-house, whispering in each other’s rears and giggling. Younger kids held hands and pointlessly walked round and round in circles. In one corner a girl tried to swap a tangerine for an orange flavoured wafer. In another, a girl split a cheese and cucumber roll with her friend. Next to them a girl desperately tried to finish her homework.
I sat with a few friends under the shade of a tree. We were talking about this and that. Suddenly I noticed that I could no longer hear the usual loud murmur of the school yard. It was as if someone had pressed the mute button on all the girls.
In addition to going mute, all the girls had also stopped dead in their tracks and were staring at something in the middle of the yard. Naturally my friends and I stood up and started looking around for whatever it was that had so mesmerized everyone. And that’s when I saw it: that slender body with its natural curves (well curve really!), that radiant colour, those tiny, brown beauty spots. I knew what it was straightaway. ‘It’s a banana,’ I said as if thinking out-loud. The people standing around me all turned to look at me.
‘What did you say that was?’ one of the girls asked.
‘A banana,’ I said confidently.
Maybe none of them had ever seen a banana before but they should still have been able to identify it from pictures and stuff. I mean most of them had never seen an elephant before either but I’m pretty sure if an elephant had walked into our school, they would have been able say exactly what it was. Also we had banana flavoured chewing gums. Ok so they had the texture of cardboard and tasted more like the idea of banana from the point of view of someone who had never had a banana before in his life but it was still some point of reference.
‘Are you sure?’ another girl asked.
‘Yes,’ I said, ‘I’m sure that’s a banana.’
From that moment on, the girls that were around me, hung onto my every word as if it was the most important thing they had ever heard in their life. If someone asked an inappropriate question, the others would snap at her saying things like, ‘she said it’s chewy,’ in a pay-attention-girl sort of tone.
Meanwhile the banana went up and down the school yard as it was watched by four hundred pairs of eyes.
The thing was at our school we all wore dark coloured uniforms. We even had to wear dark shoes. The only things at school that had any colour in them were our bags and at break times when we didn’t have our bags with us, the whole place was just a sea of black, grey, navy and brown. So to suddenly have this bright yellow, almost luminous thing in the middle of all that, was really amazing.
The banana belonged to a girl called Maryam who had it clutched to her chest tightly as she walked round and round, seemingly aimless. You could really see the terror in poor Maryam’s eyes. She gave the impression of a sheep trying to make her way through a pack of hungry wolves with her injured little lamb by her side.
Oh but she also had a sheepdog. Not exactly a sheepdog actually, it was just another wolf really but it looked like it might have turned friendly.
This sheepdog/wolf/self-appointed-bodyguard was called Fatemeh. Mrayam and Fatemeh were both in our class. We were all friends in a way because we were all in a one class but these two girls weren’t really special friends or anything like that. I had never seen them hang out at break times together before. But this day was different. This day Fatemeh had her arm around Maryam like they were best friends. As they walked past us I noticed that Fatemeh was holding onto her new best friend so tightly that you could tell her fingers were digging into her shoulders. ‘We’re best friends,’ I heard Fatemeh say, ‘and best friends always share everything.’
Maryam did not answer. She just stared ahead, holding onto her banana. It didn’t look like Maryam had had any say in this newfound friendship.
I guess what Fatemeh was doing wasn’t very nice really but I think in a weird way, Maryam actually appreciated it. I mean her own friends had deserted her and now she was under the watchful eyes of the whole school. I don’t think people were going to attack her or anything like that but it still must have been very scary for her. Fatemeh might have wanted half of her banana but she was also protecting her. Whenever someone tried to get close to Maryam, Fatemeh would push them away.
Suddenly there was an announcement on the loudspeaker. Maryam and her banana were to report to the office immediately. Straightaway Fatemeh let go of Maryam and vanished into the crowed. Maryam and banana made their way to the office. Some minutes later Maryam came back out alone. The banana that had brought the whole school to a standstill had been confiscated.

2007-01-28T19:19:00.000Z

I’d always known as human beings we are very adaptable and can get used to almost anything but I would never have guessed that one could even get used to feeling sick. Now it’s only been a week and bizarrely I think I’m starting to get used to having a carsick feeling twenty four seven. Can’t say I like it or anything but it’s there and what’s weird is that I’m beginning to have trouble imagining a time when it wasn’t there. For example even looking at a banana makes me want to throw up now and I can’t for the life of me imagine a time when bananas didn’t have that effect on me and I used to like and even eat them!
It’s like that feeling when it’s in the middle of a very cold winter and you look at pictures of yourself on a beach in a bikini and you are so cold at that moment that you think no matter how hot it might have been on that beach, if you were to be transported to there right now, you would still probably wear a cardigan at least.
The funniest thing is that if something makes me feel sick at the moment, then it’s not just smelling it or seeing it that makes me feel sick, it’s even hearing the word or reading it somewhere.
At the moment garlic is one of the things that I cannot stand. So of course I get an email from my mum this morning titled, Garlic! Every time I read the dreaded word it made my stomach churn! I think I might be turning into a vampire.
However the weirdest thing about pregnancy so far is that it feels like someone has come in the middle of the night, emptied my head of my brain, and replaced it with some cotton wool. I can’t think at all. Which means after finishing the sentence before last and before writing, ‘I can’t think at all’ I spent about ten minutes staring at the monitor while my brain took a break and thought about a green meadow with white, fluffy bunnies jumping about in it. Can’t say it was unpleasant but it wasn’t exactly my cup of tea either.

2007-01-21T20:28:00.000Z

Big news people! I’ve gone and got myself knocked up.
So for the next few months you can look forward to such posts as, ‘Constant Puker’, ‘Me, myself and my leaky nipples’ and ‘Midwife Cowboy’

Thought you might be interested in knowing some of my likes and dislikes at the moment so here they are:
First, Likes: Boiled vegetables, Tomatoes, Celery, Aaloo (prunes), rice, eggs, Marmite, Blueberries
Dislikes: Chocolate (Smell of chocolate actually makes me gag! Now isn’t that something?!), Baked beans, most sweet things, hummus

Must go and throw up now.

2007-01-12T11:22:00.000Z

At our high school there used to be a small but fearsome lady called, let’s say, Mrs R. This Mrs R had a rather curious phrase that for some reason she was very fond of and would repeat over and over again. No matter what you did from arriving late to breaking a window to chewing gum in class to ripping another girl’s veil, Mrs R would say to you, ‘May you break you neck.’
I know in Iran people say some pretty bizarre things like if you really like someone you may say to them, ‘I want to eat your liver.’ And they will think that you are being very sweet but this was different. This was not a phrase that we all knew and had hidden meanings and stuff. No, this one basically did exactly what it said on the tin, it wished for you to break your neck and die…at your earliest convenience!
She had overused this phrase so much that we no longer called her Mrs R. Instead we referred to her as Mrs My-you-break-your-neck. Not to her face obviously.
One of the funniest things about Mrs My-you-break-your-neck was that the amount of vigour she put into saying, ‘May you break your neck!’ and the tone of her voice, changed depending on how bad what you had done had been. For example if she caught you giggling at postcards of muscly men that your friend had sent to you from Germany, she would go mental and while waving her finger at you would yell, ‘May you brrrrrreak your neck!’
But if for example you had written, ‘I am a donkey’ on a piece of paper and stuck it on the back of another girl’s uniform, she would give you a look of disgust that (you and I probably only reserve for when we’re scraping pieces of dog shit from the bottom of our shoe) and while shaking her head, would mumble, ‘May you break your neck.’ and then turn around and go as if to say, ‘well you’re just an idiot and not even worthy of me wishing for you to break your neck.’
This last one is a bit long but it’s a very good example I think so I’ll tell it anyway.
One day at school these two girls had started a water fight and were running around the school yard with empty glass bottles of coke that they had filled with water.
Now by doing this these two were breaking all sorts of school rules. For one they were running, for two they were having a water fight, for three they were playing with their coke bottles instead of giving them back as soon as they had drunk the content. In short, they were in big trouble.
Suddenly as the two were running around and laughing, they collided with each other and one of the bottles broke, cutting one of the girls’ hands. Blood started gushing out and they both started to scream and cry. Some people ran into the office and brought out the nurse and I think called for an ambulance as well. The nurse ran out with bandages and started to bandage the girl’s hand right there in the garden with a massive crowed gathered around them.
Meanwhile I had a genius idea. I ran into our classroom and got a piece of white chalk and ran out again. Now I’m not sure if had I thought about this a bit more I would still have done it but some blood had spilt on the ground and for some reason I thought it would be absolutely hilarious if I drew a chalk, body outline around it like in detective movies. As if someone had died there. And that’s what I did. I did it really quickly without drawing any attention to myself (which was easy because everyone else was gathered around the injured girl) and then went and stood with the others. It wasn’t because I didn’t want them to know it had been me, it was just that I thought it would be funnier if they suddenly turned around and saw the outline there without seeing me draw it.
Anyway at the end one person saw it and started to laugh and then everyone else saw it too and they all started to laugh, even the nurse. The only person that had not found it funny at all was the injured girl’s water-fight partner. She went absolutely mental at me and kept yelling things like, ‘You are so insensitive Saramad [my maiden name]. My friend is going to die and you’re making fun of her. I’m going to tell Mrs R what you’ve done.’
This was when I started to feel a bit bad. Her friend had just cut her hand and wasn’t going to die or anything and I wasn’t making fun of her anyway but I thought maybe she was right and I had been a bit insensitive. Then I suddenly saw Mrs R, aka, Mrs May-you-break-your-neck running towards us.
The girl that was yelling at me, ran to her crying and saying, ‘Mrs R, come and see what Saramad has done. She is so horrible.’ and things like that.
Basically she knew she had broken all sorts of rules and was very much in trouble so now she was trying to draw some attention to me hoping that they would just forget about her.
On the other hand I was at the early stages of pooing my pants as you could tell by Mrs May-you-break-your-neck’s way of running that she was pretty angry.
A little out of breath, Mrs May-you-break-your-neck stood at the foot of my chalk outline with the other girl next to her who was screaming and crying and pointing to the ground.
Mrs May-you-break-your-neck looked down for a few seconds without saying a word. Then I noticed that she had started to bite her lips the way we do to stop ourselves from laughing. Then she turned to me and while the beginnings of a smile were trying to break out from the corners of her mouth, somewhat playfully, borderline affectionately, said, ‘Saramad, may you break your neck!’ before turning around and walking back to her office.
So basically her tone varied but the saying always stayed the same, ‘May you break your neck!’
One day we noticed that Mrs May-you-break-your-neck had not come in. She was absent for a week I think and then one day turned up wearing, yes you guessed it, a huge, white neck brace over her veil.
I just remember looking up to the heavens as soon as I saw her on her first day back and thinking to myself, ‘There is a god. And he sure appreciates irony.’

2007-01-06T12:55:00.000Z

Ages ago Leyli invited me to a game called Shabeh Yalda where you reveal five things about yourself that you haven’t already and invite five other people to do the same. Now I haven’t been around for a while so, sorry about the delay but here it is anyway.

راستی این فارسی هم داره اگر ترجیح میدین.ل

1- I hate it when people say, ‘Guess how old I am!’
In my opinion this is the most pointless exercise known to mankind and nine out of ten times, it ends in tears. Well it does if I’m the person you’re asking!
There was this one time at a friend’s house when I was talking to this guy who I thought was still at school. Then he said something about his military service and it surprised me because I thought he was about sixteen or seventeen. Turned out he was twenty or twenty one, the baby face type.
Anyway there was a woman there who I was meeting for the first time that night and who overheard our conversation. For some reason this woman found this little mistake of mine absolutely hilarious and then no matter what, would not drop the subject. She kept laughing and going on and on about how funny it was that I had thought this boy was about sixteen or seventeen when he was twenty or twenty one.
‘Oh you don’t have a clue how old people are do you?’ she kept saying while giggling. I think she was a bit tipsy but I was getting a bit annoyed with her anyway because I wasn’t!
After about ten minutes of laughing she finally asked the question, ‘So how old do you think I am then?’ and as quick as anything, I blurted out, ‘Forty two’
Turned out she was forty two. And from the look on her face, she was not too happy about it either! Well she asked for it, didn’t she?
She was right about one thing though, I really didn’t have a clue how old people were; I had thought she was about forty eight and basically I had tried to be nice to her by saying forty two instead!

2- For some reason a lot of people seem to think I’m a lot smaller than I really am. My dress size is ten or twelve, very rarely eight (depending on the shop I’m in) but I’m normal size really. However some people I know seem to always be trying to push my dress size to see how low they can go before I actually burst out of the outfit they have given me!
On occasions I have even been given children’s clothes. I’m thirty one. With breasts and everything! I mean they’re not big but they’re there.
So I get given these tiny T-shirts made for ten year olds and as if that’s not enough humiliation for one day, then I am often made to put them on there and then as well to see how it looks.
So I come out taking care not to take deep breaths because I’m afraid the T-shirt might rip if I do. My belly is hanging out and I’m being choked by the neck line and they go, ‘Oh great! It fits!’

When I worked at this restaurant for a short while, on my first day my manager looked me up and down and then handed me a uniform. I went into the changing room and put it on. Then I looked at myself and thought, ‘Odd! Is this T-shirt really meant to flatten my chest like that?’ I thought maybe they had some sort of no-chest policy or something.
I took off the T-shirt and looked at the label. It wasn’t small or extra small or petit or anything like that. Oh no. The label said: Age: 5-6 years. 5-6 years! I’m not joking. The bastard had not even given me a normal staff uniform, he had given me one of the kiddy T-shirts that we sold in the restaurant. Needless to say I looked like a retard.
Talking of retard, I always wondered how I still got tips even though I was a very bad waitress, now I’m thinking it’s possible that people just felt sorry for me.

3- I can’t stand it when people say, ‘I never give a hundred percent in what I do, I give a hundred and fifty percent.’
What on earth? I don’t know which idiot started this whole stupid over hundred percent business but whoever it was, should be ashamed of themselves.
Suddenly giving hundred percent to something is not enough anymore. If you go for a job interview and say, ‘I give a hundred percent in everything I do,’ they will probably think you’re a bit lazy! You have to say I give a hundred and ten percent at least or two hundred percent if you really want to impress them.
In sports, everyone has to give hundred and ten percent now or it’s not good enough. If you watch interviews with football managers they always say, ‘My boys are going to go out there today and give a hundred and ten percent.’ Which basically means, they will do the best they can and then give a little bit more.
So why do your best and then do a little bit more then? Why not do your best and then do a lot more more? Hmm, let’s see what percentage that would be. Hundred and fifty percent? Two hundred percent?
So where does it end then? Nine hundred and ninety nine percent? One million percent? Absolute nonsense.

4- I really envy those people who can come out in the middle of winter wearing just a vest or a T-shirt and not even shiver. I don’t know how they manage it but I wish I could do it too as it seems like a very useful skill.

5- This blog was very nearly called, ‘Communication, no!’ But then I thought it was probably best to go with a title that did not need explaining.
The story behind ‘Communication, no!’ is that there was this guy that my cousin and I once met in a party in France. He was very sweet and kept trying to talk to us. The problem was, he didn’t know much English and we didn’t know French. So he would start to say something (by the way he was completely coked out of his head) in English and then suddenly he would get excited and say the rest very fast in French. And then we, not having understood a thing, would say, ‘Sorry, no French.’ And every time, he would slap himself on the forehead and stamp his foot and totally helplessly shout out, ‘Communication, no!’ Then after a few moments he would try again.
Unfortunately we never found out what was going on in that poor guy’s coked up mind that he was trying to tell us about but I doubt I will ever forget his desperate cries of ‘Communication, no!’

And now I’m passing this onto these guys if any of them are interested in doing it:

Homeyar
Foulla
Amanda
Amir Sharifi
Chakameh Azimpour

2006-12-23T14:40:00.000Z

Our serial killer has finally been caught. Actually I shouldn’t say that. He is after all presumed innocent until proven guilty. I’m talking about the case of the five murdered women in Ipswich by the way. The women were all prostitutes and worked in the same area.
I’m dying to know why the police arrested this guy and why they ended up charging him but they’re not saying anything at the moment for legal reasons. I would love to be a fly on the wall in that court or better yet, a juror. This is weird because when I got called up for jury service once, I was absolutely horrified by the idea of having to sit through a very gruesome case or something nasty like child abuse.
What I ended up being a juror on was in fact neither of the above. A man had brought his wife to court accusing her of pouring paraffin over him and trying to set him on fire. She had failed in her mission however and all that he had to show from his traumatic experience was a rash he had got on his left butt-cheek from the paraffin.
I don’t even know how this case had ever made its way to court. The whole thing was basically like a comedy sketch. In a way it felt a bit like god was making fun of me.
‘What dear? You don’t fancy being a juror on a grisly murder case? How about a bit of mild domestic argument then? Do you think you could handle looking at pictures of a man’s butt with a little rash on it or would that be too much for you too? Please tell me because if you don’t like this, I could maybe fix it for you to go to the furry animals court instead and be a juror on the case of mister Squirrel taking Fluffy Bunny in front of the magistrate and accusing him of stealing his nuts.’

For added comedy value, the woman was tiny while her husband was very tall and lanky. She only came up to about his waist and she was wearing high heels! I’m not saying she was not capable of doing anything nasty because she was small but looking at them you would think that no matter how scary things got between those two, as long as he was not tied down, that guy could always simply step over her. Or like in cartoons, put one hand on her forehead and keep her at an arm’s length and stand there watching her as she throws kicks and punches his way without being able to reach him.

We were not told what the original argument between this couple had been, we were just told that they were arguing about something. In the middle of it all, the wife takes a break to go into the kitchen and pour herself a nice bowl of paraffin. As you do! Not to drink by the way, the paraffin was to treat her head lice, which incidentally is very common in Britain. I’m saying this because I know by reading this, a lot of people in Iran at least are now thinking, ‘How ghastly! Hope you convicted that dirty tramp and threw away the key.’ But as I said anyone can get head lice over here and from what I saw, that paraffin thrower/husband burner, was in fact a very lovely and respectable young lady!
Anyway as I said, the lady takes a break and pours herself a bowl of paraffin but her husband who is obviously not aware of international laws regarding ceasefires, follows her into the kitchen and continues with their argument. Long story short, after a while she gets very angry and chucks the paraffin on him. However being so small, she only manages to get it on his waist.
The paraffin that had sunk into the man’s clothes, had resulted in a mild rash on his left buttock that he had had a friend take pictures of at the time. These were passed around the court for everyone to look at. And here is where all my sympathy for this guy went right out of the window. Tell me if you don’t think this is nasty. In the pictures, the man was wearing blue Y-fronts. Blue Y-fronts for crying out loud! Why?
In case you’ve missed it, blue Y-fronts are a serious pet hate of mine. I don’t like Y-fronts full stop but I find the blue ones in particular extremely horrifying.
Good job I didn’t become a judge right?!
‘The man is wearing blue Y-fronts, off with his head!’
‘But he is the complainant Your Honour.’
‘Oh! Are you sure? He looks pretty dodgy to me. Could I at least maybe slap him a couple of times?’

So that’s basically the gist of my comical jury service experience. Obviously it was nothing to give me nightmares or anything like that. Afterwards my fellow jurors and I did kind of wish that we had been given a case a tad more serious than a butt rash. However I must admit this experience was a bit of a turning point for me.
It’s weird having two nationalities, especially if like in my case, your two nationalities are so different from each other. I guess it’s a bit like having two children that are very different. Say one is a bit of a retarded drug addict and the other is a model-looking genius. From what I’ve seen, if a mother has two kids like this, she will always pay more attention to the first one. She will take care of him more and maybe even love him more than the second one who she may end up ignoring or maybe even loathing. Well she figures the second one doesn’t need her really because he is great and everyone knows he’s great too so he will be fine. The first one however will probably only ever be loved by her.
This I think is similar in a way to the two nationalities that I have, Iranian and British. Guess which is which child!
Anyway just like that mother, I have always sort of taken the side of my not-doing-so-well nationality and picked faults with my other one. Well the first one is an easy target basically and the way I see it it needs my love and protection more. However there was something about my jury experience that made me see things a bit differently.
As I sat in that beautiful court room with the judge and the lawyers all in their wigs and costumes, very seriously presenting pictures of a man’s butt-rash, all I kept thinking (apart from, ‘that butt-rash man has no sense of style whatsoever’) was, ‘how fantastically civilised’. I hope I’m explaining this well because it’s quite a delicate subject but it just felt so amazing to be a part of that whole thing. I mean this is a country that values it’s people enough to give an arty someone (whatever I am) a chance to have a say in what becomes of a paraffin throwing, lice-infested little lady and her lanky blue Y-front wearing husband! I just think that is so wonderful. I’m being serious now.
I guess you could say that in an extremely unusual turn of events, a man’s butt rash ended up making me feel proud to be British! And I still get the same feeling when I think back to that time. So it was a good experience after all.
Course I will continue to take the side of my easy target, flag burning, holocaust denying, generally as politically incorrect as they come country and pooh-pooh my other nationality (which I’m not saying is without its faults) but the difference is that now we both know that deep down I respect it immensely and love it really.

Wonder if the Ipswich killer wears blue Y-fronts. I’m telling you, those kinds of people are not to be trusted ;-)

2006-12-16T10:44:00.000Z

A few days ago I heard on the news that anti-war protesters finally won their case against the police to prove that their rights to protest were violated after 120 of them were detained by the police in March 2003. The campaigners had planned a peaceful demonstration outside Fairford airbase in Gloucestershire (which is where many American B-52 bombers were launched from to bomb Baghdad in the early day of the war) but instead they were stopped in their coaches, searched, then kept in there for two hours and then escorted away from the base and sent on their way. The campaigners were obviously not happy about this at all and so they took the police to court. On the 14 December this year the campaigners finally won their legal battle when high court of appeal ruled that the police acted unlawfully.
Gloucestershire police said that it was “disappointed” with the outcome and that the officers had acted in “good faith”.
But here’s the interesting part. When interviewed on the news the other night the head of Gloucestershire police (who looked pretty upset) said that they did this for the protesters’ own safety as they were worried that a demonstration might make the American pilots angry and result in them opening fire on the protesters.

[Some violent shakes of the head to adjust brain in right place followed by a minute or two of staring at the monitor with widened eyes]

Excuse me?
You were worried about the American pilots getting angry and opening fire on the protesters?
Opening fire on these didgeridoo playing, tree hugging, British, peaceful protesters?
And this is really what you think of American pilots? That they are sadistic robot gorilla types that are programmed to shoot at anything that might look like it might disagree with them?
And these are the creatures that were sent off to carry out “precision bombings” in Baghdad?
‘,:-
I don’t for a minute think that this would ever have happened you know. That the Americans would open fire on the protesters I mean. It’s absolutely ridiculous. But what really makes me laugh is that this is obviously what the British police think! Of their allies! Oh dear!

2006-12-09T12:00:00.000Z

This year in an attempt to build bridges between Christians and other faiths, celebrating Christmas openly has been frowned upon.
Oh yeah, that ought to do it! That is going to build bridges between faiths alright. Bridges that they can then cross to reach the people of other faiths…and kick their heads in!

-Why aren’t we having a Christmas tree this year Mummy?

-Well little Johnny, you know what a Muslim is?

-No

-You know Abu Hamza? The guy with a hook for an arm and one eye that you used to have nightmares about every time you saw him on the news? Well that is a Muslim. And that doesn’t like Christmas so we’ve decided not to have Christmas anymore because we don’t want to offend him. Isn’t that nice?

-But what about Santa Mummy? Is Santa still going to come?

-No honey, I’m afraid not. You see Santa’s sleigh was hit by a scud missile as it flew over Gaza. The Jewish government has already accepted responsibility and has apologised for this mistake…which is nice.

-So no presents?

-Well not quite darling. Here is a copy of the Holly Koran for you to read during the holidays and in this envelope I have two circumcision vouchers for you and your daddy to be redeemed on Boxing Day! Isn’t that great?!

Yeah that’s it! Get them while they’re young. Make sure that message of “Hate non-Christians” is tattooed on their brain before they’ve even reached the age of ten.
Two out of three companies in the UK have banned Christmas decoration in their offices this year so not to offend people of other faiths. It’s political correctness gone mad darling! Whatever next? A veiled Muslim lady delivering the Christmas Day message?
Well they’re one step ahead of us on that one. Channel 4 has already signed up a veiled Muslim lady to do their Christmas message and it’s going to be aired at exactly the same time as the Queen’s speech.
Also talks are currently being held with heads of Al-Qaeda as Harrods desperately tries to sign up Bin Laden for its in-store Father Christmas.

2006-12-04T13:26:00.000Z

Back in a few days.
xxxxx

2006-11-09T14:15:00.000Z

Go America! The Democrats have won! Don Rumsfeld has been kicked out!
People of California, what’s wrong with you? You’ve chosen Arnold Schwarzenegger? Again? For his environmental policy?

The man drives a Hummer for crying out loud!

Obviously the issue of environment is very close to people’s heart. However the Republicans still believe that the best strategy to combat global warming is to outright deny it. ‘There is absolutely no evidence that global warming actually exists.’ a bemused Republican told Channel 4 News in Washington last night.
Unfortunately the interview had to be cut short as a family of tropical birds had a taken a liking to the man’s bouffant!
Since when have they been worried about lack of evidence anyway?
Still we’ve had a nice summer so I’m not complaining.

News just in: Governor Schwarzenegger’s Hummer runs on hydrogen. People of California are not dumb after all!

2006-11-05T20:17:00.000Z

Sooo. Saddam. Sentenced to death by hanging. I suppose if you absolutely have to go, that’s the best way really. I don’t care much for the electric chair. Why do they even have that? It’s so American isn’t it? ‘Must waste energy to my last breath’
I wonder if you’re a green, energy saving sort of killer you can ask to be buried alive or be fed to endangered species or something like that instead.

There are two things about this whole Saddam thing that I would really like to find out about and would be very grateful if someone could help me with. Firstly, what was Ben Kingsley doing judging Saddam’s trial? And secondly, whatever happened to all those other Saddam Husseins? You know, all those look-alikes that he had that made it very tricky to catch him because every time the Americans walked into somewhere and asked for Saddam Hussein, a load of guys that looked exactly like the man himself would stand up and go, ‘I’m Saddam Hussein.’
‘I’m Saddam Hussein.’
‘No I’m Saddam Hussein.’
Where are they now? They used to show them on telly all the time at the beginning of the war.

‘Here is Saddam Hussein attending a children’s party in Kabul. At that exact same time, he is visiting a jam factory in Basra and also enjoying a relaxing evening in his hot tub at his palace in Baghdad, sipping Martinis with Donald Rumsfeld.’

Course the poor look-alikes don’t get much airtime these days on account of them being “so yesterday”. I feel sorry for them really. I expect being able to be Saddam Hussein is a bit of a niche skill that accordingly has a very small market, especially at the moment. And then of course there is always the danger of being hanged by mistake. Oh life is hard these days for the poor Saddam look-alike and to think that it all started with answering to a small ad in a national newspaper.

Wanted

Me look-alikes, willing to undergo some plastic surgery if necessary. Must hate Kurds and enjoy gassing people.
Call my personal assistant Zobeideh on 07986578 to make appointment. In interview your will be tested on your moustache growing skills and all your body parts will be measured (I don’t know what that has to do with anything but Mrs Saddam has insisted on it).
Time wasters will be shot.

2006-10-29T09:43:00.000Z

A few days ago Negar of Location Texas made a comment about me being pregnant. As I’m sure you would all agree, predicting that someone in Oxford is with child, all the way from Texas is no easy feat.
Now those of you who know Negar know that she has been fasting all Ramadan and altogether really is quite holy (overlooking her foot obsession. Actually Jesus quite enjoyed washing other people’s feet) So I’ve been thinking, now we don’t know yet if I am or not but supposing for a minute that I am pregnant, shouldn’t that be considered a kind of miracle on Negar’s part? And if yes, shouldn’t that make her allegeable for canonization and ultimately sainthood? Of course she will still be needing one more miracle to become a fully functional saint but it’s a start isn’t it? Wouldn’t it be cool though? Saint Negar of Texas. Has a real ring to it wouldn’t you say?

I don’t want to alarm you but did you know ‘Saints almost went out of style in the 1960s’? (according to Don Lattin of San Francisco Chronicle) I know! It’s unthinkable, isn’t it? ‘Those were the days when many church leaders saw Catholic saints -- and the miracles performed in their name -- as outdated…’ Uhh!
Those were the terrible times during which many saints were either downgraded to mere martyrs or were stripped off their holiness altogether.
They even made a television programme about it called, ‘The Weakest Saint’ which was presented by the fierce Sister, Anna Robinson.
‘Now, who is two miracles short of a sainthood?’ she would say to the terrified saints standing all around her in a large circle, ‘Who has managed to pull the wool over the eyes of the cardinals of the Congregation for the Causes of Saints? Which one of you has been canonized when they should have been shot out of a cannon?’ she would throw her icy stare at the saints; unforgiving, brutal, ‘Which one of you has been acting all holy when in reality you are only as holey as a tramp’s undergarment? It’s time to reveal, the weakest saint.’
The BBC refused to air the programme however claiming that no one would watch it on account of saints and martyrs being so passé. Well they had almost gone out of style then as we said earlier.

One of the saints that were dropped during the downsizing was poor old Saint Christopher, the patron saint of travellers (I don’t know why that was, I suppose he had dreadlocks and lived in a caravan) who once carried the weight of the whole world across a river. Well he did it by accident actually or more to the point, he was tricked into doing it.
One day poor old Christopher was about to cross a river when a child came up to him and said, ‘Hewwo mister Chwistopey. I’m onwy a wittoy baby. Wiww you take me to the othey side of this big wivey wiv you pwease?’
But when Christopher put the child on his shoulders, he realised that he was unbelievably heavy. On further inspection he noticed that the child was in fact none other than our own Lord Jesus Christ (who died on the cross to save all our sins) carrying the weight of the whole world! Talk about mardeh rend, Minoo! That’s just so unfair isn’t it?
God asks his son to take the world from one side of the river to the other and he’s thinking, ‘Ugh, I have to do evvverything around here.’
I heard that.
‘Course you did, you’re always eavesdropping.’
And you are always moaning, ‘Oh do I have to daddy? but I don’t like touching other people’s feet’, ‘oh why do I have to walk on water? Why can’t I part the sea like Moses?...
‘Ok ok, I get the massage. I’ll do it. Why do I need to take the whole world across the river anyway?’
We’re going on a picnic.
‘Can’t we just take sandwiches like everyone else?’
HuH, see? Always moaning, ‘Oh but do I have to daddy? why Can’t we just take sandwiches…
‘OK OK! Jeeeesus! I said I’ll do it didn’t I?’
Ok then you move the world and I’ll go and get the Thermos and the picnic blanket.
‘Yes you go and do that father, I’ll just take the world to the other side, no problem.
Is he gone? Phew. I thought he’d never leave. I’m just sick of this you know, he’s always giving me inappropriate tasks, ‘Let them eat your flesh and drink your blood.’ ! ‘Raise the dead.’ It wasn’t even Halloween.
Now I have to carry the whole world to the other side of the river and what for? We’re not Iranians. We don’t have to take everything we own with us on a picnic so we can cook rice and aubergine stew from scratch…Hey who’s that? Is that Christopher coming this way? Hmm, that has just given me an idea.
Hewwo mister Chwistopey…’

That’s a joke obviously but I’m not surprised if Jesus is a little bitter about his miracles. Moses got all the best ones really didn’t he? He turned a cane into a snake, parted the red sea, ate red hot charcoal and burnt his mouth. Now those of you who are not familiar with the story of Moses are probably thinking that the latter can’t have been a miracle if he actually burnt his mouth, but it was.
Basically Moses being a prophet was different from all the other kids right from the start and as time went by, Pharaoh got more and more suspicious. Until one day he said to his wife, ‘Listen Missy, I’m not all that crazy about this basket boy you’ve brought in here. I’m thinking about having him you know…What do you think?’
‘What?’ his wife replied, horrified, ‘Are you crazy?’
‘Well he just makes me feel uneasy you know.’ Said the Pharaoh, ‘Look at him sitting there all quietly on top of the desk.’
Wife: ‘What’s wrong with that? He is just drawing.’
Pharaoh: ‘He is drawing up blueprints for a bridge that he is planning to build over the river Nile.’
Wife: ‘Hmm, yeah maybe he is a little advanced for his age but he is still only a harmless wikkle baby.’
So they walked over to the desk.
Wife: ‘Helllo wikkle Mozy pozy. Do you have a little kiss for mummy?’
Moses: ‘Later doll, yeah? I’m really busy right now.’
‘You see what I mean?’ Pharaoh whispered to his wife, ‘He’s not normal.’
Moses: ‘Yo Pharaoh, wanna come down to the river with me tomorrow? I’m going to pick a nice spot for my bridge.’
Pharaoh: ‘No I don’t like going by the river. There are frogs there. I don’t like frogs.’
Moses: ‘Really? You don’t like frogs? Huh, wha’doyouknow!’

So the next day when Moses came back home from picking a nice spot for his bridge, a table had been set for him with two plates on it, one containing a piece of red hot charcoal and the other a piece of cold, black charcoal. This was a test devised by the Pharaoh to separate the prophets from kids and the logic behind it was that the genuine child, being a bit of a dumb-dumb by nature, would be attracted to the redness of the red, hot charcoal while the baby prophet, being a bit clever and having supernatural powers, will eat the cold charcoal! Or say, ‘Goodie! Is it Egyptian fondue night? Make your own kebab type thing? Where’s the meat?’
However the poor Pharaoh had not taken into account that prophets don’t always play fair, especially the baby ones who can be extremely crafty at times. So he was tricked by baby Moses who picked the hot charcoal.

For a while now I’ve been begging a friend of mine to let me try this out on her baby but she is just one of those overprotective mothers who would never let their kid do things like eating hot charcoal (hopefully Saint Negar is correct and soon I won’t have to keep begging others for every little experiment that I want to do).
Finally the other day, we settled on a much safer option. I was well up for it at first but then I lost interest when I realised that she’d said raisin and not razor.
She offered the baby a raisin and a grape. He picked neither as he was busy chewing on a slug he had found in the garden. An imbecile or a messenger from god? We will just have to wait and see with that one I suppose.

When it comes to prophets, I really think Noah drew the shortest straw. The poor guy really had his work cut out for him there didn’t he? First he had to single-handedly build a ship. Then he had to go and pick out two of each animal to get on his ship so they could later repopulate the world. That must have been really hard because he must have had to put them through vigorous tests and interviews to be able to pick out the best and the healthiest. Well it would have been terrible if after the flood he realised that the male zebra he’d picked had a low sperm count or something.

Is there anyone in the family with this problem?
Have you attended alternative practitioners like an Osteopath?
Has it stopped you going to work?
Have you felt resentment for being off work?

Do any problems arise out of going to the toilet so often?
What about social problems, work problems, with opening your bowels so often.
What actually was the original problem?

Are you able to get about?
Can you walk upstairs?
How far can you actually walk?
Are Social Services involved (e.g. meals on wheels, home help)?

What actually happened at the time?
Is there any difficulty with speech?
Are there problems with swallowing?
What treatment are you on at the moment to prevent further attacks?

Do you get the Flu Vaccine and Pneumonia Vaccine on a regular basis?

Have you ever been admitted to Hospital with too much sugar in your blood?
Has it affected you from an Insurance point of view?

How did you first notice that her memory was going?
Would she get lost if allowed out alone?
Is she able to take part in any conversation?
Does she repeat things very often?
Does she get more confused at any particular time of the day?
Is she likely to wander?
Is she likely to do other things like leaving the gas stove on?

I don’t know what he did about lazy animals like pandas and koalas and things like that. Koalas are apparently as lazy as they come. I once saw this programme about koalas and in it they were saying that koalas are too lazy to mate and so there was this guy who was in charge of koalas’ mating. So I thought he would be lighting scented candles for them and playing Barry White on the stereo but I was wrong, his job was definitely a lot more hands-on.
This is what he did: He went over to a sleeping male koala, holding onto a tree and started, humm, let’s say, “pleasuring him”, manually. Once the male koala was good and ready, he grabbed him by the scurf of the neck and rammed him on top of another sleeping koala, on another tree (this one female). You would think the koalas would take it from there themselves but oh no, the job of the koala fiddler was not yet complete.
The female koala didn’t even wake up all the way through. The male opened his eyes briefly (well I say opened. Half opened really). He looked unimpressed and rightly so; the guy didn’t have much of a rhythm. And to top it off he was talking to the camera the whole time which must have been quite off-putting.
That’s some job that guy has, isn’t it? ‘And what does your father do little Sheila?’
Hope poor Noah didn’t have to do that.

Oh sorry, I just realised I’ve left you all high and dry by dropping the bombshell of, ‘Saints almost went out of style in the 1960s’ on you at the beginning, without letting you know that there really is no need to panic because only a few years later, saints made a huge comeback all thanks to the king of cool, John Paul II and the one and only, Mother Teresa. Phew!
Now Mother Teresa, like our very own Negar, has performed one miracle so far. A medallion with a picture of Mother Teresa was taped to the stomach of a woman suffering from a cancerous tumour and after a while the tumour disappeared.
Now there are those, like Dr. Ranjan Kumar Mustafi who refuse to accept that this was a miracle. ‘She had a medium-sized tumor in her lower abdomen caused by tuberculosis,’ he (nicknamed Dr Tattletale by the supporters of Mother Teresa) told the Sunday Telegraph, ‘The drugs she was given eventually reduced the mystic mass and it disappeared after a year’s treatment.’
Doctors, ey? Always trying to take all the credit. So answer me this then Mr Smarty Pants, who made the tumor in the first place, ey? I suppose next you’ll be wanting to take credit for that too. It’s all me, me, me with these doctors isn’t it?

Anyway enough about Mother Teresa. I think Negar’s miracle is much better. Predicting pregnancy from thousands of miles away! That’s really something. I’m sure neither Dr. Ranjan Kumar Mustafi nor the Pope himself will able to argue with that one.
Humm, Saint Negar of Texas, the patron saint of bloggers.

2006-10-21T17:01:00.000+01:00

This year when I was in Iran, I was told by an uncle (a few times removed) who looks a bit like Sloth from the Goonies (in a nice way) that on account of my great grandfather and a little sack full of screwed up pieces of paper that he was buried with, I will be going to heaven regardless of what I do in this world.

It’s a strange feeling knowing that you are going to go to heaven no matter what. It kind of makes me wish I enjoyed doing more bad things. At the moment the worst things I do are probably not picking up the phone sometimes, throwing away mouldy bread and not listening to the great advice of prophet Mohammad, ‘Stop eating at one bite before feeling full’ (after thirty one years I still have not been able to pinpoint that exact moment)
On the other hand I’ve gone off alcohol. I don’t even drink coffee anymore. (My body truly is a temple these days!) And I’m usually nice to others.
To top it off, I used to get these terrible migraines when I was younger that would stay on for hours and according to Prophet Mohammad suffering through one hour of headache is the equivalent of seven years of praying (or seventy? Ok, let’s say seven is correct) which means discounting the hangover pains (which I have a feeling will not count) I have many more years of praying banked up than I’ve lived in this world.

I’m thinking of putting some on ebay if anyone’s interested. I mean why not? Some people (who are very busy or simply can’t be bothered) employ others to pray for them. It’s true. If they go out drinking one night, the next morning they’ll call up their employee and say, ‘Fancy some overtime?’ Unless I’m wrong and the hangover headaches do count, in which case they will call up their employee and say, ‘Fancy a day off? Or should I just go and take that hair of the dog now?’
Either way things could be a lot simpler if instead of employing someone and having to listen to their whines about holidays and raises and bonuses, you could just go and buy however much praying you needed on ebay. I’d always known I was destined to become an entrepreneur.
Now I’ve patented this idea so don’t you migrainy types think you can just go and start up your own business because I will sue your Nurofen-starved heads, not only in this world but also in the next.

Now back to the subject of my great grandfather and his little sack of screwed up pieces of paper.
My great grandfather was a man of god. He prayed, he read the Koran and I’m guessing fasted too (which was probably a lot easier to do in those days on account of Spaghetti Bolognese not having found its way to Iran yet).
Every time my great grandfather…Aah I don’t know why I keep saying ‘my great grandfather’ it’s a bit formal isn’t it? I’ll just use his normal name from now on, Mirza Mohammad Ali khan-eh Sahamnezam. That’s better. So every time Mirza Mohammad Ali khan-eh Sahamnezam read the Koran from start to finish, he would take a little piece of paper, screw it up and keep in a little pouch. This was the pouch that was later buried with him.

Apparently there were so many pieces of paper in there to make Mirza Mohammad Ali khan-eh Sahamnezam the…well I was going to say ‘the king of heaven’ but I suppose a position like that has probably already been taken by someone like Prophet Mohammad or Jesus so he will be something like Secretary of State perhaps. Anyway even after becoming a high ranking heaven official, he will still have so many screwed up pieces of paper to spare that (according to uncle Sloth) all his children and all his children’s children and their children will get all their sins washed away and enter heaven too.
Great, isn’t it? It’s like having your name on the best guest list ever. While all you lot will be queuing with the rest of them outside the gates of heaven, putting your most holly faces on to try and get in, I’ll be pulling up in a white chauffer driven Bentley and waltzing in through the VIP door to pick up the keys to my three bedroom Victorian semi with a river of milk and a river of honey running through the bottom of its backyard.

Ok so maybe it’s a bit mean of me to rub it in your faces like this. But don’t worry I’m pretty sure it’s not going to be all milk and honey and Bentleys and Victorian semis for me either.
Think about it. First of all there’s going to be The Judgment Day where everyone (literally) will be present along with God and Gabriel and the Devil and lo and behold, Mirza Mohammad Ali khan-eh Sahamnezam and his little sack of screwed up paper which I’m guessing the Divine Court is probably going to be a little offended by. I mean they’re supposed to be the biggest record holders ever. They’ve been keeping records since the dawn of time. They know exactly how many grains each ant has picked up in its lifetime and how many times you have passed wind and tried to blame it on your senile grandmother. And then my great grandfather for some reason has felt the need to take his own evidence down there. It’s like going to the Oxford Crown Court and taking this picture with you

as evidence that a man called Dave has robbed your house or getting on a NASA space shuttle but insisting on wearing your own homemade helmet made out of aluminium foil.

I’m just hoping their records match with his screwed up pieces of paper because what is he going to do if they don’t? Is he actually going to have it out with Gabriel? In front of everyone? Ooh, I don’t even want to think about it. You know how it’s kind of embarrassing when one’s parents get drunk and start doing karaoke or re-enacting scenes from Saturday Night Fever? Well I’m not sure but I’m kind of guessing your great grandfather quarrelling with Gabriel on Judgment Day in front of every creature that has ever lived in this world plus God and the Devil and all the angels is going to be quite embarrassing.

And then of course we will have the matter of my sentencing.

Gabriel: Shirin, you are hereby sentenced to shuffle excrement in Hell for all eternity. Any questions?

Me: Yes. Th…

Mirza Mohammad Ali khan-eh Sahamnezam: What? She can’t be going to hell. There must be some kind of mistake. What about all those headaches she used to get?

Gabriel: Yeah well she was fine with those but then she started selling all her banked up prayers on ebay. Then when she saw what a great demand there was out there for prayers, with the help of a friend she opened up a praying sweatshop in downtown Tehran and started exporting affordable prayers to Europe and the US.

Mirza Mohammad Ali khan-eh Sahamnezam: I can’t believe this. This is terrible. So that is why she is going to hell then?

Gabriel: No that’s fine. There is actually a legal loophole in Islam that makes it absolutely fine to buy or sell prayers but your great granddaughter’s problem is that she forgot to keep any prayers for herself.
Now dear I believe you had a question for us.

Me: Emm, yes… about what I’ll be shuffling for all eternity, do you know if that will be human or animal excrement?

Gabriel: Hmm, let’s see. Half burnt stakes, yada yada yada, getting ripped apart by angry dogs, yada yada yada. Oh here we go. Yes, pool of excrement. No that’s not it. Oh yes here we go: shuffling excrement… Hmm, no I’m sorry dear. Unfortunately it does not specify which type of excrement you will be shuffling.

Devil: Sorry to interrupt but can I say something? Now don’t take my word as Gospel (hee hee, joke) but seeing that the act of shuffling excrement will be taking place in Hell, I would imagine it’ll be mostly demon shit.

Me: Oh, I should think that is quite acidic. Am I right?

Devil: Yes but you don’t need to worry about that; we will be issuing you with special protective gloves and boots…

Mirza Mohammad Ali khan-eh Sahamnezam: Ok that’s enough. You know I’m not going to let her go to Hell and that’s that. So let’s start our negotiations about how many Koran readings it’s going to take to keep her out of there.

Gabriel: Fifteen.

Mirza Mohammad Ali khan-eh Sahamnezam: FIFTEEN? You havein’ laugh? Is he havni’ a laugh? No way. I’ll give you one.

Gabriel: ONE?! ONE?! I know you’re haggling Mirza Mohammad Ali khan-eh Sahamnezam but that’s ridiculous even by Iranian standards.

Mirza Mohammad Ali khan-eh Sahamnezam: Two and that’s my last offer.

Gabriel: No way Pedro.

Devil: No way Pedro?!

Mirza Mohammad Ali khan-eh Sahamnezam: Ok then, three and I’m not giving you a Besmellah more.

Gabriel: What did you say? Because for a minute there I thought you said ‘three’ and I was going to get seriously insulted. Thirteen and I’m not accepting a Gholho vallah less.

Mirza Mohammad Ali khan-eh Sahamnezam: Well tough because I’m not giving you any more than four.

Gabriel: Twelve.

Mirza Mohammad Ali khan-eh Sahamnezam: Five.

Gabriel: Eleven and that’s only because you are a direct descendent of Prophet Mohammad.

Mirza Mohammad Ali khan-eh Sahamnezam: Six or I’m walking.

Gabriel: Are you kidding me? No way. Ok I’m getting bored of this now. Let’s call it an even ten.

Mirza Mohammad Ali khan-eh Sahamnezam: Seven

Gabriel: Nine

Mirza Mohammad Ali khan-eh Sahamnezam: Eight

Gabriel: Eight and a half.

Mirza Mohammad Ali khan-eh Sahamnezam: Eight and a quarter.

Gabriel: Done.

Devil: Halleluiah!

Me: Thanks for bailing me out Mirza Mohammad Ali khan-eh Sahamnezam. I’m very sorry you had to…

Mirza Mohammad Ali khan-eh Sahamnezam: Come on young lady, we have a lot to discuss.

Me: Shit!

Mirza Mohammad Ali khan-eh Sahamnezam: Now tell me. Have you thought of any new money making schemes suitable for this world?

Me: Seriously?

Mirza Mohammad Ali khan-eh Sahamnezam: Yes. Well we have all eternity here so we might as well do something.

Me: Well off the top of my head…a sewage system for Hell?

Mirza Mohammad Ali khan-eh Sahamnezam: Do you think there will be much profit in that?

Gabriel: Excuse me can the people who have already had their sentence move their talks of dodgy dealings out of this court please? We really need to get on with things over here.
Ok where was I? Oh yeah. May I have your attention please? May I have your attention please? Will the real Slim Shady please stand up? I repeat, will the real Slim Shady please stand up? We’re gonna have a problem here...

2006-10-14T15:01:00.000+01:00

I fasted once. Twice really but it appears that one of the times will not count because I ate at lunchtime and that apparently is a big no-no.
It was the month of Ramadan and my cousin Shadi and I had decided to fast. It was my first time but Shadi was a pro. I was about ten or eleven and Shadi was two years older. We were staying at our grandparents’ house.
I could hear the sound of the call of pray as I was being shaken awake. I pulled a blue mohair jumper with an orange butterfly on the front, over my red, Japanese style pyjamas (very popular with us kids back then) and crawled out from under the stairs.
Now to avoid any misunderstandings let me just explain that we were not made to sleep under the stairs by our cruel grandparents. No, it wasn’t like that. Usually we slept under the dining table like normal people. Well I say normal!
Basically it was during the bombings and my grandmother, Mamanjoon had got it into her head that the safest place for us all to sleep in was under the dining table. It was made of choobeh albaaloo (sour cherry wood) you see, which apparently is very strong.
‘You pack up every night and go and sleep in reinforced concrete shelters?’ I used to say to my friends at school, ‘Maybe you should think about investing in a sour cherry wood dining table.’
So when we stayed at our grandparents’, we all slept under the dining table. All except Madarjoon (Mamanjoon’s mother) that is. Madarjoon was far too old and far too sensible to leave her comfy bed in favour of sleeping under the dining table with me, my two cousins and our two grandparents.
I don’t know exactly what our bomb plan was really but I imagine it was something along these lines:

In the event of a bomb trying to enter the house, first Madarjoon would try to catch it and fling it out of the window.

If she failed to do this however, the bomb would then bounce off the dining table and that would be the end of that.

As you can see it’s quite a plan. Luckily we never had to find out exactly how foolproof it was. Anyway, back to the main story of my failed fasting.

So that night Shadi and I had moved to our own private quarters (under the stairs) so we wouldn’t wake the others when we woke up at dawn to start our fasting.
I slumped myself into a chair at the smaller, round dining table (that was still being used for eating purposes and not as a bunker on account of it being a bit flimsy and not quite big enough for all five of us to fit under)
As I sleepily shoved pieces of greasy aubergine omelette (that had been left out for us by Mamanjoon the night before) in my mouth, Shadi poured me a cup of tea from the flask and stirred in a couple of spoonfuls of sugar, talking non-stop, ‘We’re not doing this right but it’s ok. You’re not supposed to eat after the call of pray. Actually I don’t know…maybe you can eat all the way through the call of pray too in which case we should eat very fast. It shouldn’t matter though because it’s not our fault; our alarm clock didn’t go off. It’s lucky I woke up myself. Anyway I don’t think it matters. The important thing is that we wanted to do this so it’s ok. We will eat quickly and we’ll go to bed and we won’t tell anyone about this. Ok?’
I nodded. I was far too sleepy to have an opinion anything at the time.
A few hours later we woke up again and watched telly while the others had breakfast. A little past midday, I went home (which was about five minutes away) to get something. And within ten minutes of me arriving there, I had raided the fridge and scuffed a huge bowl of Spaghetti Bolognese.
The truth was I had found fasting quite boring and not at all the exciting spiritual experience that I thought it was going to be. I had expected to at least be able to levitate by lunchtime. However I did feel the exact opposite of that as soon as I told my cousin what I’d done. She was very disappointed in me. I said, ‘But it wasn’t going to count anyway, was it? Because we woke up late.’
‘It would have counted.’ She said, ‘Being a few minutes late wouldn’t have mattered, the important thing is that we wanted to do it.’
I hung my head in shame and sneaked upstairs to Madarjoon’s room. It had been another quiet night on Bomb Watch for her and I figured she could use some company.

2006-10-07T11:46:00.000+01:00

I was watching one of my favourite programmes last night called QI (Quite Interesting). It was all more than quite interesting and all the way through I was doing the usual pleading with my brain to remember at least one interesting fact from the show so in the unlikely situation of that subject ever coming up in a conversation, I would have something to say about it and dazzle everyone with my cleverness and as usual my brain was refusing to accept anything.
‘Come on please. They are talking about the real people who Gulliver’s travels and Robinson Crusoe were based on. This is very interesting. Could you try and remember this please?’
‘Sorry, no can do. The disc is full.’
‘But how can that be? I don’t know anything really.’
[Yawn] ‘Well you know this morning when you were trying to memorize your mobile phone number?’
‘Yeah’
‘That took a lot of space.’
‘Oh cool, so did I manage to memorize that at the end then? Huh, I hadn’t realized that I had.’
‘Oh yeah’ [Yawn] ‘077 something, something and all the rest of it.’
‘077?! That’s all you’ve got?’
‘Hey come on, it’s a long number. How many digits? Ten? Eleven? You know I’m not good with numbers.’

But as soon as a picture of a kangaroo came up, for some reason I knew that I was going to remember this interesting fact no matter what. And I did!
‘What is it that kangaroos can not do?’ Asked Stephen Fry.
‘Play the piano.’
‘Oh shut up Brain.’
‘Drive’ Said Alan Davis
‘Vote’ said another guy
‘It’s a bodily function.’ Said Stephen Fry
‘Burp’
‘Fart’
‘Yes’ said Stephen Fry, ‘kangaroos can not fart.’

Interesting! But it gets even better. Apparently, as I write this, cutting edge experiments are being done by scientists who hope that one day those species of bacteria that live in a kangaroos’ guts can be fed to cows and with any luck stop them from farting so much and ultimately end global warming.

Uhum, yes. Sounds like a great plan. But is there a plan B that maybe we could work on before starting this? The thing is I’m just not comfortable with the idea of experimenting with trying to improve cows again. We all remember what happened last time when we tried to do that, don’t we? And who would have thought that something as innocent as feeding some cows to some other cows would start such an appalling chain of events with the cows all going mad and even worse, making some of us go mad too with the terrible thought of not being able to eat burgers for while. Oh those were tough times.
[Yawn] ‘Oh yeah, very tough, very tough. Is it lunchtime yet?’
[sigh] ‘No not yet.’
‘Snack time?’
‘No’
‘Play time?’
'No'
'Sleep time?'

2006-10-01T17:31:00.000+01:00

One of the situations that make me feel very uneasy is when someone calls me and I get the feeling that they are after a very long conversation because they’re bored. Oh just thinking about it sends shivers down my spine. ‘Hi’ they say in a miserable sounding voice, ‘I’ve been stuck in traffic in Headington for twenty minutes; I’m bored out of my skull.’
This is when I start to panic. But then I think, no no no, let’s not be hasty now, it might not be what I think it is. So I say (in a oh-no-you-poor-thing way) ‘Oh no, that’s bad.’ And then ask, ‘Are you on a bus?’
‘Yeah’ they sigh. Oh no, I’m really panicking now. ‘Where are you heading?’
‘London’ they say cheerlessly. My worst fears are realized; this means they’re after a two hour conversation.

I’ve never been a big telephone fan. When I was younger I never went through that period of spending hours on end on the phone. My mum, who was extremely worried over my lack of interest in this teen must, even went and bought a little, red telephone especially for me and put it in my room. But it didn’t work; neither my mum’s plan nor the phone. It was one of those cheapo plastic ones with very sharp edges and built in Random Disconnecting System (which did exactly that). Bad for having a conversation on basically but great if you were after something sharp to slit your wrist with. The man in the shop may not have been lying after all when he had said that these were very popular with teenage girls!

Living so far away from my family and a lot of my friends for so many years however has taught me to appreciate a good phone conversation with a loved one. But I still can’t get my head around the idea of calling someone not because I miss them or have something to tell them or ask them, but just because I’m bored. I’m not saying it’s wrong to do that or anything, I just don’t understand it especially when the bored person has absolutely nothing to say and it’s like they’ve called you to entertain them.
I was having one of these conversations this morning. Oh it was like pulling teeth. There were many ‘Hmm’s and long silences and ‘So what else is new’s. It was clear that neither of us was enjoying ourselves much but still every time I tried to direct the nonexistent conversation towards an end, the person on the other side brought up another subject. Twenty three minutes and forty five seconds this suffering went on for. It really was quite painful.

2006-09-27T14:22:00.000+01:00

All this talk about banning skinny models from catwalks has reminded me of this little story which I thought I could share with you.
A couple of years ago, in January 2004 to be precise, I went to ‘Fashion in motion’ a fashion show by some famous Iranian designers at V&A Museum in London (organised by Iran Heritage Foundation).
My aunt and good friend was one of the designers there so before the show I got to rub shoulders with the rich and famous of the Iranian fashion world. My choice of outfit: a thick, stiff, black polo neck that flattened my chest to nothingness (It was a cold day, ok? And that was the only jumper I owned at the time. I’m not a big fan of winter clothes really) was something that I regretted almost immediately and then a bit later, after paying a visit to the ladies' room, my very rushed and amateurish makeup application!

Straight off you could tell the designers were not happy and there was tension in the air. After some minutes of persistent eavesdropping I managed to work out what the problem was. Apparently the models that had been brought in for the show, how should I put it, er, let’s say had a lot more meat on them that designers had anticipated.
Luckily my aunt did not have to worry about things like that much on account of her clothes mostly being, if not one-size-fits-all, then one-size-fits-many. But even she was a little annoyed I think because one of her outfits had not fitted any of the models.
There was this one guy there that everyone was feeling sorry for though who from what I gathered was not going to be able to show a lot of his designs since none of the girls could fit into the clothes.

As usual with cases of unhappy Iranians vs. people of other nations, there was a lot of talk of conspiracy theories. ‘They’ve only done this because we’re Iranians.’ I heard someone say (Iranian is the new “Black” apparently), ‘they would never have given us such fat models if they didn’t want to annoy us.’ (These were not the designers themselves by the way. Those guys were too busy running around to have time for uncovering conspiracies. These were just their friends and other nosy people) ‘Of course’ another one joined in, ‘do you think if Giorgio Armani had a show here they would dare give him these models?’

By the time I took my seat by the catwalk, I had taken the idea of fat models and run with it and was imagining all kinds of amazing entertainment for the night: big mummas packed into delicately made clothes with the stitches coming undone, handing out cookies to the audience. Unhealthy, overweight, teenage mums munching on chip butties and pushing prams and wearing pink pleated shalitehs and tonbans (short skirts worn on to of a pair of baggy trousers that fasten round the ankles)
I could go on but I don’t want you to, like me, get too excited about this and then be totally disappointed!
I’m only kidding. The show was absolutely fantastic. However I just couldn’t get over what I’d heard round the back. I’m not a designer and I haven’t been to many fashion shows so I don’t know, maybe these models were actually a bit bigger than normal catwalk models but to me they looked super skinny and I just kept thinking if this lot couldn’t fit into the clothes, I really don’t know who could. A stick insect? But she would probably get crushed under the weight of the clothes and suffocate!

Fatty number one ;-)

I can’t remember who took these pictures. They’re not great. You can see some better ones on the V&A website.

2006-09-23T16:45:00.000+01:00

It breaks my heart every time I have to throw the fat parts at the top and the bottom of sliced bread in the bin so I don’t do it for ages and keep them in the cupboard thinking that I’ll take them and feed them to the ducks sometime but then when I don’t get round to doing that for a while and they get covered in powdery green dust and strange fungi, I’m left with no choice but to throw them away. Oh how I wish like in Iran, we had Namakis (Salt Men) in Oxford who would exchange dry and mouldy bread for crystal salt.
Bread has a lot of respect in Iran. Robab, my cousins’ nanny, used to say, ‘If you see a piece of bread in the street, pick it up, kiss it and then put it somewhere higher up like on a wall or a windowsill so it won’t get treaded on.’
Actually all food get a lot more respect there than they do here but bread in particular is much respected bordering on holly.
Growing up in Iran one of the first rules I ever learned was that ‘you finish everything that is on your plate’. When I see people leaving food on their plates, I feel so angry. Well it’s more upset than angry actually. To me it’s just sad that they see nothing wrong with wasting food. The funny thing is that from what I’ve seen, usually these are the people who are seen as righteous and whose behaviour is envied by others. Time and time again I’ve heard people (usually ones that are a bit on the chubby side) make comments such as, ‘Oh you are so lucky you’re able to leave food on your plate, I always have to finish everything, even when I’m full.’ And the other person, the rude one, the one Robab and my grandmother would not have hesitated to give a good telling off to, the one who has for many years been in charge of how much goes onto his/her plate but has not yet been able to calculate exactly how much he/she is able to eat, sits there with a massive grin on his/her face, looking very pleased with him/herself.
It’s like eating is such a bad thing that doing anything else with your food other than eating it is fine. ‘Just don’t eat it ok? Because eating will make you fat and that is bad’ seems to be the message.
Some time ago I was with a few friends; a couple of them with new babies, one with an older baby and me with no baby when I heard this (which I think is one of the strangest pieces of information and advise I’ve ever heard in my life), ‘It has been proven that mothers put on most of their weight from “let’s not waste”’ Said the older baby mummy in a knowing manner, ‘but you mustn’t think like that. As soon as you think your child has had enough, you must pour what’s leftover on the plate into the bin and pour washing-up liquid all over it.’
I felt the same look coming over my face as when people ask me questions like, ‘Just out of interest, exactly why do Moslems love to blow themselves up so much?’
‘Yeah I’ve heard that’ said one the new baby mummies, ‘I’ll definitely do that because I don’t want to get any bigger than this.’
The older baby mummy smiled and nodded sympathetically. I smiled and raised my eyebrows. Many questions were circling around my head. Some I figured I was better off not knowing the answer to (So is the washing-up liquid really necessary? Is it possible that if you don’t do that, you will at some point during the afternoon go looking through the bin for a little snack? And if you are the kind of person that does that, is a bit of washing-up liquid going to stop you?) and some I thought I would just get laughed at by asking them (Does it absolutely have to either go in the bin or be eaten? What’s wrong with putting it in the fridge and keeping it for later? It could make a nice little snack for you or the baby couldn’t it?) But most of all I was thinking ‘Exactly when did food lose all its respect in this country?’
Somehow between these girls’ grandparents’ generation (who without a doubt respected food after all the hardship they had gone through during the war) and now, it has become absolutely fine for someone like Gillian McKeith (of 'You are what you eat') to go to someone’s house, get a bin bag and throw anything sugary or fatty that she finds in the house in there, encourage the overweight person who has asked for her help to put muffins and éclairs on the floor and stamp on them, then set a table with all the things that person eats in a week (slabs of cheese, kebabs, burgers, cakes, chocolate, numerous glasses of beer and coke, biscuits, takeaways,…) and occasionally use other shock tactics such as making a chocolate gravestone and a human size grave covered entirely in chocolate bars.
I actually like this programme because it teaches people to eat well and be healthy but must they waste all this food in the process? Ok yes, cakes make people fat but cake is still food isn’t it? It has been made from flour, sugar, oil, eggs maybe milk, maybe nuts. These are all good food that our bodies need and should be treated with respect and not as the enemy. Yet people on this programme and others similar are encouraged to destroy them, throw them away and pour washing-up liquid over them, in short do anything but eat them. Maybe I’m being a bit naïve here but shouldn’t they instead be taught to respect food and try to control themselves so they won’t overeat?
Let’s say someone is a sex addict and whenever he/she sees a good looking person, he/she wants to…well you know. Anyway when he/she goes to get the help of an expert, does the expert 1- try to teach him/her to somehow get his/her desires under control? Or 2- tell him/her that whenever he/she sees a good looking person in the street, he/she should punch them in the face so they’re not pretty anymore and therefore no longer desirable?
This might seem like an extreme example but I’m sure if you were to put this scenario and someone destroying a skip full of cakes, cheese, bread and chocolate, to group of people in a famine stricken country, they would think that these were both equally ridiculous.

I don’t know what came first really; the wasting of food in our daily lives or in movies and television. But it does often feel like they are one step ahead of us, taking things to extremes. And it’s strange how they usually take every possible care to make everything appear so natural in movies yet when it comes to eating habits, they often fail miserably.
I’m talking about all the times someone buys a sandwich, takes one bite of it and throws the rest in the bin because he receives a phone call with good or bad news/sees a friend or enemy standing on the other side of the road/realises he’s late for something/has had amnesia for the past four years and then suddenly remembers (if what he remembers is that he doesn’t like pastrami and that’s what he’s bought, then I guess that’s understandable but it’s probably something lame like) he is a prince who everyone thinks has died in a yachting accident and now that his father has died, his evil cousin is about to be crowned as the next king unless he gets himself to the palace pronto. He could still eat the sandwich on his way there if you ask me. I would. I had to throw my half eaten tuna sandwich in the bin about a year ago because the bus driver said no food was allowed on the bus and I’m still thinking about that sandwich and cursing that bus driver every time I do. And it wasn’t because he had made me get on the bus hungry because the sandwich was huge and I had already eaten my fill (I was just keeping the rest for later).

There are so many examples of these unnecessary throwing away of food in movies and television that I could write a whole book on them. The depressing British soap operas (Eastenders, Hollyoaks,…) are full of them. No one ever eats on these programmes.
Scenario: A couple sit down to have dinner with plates of sausages and chips in front of them. Phone rings. The man picks it up (bad move), ‘Hello’
‘Your wife is cheating on you.’ Click, beeeeeeep
‘Hello, hello, who is this?’
‘What’s wrong Barry?’ Asks the wife, picking up a chip.
‘You’ replies the husband with an angry look on his face, ‘you’re cheating on me. I don’t ever want to see you again.’
Walks out. Slams the door behind him. Now the woman either starts crying and runs upstairs or starts crying and empties the plates in the bin. And I just think, Love, you cheating might have been shocking news to him but it’s not news to you, is it? So why not finish your dinner?

Another common scenario is this: A man/woman walks into a house. He/she takes care to come in quietly as it’s pretty late at night. He/she walks into the dining room to find a table set for two with two plates full of food that have gone cold and a flickering candle on its last breaths. In the living room, a woman/man sleeps on the sofa fully dressed, holding an empty glass of wine. She/he has been waiting for he/she to arrive and he/she is very late for their dinner date. Now she/he suddenly wakes up and starts rubbing her/his eyes and he/she starts to apologize for his/her lateness…Stop right there.
Let’s analyse this common scenario on television and movies for a moment. Would anyone in their right mind dish someone’s dinner and put it on the table before they arrive in the house? Because I’m thinking even if you have a date with the Incredible Timekeeping Man/Woman who always arrives at exactly the time he/she says he/she will arrive, he/she might still have a little something to do before dinner like washing hands, making a phone call or going to the bathroom. What if they want to have a little wine before dinner? What if on their way in, a neighbour starts talking to them?
The way I see it, it’s she/he who has done the wrong thing here. She/he has not only wasted all the food, but also finished all the wine. And now we’re supposed to feel sorry for her/him too?! No way.
If I were him/her I would give her/him a good telling off. If you can’t understand why I think what she/he has done is so stupid, let’s change this scenario a little for you. Let’s replace dinner with a baby or a puppy. Let’s say in the film, he/she was supposed to have come home at 7 O’clock to look after the baby/puppy so the other person could have a rest or go out. He/she arrives three hours late to find that she/he is sleeping with earplugs in (so not to be disturbed by the cries of the baby/puppy)/has gone out already and the baby/puppy is hungry and badly in need of a change/walk.
Again some might think this is an extreme example but I’m sure people felt exactly the same way when someone decided that animals should have rights (and a little further back,) that humans should have rights. So now what’s wrong with saying that foods should have rights?
The fact of the matter is that day by day, the food we eat has less and less nutrition in it on account of us overworking the soil so much. Apparently these days most of us (even the ones with a balanced diet) need supplements simply because there are a lot less vitamins in our food than there once was. But we still don’t think that food needs to be treated with respect.

There are always discussions about all the violence in movies and the effects of this on the society. Ok I agree; violence is bad. People die from violence. But every year masses of people are also dying from hunger while others are given standing ovations for stamping on éclairs.
It’s funny how it no longer seems to be acceptable to have a hero or heroine in a movie who smokes but it’s absolutely fine to have someone in a movie take one bite from an apple and throw the rest sexily in the bin or to have Brad Pit in Ocean’s Eleven, take one bite of a burger and then for no apparent reason, throw the rest away.
‘No food has been wasted during the making of this film’ that’s what I would like to see at the end of a blockbuster movie one of these days.
I would probably fight for this if I was a tad less lazy but unfortunately I’m more of a talker than a doer and so my height of Respect Food Campaign will probably be to glare disapprovingly at guests who leave food on their plates and maybe if I have a child one day, teach him/her to respect food too.

2006-09-11T13:45:00.001+01:00

The other night I was doing a bit of cooking and listening to the television that was on in the living room. It was one of those British documentary series following a bunch of people around at work. You know the ones. And if not, the best way to describe them I think is, dull as hell. Which I like because you know, it’s real. Let’s face it, life for most people, for the most part is dull. And that’s how we like it, isn’t it? I mean if every time I came out of the house, I would have to dodge man-eating lions that were lurking about behind the Ford Fiestas and the wheelie bins, then yes I guess life would be a lot more exciting but as it is, the only thing lurking around here is the crazy guy who shouts at me from time to time and to be honest I would prefer it if this bit of excitement was taken out of my life too.
Anyway back to the documentary. It was all about following a few people around some airport.

Hussein, a cleaner in terminal five has a problem. ‘I’ve lost me broom. It were there a minute ago and now it aint.’ Hussein decides to do some investigating.
‘Excuse me, ‘ave you seen a broom lying about ‘ere.’
‘Where?’
‘Well I don’t know do I? It were there a minute ago and now it aint and I need it to do me work youknowwha’imean?’
‘Sorry mate I haven’t seen it.’

Meanwhile Naomi has to deal with a very unusual package. ‘What is inside?’
‘It’s a doll. A very expensive…’
‘No no no, you must take it out of the box. You can’t put a dog in a box, it’ll die.’
‘Oh no it’s not a dog, it’s doll. A clay doll. They are very expensive.’
‘A doll?’ ha ha ha ‘I thought you said a dog.’

At the same time on the other side of the airport, Ben is on Bird duty.
‘Birds land on the runway from time to time and it’s not usually a problem but when you get a lot of them…’
Radio, ‘khhh…How are things looking down there?’
‘Not good. A group of seagulls are blocking runway 14.’
‘Kaa kaa’ the birds chat in the background.
‘khhhh…Roger that.’
Ben attempts to shoo off the birds.
‘Shoo shoo.’
‘Kaa kaa’ (‘Is that guy pretending to be a bird?’)
‘Kaa kaa’ (‘Shoo shoo? What does that mean?’)
‘Kaa kaa?’ (‘He is making sea noises. I think he is trying to ask us where the sea is.’)
‘Kaa kaa’ (‘Are you sure? I’d always thought that was human for ‘shit on my head.’’)
Unfortunately the shooing does not work but Ben has another trick up his sleeve (apparently the unsuccessful shooing counts as one trick!).
‘This is a tape of a seagull in distress. I’m going to play this now and the seagulls will fly away thinking that there is danger in this area.’

‘’ave you seen me broom?’

No no no stop! Don’t cut to the broom guy! The seagull story was just getting interesting. A tape of a seagull in distress! I just have so many questions about that. For starters, how do you go about making a tape like that? Do you strangle a seagull and record his dying screeches? If yes, does the RSPCA know about this? Do your family know you strangle seagulls for a living? Is your mother proud of you? Perhaps you can buy this tape from HMV or Tower Records. In that case, do you think I could get one that says, ‘Please don’t shit down my collar?’

‘…a broom. ‘ave you seen it?’
‘Why are you looking for a broom?’
‘Cause it’s lost init?’

On the other side of the airport Zohoor has problems of his own.
‘Sometimes a swan gets lost and lands in the airport. You have to be careful with them because they’ve got a nasty beak on them.’
‘Ghaa’
‘Ouch. See? He just tried to go for me there. They’re vicious little things they are.’

Meanwhile runway 14 is still blocked by seagulls.

Yes! Back to the seagull story.

‘Khhh…has the runway been cleared?’
‘No not yet. I’m playing the tape of the seagull in distress at the moment but it doesn’t seem to be working.’
Turns out the tape is just of a bird doing a jazz version of ‘O Sole Mio’ and the seagulls seem to enjoy it.

No it didn’t say that and I don’t think that’s what it was. It sounded more like the seagull they had strangled had some sort of speech impediment that made it hard for other seagulls to understand him. They sounded quite confused, ‘Kaa kaa?!’ (‘Is he saying ‘Help me, I’m dying.’ or ‘Jeffery, I’m in love with Marlene.’?’)

Now Ben needs to think of another way to clear the runway.

Hussein’s shift is coming to an end and he has not been able to locate his broom. He is considering discussing the matter with his supervisor and asking for her advice.

Join us again next week for another episode of Airport where Hussein will undergo hypnosis in an effort to find his broom and Ben struggles on Bird Duty.
‘As you can see they are starting to get a bit aggressive now.’
‘Kaa kaa’ (‘What do we want?’)
‘Kaa kaa’ (‘O Sole Mio’)
‘Kaa kaa’ (‘When do we want it?’)
‘Kaa’ (‘Now’)
‘Kaa kaa’ (‘Che bella cosa na jurnata 'e sole,
n'aria serena doppo na tempesta!
Pe' ll'aria fresca pare già na festa...
Che bella cosa na jurnata 'e sole.
All together now’
‘Kaa kaa’ (Ma n'atu sole
cchiù bello, oje ne'.
'o sole mio
sta 'nfronte a te!’)
Ben, ‘I think I might call for backup.’

Now I’m off on a fun-packed week in London and Paris tomorrow where I’ll be meeting many old friend and three new babies and all I’m thinking about is, ‘Damn, I’m going to miss next week’s episode and will never know what became of Hussein’s broom or the jazz loving seagulls!’

2006-09-02T16:31:00.000+01:00

I guess most people would agree with me on this (well most people that read this blog anyway); it’s not nice seeing pictures of mutilated bodies or people being eaten alive or dieing in some other horrible way.
Being married to a Heavy Metal fan, I’m exposed to beauties such as these nearly everyday (please don’t look if you’re going to have nightmares. Yes I mean you Mother. Remember how many laps of the living room you did when we attempted watch House of Wax together? Hmm, yes leave that mouse alone dear, it’s not worth it): Butchered at Birth - Eaten Back to Life

Ahhh, you can’t imagine how many times I’ve woken up in the morning to an image of someone being torn apart by a bunch of zombies on our bedside table next to a discman and thought ‘why can’t my husband just be into porn like a normal bloke?’

So a little while ago Kamyar and I met in HMV and I noticed that he had picked up a few CDs, which was weird because he had bought some the week before and he never really used to buy many CDs. So I said, ‘You’re buying a lot of CDs lately.’ To which he replied, holding amongst others a Marilyn Manson CD (which I happen to like as well actually, the music that is not the artwork) with a picture of a crucified Marilyn on the front, minus him bottom jaw, ‘you know what’ in a bit of a you’ll-be-dead-proud-of-me-when-you-hear-this sort of tone, ‘I’m collecting these for our child.’
Yes, some people start up a college fund or a wedding fund or a post office account for their children, we prefer to invest in CDs of people with half of their face missing, singing about Satan!
I can just imagine the kind of family arguments we’re going to have in fourteen years time: ‘What do you mean you don’t like Cannibal Corpse? You know how much overtime your father had to do so he could buy these albums for you?’ or ‘You kids these days don’t appreciate anything. When I was your age back in Iran, we never had original CDs. We just had tapes that were copies of copies and artworks that were photocopied over and over again until you couldn’t tell if it was a picture of a man munching on his own insides or a man being served a plate of spaghetti bolognaise. Ahhh the good old days.’
No but joking aside, we would never force our way of thinking upon our child. This is more a case of us wanting to make sure that if our child one day expresses interest in the general cannibalism or Satanism area, we have a good collection of music and artwork for him or her to enjoy.
I’m only kidding. I know not all heavy mental fans are into cannibalism and Satanism and all that. Most of them (such as my own other half) are very lovely and gentle people actually…who just happen to enjoy listening to songs about people being ripped apart :-\

2006-08-27T08:36:00.000+01:00

The latest on the airports terror alert
with Shirin and Kamyar Adl

A stick of dynamite was found in a man’s checked luggage in Houston Texas. The man, who was arrested by the authorities, claims to work in the mining industry.
Earlier I interviewed one of the other passengers on the plane who had agreed to speak to us.

‘Hello Sir.’
‘Meep meep’
‘Mr Roadrunner, this man claims to work in mining which of course would explain the dynamite in his luggage. Obviously people should be allowed to carry their work tools around with them if they wish to do so. And of course I would never object to a teacher travelling with one or two pupils packed neatly in her suitcase or a lumberjack walking through airport with a chainsaw on his back. But in case of this creature I must say, all evidence point to him being a terrorist:
1- He is brown
2- He is hairy
3- He is quite dodgy looking really

We asked Mr Roadrunner for his input on this subject but unfortunately by then he had disappeared, leaving behind only a cloud of dust.

In other news a Continental Airlines flight from Corpus Christi, Texas, to Bakersfield, Calif, was held in El Paso after the crew discovered a missing panel in the lavatory.
After examining the hole, the authorities arrested a strange looking man with a huge belly and a very big nose/mouth. There are reports from eyewitnesses that as the man (who claims to work in the pest control industry) was being escorted out of the airport, in one terrorist language or other, he repeatedly shouted the words, ‘Azat motenafferam soorakheh fori’ which when translated into Queen’s democratic English will give, ‘I hate you instant hole.’

The man arrested, who has been named by the authorities as Anteater, will be transferred to Guantanamo Bay prison later this evening.

An Aer Lingus flight from New York City to Dublin was also evacuated Friday morning during a scheduled stopover in western Ireland following a bomb threat that turned out to be unfounded.
We now go live to our airport correspondent.

‘Bugs Bunny, I hear that you have been interviewing people at the airport all day.’
(munch munch) ‘Eh…yeah that’s right.’ (munch munch)
‘So? What have they been saying?’
‘Well I asked one guy, ‘What’s up Doc?’ and he said, eh…where are my notes now? Hang on a minute…ok here they are. Eh…he replied, ‘Be vewwy, vewwy quiet, I'm hunting wabbits!’
‘Oh, well that’s very interesting.’
(Munch munch)
‘Ok…er, what about Denis Breslin, spokesman for American Airlines’ pilots union? I hear that you have been speaking to him too.’
‘Eh…’ (munch munch) ‘oh yeah that guy. Yeah I asked him, ‘What’s cooking?...Doc.’
‘O…kay?’
‘And he said, ‘There really are bad guys out there to get us.’
‘Really? Is that what he said? Well that sounds scary.’
(munch munch) ‘Nyeah…I knew I should have taken that left turn at Albuquerque.’

C Loony Adls Press 2006

Have your say!

These are some of the comments that we at the Loony Adls Press have been receiving regarding the latest terror alerts and airport security.

Erik Smith said…
The authorities have been trying to unarm airplane passengers for many years now but somehow there are still people getting onto planes armed with dynamites and knives and shoe-bombs and baby milk. Frankly I don’t feel safe travelling on a plane anymore.

Anonymous said…
I don’t think it’s fair how airport officials seem to concentrate all their attention on the Moslem looking people. As a tall blond person who has never been strip searched in an airport in all my life, I feel that my basic human rights have been violated.

Mohammad Taghavi said…
This is only another great stratagem by the Great Satan and the cockeyed British to annoy the guiltless, martyr producing nation of Iran and compel this dear nation to give up their basic human rights of a nuclear power station.
Give me your ear and let me notify you why I say this. Notify me, what other people would endure as much suffering as the first-class people of Iran when a veto on hand luggage is put in place? You are notifying us, the nation who invented the Six Carry/Push method (one backpack, two carrier bags on each hand and one big bag being kicked in the front) that we are only sanctioned one bag on the plane each? You kid me? What about all the fried Ghormeh herbs, the fried aubergines, the feta cheese and green plums? Are you anticipating us to travel without these vital substances?
But let me notify you this Mr Bush and Mr Blair, you may take away our hand luggage rights but we will never give up our nuclear rights. As god is my bystander, I will pray everyday for the day that every Iranian has a nuke in his backyard, in other words, beh omideh roozi keh har Irani yek mooshak daashteh baashad. Vassalam, nameh tamam.
Mohmmad taghavi, 38 saaleh, az Tehran

2006-08-24T09:08:00.000+01:00

‘Miss’
‘Yes?’ the teacher replies unenthusiastically as she stares out of the window, hands behind her back.
‘Can we write whatever we want in our letter?’
‘No’ says the teacher, continuing to look out of the window, ‘you must all copy out what I have written on the blackboard.’
The blackboard has been split in two by a wriggly chalk line in the middle. On one side of it there is a letter, written in white chalk. It reads:

Drear Soldier brother
My name is … and I am … years old. You are very brave my brother. Your family must be very proud. We pray everyday for you to defeat Saddam the killer and come back home. We are behind you every second of the day, fighting from our little trenches: our schools.
May Allah be your guardian

On the other side of the blackboard there is a badly drawn picture of a standing man with his hands in front of his face in prayer position.

‘What about the picture Miss?’ asks the girl sitting in front of me raising her hand, ‘Can we draw a different picture?’
‘No’ the teacher sighs. Then she turns around and reluctantly walks to the blackboard, ‘you must draw this picture on one side of your paper, and then copy out this letter on the other side of it, putting your name and surname here,’ she says pointing to the dotted line after ‘My name is’ and then pointing to the next dotted line she says, ‘and your age in here.’
‘What did I tell you?’ the girl in front of me whispers victoriously. I want to give her a kick from under the desk but I don’t want her to know that she has annoyed me. So I shrug. ‘So?’ I say indifferently.
‘So’ she whispers again, with one hand in front of her mouth, ‘your drawing is no good and you have to start a new one now. I shrug again. Tina, who is sitting next to me whispers, ‘Just ignore her.’
The girl in front turns around and seeing that I’m still colouring in the picture I have copied from my pencil case; Luke Skywalker having a light sabre duel with Dart Vader, whispers a little louder than before, ‘You’re going to get a big fat zero for…’
‘Shhhh,’ says the teacher, ‘Quiet. You only have ten more minutes to finish your letters and then we’re going to start our lesson. If you’ve finished already, take your letter along with your moneybox and put them on my desk.’ And then she starts walking in between the desks and looking at people’s drawings. ‘That’s nice’ she says smiling, ‘Well done Zohreh.’
The girl in front of me giggles. ‘She’s not gonna be smiling when she sees your drawing.’ She whispers.
‘Shhhh’ says the teacher and glares at her frowning for a few moments before resuming her stroll around the class.
Suddenly it sounds like there is a fight going on downstairs in the yard. Some of the girls on the other side of the class are peering out of the window. ‘What is going on?’ asks the teacher as she walks to the window herself, hands behind her back. ‘A few mums are talking to each other down in the yard Miss.’ Says one of the girls, standing on the bench to get a better look. ‘Niki,’ she says excitedly, ‘you’re mum’s down there too. And so is yours Niloufar. And…’
‘Get down from there and finish your letter.’ Says the teacher as she opens the window.
An anxious voice calls from the yard, ‘Thank god Mrs Baagheri. Are you sending the kids down now?’
First looking at her watch and then back out of the window again and sounding a bit unsure, our teacher replies, ‘No’ and then, ‘There is still half an hour left until break time.’
‘We’re not talking about break time’ one of the mothers screams melodramatically in a squeaky voice, ‘the Red Alert has already gone off. We are about to be attacked.’
‘Oh I see,’ says our teacher, ‘I wasn’t aware of that.’
‘Well now that you are, will you send our kids down?’ says one of the mums from the yard.
‘I’m sorry’ says our teacher, ‘but I can’t dismiss this one class when the rest of the kids are still in their classes.’
There’s a sudden uproar in the yard.
‘What?’
‘Can you believe this?’
‘They’re crazy.’
‘Are you honestly expecting us to…’
‘Don’t worry Niloufar darling, mummy’s here.’
Niloufar hangs her head and starts to go beetroot red. Some of the rest of us start to giggle hysterically.
‘What is going on here?’ asks the principle, shuffling her way across the yard in her rubber slippers.
‘We’re about to be bombed’ shouts one of the ladies, ‘and we want to take our children somewhere safe.’
‘Yes I heard the Red Alert’ says the principle calmly, ‘but I’m sorry; I can’t close the whole school every time the red alert comes on. As you know, sometimes they come on three or four times a day and nothing happens. But even if we are attacked, I don’t think it’s safe for the kids to be sent away before school closing time. What if their parents are not home yet from work? What if their parents always pick them up from the school and they get lost? What if instead of going home…’
Tina nudges me. ‘Start packing’ she whispers. I grab my backpack and shove everything inside it in one swift move. Downstairs the principle is still counting the reasons why she is not going to close down the school, ‘I’m responsible for these girls. If something happens to one of these girls during school hours, I’m the one who will have to answer for it. I’m the one who angry parents will come to and ask, ‘why did you send our daughter out of school all by herself?’ What I’m trying to say is…’
Boommmm. The sound of the bomb is faint and muffled. ‘Aaaaa’ screams the squeaky mum, ‘they’ve started.’ The whole class stand up; ready to run out of the door. ‘Sit down’ our teacher says firmly. We all sit back down on the edge of our benches with our backpacks still on our backs.
Boommmmm. Class shakes. Windows rattle. One of the girls screams and starts crying. From downstairs mums shout out their kids’ names followed by, ‘Mummy’s here.’
Out in the corridors and stairs, kids have started to run around noisily. Our teacher goes to the classroom door and looks out for a few moments. Tina and I hold sweaty hands. All the girls with aisle seats have one leg out of the bench, ready to run out.
‘Out’ our teacher suddenly announces, holding the door wide open with one hand and waving us out with the other.
Tina and I squeeze ourselves out through the door. In the corridor, we join the sea of kids pushing each other towards the stairs. I trip but don’t fall over since we are all so packed together that there is no room to fall.
Outside in the yard, tearful mothers grab their children and storm out of the school.
Four of my friends and I try to go walk out of the gate but the principle stops us. ‘No. Only the kids whose parents have come to pick them up can leave. The rest of you are staying here.’ And then points to the back of the yard, ‘go and stand over there.’
‘Ahhh’ I say, ‘just because we don’t have crazy parents who spend their whole day waiting outside the school, listening to the radio, we have to stay here for the whole day and sit through maths while everyone else gets to go home.’ The others nod in agreement. ‘I said go and stand over there.’ Says the principle, noticing that we have not yet moved away from the gate, and points to the back of the yard again. We cut through the crowed and stand under a tree.
Booommm. There’s another explosion but we’re too miffed to pay any attention to it. ‘Back of the yard.’ The principle is saying to another group of disappointed girls.
‘Nargess’ a lady standing by the gates is calling and waving in our direction, ‘come hear darling.’ She screams. But she is barely audible in all the noise everyone else is making. ‘I’m here to pick up Leyli’ she says, holding the little first year girl, Leyli, in her arms, ‘you can come with us too if you like.’
‘That’s my neighbour.’ Says Nargess.
‘You’re so lucky.’ Maryam says to her.
‘Yeah’ she says, ‘Sorry’ she shrugs helplessly at us, ‘I see you tomorrow.’
The four of us wave at her glumly as she pushes through the crowed. When she reaches the gate, her neighbour asks her something and points in our direction. Nargess says something back to her. Then she shakes he head and says something to Nargess. Suddenly Nargess starts waving at us. ‘Come on’ she shouts cheerfully.
We start pushing through the crowd instantly, not wasting a nanosecond of time.
‘Come on’ says Nargess’s neighbour, eager to get out. We all follow obediently without stopping for a second to tend to our twisted veils or unbuttoned uniforms or undone shoelaces that have resulted from being pushed and pulled and hung on to for steadiness as we had tried to make our way through the sea of girls trying to make it out of the school.
‘Where do you think you’re going?’ the principle shouts at us angrily, ‘How many time does a human child need to be told one simple…’
‘They are with me.’ Nargess’ neighbour cuts her off bravely. We all huddle behind her, using this opportunity to adjust our veils and button up our uniforms.
The principle grunts in displeasure and turns away from us.

Outside, I hungrily breathe in the air of freedom. ‘You will all go home now, won’t you?’ Nargess’ neighbour says, holding her daughter tightly to her chest with Nargess standing by her side. We need to split from them as we are not going in the same direction. ‘Of course’ the rest of us say in unison and then we turn away from them and start running in one direction as they run in the exact opposite.
We run past the little nameless shop next to the school. For the first time I can see what the front of the shop actually looks like without a crowed of girls attached to it. Multicoloured plastic boxes containing bottles of black pop are stacked on top of each other outside in the sun. There is an empty little worn-out stool just in front of the door where I presume Mashdi, the store keeper, sits when he is not being attacked by swarms of girls from our school demanding lollipops, popsicles, cheesy puffs or sour prunes.
The street is empty except for the odd car speeding through every now and then and swerving round the corner. We run as fast as we can until we are almost flying with our sails of veils flapping behind us in the wind. With every step we take the coins we have each been collecting for the war for the past three months, rattle noisily inside their plastic grenade-shaped moneyboxes.
Booommm We run faster laughing and screaming with tears spurting out of the corners of our eyes from all the dust blowing into them.
I imagine arriving home and finding a pile of rubble where our home once stood. ‘It landed on our home,’ I sing, my right foot hitting the asphalt. ‘Chlink’ the coins do their bit. ‘It didn’t land on our home,’ I sing as my left foot momentarily hits the ground before it is forced to swing back again as my right foot comes to the front. ‘Chlunk’ sing the coins.
‘Wait’ someone is shouting. I almost fall over trying to stop. My backpack, still in flying mood, hits me on the back of the head hard before falling back down to place again.
A little further down the road, Tina sits on the ground rubbing her knee. All around her are the contents of her backpack: books, notebooks, her Barbie pencil case and a packet of cheesy puffs. Her maths notebook with red cover has fallen open in the middle of the road and the pages are being flicked through by the wind, or the invisible man. Her plastic grenade rattles happily rolling down the road until it is stopped by the tire of a parked car.

‘It landed on our home. Chlink. It didn’t land on our home. Chlunk…’ I sing turning into our street after dropping off Tina, Maryam and Goli at their homes, making the last bit of my journey home alone since out of all my friends I live the furthest from school. I try to jump higher as I run, to see if any smoke is coming from the direction of our home, surprising myself with how much energy I still have after all that running.
I run up the stairs two in one, bursting into the front door of our flat, gasping for air. My mum and dad both come to the door to meet me. ‘They closed down the school?’ my mum asks. ‘No’ I say panting, pulling my veil off theatrically and feeling my hair stand up with static electricity. My dad smiles. ‘We escaped.’ I say and throw myself in their arms.
It didn’t land on our home.

2006-08-18T16:02:00.000+01:00

‘You love Saddam Hussein?’ asked the Greek barman eagerly. I had been mistaken for many things in my life but Saddam Hussein’s lover was definitely the most interesting one.
‘No’ I replied in a bit of a squeaky voice that had resulted from me being so shocked at this question. Socrates, the barman, frowned in disappointment. ‘You like Iraq better now?’ he inquired, leaning over the bar. He was quite big and now towering over me.
I instinctively stepped back, taking care not to step on the chubby black puppy sleeping just behind me with his fat, pink belly pressed against the cool stone floor of the restaurant.
‘No’ I said, ‘the current situation in Iraq is terrible but Saddam Hussein wasn’t such a great person either.’
The barman stepped back, giving me knowing nods. ‘Yes it’s terrible’ he said, his face showing disgust but also happiness at having found exactly the right English word to describe his feelings in relation to the Iraq situation: Terrible. This he now repeated several time whilst shaking his head from side to side. I kind of wished I’d picked a better word.
‘Do you go back there?’ he finally asked, after sufficient number of ‘terrible’s were expressed.
‘Ah’ I said smiling, realising the misunderstanding, ‘I’m not from Iraq, I’m from Iran. With an N.’
Socrates gasped, widening his eyes. ‘Iran?’ he asked excitedly. I nodded, dreading his next question which I assumed was going to be about me being in love with our president. But luckily it wasn’t. He just nodded at me approvingly. ‘Very good’ he said, looking me up and down.
I looked over to the bottle of coke and the can of iced tea that I had taken from the fridge about ten minutes earlier. They hadn’t been that cold to begin with and now they were even warmer. For the fifth time since I had met the barman, I stretched my hand towards him, holding a five Euro note.
‘Hey’ he shouted at a chunky middle aged guy sitting at the end of the bar, waving my money away. This was followed by a series of words in Greek with the only recognizable word to a non Greek speaking person being: Iran.
‘Oh’ the other man replied, raising his eyebrows in surprise. Then he got up and headed in my direction.
Standing in front of me, one hand on chest, he began, ‘Hello’
‘Hello’ I replied, losing all hope of ever getting away.
‘I am Socrates’ he said, bringing his right hand to shake mine. Hearing this exact same sentence about ten minutes earlier from the barman had amused me a little but now I was just hot and bothered and wanted to drink my coke sitting on the beach with my feet in the water.
‘Shirin’ I said, shaking the man’s hand, ‘nice to meet you.’ Then I waited but neither of them said anything. They just stood there looking at me as one would at endangered species shown on television; with a look of sorrowful respect accompanied with the faintest of smiles. The puppy yawned and dragged his belly across the floor a little to reach a cooler area.
‘Iran’ said Socrates #2 with great determination that was mirrored in his tight fist held near his face, ‘very good country.’

Who would have thought that as a result of the Lebanon tragedy, being Iranian would suddenly become something cool and trendy! All the time we were in Corfu, whenever we told anyone we were from Iran, they would look at us admiringly.
The most interesting example of this was definitely the antiwar demonstration that we accidentally attended in Corfu town. We were walking around in the evening, going from shop to shop; waiting to feel hungry so we could go and have dinner, when we saw a group of people walking down the road carrying Lebanese and Palestinian flags and shouting slogans which were all Greek to me ;-)
Naturally the photoblogger and his flaneur missis followed the crowd. He, enticed by the prospect of great photo opportunities, and her, drawn in by the cuteness of the group of nine local dogs following the demonstrators.
As we marched through the narrow streets, more people and dogs joined. After a while, a little out of breath, Kamyar caught up with me and my twelve furry friends at the end of the procession. ‘Excuse me’ he said to the guy walking in front of us, holding a Lebanese flag, and asked him what it was exactly that they were shouting about, fitting into his question, very artfully, the three magic words that we had come to understand would instantly turn people into our friends: I am Iranian.
It worked. The man looked very pleased and so did the woman next to him. After he was done explaining to us what was being said by the demonstrators, he whispered something to the person next to him. This started a little Mexican wave of whispers, with every now and then, someone turning around to give us a respectful nod.
At Liston, everybody stopped and continued shouting, standing in a circle. Kamyar and I and a collection of dogs, stood a little further away, watching. After a while a young man with dreadlocks ran towards us. ‘Come quick’ he said excitedly. They were about to burn flags and he had rushed to call in the experts, as it were!
I don’t really like the whole flag burning thing myself and despite being Iranian, with flag burning in recent years having become a national pastime of ours, I’m afraid I had never seen it being done before. Even so, obviously carrying the Iranian-flag-burning genes, I took one look at the Israeli and the American flags that they were holding and knew they were heading for a disaster. The flags they were about to burn were different to the other ones they were carrying. These were made out of plastic for some reason. And as if that wasn’t enough, the guy in charge of burning them, first covered them both in what smelt like lighter fuel.
The flags went from flags to charred nothings in 1.2 seconds.
The crowd screamed and jumped back as the flags went up in flames.
The dogs dispersed.
The Iranians went off in search of a nice restaurant.

2006-08-14T13:34:00.000+01:00

Drrrrrrrrrrrring Drrrrrrrrrrrring
‘Huh’
Drrrrrrrrrrring Drrrrrrrrrring
Shirin quickly picks up the phone, at the same time producing a very unnecessary cough. ‘Hello?’ she says, trying her hardest to sound awake. As if sleeping is some sort of crime.

‘Good morning’ says the hotel receptionist from the other end, ‘I have Europe Car people here. They have come to pick up the car you rented.’
‘Oh!’ she replies, blinking rapidly a few times to try and get things in focus whilst looking at the clock, ‘But we were supposed to return the car at ten, it’s not even nine now and we still haven’t put the petrol we used back in.’
‘Oh!’ replies the receptionist.
‘Well the petrol station was shut when we got back last night so we thought we would do that this morning.’
‘Please excuse me a moment.’
And then two Greek voices discuss the matter on the other side. Shirin takes this opportunity to rub her eyes with the back of her free hand and check out her tan. It’s looking good but it could be better and today is her last chance to try and get it just perfect.
‘Hello?’ Says a nervous Greek voice from the other end.
‘Yes? Hello’
‘I am very sorry but I need to take the car now.’
‘But what about the petrol?’
‘It is ok. I will see how much you used and take the money from your card.’ And then her voice goes from nervous to sounding like she is about to cry, ‘Please, I need to take the car now. I will not be able to come back in this weather.’
That’s when Shirin notices the ‘wishhhhhh, wishhhhhh’ sound from outside. It’s raining. ‘Oh Greeks’ she thinks to herself swallowing her laughter while shaking her head from side to side in the knowing manner of a person from the UK.
‘Please’ the woman pleads again.
‘Ok’ she replies, ‘Don’t worry, my husband is on his way to the reception now.’ looking at the poor, half sleep husband next to her and waving him out of the bed.
‘Oh thank you’ says the woman on the other side, sounding very relieved.

Outside, rain is coming down hard on the lawn and on the flowers and on their drenched towels hanging out to dry. Shirin sits on the edge of the bed, scratching her legs and looking at the too familiar English style sky. ‘So you missed me so much that you had to follow me all the way to Greece then hey?’ she says looking up at the clouds.
‘What about the petrol?’ asks Kamyar, pulling his T-shirt over his head. ‘It’s ok’ she replies, watching the fat drops of rain land in the anti-mosquito candle left outside on the table, ‘she says she can just take the money.’

The next ten minutes are dedicated entirely to Shirin thinking about what she is going to have for her breakfast. By the time Kamyar gets back, drenched from head to toe, she has worked out exactly what she is going to have: three pieces of toast dripping with double cream and topped with blackcurrant jam washed down with a cup of coffee. But the storm is getting worst by the minute. ‘So this is the catch.’ She says to herself, ‘being stranded in our room on our last day here without any jam.’
She had wondered about the catch ever since the very cheap last minute holiday they had booked without even knowing exactly which hotel or which town they were going to, had turned out to be an amazing holiday in a wonderfully gorgeous place, not far from her idea of paradise.
They had been given a little house all to themselves, about five minutes away from a huge swimming pool and a beautiful beach, with amazing views of Greek mainland. But somehow non of it had felt right and everyday, lying back on the beach or by the pool, jet skiing in the Mediterranean, eating fresh swordfish, accidentally receiving a much better rented car than they had paid for, she had asked herself over and over again: What is the catch?
‘But if this really is the catch’ she thinks to herself, ‘it’s actually an ok one. We’ve had a fantastic week and now it’s raining a little, so what?’

‘Terrible weather, isn’t it?’ the old lady from next door was shouting to the people standing by the front door in the house opposite from them, ‘Do you have supplies?’
‘Supplies!’ Shirin chuckled to herself.
The lady continued, ‘Have you heard about the airports? ...Terrible, isn’t it?’
‘The airports?’ Shirin thought, ‘Oh no, have the airports closed down because of the rain? Oh fogodsakes’ she thought, getting up from the bed and walking to the door, ‘it’s just a bit of rain.’
Outside the rain had been busy. It was still coming down hard and now everything was under at least two inches of water. ‘Umm’ she thought, things were starting to look serious now.
‘Look at this’ she said to Kamyar who was pouring water in the kettle to make coffee, ‘There’s water everywhere.’
And so they both did what any normal holidaymaker in their position would do; they took out their cameras and started to shoot.

Their paradise had gone from this

and this

to this

and this

For the first time since they had bought their tickets, Shirin thought about the annoying mandatory insurance that they had been made to buy, wondering if the cheap £17.99 one they had chosen, offered a helicopter rescue from the roof or not.
‘Oh we must watch the news’ she said, suddenly remembering what she had overheard earlier, ‘The lady next door was saying something about the airports being closed.’

‘Airport plot’ read the white writing on the red band at the bottom of the television screen on BBC World Channel. And then it changed to ‘Terror Alert’
It took them a while to work out exactly what was going on. Basically the British police had been informed that terrorists had plotted to blow up planes in midair, using bombs in liquid form (a Doctor Evil kind of plan basically) and now many flights had been cancelled and all airports were in chaos. Shirin and Kamyar watched in disbelief.
‘So this is the catch’ Shirin thought to herself.
Outside, rainwater was only about an inch away from reaching the top of their doorstep and pouring into the house. Occasionally a lobster-red, English man in shorts would slosh past their door, ankle deep in water to get to the shop for some food for his family. ‘Wonder if the shop has any jam left.’ Shirin thought to herself.

They spent the rest of the morning staring at the television or reading their books. The rain would ease off for a while and then start up again. By twelve o’clock they noticed an opening in the clouds and then a small brown dog with a goatee swam past their front door. The situation was still extremely surreal but things were definitely improving.

By two o’clock the rain had stopped. Blue skies had come out again and Shirin was sitting outside in the sun eating her three pieces of toast with cream and jam, hoping the dog with the goatee managed to swim home ok. They still had the airport situation to worry about but now that it was sunny again, it wouldn’t actually be that bad really if they had to stay a few extra days.

2006-08-12T18:52:00.000+01:00

I’m back from sunning myself in gorgeous Corfu. More on that story later but until then feast your eyes on these: amateur photography galore ;-)

2006-08-03T21:40:00.000+01:00

Taking a break from blogsphere
Big love to you all
xxxxx

2006-07-31T10:39:00.000+01:00

‘It’s like even The News is getting sick of news these days.’ I said to Kamyar as we watched BBC News 24 the other day.
‘We always drop down leaflets before we bomb a place’ says the chubby Israeli officer, ‘we always tell them when and where we are going to attack.’ I chuckle bitterly. ‘No other army in the world does that’ he says with a smile, looking quite pleased with himself.
‘Well done you’ I mutter sarcastically. Kamyar shakes his head.
I suddenly find myself playing a game that I have not played for many years. It used to be called ‘If you had Saddam Hussein in your hands what would you do to him?’ my cousins and I used to play this game when we were little.
‘I will pull his eyes out and feed them to crows.’
‘I will pull his nails out, ONE by ONE. Very slowly.’
‘I will cut his balls off and feed them to him.’
‘Good one. That’s clever.’
‘And, and…’
It just went on and on. We were quite imaginative when it came to torture. Kids are cruel. We loved animals but we still used to torture some. We used to feed snails to our favourite type of ants; those big black ones with huge heads. We used to peel off the snail’s shell and drop it on the entrance of the ants’ nest. This would naturally cause a commotion amongst the ants who probably thinking they were being attacked by the homeless, slimy creature, would pile on top of it and start taking it apart.
We would squat down on the ground and watch eagerly.
I never gave much thought to the poor snail. I liked snails but I liked ants a lot more because snails were slow and didn’t do much while ants were fast and extremely entertaining. Plus I quite enjoyed peeling them. It was like peeling a very small and delicate hardboiled egg.
These days I can’t even bring myself to kill a fly or a moth (my most despised insect of all) and when I accidentally step on a snail in the dark, I get very upset and if I’m alone, I might even have a little cry.
All this had led me believe that I had lost all my childhood viciousness as I had stepped into adulthood.
Over twenty years on however, I was again finding myself deriving large amounts of pure pleasure from fantasizing about ways to torture this Israeli officer, who was supposedly in charge of bombing Lebanon. I was playing ‘If you had…in your hands what would you do to him?’
You would think after all these years, I would be a bit rusty but I wasn’t at all. In fact I totally surprised myself by how imaginative I was being and how much I was enjoying myself. I was still as cruel as I had been as a child it seemed.
This new discovery naturally upset me. I had always seen myself as a peace loving human being and for my snail-tormenting, world-leader-torturing past, had always held childhood ignorance responsible.
‘But am I only pretending to be peace loving’ I wondered, ‘because that’s what I think I should be?’ I reluctantly brushed away the image of me ripping the officer’s still-beating heart out with my bare hand, to make room for thinking about my question. I could lie to others maybe but not to myself and the truth was that at that moment, if that man had been in front of me, I probably would have at least tried to bite his nose off clean, like I had imagined I would. Perhaps the “ripping the heart out” thing had been a bit much. Not because I didn’t want to do it, but because I’m quite small and not very strong, and that would have been physically impossible probably.

‘Sad’ I thought, ‘I haven’t grown up at all it seems.’ And that’s when it hit me. ‘Grow up’ they say, ‘Act your age.’ But that doesn’t mean ‘stop giving people wedgies’ NO. It means find more sophisticated ways of giving people wedgies. Perhaps you could do it with a kind smile and a look of grave concern.
‘Ouch man.’
‘Do you think I enjoy doing this?! I was only trying to help you untie your matted bum-fluff.’
‘Oh…thanks…er, that’s very kind of you.’
It doesn’t mean, stop tormenting others altogether. It means if you must, say, bomb people, don’t go and drop a bomb on them like a common criminal. NO. Where are your manners? First drop leaflets, then bomb them as they are fleeing.
It doesn’t mean that you have to try to be good and do the right thing. It doesn’t mean that if your friend is hitting people smaller than him and you don’t want to go to their aid, you must anyway. NO. It means instead of standing up in front of everyone, arms akimbo, saying, ‘I want him to hit them. I like watching it. And I’m even gonna go and help him. Now watchagonna do about it?’ and sticking out your tongue, maybe act a little more mature. How about for example wasting a whole conference, as people are being blown up, arguing over the word “Immediate” in relation to “Ceasefire”?

I wish I had noticed this before I thought. If only I had let my viciousness grow with me, rather than trying to suppress it, I could have been so much more successful now. Who knows, maybe I could have even become a world leader. But as it stood, I had grown up to thirty one while my vicious self who popped up every now and then, throwing childlike tantrums; wanting to claw people’s eyes out, had stayed at the age of seven.
I wondered if there was a mature equivalent for ‘If you had…in your hands what would you do to him?’
Is Hell the answer? Red hot stakes being inserted up Tony Blair’s and George Bush’s backsides for eternity?
Umm, I don’t know. Somehow it’s just not as satisfying, neither to the thirty-one-year-old woman nor to the snail-peeling seven-year-old child. The latter thinks, ‘What if they develop a taste for it after a while?’ while the former worries, ‘What if they get off on a technicality? After all they haven’t actually killed anyone themselves.’

2006-07-26T13:57:00.000+01:00

On one side of our oversized sofa, amongst the camera magazines, borrowed books, TV guide, Sunday Newspaper and a council booklet, lives a small, yellow leaflet. ‘Planning a baby?’ it questions me every time I pull something out of the pile and it happens to fall in front of me, displaying a badly drawn cartoon of a baby and a teddy bear in dungarees, swinging from a rope.
I’ve already looked through it. It’s not even helpful really and since the answer to that question is ‘not right now’, I guess I could very easily dispose of it to make room for other leaflets or take a step towards tidying up the place. But I still let it live there, despite its uselessness and the annoyingness of it being a constant reminder of my fast-ticking body-clock.
The reason I keep this leaflet is that it has big historical significance for me. For me this is a reminder of the day when my transition from an Iranian in limbo between England and Iran, to an Iranian who lives in England and only visits Iran to see family and friends, was finally completed.
Previous to that day you see, I had always visited Iran to see loved ones of course but once I’d got there, there had always been things that I needed to do. But little by little, over the years, many of those habits had either been dropped altogether or swapped for British versions. For example over the years I had built up an extensive collection of handicrafts and so had no need to visit the Big Bazaar downtown anymore. I was no longer a student and so did not need to spend days queuing by the Melli Bank to get that thousand dollars at low price that government would give to students. I had decided to renew my passport over here. We had discovered internet and so no longer needed to make trips to Jomhoory Street if we needed cheap, electrical goods. And so on and so forth. Two habits however still remained; every year on my trip to Iran, I paid a visit to the dentist and to the gynaecologist.

By the way this is going to get a little graphic so if you’re a child reading this, please stop now and be a good boy/girl and go blow some heads up on your Play Station or rob a granny or whatever it is you kids do these days because I don’t want to be responsible for robbing you of your “childhood innocence”. Others who I do not recommend to read on are: people who are easily offended, those who are a bit squeamish, my father and those who do not appreciate stories about gynaecologists and women’s er… let’s call it downthere shall we?

As I sat in the Family Planning Clinic’s waiting room, playing with the ‘Planning a baby?’-leaflet that I had absentmindedly picked up, I thought about the great significance of that day. Having already registered at the dentist the previous month, I knew from the moment I walked into that room and dropped my pants, I would only ever visit my homeland as a tourist. I couldn’t help feeling like a traitor. Like I was turning my back on Iran. And literally, my front to England!
I also felt like I was turning my back on my mum. We had always done this together you see. Over the years, going to the dentist and having my downthere looked at, had somehow become vital mother and daughter activities for us. We would make a day of it, you know; in the morning I would have my teeth drilled while my mum covered her eyes and ears and did panicked laps of the dentist’s waiting room, shouting, ‘Is it finished? Oh I can’t bear to watch.’
Then after she had gotten an earful from the dentist for not being able to handle her child being tortured by him, and me a mouthful of gauze, we would go out for a little stroll and some carrot juice which to the delight of onlookers, I would mostly pour down the front of my Islamic uniform, on account of my lips still being numb. Oh what a laugh. And then for the grand finale, we would pay a visit to the gynaecologist for me to have my downthere looked at and my insides poked and prodded.
The doctor who had been my mum’s doctor for years and also knew my dad and my uncle, would always insist of my mum coming into the examination room for a chat that would usually continue all through him actually examining me. ‘How is Firouz?’ he would ask my mum while putting on a new pair of plastic gloves. ‘Oh very well’ my mum would happily shout back from behind the curtains.
I would be lying there trying to block out their conversation. Maybe it’s just me but when I’m lying on my back, bottom half naked, legs up in the air, the last thing I want to think about is my uncle.
‘Well say hello to him from me when you see him next.’ He would shout back at her and then turning to me, he would repeat, gynaecologists’ favourite catchphrase, ‘Relax’
‘Excuse me?’ my mum would say from behind the curtain. ‘No I wasn’t talking to you.’ He would shout back at her, ‘I was telling your daughter here to relax.’
‘Oh for the love of god’ I would be lying there thinking just before saying to myself, ‘This is the last time I ever come here. From now on I will have my smear test done in England, by people who neither know my dad, nor have any interest in knowing what kind of business my uncle is into at the moment.’ But somehow every year I found myself back lying on that bed.
The straw that broke the camel’s back however had finally come the time I had gone there to amongst other things, have my IUD removed as it had started to hurt me.
As I laid there thinking about how much like Russian dolls my mum and I where to this doctor with him having looked inside us both, I listened to my mum shuffling inside her bag (no doubt looking for her list of our mother and daughter activities to see if we had time for the next fun item on the list like having my nails pulled or whatever).
Their conversation had ended a few moments earlier and amazingly neither had initialized a new one.
Suddenly I noticed the doctor staring at me from the bottom of the bed. He was holding pliers-like instrument in one hand and wearing a coalminers’ type flashlight on his head (to my relief I noted that he was not holding a cage with a canary in it).
We stared at each other for a few seconds. In his eyes he had a look of horror mixed in with uncertainty. It made me think of a man, about to walk out onto a minefield, ahead of everyone else. ‘Tell my wife I love her’ his eyes where saying. Even his moustache, which seemed to have a life of its own, and always seemed to look happy despite of the mood of the man himself, I noticed was now looking somewhat contemplative.
He dived in. A muffled sound followed (gynaecologists’ second favourite catchphrase), ‘You may feel a slight discomfort.’
Again I feel that this too, like with the case of the “comfortable stilettos”, depends entirely on your idea of comfort. If one’s day job is to test the bite of none-venomous snakes to grade them in order of painfulness for example, then yes I guess this feeling could be described as a “slight discomfort” or maybe one would even find the whole experience to be “quite pleasurable”.
This is not the case with me however who spend most of my time sitting on comfortable chairs or walking around slowly or lounging around on the sofa. A slight discomfort for me is a cushion a little out of place behind my back or a wet patch on the sheets. I’m afraid a man rummaging around inside me with a pair of pliers, looking for a small missing T-shaped object, swiftly moves away from the “slight discomfort” zone, swims right through a “total nuisance” stage and very quickly becomes a “real pain in the neck” borderline “ouch”.
But to tell you the truth I didn’t really care about any of this at the time, I just wanted him to find the bloody thing and get out of there. And that’s when I said to myself if this man finds what he is looking for in there and I make it out of here in one piece today, I will definitely go and register myself at our local Family Planning Clinic as soon as I get back to England. It was not that this doctor was bad or that he was doing something wrong or anything like that. He is actually a great doctor. It was just that I could not stand the thought of ever going through another similar experience again with my worried mum sitting behind the curtains and aging five years for every minute of it.
Finally the doctor resurfaced, looking quite dishevelled. But before he had even opened his mouth, to tell me how he thought he was going to have to send me to the operating theatre, his moustache told me that they had found what they were looking for and everything was fine.

‘Would you like to come in?’ a smiley, soft speaking lady said, holding the door of the examination room open for me. I shoved the ‘Planning a baby?’ leaflet in my bag and marched into the room. ‘Sorry Iran’ I thought, ‘I still love you.’

We talked about Iran, Israel, nuclear weapons and the state of Iraq. I found these to be much more agreeable gynaecologist topics of conversation than my uncle’s business.

2006-07-22T09:05:00.000+01:00

Exactly one year ago on this very day, a thirty year old Iranian woman woke up in her flat in Oxford. It was a July Friday morning like any other.
She looked at the clock as a dog yapped in the building opposite and a few crows greeted each other in crow language. She twiddled with her hair as she listened to a drunk father and his young son have their morning chat and the single mum downstairs shout at her little girl, ‘GET IN THE CAR.’ And suddenly she was seized with an uncontrollable urge to start a blog and thus Shirin in Engelestan was born.
Now one year on, the drunk father has finally listened to his son and f***ed off, the little girl downstairs has listened to her mum and got in the car and they’ve gone away too but the dog, the crows and Shirin in Engelestan are still going strong; yapping and croaking and click clicking away on the keyboard; letting the world know that they need the bathroom, that they have just been to the bathroom on someone’s head or that their bathroom taps were designed by Doctor Evil.
But enough about me, the dog and the crows, let’s talk about you. Do you come here often? ;-) Why that’s a lovely monitor you have there, it frames your head so beautifully! :-)
Thank you for visiting Shirin in Engelestan in the past year. I hope it has made you smile sometimes.

2006-07-18T12:45:00.000+01:00

One day a week we can go and visit Babazee in prison. Babazee (my mum’s father) is a small man with a big nose who is a doctor of economics but made his fortunes from Agriculture.
Babazee used to be very rich and owned a whole village near Karaj, just outside Tehran. I don’t remember much about our family’s wealthy days because by the time I was three and a half, everything they owned had been confiscated by the revolutionary government and given to Bonyad-eh Mostazafan (the Organization for the Oppressed).
All I remember from my Grandparents’ huge house in the village, is the big Bullmastiff called Filo, who lived on the roof and looked down at us as we walked into the house on Fridays.
Interestingly enough some believe that it was this same dog that caused Babazee’s downfall at the end. Allegedly some of the villagers who did not like my granddad much, after the revolution had ceased their chance and had gone to the revolutionary guards telling them that Babazee was a vicious landlord who kept a lion on his roof that he threw villagers in front of.
One day when Azizam (my grandmother) came back home from visiting her sister, she found that there was a big padlock on the door of her home and all the other doors and windows had been bordered up.
All that Azizam had been left with were the clothes she had on, her Rolex watch, a little gold broach in shape of a woman’s head, a necklace, two rings on her fingers and her handbag which in it had a little money, her house keys (which were no longer in use), a little pill box and some other bits and pieces.
Babazee had been taken to prison but he kept saying, ‘Don’t worry. This is just a misunderstanding. I’ll be out in no time.’

I hate going to prison so I don’t go every week. I go often though because I’m the only one out of all my cousins on my mum’s side that has not started school yet and so for most of the year, I’m the only one on be-a-good-girl-and-go-cheer-granddad-up-with-a-big-kiss duty.
Although sometimes it backfires and my presence seems to annoy him rather than cheer him up. Like when he sits on one side of the fence and we on the other and I’m allowed to go through the side door and sit with him.
First he looks as though he is very happy to see me and hugs me kisses me but then as soon as he thinks the guards aren’t looking, he starts going through my pockets. ‘Where are they?’ he whispers to my mum. ‘Where is who?’ my mum asks whispering while bringing her face nearer to the fence and narrowing her eyes.
I start to get excited thinking, ‘Wow, are we about to break Babazee out?’ and imagine us all running out of the prison in slow-motion with shots being fired after us and my mum and I jumping off the high prison wall, using her chador as a parachute; James Bond style, ‘ding dililing leeng…ling ling ling, ding dililing leeng…ling ling ling…’ ‘The pills’ Babzee interrupts my James Bond theme tune, ‘The sleeping pills that I have been asking you for, for god knows how long.’
‘Baba,’ my mum says impatiently, ‘I’m not going to give her pills to bring to you.’
‘Why not?’ he whispers, ‘They don’t search her.’ And then he turns to me and asks, ‘Did they search you?’
I panic and start nodding without thinking but then I remember that the guard just took my hand and brought me straight in and in fact the first time I was ever searched, was when Babazee put me on his lap and started going through my pockets. So I suddenly stop nodding and fling my head backward, raising my eyebrows. This is not a polite thing to do but at the moment my mum seems to have more important things on her mind than worrying about my bad prison etiquette.
‘See?’ Says Babazee, ‘What did I tell you; they don’t search the kids.’ And then, ‘you don’t know what it’s like in here. I need those pills.’

The prison is very far and I always get carsick on our way there. I’m bored stiff because all grownups want to talk about are things that I’m not interested in like, their numerous trips to Bonyad-eh Mostazafan, Komiteh, Rations, Petrol queues and he or she who was (they only move their lips to this without letting any sound out so I won’t get upset) executed (as if I’m blind and don’t see pictures of the newly-executed with ropes around their necks or holes in their heads, plastered all over the front pages of newspapers everyday).
There’s mud everywhere in the car because it’s been raining and all the dust on the road has turned into orangy-brown sticky mud and Maman, Azizam and I have brought a lot of it in with us when we stopped a little while ago for me to be sick by the side of the road.
‘Maman’ I say pulling her sleeve and looking up at her. She is sitting next to me on the backseat of the car, ‘I need a tissue.’ She picks up her handbag asking, ‘What for?’
‘My nose is running.’ I say stretching my upper lip over my upper teeth to try and buy myself some more time before the fast-moving snot reaches my mouth. ‘Oh’ she says and starts looking inside her bag, ‘I had one in here but I think I gave it to you to wipe your mouth earlier.’ And when she doesn’t find one she shrugs and says, ‘No I don’t have any. Does anyone else have any tissues?’
Uncle Bahy takes one hand off the steering wheel and with it searches his coat pockets and then lifts himself off the seat a little to pat down his trousers’ pockets, saying, ‘Even if they have decided that Baba is guilty of some sort of crime and deserves to have all his belongings confiscated, it doesn’t make any sense to take all our belongings away too. I’m sure we’ll be able to take our own homes back very soon and then we can start on getting Maman and Baba’s home and lands back.’ And then he looks in the rear view mirror and says, ‘Sorry darling, I don’t have any tissues.’
Aunty Leili who is sitting on the front passenger seat, has a look through her handbag too and then turns around and says, ‘I don’t have any either sweetie.’ I tilt my head back and try to redirect the snot back inside my nose.
‘Blow your nose in here.’ Says Azizam. I don’t move my head. I just give her my hand to put the tissue in. ‘No I don’t have a tissue darling but you can blow your nose in here.’ She says holding one of the two end bits of her headscarf in her hand while she is still wearing it.
‘I can’t do that.’ I say, not liking the idea at all. But she says, ‘It’s ok. I’ll just wash it when I get home.’ and at the same time shoves my head towards the piece of headscarf that she is holding between her thumb and forefinger. ‘Blow’ she says encouragingly. I do but I do it reluctantly because the headscarf is made out of a very slippery fabric that does a lot more smearing than wiping.
‘Better?’ asks Azizam, smiling down at me while tying a knot around the snotty part of her headscarf. ‘Yes thanks’ I say, giving my nose a couple more wipes with the back of my hand.

This time Babazee is sitting on one side of a glass wall and we’re on the other and the only way to talk to him is through the telephone. As soon as he sees us, he points to uncle Bahy which means he wants to talk to him first. So uncle Bahy sits down on the one chair on our side and we all stand behind him.
‘Salam Baba,’ uncle Bahy says smiling, ‘looking well.’ And then, ‘I went and talked to that Hajji I was telling you about last time.’ On the other side Babazee is getting very excited and talking fast but we can’t hear what he’s saying. I get bored and hang from the little metal shelf with the telephone on it and try to swing myself back and forth but after only a couple of swings uncle Bahy puts his hand on my head which means don’t do that and continues his conversation with Babazee.
‘I’m going to see him again tomorrow. You see this beard?’ he says stroking his beard and smiling, ‘this is my Bonyad beard.’ Uncle Bahy has had a beard for as long as I remember but these days when he wants to go to Bonyad-eh Mostazafan, he lets the sides grow, thinking that it makes him look more Islamic.
I slowly lower myself down, still holding onto the shelf and then let go of it, to sit on the stone floor of the visiting room. From the floor I look up at my mum, Azizam and aunty Leili; three of them standing solemnly in a row behind uncle Bahy, holding their chadors very tightly under their chin. ‘Hee hee, black crows.’ I think to myself, which is what I’ve heard some people call women in black chadors.

They didn’t always wear this outfit when they came to prison. At first they used to come in wearing their own clothes. But then this one time, they were not allowed in because a bad-tempered, black-chadored woman outside the prison told them that they could not come in unless they were wearing a headscarf. And no matter how much Azizam and my mum had cried and begged the bad-tempered woman to let them in just this once, she had flung her head backward, clicking her tongue and had said, ‘Next. What have you got in that bag? Empty it on the table.’
So the times after that, they had taken headscarves in with them and had worn long, baggy shirts and had got in. But then some time after that, they had been stopped by the door and told that they could not go in, unless they were wearing a chador. And that was what they had worn from then on.

‘Listen, we’re getting you out very soon’ says uncle Bahy, ‘and then we’re going to get everything back and there is no doubt about that; all the lands, the house and the villa. It’s all under control. Don’t you worry about a thing.’ Azizam throws her head back as she produces a very short burst of laughter, ‘Huh’ and loses her grip on her chador which means the little sack of snot gets a chance to poke its head out and dangle freely for a few seconds in prison air before she composes herself and tightens her grip again.

I make music by covering and uncovering my ears with my hands to let in and block out waves of the loud buzzing sound made by all the visitors talking, frustrated babies crying, the quick, occasional bursts of nerves-sounding laughter and the sound of Koran being read on a loudspeaker somewhere in the prison by a man who can no doubt have himself a very successful carrier as a pearl diver, even if the Koran reciting business does not work out for him.
Realising time is about to run out and she is not going to get a chance to talk, Azizam taps uncle Bahy on his shoulder and says, ‘Tell him I’ve brought him a new shirt, a dressing gown, some fruits and some biscuits.’

2006-07-13T09:09:00.000+01:00

‘Got any ‘ash [hash]’ I heard someone say as I walked to our local supermarket the other day. I used to get asked questions like this all the time when I was a student and dressed in tie-dyed flares and had a shaved head which to complete the dodgy look was at one point dyed blue with three orange fish painted on it.
Well that was the original idea anyway, in the finished design the fish ended up looking more like bombs than fish actually. Serves me right for asking a jewellery design student to paint on my hair rather than one of my illustrator friends.
To get an idea of exactly what my hair looked like, think of the end of Doctor Strange Love; the scene shot from the plane looking down at a few bombs that were about to hit the ground, only mine was in Technicolor and it was the wrong way round, meaning you were looking up at the bombs instead of down on them because the background was sky blue (which had gone green actually because the peroxide had made my hair yellow and then yellow and blue had made green. So basically you were either looking down at three bombs hitting a blue-green ocean or if you could see past the green you were looking up at three bombs hitting the ground).
The druggies however continued to approach me in spite of my failed design. This was a beautiful thing I found about the druggies; whereas my friends at college kept laughing at my hair and saying how ironic it was that the Iranian had gone and painted bombs on her hair, the druggies saw past that; they saw someone walking towards them with weird clothes and blue hair and they asked ‘Got any ‘ash’ regardless of whether that person had bombs or fish painted on her hair!
These days with my shoulder length black hair pinned down with hairclips or put in pigtails and my jeans and rucksack (that I usually carry around with me now that we don’t have a car, to put the shopping in), I look more like a Spanish tourist than a drug dealer but I turned around to answer the man anyway thinking to myself, ‘No I do not have any hash. If I did I would not give any to you since from that nice purple colour of your skin and that husky voice of yours and those empty cans of beer scattered all around you on the grass, it looks like you’ve done quite enough to yourself for one day already.’
I would never say any of this of course because before I had a chance, the taarofing, polite Iranian in me would jump out and with a kind smile say, ‘No sorry, I don’t have any.’
Huh! I don’t know why I do that. Am I sorry that I don’t have any hash on me to give to the drug addict? No. Do I need to say it with a smile? Not really. It’s just a reaction that I have absolutely no control over like when I see a dog and instinctively make weird screechy noises and go ‘Aooooo’ and want to jump and cuddle it regardless of where I am.
Long story short, even my automatic smiling reaction did not get a chance to show itself. ‘I ain’ go’ nothin’ mate.’ I heard someone say from behind me. It was a big black guy with dreadlocks.
‘Of course’ I thought to myself ‘it’s page two of Druggies Handbook if I remember correctly: In the absence of a dodgy looking geezer that whispers, ‘Trips, Es, Crack, Hash’ in people’s ears as they go past, to get your fix, approach either black guys with dreadlocks or weirdly dressed people with blue hair.’
About five meters away from all this, little kiddies made happy noises as they played in the little playground next to the bus stop. A little further away a family were having a picnic on the grass and a few meters away from them, some older kids were kicking a ball around. A little closer to the bus stop, next to two foreign students sitting on the curb, under a tree, another purple-faced guy with a couple of bored-looking dogs (eeeeeeeee, Aoooooo), had passed out.
Welcome to our neighbourhood.

It wasn’t always like this. Just a little while ago, everyone in our neighbourhood had a place to go to if they wanted to be with people like themselves. Families had picnics on the grass and went to restaurants, drinkers went to pubs and bars, Moslems hung out at the local mosque and halal shops, kids played in the playground, teenagers hung around outside public toilets and tried to look hard and druggies went to the graveyard.
People sometimes complained about the druggies and drug dealers having taken over the graveyard because it was kind of frightening to go in there and since there is a shortcut path that goes right through it, they thought it would be good if that place was made druggy-free and safer for public.
But when you think about it, the old church/graveyard that was hardly ever used was out of all the other places in our neighbourhood, the best hangout the druggies could have chosen for themselves. It was not perfect of course but it was better than for example, the mosque or the playground or the Pawn Shop or the local Buddhist centre.

However one day someone did something there that was an even more appropriate graveyard act than taking drugs; he died in there.

One day I was walking down our road when I noticed something very strange. It looked as though the entire cast of Spun and A Requiem for a Dream had been let loose down our road.
The whole place was swarming with police officers, druggies (that had been evacuated from the graveyard) and their excited-looking dogs (eeeeee Aooooo).
On further nosiness I heard a few rumours:
‘One of the druggies ODed.’
‘One of the dealers shot this guy that owed him money.’
‘He was shot alright but not by a dealer but by the police. They were trying to arrest him and he was not cooperating so they shot him. I’m telling you, I heard the shot.’
There was even one rumour that said no one had died there at all but the police were there to arrest the vicar because he had been secretly selling up the graves on ebay and pocketing the money!

As it turned out it was none of the above. Yes a man had died in there but according to a Thames Valley Police spokesman, this was what happened, ‘An altercation occurred between the man, the officer and a second police officer.
‘The exact circumstances surrounding this incident at this time are unclear however, shortly after an ambulance was called to the churchyard where the man was pronounced dead.’

In a way this is more confusing than the ebay thing even but what can you do, it’s the police and they love to get all mysterious when someone dies around them!
Anyway how and why the man died is not what I’m interested in. It’s the after-effect of it that bothers me.

For a few days the police were around collecting evidence and whatnot in which time the church or the council (or both) decided that something needed to be done about the churchyard. So when the police packed their stuff and left, straightaway the council got to work.
First they mended some of the gravestones and crosses and all that. Personally I did not think that was a very good way to spend our council tax money but what can you do? This is not a graveyard that is in use by the way. It’s not like a graveyard that people go to to put flowers on their grandmother’s grave or anything like that, this is an old graveyard with most of the people that are buried in it having died before the 1900s. But the council and the church obviously thought the gravestones needed to be fixed and so that’s what they did. And they did not stop there.
Next they repaired the very short walls at the front of the churchyard and cut down the overgrown bushes that were around them, exposing the whole churchyard to passers-by from the street which meant everyone could now see everything and no one could hide in the graveyard anymore and buy or sell drugs or OD in peace.
They really were on a roll. Next they put down a lawn on the front of the church and planted flowers all over the place; roses and geraniums galore.

So now while some overweight guy, who could very well do with a nice long walk around the church, goes through the shortcut in the graveyard enjoying the smell of roses and sitting down on one of the newly put up benches on his way if he gets a little tired, without the fear of getting mugged, some three year old pokes some guy with a needle sticking out of his arm, in the eye saying, ‘Is he sweeping mummy? He has a booboo on his arm.’

The way I see it, this whole thing is a classic case of doing something without thinking of the consequences. Fair enough; they did not want the druggies to hang out in the graveyard anymore, but when you take their retreat away from them without offering them an alternative, you can’t exactly blame them when next thing you know they’re passing out on swings in the playground either, can you?
I just hope those bushes around the churchyard walls grow back again quickly so we can all go back to our designated hangouts and live happily ever after.

2006-07-09T20:32:00.000+01:00

Here are a few things I learned from my trip to France and the wedding that I thought I share with you. I hope you find them useful.

1- Travelling is so much more peaceful when one’s travelling companion has a British passport rather than an Iranian one.

2- Having your eardrums pierced on Eurostar for three hours by excited little three-year-olds going to Disneyland, shouting at the top of their lungs, ‘Is Eeyore gonna be there? Is Winnie the Pooh gonna be there? Is Stripes gonna be there?’ can put you off having children for life.

3- The French are not able to form an orderly queue even if their lives depend on it.

4- It’s hard work trying to walk around on shingles wearing open toe, high heel shoes but fear not; things will get surprisingly easier after a few drinks.

5- It’s impossible to eat pistachio nuts while standing up and at the same time trying to hold a drink, a handbag and a shawl.

6- Not everyone will think, ‘Is you looking exactly like Peter Sellers, accidental or intentional?’ is a compliment.

7- Praying to the god of hairs apparently works.

8- It’s ‘la chignon’ and not ‘le chignon’

9- Twenty one year old boys (or is it men?) might look cute in their little suits but avoid talking to the little devils at all cost as it can be very depressing.
‘How long have you been living in England for?’
‘About twelve years now.’
‘Wow, you must have been a kid when you went there then.’
‘No; I’m just old.’ :-(

10- If you have trouble working out exactly when is a good time to stop drinking, hearing yourself speak these words, while hanging from someone’s jacket (preferably after having just finished a particularly theatrical solo dance to some eighties tune) might be a good cue, ‘Isn’t it weird; I’ve had three…or was it four? Anyway, vodka and tonics and two shots and two glasses of wine and I don’t feel drunk at all.’

2006-07-05T15:25:00.000+01:00

I’ve never understood this fascination we women supposedly have with shoes. Yes high heel shoes are nice. To look at. Not to wear! Not to bloody wear! It’s like putting your feet in clamps. Sliding ones. And then be expected to walk and dance and laugh and chat to people as well instead of doing what you really want to do which is to take the shoes off and hit them repeatedly with a mallet-like instrument while screaming ‘you stupid stupid things.’
It just kills me when people balancing themselves on stilettos say things like ‘These shoes are so comfy.’ It makes me wonder what they normally wear you know; shoes with razorblades on their insides? Because in that case those scrappy stilettos that are making their feet look all mangled already from the pressure, could very well be super comfy for them.

I’ve started to think about all this because we’re going to a wedding on Friday and I’m dreading having to walk around in high heels all night. Everything else is great. I have a few dresses (that are all comfortable) and a few bags to choose from and I’m going to pray to the God of Hairs not to give me a bad hair day (my hair is at that teenage stage between short and long and lately it has been very unruly). There’s no point in praying to the God of Spots I guess since it has blessed me with two lovely spots already; one on my chin and one (of all places) on my chest. This is so God of Spots; always coming up with new and exciting places to put his creations on just before a big do. Bless, he never lets me down.
So the only thing I have to complain about is my shoes; the instruments of torture. My feet are starting to blister just from being in the same room as them.

I guess it could be worse though; I could be a man. Poor Kamyar has to wear a polyester suit. In this heat! He picked up a cotton one first, one those ones that crease even from being looked at. By the time he came out of the changing room he looked like he was wearing a large dishcloth.
‘I don’t think that’s suitable for a wedding really.’ I said. ‘Why not?’ asked Kamyar disappointedly (he hasn’t been to many weddings) ‘Because people tend to wear the kind of suits to weddings that do not crease so easily.’ I said. What I had really meant to say was ‘Because people tend to wear the kind of suits to weddings that do not make them look like drunken homeless guys.’ But I thought I should go easy on him because he had really liked the suit and was feeling very poorly from hay fever (which had actually contributed very generously to his drunk-homeless look; eyes half shut, mouth half open at all times to breathe in from due to severe nose blockage)
‘Doesn’t anyone wear these kind of suits to a wedding then?’ he said looking at himself in the mirror.
‘I don’t know’ I said, ‘Bob Geldof might.’
‘Oh!’

I must say he looked very dishy in his polyester suit and shirt and tie and all that at the end, Rrrrrrrrr. Any of you ladies try to flirt with him on Friday and my heel just might accidentally land on some of your mangled toes, ouch.

2006-07-02T16:15:00.000+01:00

So far the only thing the World Cup has given me, is a small belly that I have accumulated from all the beers I’ve been drinking. Is that you clapping and cheering Khaleh Maryam? ;-) You know that day you said you wanted to put me on a fatty diet of cheese and cakes and lard or whatever, you should have just waited for the World Cup.

It’s funny isn’t it how the World Cup, which for some is all bout fitness, accuracy, balance and concentration, for the rest is basically all about drunkenness, hiccups, tripping over one’s own feet while slurring, ‘’ave I ever told you? You’re sound man. You’re sound you are.’ And then squaring up to that same wall or tree or dog or whatever creature one happens to be talking to ‘You f***ing whah? You f***ing whah? Come on then. Come on.’ Right before passing out.
It was estimated that during the first month of the World Cup, 410 million cans and bottles of beer, lager or cider were going to be drunk in the UK.
Obviously Kamyar and I have been doing our bit too and so far have drunk a large quantity of lager and Guinness…while sitting in our underwear… shouting at the television, ‘Are you kidding! That was never offside.’ Hmm, add that to the fact that the only property we could afford to buy was on a council estate and that we are both extremely white at the moment on account of not having been on a holiday in the sun for the past three years, and I think you will find that we are well on our way to become the first ever Iranian white trash couple. Know wha’ I mean? Hmm, no. Maybe my language still needs a bit more work.

It was so sad England leaving the World Cup yesterday. I shed a few tears I did. England hadn’t been all that great in all their other games but I thought yesterday they played brilliantly. After that idiot, Rooney was sent off and Beckham had to come off the pitch (because…I don’t know…someone had messed his hair up or something. I don’t know what happened to him really) the rest of them played so well. They really deserved to win that game I thought. First Iran and now England; all the best teams are out.
So I sulked a bit and then went and dressed myself in tacky eighties stuff; blue and white stripy top, red and white polka dot hairclips and a pearly-looking necklace, singing,

Everyone seems to know the score
They've seen it all before
They just know
They're so sure
That England's Gonna throw it away
Gonna blow it away
They don’t know how to play

Kamyar was busy with another four hour shift of staring at the computer monitor with an open mouth. This was what he had been doing since, for no apparent reason, one day his whole website vanished off the face of the internet and when it returned some days later, it had lost a whole month of photos and insisted that it was still the 31st of May. ‘No Website dear,’ we kept saying to it, ‘it’s not the 31st of May anymore, it’s nearly the end of June now.’
‘Are you sure?’
‘Yes we’re very sure.’
‘Well in that case I’m terribly sorry but I don’t seem to recall anything that went on after the 31st of May. Do you think I may be suffering from Amnesia?’

But I remember...
Three Lions on a shirt
Jules Rimet still gleaming
Thirty years of hurt (well forty years now)
Never stopped me dreaming

It's coming home
It's coming home
It's coming
Football's coming home

It is as well. Well the footballers are. With a long face :-(

But on a happier note; welcome back mister Kamster of Kamshots. Yay, all the staring paid off at the end :-)

2006-06-25T12:26:00.000+01:00

You might want to go and get yourself a cup of tea for this one because this is looooong even by my standards. Have a look. Yes scroll down.

See? It just goes on and on and on. Don’t worry though there is an intermission.
Yes I know; I’m not exactly helping by adding to the top of it as well. Agh, I can’t help it can I? Ok, I’m gonna shut up. Zipping it up. That’s it now I’m not gonna say another word. The mouth is now closed. Me no talky.

One last thing before I go though. Does anyone know a cure for verbal diarrhoea?

I think I was about nine or ten. It was one of those times that Iraqis had started bombing Tehran again and so our schools had closed down. During the bombings my grandparents’ tiny one bedroom house by the Caspian always became Shelter Central and the doors were open for any friends or relatives who wanted to escape Tehran. There were two double beds and two sofas in the living room and everyone else just slept on the floor.
Usually you would get a good mixture of people coming; kids, their parents and some older people too so everyone would have a good time and get to hang out with people their own age.
This particular time however, apart from me and my mum and dad, for some reason only the very old had turned up. And when I say old I mean proper old like most of them were older than my own grandparents even.
At first I didn’t really mind it. My mum and dad and I stayed in the little annex and every night after the others had gone to bed, we would have a great laugh in there chatting and listening to my dad read to us from some of the stuff he was writing at the time.
I also enjoyed being Babajoon’s (my granddad) self-appointed assistant and following him around the garden along with the two local black dogs, Kaapo and Haalo and when I got bored of that, I went off on my own and did what I had always done (and still do) best which is to stare into space and escape into a fantasy world in my head.
But after a few days I started to miss hanging out with people my own age. Plus my birthday was close and, not that I had anything against this lot, but I much preferred spending it with people who when started a sentence with ‘During the war…’ actually meant the Iran Iraq war and not Word War 2 or Jangeh Kaazeroon or Mamasani!
After dinner as everyone would gather around the radio trying to tune it into BBC World Service, I would kneel on the sofa with my nose pressed against the window and my hands cupped around my face, quietly singing to myself a spell my mum had taught me for when you want someone to come to you.
Alessoon-o valessoon
Abracadabra
Shadi-ro zood beressoon
Bring Shadi to me fast
Ageh neshsteh paash kon
If she’s sitting, make her stand up
Ageh vaysadeh raash kon
If she’s standing, make her walk

And then Alesson-o valesson
Nader-o zood beressoon
Ageh…

When we’d left Tehran, my aunt and uncle had said that they would come and join us in the north in a few days along with my two cousins, Shadi and Nader. Now a few days had passed and they had not arrived and we didn’t have a phone there to contact them.
Every morning I would walk to the top of the massive garden and I would poke my head out through the bars on the yellow metal gate and watch the cars going past while trying to get my cousins to come to me with the power of my mind.
This was something my cousins and I had done together many times when we were in the north and wanted someone else to come over. The three of us would get onto the gate and while swinging it back and forth would try to make contact with that person through the power of our minds! There was great fun to be had there even if the person did not show up at the end. Unfortunately doing it on my own just wasn’t the same. I couldn’t even get the gate swinging.

The night before my birthday I prayed like I’d never prayed before. I knew that was my last chance for them being there for my birthday because my aunt and uncle always left Tehran in the evening which meant they got to the north in the middle of the night so I knew if I woke up the next day and they were not there, they weren’t going to be there for my birthday.

The next day as soon as I opened my eyes, I jumped out of bed and flew to the window. I couldn’t see their car in front of the house so sliding my feet into my trainers with their backs pressed down, I ran out into the garden and did a lap of the outside of the house just to make sure they had not parked somewhere round the back so they could surprise me.
But their car was nowhere to be seen and to add insult to injury, all my running around the house had made the oldies (who were up at the crack of dawn) come to the window and now instead of going back to my bed and feeling sorry for myself and giving god an earful for not answering my prayers, I had to stand there and watch a bunch of wrinkly old smiling heads, poking out of the top of flowery frocks and shirts; buttoned up to the top, sing me happy birthday from behind the window, as I stood on the lawn in my pyjamas.
Oh I would give anything to see that now but at the time it was torture. I would have left but that would have been very rude, so I stood their just long enough for them to finish their song and ran off just as they started clapping at the end of it and pretended not to have heard their cries of, ‘Birthday girl, come and have breakfast with us.’

My mum was getting dressed and my dad was still in bed, hands behind head. ‘Happy birthday’ they said as I walked into the annex. ‘They didn’t come.’ I said sulkily, ‘I’m going to be all alone on my birthday.’ and sat on the edge of the bed, cheeks in hands. ‘Don’t lose all hope.’ Said my mum, ‘They might still make it.’ Letting out a big sigh I said, ‘No they won’t.’ and looked down at my feet. ‘Well they might break tradition just this once and leave in the morning so they can be here this afternoon.’ she said and while putting her hair in a ponytail she continued enthusiastically, ‘And even if they don’t come, we can still have a good time together, can’t we?’ All I wanted to do was to mope around all day and feel sorry for myself but you could tell she wasn’t going to allow to me do that. ‘Come on chop-chop,’ She said, ‘we have loads to do today.’ My dad smiled and winked at me.

This might be a good time to go and get yourself another cup of tea or a glass of water or something because as you can see this story is never-ending and I don’t want you to be all dehydrated and shrivelled by the time you finish reading it.

As a special birthday treat, I was going to be taken to town. On a normal day I would have jumped at the chance and would have dived headfirst in the car barefoot even, in case while I spent time looking for my shoes, they drove off without me, but that day, since I was determined to have a bad time, when I was told , ‘Guess what! We’re going to Noshahr.’ I just shrugged and continued to stare at the gate.

Most of the oldies stayed behind. Only me, my dad, my mum, Mamanjoon and one of Mamanjoon’s friends went to Noshahr. They all tried very hard all the way there to get me excited about my birthday but that just annoyed me because all I wanted was for them to be quiet so I could concentrate on sending brainwaves to Shadi and Nader and my aunt and uncle.
In Noshahr my dad went off to do the food shopping, Mamanjoon and her friend went somewhere else and Mum and I went to the Bazaar.

‘Cheer up’ Said Mum smiling, ‘come on, let’s go and get some ice cream.’ We bought runny ice cream that tasted like rosewater with bits of red, tasteless jelly swimming around it.
‘Now that…’ said my mum after her first spoonful. I finished her sentence for her, ‘…is disgusting.’
‘Yes that too,’ she said, ‘but I was gonna say, ‘…something worth getting upset about.’ We laughed and drank our ice creams, spitting the bits of jelly back into the cups.
On the opposite side from the ice cream place, there was a shop that sold cheapo, plastic stuff; colanders, Aaftabehs, ugly plastic dolls, salad bowls, laundry baskets and a load of other colourful plastic products. I spotted these little pink flasks with blue lids and blue straps hanging in the corner and imagined Nader and I, in our expedition gear, ready to embark on another adventure in the garden along with Kaapo and Haalo, armed with our sticks and sporting one of those flasks each. What an image! If Indiana Jones were to see what I was seeing at that moment, he would hang his head in shame.

‘Maman’ I said eagerly, pulling at her arm, ‘can we get some of those.’
‘Where? What?’ she asked looking around excitedly. She had been pointing at this and that all day to try and get me something for my birthday but I had turned my nose up at every single thing.
The flasks were cheap and nasty and stank of plastic. We bought three.
I knew Shadi wasn’t going to use hers much on account of her being two years older than I and preferring to spend her spare time reading romantic novels and Daee jon Napelone or scrubbing the bathroom and kitchen floors with bleach (instead of going on exploration missions around the garden, or fighting pirates and Iraqis) and there always being plenty of water in the living room where she read her books and in the hallway where she stood guard so she could tell people off if they tried to walk into the kitchen or the bathroom with dirty feet. But we got one for her too anyway.

Coming back, I was in a much better mood and kept thinking maybe they’d arrived. But they hadn’t. I spent the rest of the day hanging from the gate and watching the traffic.
When the sun went down, having lost all hope of my cousins ever coming and feeling a bit hungry, I went back to the house.
I was dreading going inside knowing that they were all going to make a huge fuss over me and keep calling me Birthday Girl and all the old ladies will be like ‘Oh my darling, how old are you today?’ and then ‘Oh what a lovely age. Cherish these childhood years my dear because in a blink of an eye, you will be old and broken like us. Now come and give me a big kiss.’ and then like a little bumble bee going from flower to flower, I’ll have to go from old lady to old lady. Only instead of drinking nectar, I’ll be breathing in head-spinning perfumes and instead of gathering pollen, I’ll be collecting different colour lipsticks on my face which no doubt someone will try to violently remove with a handkerchief a bit later.
The old men will be a lot better. Although they will no doubt ask me (for the umpteenth time) what year I’m in and then when I tell them, they will turn to the person next to them and ask, ‘What would that be in the old system?’ and when the person next to them says that they don’t know because the new system is too complicated for them, they both go on to tell me how much simpler things were back when they were my age and how the only toys they had were sticks that they pretended to be horses, ‘not like your generation with your Barbi and Kents and Donkey King games and Mickey Moze.’

‘Sorry your birthday was so bad’ said my mum as we sat on my bed. It was late and everyone else had gone to bed but I didn’t want to go to sleep just yet because I still wasn’t done feeling sorry for myself. ‘It’s ok’ I said, trying very hard not to cry, ‘It wasn’t that bad.’
‘I keep thinking of something to do for you to cheer you up but I can’t think of anything apart from ‘Hava Jeer Jeer' but I guess you’re a bit too old for that now.’ The name sounded familiar but I couldn’t remember what it was. ‘Do you not remember it?’ she said, ‘I used to that with you when you were little.’ I shrugged. ‘Well I get on my back. You lie on the sole of my feet with your chest and give me your hands. Then I throw you up and down by bending my knees and straightening them and sing, ‘Hava jeer jeer…’’ The song was longer than this but I can’t remember the rest. ‘I think I’ll pass.’ I said. ‘Is there anything else that you would like me to do?’ I shook my head. ‘Then I suppose we better go to bed, it’s getting late.’ As soon as she said that, I felt even more depressed; for some reason I didn’t want this day to end.
‘Maybe’ I said, ‘we could could give Hava Jeer Jeer a try.’
‘Really?’ said my mum excitedly, ‘Great!’

Hava Jeer Jeer was uncomfortable to say the least. Every time she pushed me up, my ribs dug into my insides and made me cough. I wanted to stop as soon as we started but that meant going to bed and I didn’t want to do that. Also seeing my mum’s happy face as she threw me up and down while laughing and singing the song (a little out of breath) I suddenly realised what a hard day she must have had seeing how unhappy I was and not being able to do anything about it. So for her sake at least, I decided to enjoy those last few minutes of my birthday and started to laugh and sing the song with her.
As we sang and coughed and laughed and wheezed and tried to catch a breath, a light shone through from under the curtains. ‘They’re here’ I screamed.

When Shadi and Nader saw me running towards them, they started running and waving too. We collided underneath the magnolia tree where I threw myself in their arms while crying out, ‘I’ve just had the shitiest birthday.’ And then, ‘I got us flasks.’

2006-06-20T20:12:00.000+01:00

Yesterday we found out that a good friend of ours, Hooman Mahsa has died. Both Kamyar and I liked Hooman a lot and had known him for many years. I usually don’t cry easily when I hear that someone has died but yesterday as soon as I heard what had happened, I felt my eyes well up.
This news should not have come as a surprise really since Hooman had been battling with cancer for many years but with him being such a fighter, I had always thought he would be the victorious one. Unfortunately I was wrong.

I wasn’t in Iran when Hooman first realised he had cancer. When I went back home that year during Christmas holidays, one day Kamyar, Afshin and I went to pick Hooman up from one of his radiotherapy sessions to take him back to ours. Kamyar and Afshin had both been around all through the time Hooman was nearly dying in the hospital. Kamyar had been on medicine duty apparently and from what I gathered had spent most of his time going back and forth between the hospital and Nasser Khosro (a street where you can find black market medicine in Tehran). I was quite worried about seeing Hooman for the first time after all his troubles and was getting a bit nervous about what to say to him.
As soon as I saw Hooman, the first thing I noticed was that his face was very dark, like he’d been sunbathing, a lot.
After we’d all said our hellos, suddenly everyone went quite. That’s when I realised that I wasn’t the only one that was nervous about what to say to Hooman. It’s hard isn’t it? Exactly what one is supposed to say to a friend who has just come out of a radiotherapy session? ‘Good day at the office?’ ‘Nice day for it, isn’t it?’ ‘I’m having a wisdom tooth removed this week.’
Hooman was looking totally adorable sitting at the back with one of those great big smiles of his. I was desperately trying to think of something to say to break the uncomfortable silence. Then suddenly I remembered his tan and in a moment of total craziness, (due to extreme nervousness) thought to myself, ‘Of course! He’s been skiing’ (yes of course! Why not? In between his radiotherapy sessions! It’s the thing to do apparently!) and ‘maybe I could ask him about that.’
So I turned around to him and said, ‘That’s a very nice tan you’ve got there, mister Hooman.’
With a smile that had gotten even bigger now, he said, ‘Yes, isn’t it? Thanks for noticing Shirin.’ I was feeling so chuffed, I had both broken the silence and said something thoughtful. However this feeling was very short-lived.
Desperately trying to stop himself from bursting out laughing, Hooman continued, ‘That’s one of the things I love about radiotherapy; it gives me such a lovely tan.’ This was where he could control himself no longer and exploded with laughter.
Obviously I felt like a right chump but to look on the bright side, I had succeeded in my mission of breaking the uncomfortable silence ;-) We laughed for the rest of the journey.

When I think of him now, I always see him at our wedding. He looked very happy that night and as usual was full of energy. I never forget the first thing my mum said to Kamyar and I when we arrived at the party that night (fashionably late ;-) ‘Hooman has been the best guest. He was the first person to turn up, he brought lovely flowers and he has been dancing since the moment he got here.’ And he continued to do so for the rest of the night.

2006-06-19T14:29:00.000+01:00

I’ve made myself a Farsi blog as well now if anyone is interested to know what I sound like in Farsi :-)

وبلاگ فارسی من افتتاح شد

2006-06-18T10:29:00.000+01:00

O poo :-(
Can’t even be bothered to take the piss.

I don’t know how much of this is true but according to Mehdi-joon, after the match the Iranian government sent a telegram to the captain of the Iranian team saying, ‘Now can you at least try and get our rug back from the Portuguese?’

2006-06-16T17:33:00.000+01:00

Iran Portugal match tomorrow. I’m going to London to watch the game with a bunch of Iranians which should be cool.
To show my support for Iran, I had this great idea for an outfit: three vest-tops, one on top of each other; red, white and green, worn in that order. I was going to leave the red one as it was then cut off one third from the bottom of the white one and two thirds from the green one which would leave me with an Iranian flag.
I liked this design especially because it would allow me to have three layers on my upper torso, something that I was hopeful would help with giving a feel of three dimensions to my chestal area.
I had the red and the white vests but unfortunately no green ones so I went out yesterday and looked everywhere (everywhere in Primark that is. Yes I’m a bit of a cheapskate) but the only green vest I could find was one that said, on the chestal area as well so there really was no way of getting around it, using a generous amount of glitter, ‘Show us yer tackle!’ which I did not think was appropriate for an Iranian flag.
Now I have to think of something lese to wear.

Even though I’m sure we’re going to get totally crushed again, I’m still hopeful and would do anything for us to win this next match. I would even offer my soul to the devil in exchange for a win but apparently he is neither buying nor selling at the moment on account of the sharp nosedive that the market of leading shares has experienced this week and fears that interest rates will have to rise further to curb inflation. Damn you FTSE-100!
So there’s nothing left for we to do now other than begging you, the Iranian team. Please please play well tomorrow. I really don’t care what you’re going to do before the game.
You want to sing ‘Maashineh mashti mamdali na boogh dareh na sandali’ instead of the national anthem, fine, sing it.
You want to give crazy gifts to the opposite team like ‘carved golden buttocks on a silver platter’ suggested by ‘Justagirl’ or maybe something a little more Iranian like a giant cake with a little khahareh zeinab [policewoman] (with bog standard facial hair) inside who will leap out of the cake, shout at the other team for wearing shorts and having long hair and jump back inside again after hitting them with a baton? Fine, do it. Personally I would prefer something a little more discreet like for example, circumcision gift vouchers for the entire Portuguese team which can be put in little envelopes and handed out, but as long as you win, I seriously can’t care less about anything else you do.

The Creed of the Iranian Football Team

This is my foot.
There are many like it, but this one is mine.
My foot is my best friend.
It is my life.
I must master it as I must master my life.
My foot, without me, is useless.
Without my foot, I am useless.
I must hit my foot against the ball true.
I must shoot straighter than the opposition,
who is trying to take the ball from me.
I must open his goal before he opens ours.
I will.
My foot and myself know that what counts in football,
is not the strange gifts we give to the opposite team,
the crazy noises we make as our national anthem is played,
nor the confusion amongst our supporters over our flag.
We know it is the goals that count.
We will score (goals that is and not afterwards in German clubs with babes wearing t-shirts that say, ‘Show us yer tackle!’).
My foot is human, even as I, because it is my life.
Thus, I will learn it as a brother.
I will learn its weaknesses,
its strengths,
its parts,
its accessories.
I will ever guard it against
the ravages of weather and damage.
I will keep my foot clean and ready,
even as I am clean and ready.
We will become part of each other.
We will.
Before God I swear this creed.
My foot and myself are the saviours of my country.
We are the masters of this match.
So be it, until the World Cup is ours; the Iranians.

2006-06-14T16:56:00.000+01:00

I don’t want to keep writing about football so I promise this is the last time. Actually I better not promise anything because you never know.
So we’re playing again on Saturday. This time against Portugal. And I’ve already started to feel a little uneasy. But to tell you the truth, it’s not the game that I’m feeling uneasy about because really what’s the worst that can happen? If I’m honest what I’m really dreading is the part before the game. You know, the bit when they all come out onto the pitch and exchange little presents. Yes, LITTLE. Did you hear that Iranian team? LITTLE PRESENTS. Like what the Mexicans brought: a little green flag type thing with a little tassel at the end of it.
And what did the Iranians bring? A huge chunky, golden frame with some sort of strange carpet type thing inside it! It was huge, wasn’t it? And no doubt quite heavy as well. No wonder poor Daaee was so tired by the time it came to playing.
Now that’s nothing. I mean if you remember the last World Cup Iran qualified for, you’ve probably noticed that they’ve mellowed down a lot with their present giving since then. Back then every time Iran had a match, they would walk out onto the pitch with a huge bunch of flowers, a big silver tray and a selection of Iranian handicrafts!
By the time the present exchanging part was over, the captain of the opposite team, standing there with his bunch of flowers and his tray and his tea set or whatever else he had been given, had an air of a young innocent girl about him for whom a suitor had been found and was about to be married off to him against her wishes!
Why do we do this? Why can’t we just keep things simple and give out little flags with little tassels at the end and get it over and done with?
So ok I guess this time was a lot better than the last World Cup; at least we didn’t look like we were trying to marry the opposite team. We gave a big, chunky, manly, frame with no flowers or tea sets. But then just as I thought, ok the embarrassing part is over now and it wasn’t really as embarrassing as I thought it would be, the Iranian National anthem started playing :-(
I just want to ask you one little question here my fellow Iranians. Am I the only person in the world who has bothered to memorize our national anthem? Seriously. Hands up, who knows the Iranian national anthem. Come on, don’t be shy. Don’t go putting your hands up just for the hell of it either. Do you actually know all the words? From ‘Sarzad az ofogh…’ right through to ‘Jomhoorieh eslamiyeh Iran’? Umm, yes I thought so. You don’t know it.
Don’t worry about it though; you’re definitely not in the minority. Even our football team didn’t know it! Nor did their supporters who had gone to watch the match in Germany. I have a feeling that even the people who sang the original version that gets played everywhere had not memorized it properly either. You know that part, a little before the end, where they go up really high, ‘Pyamat ey Emam, esteghlal, azadi, naghsheh janeh maaaaast’ it really sounds like they all think that is where the song ends but then the music keeps going and so they’re like, ‘What? What happened? Wasn’t that the end? Oh yeah there’s another bit. Shit.’ and then they come in again really quietly as if they’re not exactly sure whether they’re singing the right part or not, ‘shahidaaaaaan, pichideh dar goosheh…’ they’re still a not sure, ‘…zaman faryaaaadetan…’ then suddenly they’re like, ‘oh yeah, now I remember, Paayandeh maani o jaavedan, jomhoorieh eslamiyeh eeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeran.’
But it’s not really that hard you know. It’s quite short as well (in fact it is very very short compared to the one before it that just went on and on and never seemed to end really) but I can understand why a lot of people have not learned it yet; they think ‘What’s the point? It’s only gonna change again in a few years time and we’ll have to memorize a new one.’
It’s true; we Iranians have changed our national anthem more times in the past thirty years than most people change hairstyles in a lifetime. First there was ‘Shahanshaheh ma zendeh bada’ (Long live our king) then there was ‘Ey Iran ey marzeh por gohar’ (Iran, my prosperous land) then there was ‘Shod jomhoorieh eslami beh pa’ (The Islamic republic came about) and now we have ‘Sarzad az ofogh mehreh khavaran’ (From the horizon, shone the kindness of east ‘,:-\ or something like that. If you think you can do a better job of translating these lines, please be my guest.)
So I can understand why most of you are reluctant to learn this and of course I can’t promise you that it won’t change again next year but please, if you won’t do it for your country, do it for me! I’m serious. I think I might end up having a nervous breakdown if I have to sit through another one of those horrific national anthem experiences with some of the guys from the Iran team going, ‘Oh yeah I know this part, Eeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeey doshman ar to sangeh khare-i man aahanam…’ with the guy next to them elbowing them in their side going, ‘Shut up. That’s not it.’
‘What is it then?’
‘I have no idea. Don’t sing, just move your lips and pray to god that some of our supporters at least know the words.’ and with some of the supporters singing ‘Shod jomhoorieh eslami beh pa’, some singing, ‘I will survive!’ and the rest just standing there, scratching their heads and picking their noses going, ‘Is this still the Mexican’s national anthem?’
[Blogger sighs] I mean it’s bad enough that we don’t seem to know what our flag looks like with some of us waving a flag with an Allah in the middle, some carrying one with the lion and the sword in the middle and the rest (the agnostics) carrying plain red, white and green flags (apparently they do not deny the existence of some sort of symbol in the white part of the Iranian flag but rather hold that one cannot know for certain if the symbol exists or not)
[Blogger sighs again] Well I know I’m just wasting my time putting this here and you lazy lot are never gonna learn it but here it is anyway in case anyone is interested.

Sar zad az ofogh mehreh khaavaran
Foroogheh dideyeh hagh bavaran
Bahman farreh imaaneh maast
Payaamat ey emaam, esteghlaal, azaadi, naghsheh jaaneh maast
Shahidaan, pichideh dar goosheh zaman faryaadetan
Paayandeh mani o jaavedan, jomhoorieh eslaamieh Iran

Easy peasy lemon squeezy.

2006-06-12T14:10:00.000+01:00

‘It’s not the winning it’s the taking part that counts.’ Yeah right!
Iran 1, Mexico 3, Shirin and Kamyar £10 poorer.
Ok the first half was good. It was really good in fact. They were playing so well, weren’t they? They were fast on their feet and passed the ball around really nicely and altogether it really looked like they were playing a much better game than the Mexicans. But then the second half came and [blogger blows raspberry]. Well we all know what happened then, don’t we?
It looked as though during the halftime our team had indulged themselves in a three course meal of Mast-o khiar and then Chelokabab with doogheh mabsoot followed by a big bowl of Sholeh zard and a ghalyoon while the other team had been injected with large quantities of Red Bull and Lucozade, while someone shoved bags of coke up their nostrils!
What happened to our boys? Well I say boys but you know…most of them are knocking on a bit aren’t they? They just couldn’t be bothered or simply couldn’t play anymore. They were all just hanging around by their own goal probably thinking, ‘Oh don’t pass that to me. What am I gonna do with it…Shit, the Mexican got it again. Oh well never mind.’
At times it was even painful to watch. When that poor goalie was trying to get them to go back a bit so he could pass the ball to them on the other side of the pitch, you could see they were taking a few steps back going, ‘Is this ok?’ then he would be like, ‘No back, back.’ and motioning them to go back with his hand and you could tell they were all like, ‘Uhhhh, do I have to? But then I’ll just have to run all the way back again, don’t I? What’s the point?’
Well it’s not the players’ fault I guess. Some of them are well past their sell-by date and should really be left alone to sit in their cardigans and comfy slippers and watch the game from the comfort of their homes, rather than play in it.
Let them go for crying out loud before one of them ends up having a heart attack on the pitch!

But seriously what is this fascination we have with old footballers? I guarantee you, Ali Parvin would still be playing too if only his belly was a little bit smaller. And I have my suspicions the only reason that poor guy had to go and make such a huge belly for himself is because there really was no other way for him to get out of playing football until he was well into his nineties.
Isn’t it about time we stopped treating our footballers like pickled garlic? Baba, be peer, be peyghambar, be ee sooyeh cheraagh, [swearing to this and that] up until his mid twenties, like pickled garlic, a footballer might get better with age but from then on it’s all downhill for the footballer whereas pickled garlic not only tastes better, but I have a feeling it might play a better football as well.

Well there’s no point crying over spilt milk but what can I do, I’m truly disappointed.

2006-06-11T19:18:00.000+01:00

Balls. We lost :-(

2006-06-09T11:13:00.000+01:00

Last night our cooker blew up. If you’ve never had the pleasure of having an electric cooker blow up in your face, take it from me; it’s quite frightening and really annoying as well especially if just moments before you have been saying, ‘I’m so happy. Hey isn’t summer great?’ while dancing around the kitchen, chopping up vegetables for you pasta sauce.
Kamyar said, ‘Yeah it’s great, isn’t it?’ and we pulled some very extreme happy faces for each other; arms up in the air, eyes bulging, mouth wide open; screaming style only soundless with jazz hands to finish.
Ok we were a bit merry from our one can of Becks each after having been out in the sun all day.
‘Look; I’ve got a tan just from walking to town and back today.’ I said. Kamyar agreed with my statement on further inspection, ‘You have as well. Nice.’ and then said, ‘I’ll just go and check something on my blog. Be back in a sec.’
And that’s when I noticed it. A most dazzling light was shining out from underneath the frying pan.
Naturally I thought what I presume any normal tipsy person would think when put in a similar situation on the night before their thirty first birthday; this was God, trying to make contact with me.
I felt quite chuffed of course but then I thought, ‘I really hope he’s just come to say happy birthday and be off on his way.’ because Kamyar and I were having such a nice evening together and we were both tired and fancied just lying on our sofa and watching Walk the Line and if god was to suddenly turn up, we would probably have to sit up straight and make polite conversations with him about the Koran and the Old Testament.
‘Maybe I’m going to be a prophet’ I thought. If that’s the case I hope I’m a fun prophet with a nice easy religion that says things like, ‘If you want to go to heaven, eat strawberries.’ and ‘But if you’re allergic to strawberries or just don’t like them, eat cherries or bananas.’ and that sort of thing. I didn’t really fancy having to go to wars and preach and all that.
‘I wonder if he’ll be willing to give me this week’s winning Lottery numbers as a birthday gift’ I thought, ‘or pull some strings and make Iran win the World Cup or at the very least, cure my eczema.’
And then it happened, as I bent down to see how much longer god was planning to illuminate the kitchen from underneath my frying pan before saying happy birthday, Booooooooom; the hob blew with a loud bang, sparks went flying and for the first time in it’s very long life, our old electric cooker had a nice little fire on it (which by the way god failed to come out from).
Happy birthday to me :-)

2006-06-05T13:13:00.000+01:00

Ro-more trouble than it’s worth-mance

Part Three

In the last two parts of Ro-more trouble than it’s worth-mance, I have talked about two romantic disasters. In this third and last part in this series however, I want to talk about when romance (in its conventional sense) goes O so totally, perfectly, Hollywoodily right and exactly what that leads to in Shirin’s world.

Picture this if you may: a lovely summer’s day in a beautiful meadow/forest (well like a meadow with a mini forest just behind it) birds tweeting, blue skies with a few little white fluffy clouds, sun; shining warm, a breeze blowing; just about strong enough to make the daisies and the buttercups of the meadow dance to the rhythm of the forest and the birds. O how glorious it was. And there we were; my friend and I walking through meadow on our way to the forest.
I was babbling on about this and that. My friend was not saying much and looked as though he had something on his mind. I kept thinking he was getting flustered because it was too hot and he had this big coat on but he kept saying he was ok.

This is many years ago by the way and this boy was a good friend of mine that I got on with really well. I can’t remember if I’d had a crush on him right from the start or if I had developed the crush after we had been friends for a while but what I’m certain of is that I was a bit angry with myself at the time because I had done it again; I had gone and got too pally with this guy and again I was finding myself in that really awkward situation where I fancied my “friend” and was at a constant struggle with myself about whether to tell him or not. ‘What if he doesn’t feel that way about me? The thing is I don’t want to lose this friendship and if I say anything to him about that then we can’t really stay friends like this anymore. Maybe I’ll say something and if he looks too shocked I’ll pretend I was joking. No that’s silly. But I have to do something…or maybe not. No but I think I have to say something. Ok, if that flying pigeon lands on the ground before I finish counting to ten, then I’ll tell him. 1, 2, 3, 4… o-ok, I guess I’ll have to tell him then. Right then, here we go. Hang on a minute; is that a pigeon or a woodpigeon?’
You get the picture I’m sure. It was just so difficult and I didn’t know what to do.

Back to that day now. As the meadow ended and we entered the forest, my friend suddenly pulled his hands out of his big coat’s pockets and produced a bottle of wine and two glasses.
You would think any normal person that fancied her friend and was constantly thinking to herself if he liked her as well or not, would take one look at her friend who had kept his big coat on under the sun and had walked for about an hour with his hands in his pockets to stop the glasses from clinking, only to be able to surprise her with a bottle of wine in such an amazingly romantic setting, would quickly put two and two together and work out exactly what was going on. Sadly however, Lady Dumb-dumb here was no normal person. So she took one look at the situation and thought, ‘Wine? But it’s not even noon yet! And it’s so hot as well; I bet I’ll get a migraine. Well at least that explains the big coat but why didn’t he just put it in a carrier bag? I just hope he hasn’t forgotten the bottle opener.’
Of course he hadn’t forgotten the bottle opener but even if he had I’m sure we would have found one in front of us right there on the path. I mean everything else about that day was so absolutely perfect and looked as though someone had arranged every single thing about it from the temperature right down to those tiny purple flowers that had popped up all over the place that I’m sure a bottle opener would somehow have found its way to us too.

Two hours, some wandering around the forest talking about this and that and one bottle of wine later, a bit tipsy and very happy, we made our way back through the gorgeous meadow with me half dancing, half skipping in the front thinking ‘should I tell him should I not’ and my friend walking behind.
Suddenly my arm was grabbed and I was pulled back; gently but firmly. I don’t know if we kissed first and then fell to the ground or if we fell first and then kissed but the next thing I remember is looking up at that perfect blue sky with one little fluffy cloud going across it which I swear momentarily turned into a heart-shape before escaping my viewpoint.
I wish I could tell you exactly what was going on in my head at those moments after the kiss as I stared up at the blue sky but unfortunately there’s nothing to tell as for reasons unbeknown to me, my brain had suddenly stopped working.
I really wanted to say something but due to a very inconvenient brain shutdown, could not think of a single thing to say. Talk about awkward, the poor guy had gone through all that trouble; done all the work so to speak and now I couldn’t even say one little word to him. God only knows what was going on in his head at the time.
It was terrible. It felt like I was doing a movie scene and had forgotten my lines but unfortunately there was no one to shout out ‘Cut’ and then ‘Ro-more trouble than it’s worth-mance, Part 3, Scene 4, Take 2’

I’ve been racking my brain about this for the past ten or eleven years but unfortunately still have not been able to find a logical explanation for what happened to me that day. Was it romance overdose? Some kind of rare brain virus? A mild stroke? Or maybe it was destiny, galloping onto the scene, shouting, ‘What’s going on? Stop everything at once. You can’t do that. She’s not supposed to fall in love with him.’
‘Why the hell not man? It’s all going so perfectly well. Look at this super romantic set we’ve created here; forest, meadow, flowers; yellow, purple and white, blue skies, sun shining warm, heart-shaped clouds, (do you know how long it took me to persuade Cupid to do that for us?) we’ve even brought in the award wining Amazon Birds Orchestra. They’ve been practicing all morning with that cow that does an impression of Barry White, for the grand finale…’
‘I know, I know; I can see you’ve done a lot of work here but I’m sorry; this is not supposed to happen. Look I’ve got her chart over here. She can’t go and fall in love now, it’ll ruin everything.’
‘Let’s have a look’
‘Here’
‘What’ this; August 1996, Makes wrong choice after smartly dressed date slips in…what’s this?’
‘Sorry my handwriting can be a bit hard to read sometimes. Its says ‘…after smartly dressed date slips in cow manure and falls head first into the river.’’
‘Nasty! July 1997, Date ends when she runs off after being attacked by a swan who had taken a liking to her purple trainers! This girl really needs to stay away from rivers.’
‘Tell me about it.’
‘July 1998, on a camping holiday in France an Argentinean man named Eduardo DOES WHAT?’
‘Hey, give me that. These are personal. Ok let’s see, some boyfriends, break-ups, la la la…now here we go; September 1999, falls in love with the man with one eyebrow who goes by the name of Kamyar…’
‘Hey doesn’t he look like that guy that played the crazy roommate of Chandler’s in friends and was also in Saving Private Ryan and A Beautiful mind? What’s his face, you know…’
‘Adam Goldberg’
‘Yeah that’s it. Man he really looks like him.’
‘Have you quite finished?’
‘Yes sorry about that. Please do go on. Do they live happily ever after?’
‘Let’s try and sort out this mess you’ve created here first, shall we?’
‘But how?’
‘The only thing I can think of is to restart her brain and hope that she will just get up and walk off without saying a word.’
‘As much as I’d hate to see all this go to waste, I quite like the idea of her and the Adam Goldberg guy so I’m having my fingers crossed that’ll work. Hey maybe I could get the Barry White impressionist cow to sing at their wedding.’
‘You could try but they probably won’t even notice it since they’ll be far too drunk. Plus they will have their wedding at the ninth floor of an apartment building in Tehran; I think you might have a hard time trying to get your cow up there.’
‘Yeah you’re right…hey maybe I could persuade the cow to get into a cage and then sing for them suspended outside the ninth floor window. What do you think?’
‘Sounds like a cunning plan my friend. Good luck with that.’

2006-05-31T11:10:00.000+01:00

Ro-more trouble than it's worth-mance

Part two

As I’ve said before, I’ve never been much of a romantic but growing up I had always had this fantasy that one day someone I did not know, would come up to me and say, ‘It’s you’ (or something similar) and so basically just by looking at me he would realise that I was the girl of his dreams.

I was working as a cashier at Sainsbury’s at the time and one afternoon a little Spanish chap who bought a packet of salt and vinegar crisps and a can of Apple Tango, also declared his love to me.
Watching the Spanish Romeo being escorted out of the supermarket by one of the security guards, it suddenly occurred to me that there was a major flaw in my fantasy; normal people did not go around telling people that they did not know from Adam that they were in love with them, only creeps and weirdoes did this sort of thing.

As the supermarket closed that night and I made my way across the car park to the bus stop, I saw the little Spanish guy in the distance, standing by the exit. I guess it was sweet that he had waited out there for me for about five hours but it was also scary because it was dark and while I had been faffing around inside; looking for some change to buy a can of coke, everyone else had left the supermarket and now there was only us two left. The way I saw it there were three possibilities with this guy:

1- He was a loser with no life who could spare five hours of his Saturday night to stand around supermarket car parks
2- He was a sweetheart and a hopeless romantic who had seen past my spotty face and my greasy hair jammed in a ponytail and my very unflattering, nylon cashiers’ uniform and had fallen madly in love with me
3- He was a psychopath, about to kidnap me and hack me to pieces

I desperately felt around in my bag for anything that could be used against him in case he turned out to be the psychopath. He had already started walking towards me and so I grabbed the only thing that vaguely resembled a weapon, a biro which I held very tightly with the tip coming out of one side of my fist and imagined how I would stab him with it repeatedly (if he tried to attack me) Norman Bates style, eee eee.
As he got closer, I realised that there was also a fourth possibility with this guy,

4- He was a vampire slayer!

Or should I say I was hoping that was what he was because otherwise it meant that for no particular reason, while waiting outside for the love of his life to finish her shift, Prince Charming (feeling a little peckish) had decided that the best thing to snack on at this precise moment in time was what from the smell I would say, a bucketful of raw garlic.
‘Khello’ he said.
I think he was smiling but I can’t be sure as by then my eyes had started watering from the garlic fumes, making it hard for me to see.
‘Hello’ I said and started walking towards the bus stop, fast.
‘You no khave a car?’ He sounded like he was horrified even by the thought of me not having a car but I think it might have just been his accent that was making him sound that way.
‘No’
‘You go wis bus?’
‘Yes’

By the time we got to the bus stop, I was pretty much sure that this garlic muncher was quite harmless but it was still nice to see that there were other people at the bus stop as well.
Now at the time I used to smoke and one of my greatest pleasures was to get a can of coke from the machine and have that with a cigarette as I waited for my bus after I’d finished work.
I had taken out my cigarette and was looking for my lighter. ‘Not good for your mouth’ said the man who could wipe out an entire tribe of vampires with one breath, disapprovingly. I didn’t know exactly what he meant by that but in an effort to try and reduce the garlic fumes coming my way, I had already decided not to engage him in any more conversation than was necessary, so I didn’t ask. I put my cigarette back though and decided against lighting it because my bus was approaching and also because even though I was almost certain that garlic was not flammable, the air felt so thick with it at the time that I couldn’t help thinking, what if.

Long story short, it did not work out between me and the Vampire Slayer. Call me shallow but I have my standards and even though I appreciate a good party trick as much as the next person, I still can’t bring myself to date a man who can turn a French stick into garlic bread; simply by breathing on it.

End of part two

2006-05-26T10:44:00.000+01:00

Ro-more trouble than it's worth-mance

Part one

Last night, munching our way through our big plates of bangers and mash with onion gravy, in our jimjams, I got thinking about romance.
I’ve never been the most romantic person in the world but even so if in my teenage years someone had told me that after six years of marriage the idea of romance for my husband and I would be to say to each other, ‘I wouldn’t come in here if I were you darling, I’ve just dropped one of those chemical ones.’ I would not have believed them.
But to tell you the truth now I’m more than happy with this arrangement. My romantic life for the most part, has only ever been a series of mishaps which I have always thought I could very easily have done without.
Take this for example. This guy I knew a bit from here and there, once invited me to go for a walk with him in a field.
When he arrived, I noticed that he was dressed very smartly and had a picnic basket with him that had a bottle of wine and two glasses inside. I was shocked because I didn’t fancy him in any shape or form and had no idea that this was some sort of date, but then again since there was a definite lack of romance in my life at the time, I thought a little bit of field, river, sunset and wine might do me some good.
As we entered the field, we realised that we weren’t the only ones who had thought of lazing away a summer afternoon by a river in a field; at least twenty cows had come up with the same idea. What’s more, they had arrived sometime before us and had picked the best spots for themselves. There weren’t that many of them really but as if by magic, they had managed to cover the whole field in cowpats, making it hard for us to walk around without putting our foot in one, let alone find a big enough manure-free area to put down our picnic blanket.
You could tell the poor guy was getting quite agitated; this clearly was not the romantic setting that he had hoped for. Trying to make him feel better I said, ‘It’s not very nice around here anyway, come on let’s go sit closer to the river’ and led the way. Next thing I heard a loud shriek from behind me, as my elegantly dressed companion slipped on a cowpat and a splash, as he fell into the river.
Now here’s the part that I’m truly ashamed about; without giving it a second thought, I started running by the side of the river as fast as I could, keeping one eye on the picnic basket and thinking up ways to rescue it. It wasn’t until I had to do an emergency stop about fifty meters down (as two cows had blocked my way) that I realised my instincts had got the better of me and had resulted in me showing my true colours by putting all my energy into chasing after what was most important to me i.e. the bottle of wine, when what I should have done was to give my injured date a hand and help him out of the river.
We have not spoken ever since.

End of part one

Tune in again in a few days for the part two of Ro- more trouble than it's worth–mance.
Here’s a teaser:

My worst ever romantic experience however was definitely this one, mainly because it came disguised as my ultimate romantic fantasy which was to have someone I’ve never seen before, come up to me and say, ‘It’s you’ meaning it’s you that I’ve been looking for all my life and now that I’ve found you I will never let you go and la la la (by which I mean all the rest of the things he meant by saying ‘its you’ and not that he would suddenly burst into song or anything like that. Saying that I must admit sometimes when I was feeling particularly cheesy or had just seen a musical, he would be singing and doing a little dance and all)…

2006-05-20T09:46:00.000+01:00

Listen to this. The other day I went to this very small town about an hour and a half away from Oxford to meet with an old friend. I had never been to this town before so we had arranged to meet in a café by the one and only monument of the town, the famous Old Cross.
When I arrived I spent a little time looking around for the cross but then since I was already a little bit late, I thought I should probably ask someone, preferably someone who did not have the bottom of her skirt caught in the back of her incontinence pants and was not already busy having a conversation with him/herself.
Soon I knew I had set an impossible task for myself and so I just went and approached the first person I could find and asked where this famous monument was. The old lady very proudly said, ‘Just there dear.’
At first I thought she was having me on but then after some squinting I did notice a tiny cross sticking out of the top of this big, concrete thing in the middle of the small roundabout.
I was still standing there staring at the strange monument when I noticed a fat woodpigeon flying directly towards it. You could tell he had miscalculated his weight and size in relation to the size of the cross and was going to try and land on there. I started to get worried; if he were to lose his balance and fall down, he could be run over by one of the many old ladies orbiting around the base of the monument on their Zimmer frames.
As he got closer to the cross, you could tell he was starting to have doubts. The cross was maybe just about big enough for two sparrows to sit on either sides and one balancing on its tip. It would really be pushing it but maybe two very slim pigeons could stop on there as well if they really had to but any bird bigger, like a crow or a woodpigeon would have no chance at all unless the bird in question was a world famous gymnast or a Tai Chi master who had spent great many years working on his or her balance and concentration. Unfortunately this fat bird looked like neither.
Suddenly I heard this little voice from behind me going, ‘Psssd, new girl, fancy putting down some last minute bets?’
I turned around and right behind me on the pavement, I saw a little squirrel holding a tiny notebook next to a very rough-looking pigeon with one foot missing, standing in front of a little pile of nuts and grains. I couldn’t believe it; that poor bird’s life was in serious danger and this lot were putting down bets! ‘These guys are merciless.’ I thought.
A sharp, serious voice brought me back. ‘Put me down for two peanuts and a raison for him to fall down and get run over by Gladys’ said the old lady who had showed me the cross. Then the squirrel nodded and wrote something in his notebook, some nuts changed hands and now everyone’s eyes were fixed back on me again.
‘When in Rome’ I thought and as coolly as I could, said, ‘Put me down for ten pistachio nuts for…’ I was feeling adventurous, ‘for him to land safely…’
‘Wo wo, wo,’ the squirrel interrupted me, ‘hold your horses sonny boy. Where do you think this is? Las bloomin’ Vegas?’
‘Sounds like a hustler boss.’ the rough-looking pigeon with a foot missing said to the squirrel. ‘You want me to…’
‘Shut up Claude.’ the squirrel snapped at him. Claude hung his head and looked down at his one good foot. I was embarrassed too. I wasn’t sure exactly why though.
The woodpigeon was still circling the cross, examining it from each angle. Finally it looked as though he had made his mind up. The whole thing was far too tense for me so I shut my eyes. The next thing I heard was ‘Well I never!’ which was said by the old lady.
When I opened my eyes I couldn’t believe what I was seeing. The woodpigeon had balanced himself on one foot on the tip of the cross with the other foot sticking out from the side.
‘Who would’a thunk it hey?’ the squirrel was saying mischievously as he shoved all the nuts into a little sack that was tied around Claude’s foot, ‘But you’ve got to hand it to him; that’s some talent that bird has there.’
‘You should be ashamed of yourselves’ I said angrily ‘cheating old ladies out of their nuts.’ But they were already halfway down the road with the squirrel leading the way and Claude and the woodpigeon following closely behind.

2006-05-14T21:41:00.000+01:00

Kalleh Pacheh (head and trotters)

One of the things I love about Iran is that you can never get so chicken-nuggetly away from your dinner to forget where it comes from. Here in England if you don’t like the idea of cute little lambs being slaughtered, you can very easily walk into a supermarket and pick up a pack of lamb shops, neatly arranged in a cellophane tray and pretend that like chickpeas that actually have nothing to do with chicks, lamb chops have nothing to do with lambs either and essentially grow on trees.
In Iran however things are very different. There are some supermarkets around now but since there are not that many of them, most people still prefer to shop in their local stores. Being squeamish and shopping for meat in Iran, do not go together. If you are one of those people that like to pretend that lamb chops grow on trees, then you are probably better off becoming a vegetarian since the first time you walk into a butcher’s shop and see every body part of sheep from fillets to shoulders to livers to kidneys to brains being proudly displayed on trays in giant refrigerators along with their trotters and their skinned, smiling heads (with their big eyes staring back at you) decorated with some plastic parsley, any illusions you might have had about what meat comes from where, will be totally shattered.
Even though confronting my dinner’s head has always made me feel a little uneasy, I absolutely love the idea of every part of a slaughtered animal being used and nothing going to waste.

One of the most memorable meals I had on my last trip to Iran was the Kalleh Pacheh (head and trotters) we had in Tajrish on our way back from the mountains one Thursday. I’d had Kalleh Pacheh many times before but I had always had it at home and never in an actual kalleh pacheh restaurant.
It had been my idea to have kalleh pacheh for lunch but as we walked in and the steam from the three sheep heads boiling away in the special pan hit me and I saw those six melting eyes and those three toothy grins, I was ready to run out screaming.
Meanwhile my dad who had already decided that the bread the kalleh-paz (head boiler) was going to give us was not going to be eatable and had already unsuccessfully tried to buy some bread on our way there by hurling himself out of the taxi and into a bread shop at the traffic lights, had popped into the kebab shop next-door in search of some fresh bread and having for some reason come back empty-handed again, was confronted by one of the kalleh-paz guys who had become extremely offended by my dad’s lack of trust in his bread. As my dad did his usual hovering around the place, poking his head here and there, (as though he was trying to secure an escape route when in reality he was only putting off sitting down since for some reason he can’t stay still for too long) he was chased around by the kalleh-paz guy who incessantly spoke of the freshness of his bread and got more and more wound up as my husband also entered the discussion by offering to go to the bread shop at the other side of the roundabout.
As the bread wars continued, I finally managed to pull myself together and so my mum and I went and sat down.
The man’s bread did actually turn out to be quite good and after we had each confirmed his bread’s freshness, he went over to the boiling heads and trotters pot to bring our lunch of face-meat, trotters, two tongues and one brain.
While my dad’s bread brawl opponent arranged the pieces of face-meat on plates and using a ladle, very theatrically let the juices run over each piece of meat, his colleague very coolly broke the jaws of two sheep heads (by putting his hands on either sides of the jaws and pulling forcefully in opposite directions) to extract the tongue and the brain.
I had been the one who had ordered the brain but now that it was about to be put in front of me, going over my last memory of sheep brain, I was beginning to get worried.

As a child I had always liked brain but since I’d left Iran, I had not had it and so one time when I’d gone back, I’d said to my mum that I quite fancied having some brain. Which in English might sound like a bit of a crazy thing to say to your mother but in Farsi is quite normal and can get replies such as ‘Yeah alright then, we’ll pick up a couple on our way back home today.’ Which we did. We picked up two fresh brains from the butcher’s which were dropped into a clear plastic bag and handed to me. It wasn’ta pretty sight and to complete the horror, some blood had got into the bag with them as well. I was feeling very nauseous but I still managed to carry them all the way home with a little help from Girls in white dresses with blue satin sashes
Snowflakes that stay on my nose and eyelashes
Silver white winters that melt into springs
And a few others of my favourite things.
When we got home, naively thinking that the grim part was over, I pleaded with my mind to somehow forget the image of the two brains bobbing in the shallow pool of blood in that plastic bag or if that was not possible, maybe just not make the connection between that horrid image and the tasty, mushy, cream-cheesy type stuff I was going to have later that night.
Little did I know that a few minutes later, as I walked into the kitchen, I would witness a scene that would not only as we say in Farsi, put the other brain image in its pocket (meaning that was nothing compared to this) but also become one of my top five all time craziest things I have ever seen in my life.
As I walked into the kitchen, I was faced with what I can only describe as Hannibal Lector’s dream punch. The two brains were now swimming around in a big bowl full of water (made pink from the blood) with some ice!
This was certainly a far cry from all those times I had been called out as a child to have some of the nice, white, gooey stuff which I would smear on pieces of bread with a few drops of lemon juice without giving much thought to its original form or where it had come from.
As I struggled to stop myself from fainting, my mum who had taken all my staring at the brains without saying a word as a sign of interest in the art of brain boiling, came and picked up one of the brains and in her usual smiley manner said, ‘I really like this part. If you put the brains in some icy cold water, you can then come and pick out one end of the veins and peel them all away in one.’ Or something along these lines. I can’t be sure about anything that happened in those few minutes as I was too busy concentrating on standing up. But I think she also said something like, ‘It looks like a little net at the end.’ And it did as well. And I have not been able to look at a hairnet the same way ever since.
Needless to say, that night I did not have any brain on account of all the weird images in my head. Now many years later, I was about to make my peace with brain.
And it was really nice actually. The only slightly dodgy thing about it was that my brain was brought to me covered in cinnamon which is really the last thing I would think to put on a brain and it really should be the last thing too since it didn’t really go with it. Saying that, the cinnamon did cover all the veins which was probably a good thing and might hopefully help with my hairnet phobia as well.

2006-05-10T12:21:00.000+01:00

Shirin’s report on the streets of Tehran

On Driving

Some people agreed and some disagreed with me on this while I was in Iran but I really thought people’s driving had improved a lot in Tehran. I’m not saying all the cars were stopping on zebra crossings to let pedestrians go past or anything like that but studying the faces of a lot of drivers, I did come to the conclusion that they no longer took any pleasure in running their fellow citizens over either and unlike previous years, they no longer looked as though they were actively searching for distracted pedestrians to knock down.

Another sign of very good driving for me came in the form of a man who before changing lanes in the motorway, indicated! Ok so maybe he didn’t actually change lanes at the end and decided it was best to just drive on with the line in-between his wheels rather than with his wheels between the lines but the important thing is that he indicated even if his indicating had been a little premature and before he had made his mind up about which lane he actually wanted to be in. So the man in the white Pride on Hemmat Motorway on the 26th of April this year at approximately five thirty in the afternoon, I salute you.

On road safety

I really felt like a lot had changed in the streets of Tehran since last year. For one, drivers and front passengers wore seatbelts! This also means that taxis are now only allowed to take four passengers instead of five since it’s practically impossible for two people to sit on the front passenger seat and wear a seatbelt. Saying that I must admit I’m surprised that taxi drivers have not yet found a way to get around this little problem by for example asking the smaller front passenger to sit on the bigger front passenger’s lap and hold the seatbelt over both of them.

Another safety measure taken by the government is that motorcyclists are now all made to wear crash helmets.
How you ask? And you ask a very good question too. How on earth a government manages to make a people who use motorcycles to move their whole family (consisting of one wife, two children, one grandmother) and one ladder, from A to B, to suddenly become safety conscious and wear helmets?
I have decided to give the answer to this question in the form of a riddle: How many Pasdars (morality police) does it take to teach a motorcyclist that getting on a motorcycle without a helmet is dangerous?
The answer is, Three.

You take one long stretch of good old Tehran road and put three Pasdars on it at about fifty meter intervals. You arm the first Pasdar with a regular sized sign that in big, red letters says ‘STOP’. You arm the second Pasdar with the exact same sign, only bigger. The third and last Pasdar who should really be the most athletic one as well, gets no stop signs at all, instead you must provide him with a great big baton.
Before we go any further let me just confess that unfortunately I never got a chance to witness this amazing helmet awareness process myself since by the time I had arrived, all motorcyclists had already been made aware of the dangers of riding with their heads exposed and had all gone and bought shiny new helmets for themselves. Here I’m only repeating what Kamyar’s friend, Afshin told us about this very effective course of action.
As the first Pasdar on the road sees a carefree, helmet-free motorcyclist coming towards him, he pulls out his stop sign and waves it in front of the rider in order to make him stop.
If the rider stops, he gets fined heavily for having broken the law so he decides to ignore the Pasdar with the median sized stop sign and speeds past him.
A few meters away however, the second Pasdar is waiting with his even bigger sign. Again the motorcyclist ignores the stop sign and zooms past the Pasdar saying to himself, ‘Even Saddam Hussein and his army could not make us wear helmets. We went off to the war wearing nothing but a headband that said ‘Ya Mahdi’. Now who are you to make us wear helmets in our own country at the time of peace?’
Meanwhile the third and last Pasdar gets ready with his baton and when the motorcyclist reaches him, he is presented with a physical stop sign that sends him flying in the air by whacking him off his motorcycle as he rides past.
Before landing in the middle of the road, the man makes a promise to Allah that if he gets out alive, from that moment on he will wear his crash helmet at all times even when in bed or in the shower.

If this story is true as Afshin swore it was, then I’m very proud of our government that has not only made our streets safer, but has also managed to take the notion of tough love to a whole new level.

If you are wondering about the guy in the above picture and why he is not wearing a helmet, I must say in his defence that he is of course exempt from this law as the super-safety-conscious guy that he is, he only ever rides on the pavement.

2006-05-08T13:31:00.000+01:00

Home sweet home. Computer sweet computer. Broadband sweet broadband. But most of all bed sweet bed. O how I’d missed our bed. Somewhere between annoying Zeinab Sisters in Imam Khomeini airport mistaking my lavashak (dried fruit pure) for hash, drinking lukewarm coffees, being trapped in a plane with a woman who had emptied a whole bottle perfume on herself (this was so bad that for the fist time in my life I was actually thankful when another one of my fellow passengers let one go), falling sleep curled up and freezing on metal chairs in Baku airport and the two hour bus journey from Gatwick to Oxford, I had totally lost the will to live but crawling into our soft, warm bed last night, made all of that go away. It was one of the most pleasurable experiences of my life. Twelve hours of asleep and several pieces of toast with cups of tea and coffee later, I’m starting to feel normal again.

It’s both nice and sad to be back. I cried this morning and I’ve had a lump in my throat that changes size depending on what I’m doing or thinking of. Pulling out a bag of dried dill left over from my mum’s dill and broad beans meatballs; the lump gets Big. Watching an episode of Creature Comforts; it gets small. Seeing a piece of unpublished writing by my dad that he gave to me to keep; Big. Reading it; very small. Getting into my prison style pyjamas and lying on our sofa with Kamyar in his favourite shirt with the elbow areas missing; small. Seeing my dead plants; Big.
It’s ok to be sad though and I don’t mind it really because I know it’ll go away in a couple of days and I’ll be right as rain.
Stay tuned for my report on Iran that I will post in a few days time.

2006-04-19T14:19:00.000+01:00

Iran has been totally brilliant even if a little surreal at times. What has attracted my attention the most on this trip is how gifted some of the people here are at replying to a question you have asked without actually giving you an answer.
For the first few days I thought either I was going a little crazy or I had forgotten my Farsi and was asking questions that didn’t make sense.
For example I would ask my uncle if he wanted my mum to give him a call when she came out of the shower, he would give me a long lecture about how he doesn’t have any hot water in house! Or I would ask my grandmother how long she usually left chicken drumsticks to cook before they were tender, she would give me a complete chicken recipe with orange juice and onions, entirely missing out the part about how long it takes for it to cook. Apparently ‘The trick is to put a lot of onions and a tiny bit of water. The onions make it very tasty.’
The answers usually went on for so long that by the end I couldn’t even be sure what my question had been in the first place. So I came up with a cunning plan. Every time I asked a question and people started going off on one, I would keep interrupting with the same question until I got my answer.
This tactic worked for a few days and I was very proud of myself for having solved this problem.

I wanted to go to the Friday Market and buy something but since I had absolutely no idea how much this thing was, I decided to do some research about the price first before going all the way downtown and finding out that it was too expensive.
Anyway we went to someone’s house and I noticed that she had a few of these things so I thought great; this person will probably know about prices and all that. So I asked her, ‘Can you tell me how much these things usually cost please?’ She replied, ‘Why? Are you thinking of buying some?’
‘Yes but I wanted to know how much they are before going all the way to the Friday Market.’
‘Yes that’s where I bought mine from, the Friday Market. You know…’ Here I sensed she was getting a bit sidetracked and could do with a little interruption. ‘Yes but how much did you buy them for?’
‘You know you can buy them in all different colours now.’
‘Yes but how much for?’
‘You know when I went to buy these a friend of mine came with me and bought some as well. Would you like me to ask her if she wants to sell hers?’ She wasn’t giving up.
But neither was I. ‘That’s a good idea.’ I said, ‘So how much do you think your friend might want to sell hers for?’ Clever I thought; I had well and truly cornered her.
She paused for a moment and then replied, ‘I could call her and ask her about that but I don’t understand why you want to buy hers instead of just going to the Friday Market and getting some for yourself. Don’t be so lazy, it’s very easy to get there.’
I had met my match.

2006-04-11T22:40:00.000+01:00

Next time I write in here, it will be from my parents' home in the Islamic Republic of Iran. I can’t write much now because I’m too busy panicking about our trip. I’m becoming such a worrier in my old age!
Must go and make another list of all the things we need to do before leaving (I’ve made three of these since this morning and have managed to lose all three somehow) and have another go at Kamyar (it sounds like he might be relaxing a bit too much now just sitting there watching telly).
Laters

2006-04-08T13:22:00.000+01:00

Apparently after witnessing what a Forward Button could do, imagining the devastation it could cause if it fell into the wrong hands, one of its creators quoted a remembered fragment from the Bhagavad Gita. ‘I am become Death,’ he said, ‘the destroyer of worlds.’ Another one was reported to have said, ‘Now we’re all sons of bitches.’
(Or was that the people that made the atomic bomb? No I’m pretty sure it was the Forward Button.)

Oh the Forward Button, the bane of my life. Of course not all forwarded emails are bad. It’s nice for example when people send you things that they think you might enjoy like some of the things that a friend of my mother-in-law's sends me sometimes (pictures of tiny cute babies for example, made out of marzipan or an article about herbal remedies) or something I received from another friend just last week which I enjoyed very much; a clip with Shohreh Aghdashloo in Will and Grace.
However I find that most people these days abuse the power that has been put in their hands by arming them with a Forward Button. I’m talking about those people that forward any old rubbish that is emailed to them to everyone in their address book.
The interesting thing is that some of these people count forwarding all this junk around as emailing and even get a bit funny when you don’t reply to them and sulkily say things like, ‘Well you never write.’
In my opinion I’m actually doing our relationship a world of good by keeping my mouth shut and refraining from replying with my true feelings about every kitten picture, any dodgy article that has the tiniest reference to Iran in it or all those chain letters that they send me, but in their opinion they have sent me five emails a day for the past god-knows-how-long and deserve many replies, an award for the best emailer of the year and possibly a standing ovation.

Is it not time do you think that before giving any old emailing so and so a forward button, they were first made to pass a little test? Maybe a little something like this:

Question number 1- You receive an email that contains twenty close-up photos of different flowers, do you
a. Without thinking, forward it to everyone in your address book
b. Think about who in your address book would really love to see twenty close-up photos of different flowers and only send it to them
c. Destroy the email on the spot

Question number 2- You receive an email which contains a boring ten minute slide show with pictures of sunrises and sunsets with a cheesy peacy lovy message stuck on each slide with the last one being something like, ‘Send this to ten people and you will have good luck for ten days, fail to send this to ten people and something nasty will happen to you in the next ten days’ do you
a. Think you could do with some good luck and straightaway forward it to everyone in your address book, hoping that the more people you send it to, the more good luck will come your way
b. Hate getting these kinds of emails and never know what to do with them. You think you are an intelligent person and don’t believe in this sort of thing but you still hesitate before deleting the email because if you’re really honest with yourself, you are kind of scared. Meanwhile your phone rings, you get up to answer it; you trip on the carpet and nearly break your neck. Thinking the bad luck must have started, you run back to your computer and forward the email to ten people in your address book but in the subject box you write ‘So sorry about this but I can really do with some good luck at the moment’ followed by a winking smiley ;-) or a few of these ‘!’
c. Destroy the email on the spot

Question number 3- A travelling friend emails you some pictures from his or her travels, do you
a. Straightaway forward it to everyone in your address book that knows this person
b. Forward it to everyone in your address book that knows this person but before doing that you will take a look at the list of recipients so at least you won’t send the pictures to the people who have already received them once
c. You take a look at the pictures but won’t forward them to anyone else thinking that maybe your friend wanted only you and the other people that he or she sent that email to, to see those pictures

Question number 4- You receive a forwarded email the first line of which is ‘This may sound like a scam but it definitely isn’t! Do not delete or you will be sorry that you did!’ Do you
a. Read the rest of the email which is something along these lines, ‘This is not a scam! My friend did this and a week later she woke up to find that she had become Katherine Zeta Jones. She divorced Michael Douglas, married Brad Pitt and lived happily ever after. Another friend deleted this email. He woke up one morning from unsettling dreams and found himself changed in his bed into a monstrous vermin. He was lying on his back as hard as armour plate, and when he lifted his head a little, he saw his vaulted brown belly, sectioned by arch-shaped ribs, to whose dome the cover, about to slide off completely, could barely cling. His many legs pitifully thin compared with the size of the rest of him, were waving helplessly before his eyes. ‘What's happened to me?’ he thought. IT WAS NO DREAM.
The more people you send this email to, the higher your chances of something great happening to you will be. Good luck!’ and forward it to as many people as you can
b. Read the email. Realise it’s another stupid chain letter. Think about deleting it but you just can’t get the thought of becoming a vermin out of your head so you send it to a few people with a little note that says ‘Sorry about this but as you know I have enough on my plate at the moment without having to worry about becoming a vermin ;-)’
c. Delete the email after reading the first line ‘This may sound like a scam but it definitely isn’t!’

Yes, I know a lot of weirdoes.

2006-04-03T13:49:00.000+01:00

This is an old story but for some reason yesterday it came to me again so I thought I would share it with you.

About ten years ago now when I was at my first year of university, in our halls of residence, we had this cleaner called Pat. Now this Pat was a character and a half, psychologists' Holy Grail and Mike Leigh’s perfect muse.
If I had to describe Pat in just one word, I would have to say, Shrivelled. She was only in her late fifties but to look at her you would think she was well into her nineties. As my friend Tracy very artfully put it, it looked as though she had been left in the tumble dryer for a tad longer than she should have.
Pat’s favourite pastimes were, drinking cups of tea or coffee with eight sugars, cornering poor, unsuspecting students and telling them all about her sex life with her various husbands and walking into people’s rooms without knocking and when finding their door locked, shouting out, ‘Why is this door locked? ‘as [has] she go’ [got] a bloke in there?’
Pat’s biggest characteristic however was that no matter what you’d done, she had done something even bigger and better. For example if you were upset because your aunt had been gobbled up by a crocodile on a trip to Africa, she would say, ‘That’s nothing. My sister and her entire family were eaten by a group of seagulls in Hastings.’ and so on and so forth.
One day a group of us were sitting in our kitchen eating lunch and watching Jerry Springer which that day was all about women who had been beaten by their husbands. Pat was busy dirtying the kitchen surfaces (with this grubby rag that she was very fond of and used for cleaning everything from the toilets, to our bedroom mirrors) and giving a commentary on the programme.
Then one of the ladies got really upset and with tears rolling down her face, she gave Jerry this very long and touching speech about how hard it was for her to live with a man who beats her and how the effects of this were not just physical but mental as well. It was quite sad really and even though everyone knows Jerry Springer is really a pantomime, we were all listening intently and feeling a bit sorry for this poor woman. Even Pat had cut out her commentary and was listening (or maybe she was just thinking up something to top that). But then suddenly she decided that this woman had hugged the spotlight for far longer than she deserved and said something which in my opinion was pure brilliance and the mother of all anything-you-can-do-I-can-do-betters.
‘Bullshit’ she cried out, ‘My‘usband [my husband] used to knock me about a bit; it never did me any ‘arm [harm].’

2006-03-31T15:14:00.000+01:00

So here in England last Sunday was Mother’s Day. However some of the shops in town still have all their Mother’s Day stock on the shelves in the hope that some idiot will walk in there and seeing all the stuff suddenly think, ‘Oh no, is it Mother’s day again? I best go and buy another stripy pink bear holding a red heart saying ‘I wuv you mummy’ for my mother or she’ll get really mad.’
It was raining and I had half an hour to kill so I thought I’ll go and see exactly what it is that mums these days are supposed want from their children.
According to WHSmith, what your mother would have really loved to receive this Mother’s Day was one of the following items: a very stunned-looking giraffe with the softest muzzle you have ever stroked on any animal, a not-so-pretty bulldog, a stripy pink bear…(‘yeah yeah we know the rest’ I hear you cry out and don’t worry; I won’t describe that monstrosity again), a CD titled, ‘Number 1 Mum’ (which is basically Celine Dion’s Greatest Hits with a few R. Kelly tunes thrown in as well), a book called, ‘Mothers and Daughters’, another one called simply, ‘Mothers’ (I don’t know if it’s just me or what but I detected a note of sarcasm in this one; ‘Mothers, ey? Can’t live with them and when you suggest they should just move into a nursing home and let you live in their house in peace, they get all funny about it.’) or one called ‘Why can’t every day be Mother’s Day?’ (or ‘Puke’, if they had just let me name it).
As I ran my fingers along the stunned giraffe’s soft muzzle and thought about braving the rain, suddenly something about the last corny book attracted my attention. It was a big round red sticker proudly presenting the message: ‘Buy one get one ½ price’
‘‘Ello, ‘ello, ‘ello’ I said to the giraffe, ‘What’s going on ‘ere then? A special deal for kids who have been adopted by lesbian couples or for people whose fathers have had a sex-change?’ The giraffe continued to look shocked which I put down to a strict religious upbringing. ‘Yes these are truly modern times we’re living in my friend.’
The giraffe was not much of a conversationist. But then again with a muzzle that soft he didn’t really need to be.

2006-03-25T18:47:00.000Z

Waking up at half past four in the morning and spending our only day off school rolling down a mountain until we had snow coming out of our every orifice was definitely my cousin Shadi’s idea. She was thirteen and I eleven and somehow she had got it into her head that the only way we could get out of spending our every weekend with our grandparents was to start skiing! So we did.
The first year was terrible. I could not ski to save my life and to make matters worse, I looked like this:

Nice!

This season I was mostly wearing: outfits that were three sizes too big for me, very old skis with most of the colour chipped off them and a lovely pair of goggles (shudders)

The father of my good friend Roshanak, Amoo Farid once told me this anecdote. He said one day he was passing the beginners' ski slope and he saw an instructor trying to teach an English lady to ski. Now for going slower, the beginners are taught to point the tips of their skis towards each other and open the ends. In Farsi this is called a Hasht; the number eight, which looks like this: ^ But this poor lady did not speak Farsi and so had no idea what the man shouting at her: ‘Hasht kon’ ‘Do the hasht’ wanted her to do. As she got dangerously close to a group of kids and was about to run them over, the instructor suddenly had a bright idea. ‘Madam’ He shouted, ‘Madam do 8’ which incidentally (as illustrated above) is what I looked like I was trying to do for the whole of my first year.

The good thing about looking like that however is that there is only room for improvement and as I’m sure you will agree, here in the second year I’m looking a lot cooler.

This season I was mostly wearing: a big pair of jeans with two tracksuit bottoms underneath, a pink and white hand-me-down jacket from my cousin in Canada, pink sweater with matching earmuffs and a pair of fake Ray Bans from Tajrish bazaar, made with real glass so if you were not the patient type to just wait until the nonexistent UV protection did its thing and made you go blind gradually, you had the option of getting it all over and done with very quickly by either falling flat on your face or simply asking someone to give you a nice punch in the eyes area.

This season I was mostly wearing: my dad’s clothes with a pair of fluorescent pink gloves to add a touch of much needed femininity.

And finally the piesta resistance!
Ok those trousers were far too small for me but they were definitely an improvement from all those really huge ones I had been wearing up until then.

I know what you’re thinking, ‘How can this human embodiment of cool, end up becoming a geeky blogger?!’ Well my friend I’m afraid I can’t help you there as I myself am just as baffled about this as you are ‘,:-\

2006-03-19T23:27:00.000Z

The Persian New Year is my favourite time of the year. The night before the New Year I can never get any sleep on account of all the butterflies in my stomach and all the times I get out of bed to make sure my new clothes are still straightened out on the chair where I’ve left them.
I love all our little rituals too; Mum and I doing the spring cleaning, finding suitable dishes for all the sweets and biscuits and setting the table. I look forward to polishing the little wooden statues of Don Quixote and Sancho, painting the hardboiled eggs and shining the two little silver bowls and the teacup holders.
Buying the little goldfish is the best; I always want the smallest and the cutest one. My granddad, Babajoon looks at our table and says, 'So are you not getting a fish this year?'
'We already have Babajoon, it’s on the table.'
'Well I don’t see any fish in that bowl. Maybe it jumped out.'
'Oh no where has it gone?' I look in the bowl and the little red fish is swimming happily.
'Babajoon, why would you want to go and scare me like that; the fish is still in there.'
'Is it? Where?' He bends over the table and squints behind his glasses. 'Huh' he says at last (clearly unimpressed).

Babajoon does not believe in small fish. He buys big fat juicy goldfish for the New Year and looks very pleased with himself standing there feeding the fish with some of his breakfast bread. Mamanjoon says, 'Stop feeding those, they will make their water dirty.' But Babajoon decides not to hear her. He looks like he is really enjoying himself throwing the little pieces of bread in the water and watching his big fat fish snap them up like dolphins (Well maybe not quite like that). Mamanjoon shouts, 'Mr. Saramad' Babajoon turns around with his hand behind his ear looking at Mamanjoon and squinting a little (His way of saying, 'Pardon me? Did you say something?') when we all know he heard her perfectly well the first time. Mamanjoon calls that selective hearing and laughs about it (although sometimes she gets really angry.)
I love Babjoon. It’s great watching him as he so enthusiastically does all his New Year stuff. He is the one who makes sure that we all have the best seven Ss in the whole of Iran. He buys the nicest tasting Samanoo (malt mixed with flour) and fresh Senjed (a kind of fruit) from the Tajrish Bazaar. He goes in search of the reddest and the best looking Seeb (apple) and sits there shining it until it looks like it’s made out of glass. He goes in search of Sonbol (Hyacinth) and won’t give up until he finds some. Serkeh (vinegar), Seer (Garlic) or Sekkeh (Coins) are always easy to find and no trouble at all but his famous Sabzeh (green part of the growing wheat or Lentils) takes a lot of care and planning.
He starts on that a while ahead by soaking the wheat (he only ever grows wheat and never lentils for some reason) and changing its water all the time until they grow little roots. After that he takes a tray and pours his soaked wheat into it around two tall glasses in the middle where he will later place his daffodils and amaze everyone because when the wheat have grown into tall Sabzeh, you can’t see the glasses anymore and it looks like the flowers have grown from the middle of the greens. I see the look of approbation on people’s faces (as he explains this to them on the first day of the New Year) and realise that it was all worth it.

I know that (like me) he is looking forward to the New Year. I know that he is looking forward to dressing up and having whitefish and herbed rice with all his close family the night before the New Year, watching Nader and I trying to get Kelatch the dog to climb the King-berry tree by offering him biscuits, listening to Shadi begging him to make her some florescent pink fingerless gloves like Michael Jackson’s, watching his two sons chatting and eating pistachio nuts and dried chickpeas, trying on his new pyjamas designed by Ammeh Maryam under Mamanjoon’s admiring eyes and having my mum around to give him kisses and cuddles and be generally affectionate to him (because she loves him so much and he knows it too).
I know that he is looking forward to the next day too when he wakes up bright and early waiting for relatives to come and visit. You are supposed to start by visiting the oldest people in the family and go down the line from there. Babajoon is one of the oldest people in our family (He really doesn’t look it though) so he gets a lot of early morning visitors. People come in with cakes, flowers and open arms because everybody loves my granddad. He sits there clean shaven and bathed, in his suit, tie and waistcoat (looking a bit like Marlon Brando in the godfather) and smelling like old spice and a heavy blend of women’s perfumes (from being hugged so many times by so many different women).
I know that he is looking forward to all the laughter he is going to get from all the distant relatives when he tells them his selection of funniest things that happened to him in the past year and them gasping for air as he tells Italian jokes, translating them into Persian line by line.
One of the ladies starts laughing as soon as Babajoon opens his mouth, claiming that she is sure whatever comes out will be hilarious. When someone peels cucumbers and pouring salt over the pieces offers them around and one of the ladies says, 'Not for me thank you, my doctor has forbidden me from having salt', Babajoon turns to uncle Firuz and says, 'Quick, get on the phone, we need to find her a new doctor.'
Then someone asks him something about the family and you can really see the twinkle in his eyes as he clears a piece of the table in front of him. 'This is my mother, ‘Bibikhanoom’' says Babajoon, picking up the sugar bawl and placing it in front of him on the table. Then he picks up the salt shaker and putting it down on the table says, 'and this is my father, ‘Mirza Mohammad Ali khan Saham Nezam’' and goes onto making a complete three dimensional family tree with household items.

Sometimes Mamanjoon asks some of the visitors to stay for lunch but after lunch they too go home for their siesta and everyone can relax for a couple of hours.
The first two days of the New Year are the most hectic ones. That’s when my grandparents might get up to thirty something visitor in their house at once. There will be people showing off their new babies and pictures of their older children who have made it to the US, people talking about the old days and laughing or remembering a sad incident and giving each other deep and meaningful looks.
The visitors are usually very good, they only stay for a little while; just enough to have a cup of tea and a little chat and then they have to be off again to the next place visiting the next older relative down the line. Some younger relatives might bump into each other three or four times in one day as they visit people on their list remembering the older people they visited last year and aren’t with us this year.
The ones, who get on well, arrange to go to the next places together so they can talk to each other if their host is too old and boring. Sometimes Mum and I hitch a ride with some of these relatives and get to do some of our visiting like that because we don’t have a car. My Dad is not so big on the whole visiting thing.
By chatting to each other, people find out where the big New Year parties are. They ask their cousins where the other ones have been and then say, 'Oh no I totally forgot about Aunty Zari.' So the well-mannered people rush to visit aunty Zari and people like us (who can’t be bothered and are a tad on the lazy side) say, 'I’ll just call her and apologize.'
New Year parties are the best. Grownups sing and dance and we kids count all the money we’ve collected all through the day. That’s what you get for the New Year. Older people give money to people who are younger than them. The older ones always give you a tiny amount saying that it’s just for good luck and get seriously angry with the next generation who take out wads of crisp, new one-thousand-tooman-notes and hand them out to the kids who snap them up in the air like hungry lions.
Sometimes our parents come and borrow some money from us because they see a new kid in the party and they’ve run out of money.
'So far I owe you 12000, ok?'
'It’s thirteen thousand five hundred, dad.'
'Seriously?!' and they go away shaking their heads muttering, 'What is the world coming too.'
Most people go away for the new-year. The parents are usually happy to do so remembering how much money they are saving by not seeing the kids in the family and the kids are upset because they know how much money they are losing.

The New Year holidays start on the first of Farvardin, (twenty first of March, the official start of the spring) and go on for thirteen days.
On the thirteenth day, you have to go out of your house to somewhere nice and green and have a family picnic or you might get struck down by the bad luck that can come out of the first thirteenth of the year.
Picnic-day is fun and depressing at the same time because the holidays are over. The schools open on the 14th and all us kids end up walking around with a lump in our throat until the grownups announce that we are not leaving for Tehran that day because of all the traffic. When they say that, we start playing and being happy and grateful for yet another day off school.
The worst thing in the world is if it comes to the thirteenth and you still haven’t done your holiday homework.
Everyone knows what their first composition title is going to be when they get back to school,

How did you spend the New Year?

We spent the whole of this New Year in the north, (by the Caspian) because of all the bombings.
Dad sat on the front passenger seat and pushed his seat back as far as it went because he had broken his little toe and his leg was in plaster up to his knee.
Mr. Farivar had offered to drop us off at my grandparents' place in the north on his way to his own place. He is a big man with a big belly who needs to push his seat back a bit in order to drive properly. He apologized to my mum and she said that she was absolutely fine sharing the back seat with my two cousins and me.
We truly left Tehran in style with bombs dropping all around us. At one point a bomb landed about fifty meters away from our car on a sand dune and although we drove past it quickly, we still got loads of bits of stones and rocks banging on the car. Mr Farivar said we were lucky the bomb landed there and was suffocated by the sand or we would have surely gone up in smoke, driving so close to it an’ all.
After the Candovan tunnel we stopped and had BBQ-ed liver with bread. Mr. Farivar didn’t have any bread with his liver because he doesn’t have his teeth anymore. By the time we reached our destination, Mum was ready to have a nervous breakdown saying it wasn’t easy to share the back seat of a Peikan (Hillman Hunter) for four hours with three kids who can’t sit still for two minutes.
My Aunt had designed new-year outfits for my two cousins and me. I didn’t really like mine much but I was glad that our clothes weren’t matching like when grandma makes or buys them.
Dad said there was no need for a goldfish this year since we were by the Caspian and there is plenty of fish in the sea but at the end granddad went and bought one. So we set the table with seven things beginning with S, plus the goldfish, a mirror and Hafez book of poems.
This year the New Year was at 12:35 and 24 seconds. Therefore we all had time to shower and get ready in our new clothes before the new year started. At 12:32 we all stood around the table (apart from my cousin Shadi who insisted on starting the new year rocking on the rocking chair).
I told one of my grandmother’s friends about the story behind the orange in the bowl of water and she looked at me in amazement.
'So right now our planet is balancing on the horn of a bull!' she said looking interested, 'and at the new-year the bull gets tired from carrying the world and flings it from one horn to the other?'
'And if you look at the orange in the water very closely you might be able to see it move.'
'Fascinating' She said with a smile, 'I love these little stories.'
The soundtrack to our New Year was definitely ‘Weeeee waaaa woooo waaoo’ which is the noise the radio was making at the time as another friend of my grandparents’ tried to get BBC Persian with no luck.
There were a lot of people staying at my grandparents’ place in the north this year on account of all the bombings that were going on in Tehran and people not exactly being in the mood for being blown up since it was the New Year and all that.
For lunch we had white fish and herbed rice, chicken with rice and noodles and green omelette. We ate all that with plenty of pickled garlic and we all ate them so we wouldn’t smell it on each other.

The End

In the memory of all those great childhood New Years. Especially those ones during the eighties. Happy Eideh No-rooz.

2006-03-17T17:35:00.000Z

I’ve updated my website if anyone fancies a butcher’s (look).
I would really appreciate it if you could tall me about any mistakes that you might find in there or anything that is not working properly. Thanks.

Ok this is what I’m talking about; up there by ‘tall me’ I actually meant ‘tell me’.
On second thought, if anyone finds a way to tall me, I will appreciate that too.

2006-03-14T17:31:00.000Z

I was just in Tesco and saw this group of American girls standing in the chocolate section. They were all lined up in front of this one girl (their chocolate expert I presume) who (like a teacher standing in front of a backboard) was very patiently (and you could tell she was really enjoying this) pointing at each group of chocolates on display and saying a variation of the sentence, ‘This is nice.’ (This is nice. This is really nice. Oh this is very nice. This one also is very nice.) After a while the rest of the group could no longer control themselves and so they too started getting involved in all the pointing and touching.
Oh they looked so happy. ‘Like kids in a sweetshop’ they were, literally. And rightly too. Anyone who has ever tasted American chocolate knows what I’m talking about. Or maybe not, I don’t know; that’s actually what I was going to talk about.
Unfortunately I’m not really an expert on this subject and so unlike for example the padded-bra case (which I had actually done a lot of research on) or the bum wiping issue for Iranians abroad (which I myself had extensive firsthand experience on) in this case I can’t exactly say, yes this is the problem and here’s the solution. Because to be honest I haven’t tasted that many different American chocolates to feel like I can give an opinion on them.
I guess now you could ask, why not go and do your research first and then come and blog about it instead of wasting our time and your own with writing about something you don’t know much about? And I must say your point would be very valid too. However there is a small problem here; this is one subject that I am not actually willing to do any more research on than I already have because 1- I’m not exactly a big chocolate fan and 2- From what I’ve tasted, American chocolate, to put it mildly, (I already said to my taste, right?) tastes kind of pooie. And it’s not like oh yeah I’ve become a bit la-di-dah since I’ve moved to Europe sweetie darling and I only ever eat Lindt or Thorntons chocolates now, no, I remember even as a child growing up in Iran during the revolution and eight years of war where often the only sweet thing you could buy from a shop was a mixture of sugar and rosewater which you had the choice of purchasing either in boiled sweet or ice-lolly form, I was still disappointed when people brought me back chocolates from America or Canada! Oh henry for example! What on earth?
The thing is Americans have become an easy target now and I don’t really want to be another person that picks fault with them or makes fun of them but to be honest I’m just intrigued by this. Because really you can say anything you like about Americans but you really can’t pick fault with the way their food tastes. It might not always be nutritious but it ALWAYS tastes great. Their burgers are lovely. Those half a cow steaks they have are great. Those extremely tall deli sandwiches they have with five hundred slices of pastrami, turkey, ham and any other animal you can think of, shoved in the middle of two slices of bread, are fantastic. Their sweets are great too; their ice creams, their donuts, their cheesecakes, their milkshakes. To make a long story short, every kind of food they have is good apart from their chocolate which is…well disappointing really.
I guess you could say well this indeed is not something to get one’s knickers in a twist about, perhaps with this terrible obesity problem in the US, the fact that their chocolate isn’t exactly morish, is actually a good thing.
But when you think about it chocolates are a lot more important than that. They are kind of like the food ambassadors of a country aren’t they? Think about it this way; when a nation goes to war or tries to “free” another nation, usually during the fighting or freeing process, two things fall down from the sky: 1-Bombs 2-Food parcels. While the first one does a lot of damage and annoys a lot of people, the second one I guess is designed to make people happy and build up trust. And here’s where everything goes a bit pear-shaped for the poor Americans because they’re not dropping down In-N-Out burgers or New York Cheesecakes or pastrami sandwiches on people, they’re dropping bloody Hershey bars on them that even an Afghani goat would turn its back on! No wonder the people of every country that Americans go to free, rise against them. They think if this is how your chocolate tastes which is a luxury and should taste heavenly, then I don’t really want to know what anything else is like in your country ‘Get out’.
Think about it, does anyone ever want to fight the Belgians or the Swiss for example? The answer is, ‘No’. We love the Swiss so much in fact that we’ve said, ‘Our darlings, you don’t need to do anything at all; you just sit here and make your chocolates and just so you won’t feel left out, we’re going to give you all our money to hold as well!’
As I said before though, due to a delicate stomach, I haven’t done enough research on this so it’s possible that I’m completely wrong about all this and for example, I haven’t understood American chocolate properly and the people of the nations freed by
Americans are actually pissed off about something other than the chocolate bars that are dropped on them from the sky. So I would really appreciate it if some of you more experienced chocolate fans could help me out a little on this one.

2006-03-10T09:13:00.000Z

I’m sure a year was a lot longer than this when I was little. Now one minute it’s Persian New Year, then straightaway it’s Persian New year again! Sometimes I feel like the Mad Hatter who had got on the wrong side of Time. Only my watch is always stuck on Persian New Year instead of tea-time. Maybe I should try smearing butter inside it and dipping it in tea!

I’m not complaining though, I mean thank god my time is stuck on Persian New Year as appose to say, 24 January (the most depressing day of the year allegedly).

So yesterday I suddenly panicked and did a bit of cleaning and then soaked some lentils for my sabzeh (greens). Now I hope it grows well. My Sabzeh usually looks good because I love growing things but this year there was not much love involved in my speedy pouring of lentils in a bowl and shoving them under water and then realising some time later that there was not much to eat around the place, picking a handful of them and throwing them in a bowl of salad! I know; shame on me; this is totally unacceptable behaviour towards the lovely sabzeh.
I can tell the lentils are in a bad mood now. Maybe later this evening I will try getting on their good side by singing a little something for them,
‘Twinkle twinkle little bat!
How I wonder where you’re at!’
You know the song perhaps? ;-)

2006-03-06T13:56:00.000Z

I feel terrible as I have really been neglecting this poor blog for the past couple of weeks. First my cousin came to stay, then Kamyar and I had to sort out some things in our Website Empire (as my cousin calls our collection of websites and blogs and all that), then I started working very hard on this new project for a picture book, then my dad’s book arrived and all I wanted to do was to read that, then suddenly the picture book project came to a halt and on that same day I got another assignment which kept me super busy for a further three days and left me with absolutely no time to clean around me or groom myself even, let alone write in my blog. It was all worth it though as yesterday evening when I clicked on that send button and for the first time in days had enough time to spend in front of the mirror to actually look at my face instead of running past it while hitting myself on the head in an attempt to flatten my hair, I realised that by working so hard to make my deadline, I had succeeded in producing not one, but two things to be proud of; my art and also a beautiful moustache that was now decorating my upper lip and would without a doubt put even my dad’s moustache to shame.
As I admired my new Clark Gable look in the mirror, I remembered my last conversation with Kamyar that evening before he had left home for his nightshift.
Me: ‘I’m so sorry, I must look very bad.’
He: ‘No not at all.’ Kiss ‘That’s nice; I’d forgotten how soft you were.’
And now I knew he hadn’t just said that to be nice; my new moustache was indeed very soft.

PS Click here to see a bigger version of the party picture.

2006-03-01T14:54:00.000Z

It’s that time of the year again when I fish my headscarf out from the bottom of the laundry basket to wash it ready for our yearly trip to Iran. It is also the time when we start looking to buy our plane tickets. This process usually has four stages: Stage one; ‘Enthusiasm’ as we search for a ticket cheaper than Iran Air, Stage two; 'Excitement' as we find numerous bargain tickets, Stage Three; 'Doubt' as we find each bargain ticket has something wrong with it (such as having a ten hour stopover in Venezuela), Stage Four; 'Surrender' = buying our tickets from Iran air.
At this moment in time we are still in Stage two; Excitement. We have found a few cheap tickets, the cheapest one of which is with Azal (Azerbaijan Airline) who claims it can fly a person from London to Iran and back for only 220 pounds. It really is a great bargain compared to the 405 pounds that Iran Air charges.
Some people are still a bit wary of travelling with Azal. It’s understandable as well. I mean if dog years are seven years to one human year, then country years are more like about one to sixty human years which makes Azarbaijan a very young baby or maybe even a foetus. Now I’m just as uncomfortable with having my plane flown by a baby as the next person, however I find that when it comes to saving nearly 400 pounds (for the both of us) suddenly my reasoning starts going something like this, ‘And exactly who says babies aren’t good at flying passenger planes?’
But seriously I think anyone who has ever flown with Iran Air and lived to tell the tale should really be able to fly with any other airline after that and think nothing of it.
I’m not saying their pilots are bad. No they’re really great actually. Service is good too and so is food (especially when they give baghali-polo). People are also very friendly. Especially if you’re a single girl with a British passport (in which case there is always someone with a son or nephew that wants to get married) or if you have made the mistake of travelling light (in which case some old biddy will make friends with you and then emotionally blackmail you into carrying all her five sacks full of fried aubergine and ghormeh herbs or Primark goodies, depending on whether she is flying in or out of Iran) the inflight entertainments are quite good too (it helps if you’re into watching weepy Iranian movies in different shades of green with dodgy headphones that keeping up with the green theme will replace the voices of all the actors in the film with Kermit the Frog’s).
In fact I only have one problem with Iran Air; I absolutely have no idea how those planes are still able to fly! The only logical explanation is that there is some sort of divine intervention at work there which explains all that collective mandatory praying you have to do as soon as you get on.
Even so, I would still willingly fly with them if only their tickets weren’t so bloody expensive. Because the way I see it, in the current state of affairs (with earthquakes, hurricanes, landslides and bird flu and with buses and tubes and planes and trains being blown up left and right) on board an Iran air plane on its way to Iran, is probably the safest place a person can be.
So once you get over the fact that the plane you are flying in, probably needed to be scrapped over ten years ago, then unlike all other airlines, you can just sit back and relax and never worry about the other passengers and if someone’s hat is going to start ticking or if someone is going to try to light their shoe or hijack the plane and fly it straight into the financial heart of Iran (the Tehran Bazaar I presume). You can just fasten your seatbelt and enjoy five hours of absolute bliss and total peace of mind.
Iran Air, because you’re worth it.

Click here to read an extract from Ilkhanan-eh Iran

PS I have updated the page for Ilkhanan-eh Iran (by Farokh Saramad) so if you are interested, you can now read a few pages from this hilarious book which I received this morning and have not been able to put down since! Baba, you’re a star :-)

2006-02-23T17:37:00.000Z

Click here to purchase this book

Something very exciting has happened in the Saramad household. After a long wait, a new book of my dad’s has finally been published.
It is astounding how much love, care, research, humour and pure intelligence has gone into creating this work of art; this amazing piece of history which without a doubt will become one of the great classics of our time. And that’s just the cover. Apparently the material inside the book is pretty good too ;-)

But on a more serious note I just wanted to say how proud of my dad I am for the amazing dedication that he has to his work which has inspired me all my life. Baba, of course you possess many truly fantastic qualities but there are a few in particular that I have always greatly admired; your wonderful writing skills, your ability to grow such a perfect moustache and the way you ensure my mum’s safety by keeping those alley cats away from the balcony (and let me just say this once more as I think you still suspect something, ‘No I did not plant catnip in the garden last spring.’)
I am extremely proud of my mum too for all the time and effort that she put into trying to publish this book and also for the courage she showed on the way at some of the more difficult times (such as the time she was attacked by a budgie in the Tehran underground; ghastly experience).
I am really excited about this book, a copy of which I will hopefully get my hands on in the next few days. If you are also interested in getting your hands on a copy of this great masterpiece but are misfortunate enough to live outside of Iran and therefore unable to pop into a bookstore and buy one for yourself, then there really is no need to cry; just whip out your credit card, click here and a brand-new copy of the first edition of Ilkhanan-eh Iran by Farokh Saramad will be sent to you.
Just be patient please though as it will probably take a couple of weeks since your package will be coming from Iran and you must take into account that on arrival to your country, it will probably be strip-searched, put in an orange jumpsuit, quarantined and listened to for any signs of ticking for some days before it is delivered to you.
On the plus side though, my mum is in charge of post and packing which means if you’re lucky, with your book you might also receive a nice bit of feta cheese or a couple of pomegranates.

2006-02-17T11:41:00.000Z

I’ve lost a few people that I’ve loved in my life but my granddad, Babajoon is definitely the one that I think of the most. The interesting thing about it is that while thinking of people that have died should make us feel sad, thinking of Babajoon always makes me laugh.
Lately doing yoga with a DVD I’ve taken out of the library, I keep remembering one of Babajoon's famous stories and laughing to myself hysterically while trying to bend myself into various poses that the yoga instructor is trying to get me to do.
This story had many versions depending on what mood Babajoon was in and so keeping the tradition alive, I have now done my own version of it here which has a hint of yoga.

This is how it usually went:
He would say, ‘Did I ever tell you about that time when I was listening to the radio and two stations, one broadcasting an exercise programme and one a cooking programme had got mixed up?’ Then he would stand up and repeat what he claimed to have heard on the radio while miming what he actually had to do if he were to listen to the instructions he had been given.
‘Before we start our exercise you will need to get a few things from around the house: a hand towel, khhhh a sharp knife, a chopping board, two onions, some ground pepper and turmeric khhhhh Stand with your legs shoulder length apart and then bend down putting one hand khhhhh on the chopping board. Remove the skin and then cover with salt and leave on the side khhhhh now bring your forehead down khhhhh and place it in a large bowl khhhh spread out your legs khhhh chop up your onions into small pieces and then add them to the bowl khhhhh if this position is too hard on your legs, try bending your knees a little khhhhh and using your sharp knife, remove all the skin and bones and place the meat khhhhh on your head. We will stay in this position khhhhh until the meat is khhhhh ready for meditation khhhhh This might take a couple of hours which you can use to khhhhhh place your hands on your hips and ask someone to khhhhhh set the table khhhhh Don’t forget to breath. Inhale, reach high, exhale, khhhhh add two teaspoons of turmeric and one teaspoon of pepper to your bowl and mix well using your khhhh foot. Try lifting your leg higher khhhh and place it in a pan full of boiling water khhhh this position is wonderful for toning thigh muscles however if you suffer from high blood presser it might be better for you to khhhhhh turn down the heat and let it simmer gently for half an hour. Khhhh Stand firmly on the ground and make sure your thighs are khhhh tender by sticking a fork in them khhhh this exercise is also great for relieving any tension khhhhh at the dinner table. Khhhh Well that’s all for today. Khhhhh don’t worry if you can smell a little smoke; it’s just the fat burning off khhhhh Join us next week for another workout and meanwhile remember: your body is a temple khhhh decorate it with chopped parsley and serve on a bed of saffron rice with some pickled aubergine.’

2006-02-10T11:19:00.000Z

When I was at school, the ten day celebration of the revolution was always very exciting. The best thing about it was that this was one of the very few occasions when people could be happy openly and not feel like they were acting un-Islamic (on account of Islam being a religion all about seriousness as we were told).
On these ten days a lot of great and fun things happened and you could get into different groups that did plays or sang revolutionary songs in front of the whole school or made wall mounted newspapers that would be used to decorate the school corridors. But my favourite thing to do was making maquettes. You would choose a scene from the revolution and you would make it into a three-dimensional model. It was great fun and every year I would get together with a few friends and we would make one of these.

The customary thing to do at our school was to draw the people on paper and then cut them out and stand them up on the base. But that year my mum had a great idea ‘Why not use chick peas for women’s heads?’ she said and took a chick pea and put two tiny dots on either sides of the beaklike part. Then we made a piece of wrapping paper into a cone shape and mounted the little chickpea head on the top and it looked like a chadored woman. It was a great idea but I was a bit worried about using them at first because I thought our religious studies teacher (that was also in charge of revolutionary activities) would get all funny about the fact that instead of wearing black chadors, the women in our demonstration were accessorizing with all sorts of different colour wrapping papers. At the end I gave in though because they just looked too good.
My friends and I spent a few days working very hard on our maquette and it was starting to look really great. When they left for their homes on the last day before it needed to be handed in, there was still a lot of work to be done and I stayed up half the night working on it.
On the morning we brought it in to school, all the kids gathered around us and we were told over and over again that our maquette was without a doubt the best one in school.
The best thing was that our religious studies teacher was absolutely delighted by the chickpea women. In fact she loved our maquette so much that she hugged us all and told us how proud of us she was.

In one of the breaks on that same day, our teacher came running up to us with a massive grin on her face. She said there was a national school art on revolution (or something like that) competition and she was going to enter our maquette in it. She said she had not said anything about it before because she had not thought that we being so young could come up with anything that could be entered in that competition but after she had seen our work, she had loved it so much that had called the organisers and had arranged to go there that day with our maquette.
I’m sure you can imagine how excited we got about this. And the best thing was that she said in a few days she would go to that place again and would take us with her so we could see our work exhibited in the gallery along with the other entries.
A few days past and we kept pestering our teacher about when she was going to take us to the exhibition place. But for some reason she was having problems organising the trip. At the end on the last day (on this day actually 21 Bahman 10th February), the day before the national holiday for the victory of revolution, our teacher finally managed to get the permission from school and hire a minibus to take us to the exhibition.
We knew we hadn’t won anything (because right from the start our teacher had made it clear that we had no chance since the older girls and boys from art schools, had made some really great things) but I still couldn’t help imagining that when we got there, there would be people nudging each other and saying, ‘Look it’s those girls that made that amazing maquette.’
‘Which one?’
‘You know, the chickpeas.’
‘Really? That’s fantastic! Why they are so young as well. I can’t believe it.’
‘Yes they are very talented.’

The exhibition place was nothing like I had imagined. It was a huge old house in the middle of a big garden and it was very spooky because apart from us four and our teacher there was no one else around.
Inside the house, there was artwork everywhere. There were paintings, sculptures and maquettes all over the place. Some of the maquettes were placed on tables and platforms but there were so many of them that some had just been left on the floor.
You could tell we were all very disappointed and quite shocked by the state we had found this place in but we all made out as if nothing was wrong and set out on the task of finding our beloved maquette that we had so lovingly made.
At first we went around together but the place was so big that we thought we would cover more ground if we were to split up so we each went our separate way. I was quite wary of doing that because a lot of the artwork there depicted scenes with people dying and a lot of blood and that sort of thing made me very uncomfortable.
In the second room I went to, behind all the maquettes I saw a bed like thing with a pair of boots sticking out of the end. I thought great, this is probably the person that is supposed to be manning the exhibition and he’s fallen asleep. So I went closer to see what the story was and if maybe there was a sort of order to this place that he knew about. I could not see the man because his whole body had been covered with a white sheet that had been drenched in something red where it was touching his face. It was either that this was a life size model of a dead body with its face blown off or this creepy house actually belonged to an Iranian version of the Texas Chainsaw Massacre family, what’s for sure is that this was the most terrifying thing I had ever seen in my life. Inside I was screaming but no sound was coming out. Finally when I pulled myself together I ran out of the room as fast as I could and then glued myself to the first girl I could find.
We looked and looked but we couldn’t find our maquette. At the end our teacher said we had to leave it and go back because it was getting late.
On our way out as we were going down the last flight of stairs, suddenly one of the girls said, ‘Oh my god, look.’ So we all looked down and there it was. Our beloved maquette had been tossed on the floor by the side of the stairs.

I had to try very hard to keep back my tears. It had been completely destroyed as if people had been walking on it and dogs had been using it as a chew toy. The boy that carried a picture of Khomeini had fallen on top of the woman in the white chador with red flowers (giving our revolutionary sisters brightly coloured chadors instead of black ones had indeed turned them into right tarts) who was now just a cone as her head was nowhere to be seen. The crow had fallen out of its nest and was now having some sort of struggle with the man in green shirt. The wall on the side had broken off and most of the chickpeas had left their posts as heads and where now rolling freely around the street. Altogether our peaceful demonstration had turned into carnage.

2006-02-06T18:48:00.000Z

A Cautionary tale

Life Insurance........Life Insurance
Once I’d gone to pick up a friend at Heathrow airport and while I waited I went to buy a coffee from this guy. I thought he looked Iranian and then he asked the man in front of me ‘Vot vood you like?’ and I knew he was. So I said salam and chatted to him a bit while he made me a coffee. I went away from his stand thinking he was sweet (because he had not charged me for the coffee) but maybe a bit on the simple side (because he had not said much and had spent the whole time staring at me with a wide open mouth). Life Insurance
It was some time later when I paid a visit to the ladies’ that I realised it’s all very well to in your haste to get to the airport in time, grab and put on the first items of clothing you lay your hands on, but unfortunately the top you grab may turn out to be completely see-through. Life Insurance.....Life Insurance......Life Insurance ...... Life Insurance

2006-02-04T11:27:00.000Z

I think we have already established that I have a bit of a sick sense of humour so it should come as no surprise how I was tickled by this news on channel 4, the night before last, about Bush and Blair’s meeting about Iraq in January 2003. Basically by then they had decided to go to war anyway regardless of what the United Nations decided and in that meeting they were trying to come up with ways to do this.
What seriously annoys me is that, even though both Bush and Blair are such great liabilities, I still can’t bring myself to dislike them. I want to dislike them as well and so as soon as say, George does something really silly, I think ok that’s it now; I don’t like him anymore. But it never lasts very long because straight away he goes and says another great thing like: ‘The Indians and the Paki's should learn to live in peace.’ Or ‘I’m honored to shake the hand of a brave Iraqi citizen who had his hand cut off by Saddam Hussein.’ (Umm, I dread to think what he was actually doing when he said that.) or ‘For every fatal shooting, there were roughly three non-fatal shootings. And, folks, this is unacceptable in America. It's just unacceptable. And we’re going to do something about it.’ or ‘I know the human being and fish can coexist peacefully.’
I think you will agree that it’s impossible to dislike a man that brings us so much laughter.
It’s different with Tony. He’s not funny. And unlike George Bush he doesn’t give you that sense of the-lights-are-on-but-nobody’s-home so you can’t even feel sorry for him because you think he is a bit dim.
However the thing with Tony is that in his speeches he gives me this feeling that he really believes in what he is saying. Even with the Iraq war I think he actually believed that it was the right thing to do. Now it was either a case of him really wanting to do this and then lying to himself over and over again until he finally fully convinced himself that Saddam had weapons, or he had simply listened George Bush when he had said, ‘The war on terror involves Saddam Hussein because of the nature of Saddam Hussein, the history of Saddam Hussein, and his willingness to terrorize himself.’ and had decided that it all made sense. Whatever it was (maybe I’m being a bit naïve here but to me) in his speeches about the war, he came across quite sincere. To the point that even I, the Iranian, that make it my business to always be cynical about politicians, started to think that maybe Saddam had weapons of mass destruction and could actually destroy the whole of Britain in forty five minutes notice. I know lying isn’t good and all that but let’s give the man credit when credit is due because he really did a good job in his speeches.
But I think the main reason I can’t dislike Tony Blair is that out of all the people that want to become the prime minister of Britain, he is the least weird! Yes it’s more a case of, in the kingdom of blind, the one eyed man is king or in this case, in the kingdom of crazy, the less crazy is the prime minister. I’m not saying that people of Britain are crazy or anything like that, oh no, far from it, it’s just that unfortunately nobody in their right mind ever wants to go into politics. So Tony Blair may be annoying and a liar and the possessor of the strangest superpower of all; the ability to instantly turn anything he shows interest in from cool to seriously uncool (this is true; he very nearly put Calvin Klein out of business and at one point even the music industry was threatened) but at least he is the annoying liar superhero that we know. Also he is actually quite intelligent and says things like, ‘Ask me my three priorities for Government, and I tell you: education, education and education.’ As appose to his American counterpart, ‘Rarely is the question asked: Is our children learning?’
In short, these two are like Pinky and the Brain; they might be trying to take over the world, but it’s still impossible to dislike them.

‘I hope you leave here and walk out and say, ‘What did he say?’’ (George W. Bush, Beaverton, Oregon, August 13, 2004)

2006-02-01T16:46:00.000Z

There is a possibility that at some point in our lives, any one of us could be labelled a ‘Sad fat git’ or a ‘Mad old hag’. There is however a way to shun this unfortunate labelling. For the first one you must avoid a flight that starts in Safford airport in the US, stops in Fresno Terminal and ends in Geita airport in Tanzania and for the second one you must avoid a flight from Madrid Barajas airport in Spain to The Hague in Netherlands via Old Town United States.
However not all unfortunate labellings are so easy to shake off. Just imagine this for a moment. After passing a ‘spot the difference’ test that separates the seriously stupid from the rest, after somehow managing to get through an interview with a woman with funny eyes that you were unlucky enough to piss off before the interview even started (by completely ignoring her when she was talking to you because you were certain that her eyes were looking at the person sitting behind you) and who asked you questions like, are you into bondage? (to which you replied ‘No’ and she said, ‘I am…well sort of… just for a laugh.’) and ‘Are you punctual?’ to which you replied, ‘What is that?’ (because even though you knew what it meant, for a second you panicked thinking ‘What if it’s not what I think at all and it actually has something to do with bondage?’) after hearing endless stories about the old Rover days of the factory (people forgetting half eaten pork pies in the bodyworks of cars that were sold off to little old ladies who kept complaining about their car smelling like a dead animal) and after doing the same job on the line for months on end, not knowing if you are ever going to get that contract or not, finally one day it happens; you are given three sets of slick new black uniforms and you are told by your manager, ‘Congratulations, you are now an employee of BMW New Mini Plant Oxford.’ In other words, you are now officially a ‘Cow ass.’ Quite horrified, you examine your new uniforms, it’s true; they are all labelled: Cow Ass (some number) and then your name!
‘But why?’ you whine. Shrugging his shoulders and readjusting his cap, Cow Ass A110 replies, ‘It’s Cowley Assembly, init?’

2006-01-28T12:40:00.000Z

The other day when Kamyar and I were walking to town, our conversation went from bricks, to me delivering a long monolog about these little mud huts that my cousins and I used to make in our Grandparents’ place in the north of Iran. We each used four bricks, two to go on either side of each hut and then put sticks on the top and covered the whole thing with mud. Mesothelioma

They were originally built as homes for the little Fisher Price men that we had at the time, but later all the plastic people were evacuated out of their homes as the three mud huts were turned into emergency hospitals for the poor, half dead, rat-poison-eaten mice that we were finding around the house. First the poorly mice were placed inside the mud huts to shelter them from the hot sun and then the treatment would start. Mesothelioma
We brought out cheese and tried putting tiny pieces of it into their half open mouths. Soon we discovered that a rat-poison-eaten mouse is not exactly in the mood for cheese, or any other solid foods for that matter (we had also tried feeding them Maadar biscuits, the boxes of which their beds were made of). Mesothelioma treatment
We borrowed two empty little Otrivine nose drops bottles from our granddad (Babajoon), one for milk and one for water and took turns dropping liquids into our patients’ mouths, in a race against time to rehydrate their little bodies. Mesothelioma treatment
Sometimes Babajoon would stand behind us in his chequered shorts, white vest, socks and sandals that were tied tightly around his feet and ankles with different colour pieces of string, and would pretend to examine the diseased little orange trees in front of the mud huts when in reality he quietly watched us in our manic race to save the lives of a bunch of mice that were without a doubt beyond saving.
A bit later he would be on his way to the beach, where with his nifty choice of footwear, he would very coolly walk straight into the sea and be seen as the biggest genius of our times in the eyes of every misinformed tourist in that area who was destined to do an involuntary dance (made even more fun to watch by the crazy facial movements they made, in an attempt to hide their pain) as their poor helpless bare feet were first subjected to the blistering hot sands of the beach and then to the sharp rocks and the remains of old villas (destroyed by the waves of the Caspian) popping up here and there on the seabed.
Mesothelioma

Aligholi Saramad aka Babajoon aka Professor Baltazar
Civil engineer, Poet, Inventor, Lover of dogs
Was born in a year, way back, when hunting dogs rode on horses (well at least one dog did according to him),
and was gone in the winter of 1997 when dogs had long since stopped riding horses and the Labour government was trying to put them completely out of business by banning them from hunting altogether.

Mesothelioma

At times the sheer volume of casualties meant that we even had to put some patients on rooftops, where they laid motionless on big magnolia leaves with their limp tails hanging from the side of the roof and its end dangling about half way down the building’s side, waiting for another wasp to come and nudge it (on its way to his home right above our head, under the roof of the house) and make it swing one more time. Mesothelioma
Oh how I prayed for those mice to get better and how happy I got every time one of them looked as though it had swallowed a drop of milk or water. But sadly none ever survived and so every day we had to have more funerals and wrap the stiff body of yet another small mouse in toilet paper and bury it in the little cemetery behind the house.
Mesothelioma

Here lies Chubby the Mouse
Muncher of cheese and Mamanjoon’s straw hats
Also had a soft spot for rat poison
Died in the hot summer of 1984

Mesothelioma treatment
‘This was the height of human confusion when you think about it’ I said to Kamyar, ‘We certainly didn’t want these mice to be running around the house, chewing our clothes and eating our food and carrying on with their slalom races between the tea cups, and we would never object to Babajoon putting out rat poison, yet when we saw them lying about the place, on their last breaths, we so desperately tried to revive them, not thinking for one second that we were the ones who had caused their suffering in the first place.’
‘It’s a bit like the Iraq war, isn’t it?’ replied Kamyar. ‘Yeah it is a bit’ I said, thinking about the similarities. ‘Maybe you could write something about it.’ he said and I said ‘yeah maybe I will.’
But then I thought, well that’s not really saying much because if you really wanted to, you could probably draw parallels between the Iraq war and any idiotic kind of behaviour.
Mesothelioma

2006-01-24T12:26:00.000Z

It’s not that I really want to have a baby right now or anything like that; it’s more like I have this feeling that I must. Yes you guessed it; I’m ovulating again and those weird hormones are trying to trick my brain into thinking that what my body really needs right now is to have another person growing inside it. drug addiction treatment
But my brain being way more logical than my ovaries, refuses to accept this and points out that this is in fact the ovaries worst idea to date, followed very closely by their monthly attempts to convince the brain that we must wipe out the human race since they all seem to have been put on this earth for the sole reason to get on our nerves. The ovaries insist that this statement is in fact true and that they will stand by it. They don’t say it in so many words though as the ovaries don’t have a very large vocabulary. However they seem to have no trouble at all getting their point across. I still haven’t worked out if it’s because the ovaries are too dumb or too clever but usually what they do is to take something like ‘People bad, Baby good’ and repeat it over and over again. This can really get to poor Brain as you can imagine. addiction treatment
‘But why do we need that?’ asks Brain, ‘Are we not happy just the way we are; coming and going as we please, having a computer room instead of a baby room, being able to sleep at nights without something screaming in our ears every ten minutes?’
‘Must have baby’ shout out Ovaries. drug addiction treatment
‘No shouting please.’ says Brain trying to sound authoritative, ‘Lets discuss this like civilized beings. At the moment I don’t think your argument is convincing enough dear ovaries, so do you think you could give us any other reasons as to why you so strongly believe that we must have a baby?'
‘Must have baby’ drug treatment
‘Enough already’ Brain says impatiently
‘We make eggs, must have baby now’
‘Ok yes’ says Brain trying its best to sound sympathetic, ‘I understand. It must be very hard for you to make those eggs every month and see them go to waste like that. But haven’t you thought about how having another person in here will affect the rest of us? Take the poor breasts for example, they will have to go from the A cup, no bra wearing, free spirits that they are, to these huge growths that resemble a cow's udders and have to be strapped to the poor Back at all times because they can no longer support themselves…’
Back: ‘I aint havin’ that, no. That’s not on, no that’s just not on.’
Brain: ‘Yes thank you my friend. Don’t worry; everything’s under control. What about you breasts? Do you have anything to say about this?’
‘Well you know’ says Right Breast, ‘I’d always wondered how I’d look if I’d been a bit bigger. Maybe not that…’
‘What are doing?’ asks a mortified Brain, ‘You’re not helping. Can you just be quite and let me deal with this please?’
Right Breast replies, sounding a bit offended, ‘Well I was only saying because you asked me…’drug addiction
‘Don’t worry about that one Brain’ yells out Left Breast, ‘She gets a bit tetchy about her size because I’ve always been the bigger one.’
‘Hey this has nothing to do with that; I was just wondering…’
‘Has too.’
‘Has not.’
‘Has too, has too.’
‘Must have baby.’ drug addiction treatment
‘I’ve said it before and I say it again: I aint havin’ that. So if yous think you can just get as big as you like and dump all that weight on me, you have another thing comin’. You best think of something like hangin’ yoursefs from the sealin’ or somethin’ cause I aint dealin’ with that.’
‘Has not, has not, has not’
‘Has too, has too, has too.’
‘Must have baby’
‘Please everybody just Calm The Hell Down.’ Cries out Brain.
They all go quite for a few moments.
drug addiction treatment
‘I’m hungry. Wonder if there’s any cheese cake left.’
drug addiction treatment

2006-01-21T10:26:00.000Z

Filling the registration form at our local dentist yesterday, I very nearly put down Blogger as my occupation. Just for a laugh you know. But then I wrote down Illustrator instead which can incidentally be just as funny to some people. ‘Illustrator?’ they ask. ‘Yes’ I reply. ‘But that’s not a job.’ They say, sounding very pleased with themselves, as if I have just tried tell them the biggest lie of all time and they’ve caught me out.
‘Well not all of us are lucky enough to have landed a glamorous job at a call centre for NTL.’ I think to myself, but I don’t say it out loud because one, I’m not one for rubbing people’s noses in it and two, she might not appreciate sarcasm and cut my phone line off and what will I do then? Guess what she looks like from her voice and draw her picture?!

The interesting thing is that I have had these occupational problems all my life. Well maybe not all my life but I’ve definitely had a few from when I started school anyway. Father’s occupation bit on my registration form had been left blank and this was really upsetting our head teacher. Every time she saw me in the corridors or the school yard, she would shout, ‘Saramad, Saramad (this is my old surname by the way and not that she had some sort of speech impediment or anything like that)’ until I either managed to pretend that I hadn’t heard her and ran and hid somewhere, or went to her and was told that she still needed to know what my father’s occupation was. Every time, I would tell her that my father didn’t work but that just made her mad. ‘Everyone works’ she would say irritably ‘you just don’t know what he does. Go and ask your mother and come and tell me tomorrow.’
The more she asked me this, the more worried I got about the whole thing. I kept thinking maybe not working was a crime in the Islamic Republic and my dad was going to be taken to prison or something (well a lot of weird things were happening in the country then). Later I realised that I needed not to have worried about that at all since the only reason that woman was so interested in my father’s occupation was that she wanted to know how much money she was able to scrounge off my family at the next teacher parent meeting.
Anyway I finally, as the head teacher had instructed, asked my mum what my dad did.

A few days later at school, we were in the middle of a lesson in our classroom when the head teacher suddenly barged in and after exchanging polite nods and smiles with our teacher, became serious once more saying, ‘Saramad, I’m really at the end of my tether with you. What is your father’s occupation?’ I could tell she meant business. It must have been coming up to a teacher parent meeting or something.
Whatever the reason, by coming to our classroom like that, she had scared the hell out of me. So in a sort of weird fright trance, I repeated what my mum had told me to say word for word, ‘Up until a few months ago my father had been reading a few things and now he is writing a few things of his own.’
‘Aah’ grunted the frustrated head teacher, ‘what does that mean?’ she said, raising her voice a little, ‘Look at this.’ She said pointing at my registration form that she had in her hand, ‘even if what you just said made any sense, how could I ever fit all that in this little space on here. Father’s occupations are usually just one word like Doctor, Dentist, Surgeon.’ (the poor woman had high hopes for my family as well) She paused to see what I had to say for myself. But I just kept staring ahead, not knowing what else to do. Finally she got bored and stormed out of our classroom.

Some years past. That head teacher left our school and another one took her place. This one was also curious about my father’s occupation since it was still left blank on the form. So she asked me about it. By then my father was officially a writer and his first book was either coming out or had already come out. And so very proudly I replied, ‘My Father is a writer Miss.’
‘Ok’ she said, sounding a bit annoyed, ‘But what does he do for a living?’

Now many years later, history repeats itself and I get asked this exact same question myself. And now I finally know what my answer to it should be, ‘To tell you the truth, I’m really a Blogger that moonlights as an illustrator.’ That should confuse them good and proper.

2006-01-18T17:16:00.000Z

So yesterday I go on my first bargain hunting trip to Oxford in the January sales. There’s this skirt in this shop, Whistles, reduced from £105 to £46 and I’m toying with the idea of buying it. So I go in to try it on just to see if it’s any good or not and I see that it has been reduced even further and it’s now only 24 pounds! So I think, brilliant, I’ve cheated Whistles out of twenty two big ones. But my happiness is short-lived as I realise that there aren’t any size 10s left. So I get all down about this because I really love this skirt (on account of it having multicoloured buttons randomly sewed onto it for no apparent reason). I’m about to go but there is one in size eight there and I can’t resist trying that on just to see what a great thing I’m missing and all that.
So I go into the changing room and I try it on and miracle of all miracles; it fits me perfectly! If anything, it’s even a bit loose on me. So I’m getting all ecstatic about having found this bargain skirt in my size but even more so about the fact that I have apparently gone through Christmas with all that eating and all that not moving that I’ve done, and instead of going up a size or two, I have gone the other way! But to be honest more than anything I’m excited about getting back home and writing to Gazankhan and trying to persuade him to pack up and come to LA with me where I’m certain with his genius new Anger Management course idea (burying people up to their lower lip in runny, human excrement) and my All eating Non moving diet, we are to start a couple of new trendy fads and bag ourselves a good few million dollars to put towards our pension.
I’m getting so excited about my new size and my new millions that the skirt with multicoloured buttons sewed onto it no longer looks like the great catch that I had thought it was earlier. So I say ‘come on my lovely size eight body, let’s go buy you some real clothes with our millions.’
I get dressed in my own clothes again, humming a happy little tune to myself, listening to the conversation a posh couple are having in the cubicle next to me ( -‘What do you think of this?’ -‘It’s marvellous darling. You must buy it. Only I don’t know what you are going to do about the bosoms.’ –‘Oh you don’t need to worry about that darling.’ –‘In that case, as I said, you must buy it. I’m still worried about the bosoms a little but if you are certain you can do something about them, then I guess there is nothing to worry about.’)
Next I go into East and I see these really lovely skirts. But unfortunately they are all out of any sizes under 12. So I pick up a size 12. Just so I can try it on and see it fall down and go, ‘Haaa haa you’re far too big for my skinny body.’ But I don’t get the chance to do that because the skirt does not fall! It sits there quite snugly even if you ask me.
I’m a bit confused at this point as you can imagine. All evidence point to the fact that whilst walking from Whistles to East, which are only about two minutes from each other, I have somehow gone up two dress sizes. Very strange, I know, but then again maybe not that strange compared to say, spontaneous human combustion.
Next I go to Miss Selfridge's. Turns out in this shop, I’m a non-mover at 10!

Half an hour, one person, three shops, three skirts, three sizes = One broken woman with shattered dreams and a very big question left unanswered; What exactly was that woman going to do about the bosoms?

2006-01-15T10:05:00.000Z

When the first Iraqi bombs were dropped on Tehran, it was so unexpected that I thought I was hearing the sound of thunder and lightning. It wasn’t until Mum came rushing into my room that I realised there was something wrong. But by then the planes had left and all that we could hear was the crack of anti-aircraft fire. The sound of the bombs had been faint and far away, somewhere downtown perhaps.

Dad says there is no need for taking shelter and I am happy because I don’t like to be buried under the rubble. ‘This is nothing’ He says, ‘You know in Second World War, when Nazis bombed London, that was proper bombing. This is nothing compared to that. Two or three flimsy planes dropping four, five or six bombs a night, what is that in a city the size of Tehran? We have a much higher chance of getting run over by a car than being hit by a bomb.’
Hearing my dad say this always makes me happy. It means that there is nothing to worry about, although it does make me feel a little sad too. Those British are better than us in every way it seems; we can’t even get ourselves bombed properly!
At nights, when Dad and I can’t be bothered to get out of bed, Mum runs between their bedroom and mine a few times (not knowing which room to stay in) until the attack is over.
‘You are very lazy,’ she says standing by my bed barefoot and shivering, with her thick shiny hair resting on her shoulders, ‘can’t you just get out of bed for two minutes?’ I invite her into my bed and we tickle each other and giggle until the green alert comes on.
Sometimes I go and sit with her on their bed, with my dad (keeping his eyes firmly shut because he doesn’t want to wake up fully) saying, ‘Don’t be silly you two, go back to bed. It’s just like an injection; finished as soon as it starts.’ I say, ‘Unless it’s a Penicillin injection in which case the pain stays on for two days after.’ And he starts laughing with his eyes still kept shut.
Some nights, I don’t even wake up. I sleep all through the sirens, the bombs and the antiaircraft fire. In the morning Mum says, ‘How on earth can you not wake up with bombs dropping all around you? Did you not hear it at all?’
‘Not a thing.’ I say biting into my fresh bread smeared with ration butter and cheese, ‘Was it a bad one?’
‘No not especially,’ she replies sipping her sweet black tea, wiggling her toes in front of the oil heater, ‘only four bombs maybe. It’s hard to tell with all the noise that the antiaircraft missiles make.’

2006-01-11T13:07:00.000Z

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.

2006-01-07T11:09:00.000Z

I was in the middle of writing a bit of a funny story that happened to me the other day when the phone rang. I knew it was bad news from the moment I heard the voice on the other side. I mean you don’t have to be a rocket scientist, as they say, to know that when people are crying, they are going to give you bad news.
When you’re away from home, anything to do with someone dying is a bit of a lonely affair. One day I get a phone call from one country by someone telling me that someone very close to me by blood, that I haven’t seen for twenty four years, has died in another part of the world that I’ve never even been to. I get sad and I go over the memories that I have of that person and in between I keep checking the time and doing the maths to see if it’s yet a good time to call Canada or Iran or France or Spain.
The first thing I remembered of him was a few of us kids being out in the garden one day and him saying, ‘I know how to make a cigar.’ It was the unfortunate Farsi name of cigar (cigar barg: leaf cigar) that had given him this idea I think. He sent us to go and get the driest leaves we could find from around the garden. Then he ripped out a double page from the middle of his old homework’s notebook (there were a few of us little kids in the garden that day you see and he was making the cigar long enough so everyone could have a drag) he poured the broken, dried leaf pieces in the middle of the paper, rolled it and then used a big piece of cellotape to stick it together. We all sat in a row in the back of the garden so no grownups would find us, coughing and passing this strange, smoking torch up and down the line.
I was six when they left Iran for good. For the first few years when his mum came back to visit, he would send me letters with her with a picture of a big candle on them. Underneath the candle he would write, ‘The flame of our friendship is still burning.’ and ‘The flame of my love for Iran is still burning.’
Next thing I know twenty four years have passed and I have eleven cousins instead of twelve.

2006-01-04T14:35:00.000Z

Years ago when I was a wee girl back in Tehran, I was totally smitten by pirates and maps and finding treasures and all that. When I was at my friend, Roshanak’s place, along with her two little brothers, we would spend hours burying Star Wars men and plastic soldiers in the ground and then make maps of their whereabouts so we could go and dig them up later.
In my Grandparents’ garden in the north, my cousin Nader and I would become proper explorers armed with sticks and would spend hours and hours fighting our way through raspberry bushes and cobwebs looking for signs and clues that would lead us to a treasure that we were convinced was buried somewhere in that garden by the pirates.

At school that year, we had a great bunch of kids in our class. Our classroom was completely separate from the school building and it had been built in the yard only the year before. Essentially this was half pray-room and half library but it later became half pray-room and half classroom because of shortage of classes and also lack of interest in the library (due to the fact that there were only about ten books in there; The Three Piglets and nine others about Imam Hussein).
Maybe it was the intimate environment of such a small classroom or maybe it was that old thing about a group of people who suffer the same inhumanity (which in this case was having to endure the terrible foot odour of all the girls who came to say their mandatory prayers before their religious studies class everyday) whatever it was, we were all very close that year.
At break times I would tell my classmates about my latest expeditions and treasure hunts but it was hard for them to understand exactly where the thrill of it all was when they had never done anything like that themselves. Some even thought it was silly to just be looking for a treasure when you weren’t absolutely sure that there was a treasure to be found in the first place. The way I saw it though, it didn’t really matter if you found anything or not because for me the exciting part was definitely when you were trying to get to what you were looking for and once you had found it, the adventure part was over.

What annoyed me the most was that after a while, even when they were all getting properly excited about this treasure hunting business and they were even warming to the idea of going after something just for the hell of it, every time I found something that could be seen as a map, they still found faults in it and only saw it as what it really was; an old stained and muddied photocopy of someone’s birth certificate, a big leaf or an old telephone bill. Well a bit of imagination never killed anyone did it? But no, from what I gathered, the only way I could get these girls to go on an adventure was if an authentic pirates’ treasure map, somehow found its way to our little classroom in Charrah Hessabi in Tehran!
At the end I thought I had no other choice but to make the map myself. I knew this wasn’t a nice thing to do but I managed to convince myself that this could very easily have been done by someone else. To lessen my own input in it, I drew most of it with my eyes closed and used my left hand to write things on it. But unfortunately this didn’t work either; for one, everyone knew straight away that the map was done by me, two, I felt horrible because I had to keep lying to my friends and swear to this and that that I hadn’t done it, three, having drawn the whole thing with my eyes shot, we couldn’t make head or tail of it anyway.

2006-01-03T11:07:00.000Z

…and so the eating continues.
One thing that I’ve learnt in this season of stuffing one’s face, is that seafood noodle soup and beer really don’t go together. I learnt this the hard way unfortunately but I thought it might be a good idea to share this with you in case you are ever tempted to try it.
Yes so this was how 2005 ended for me; feeling very queasy and having to walk all the way back home from the fear of being sick on the bus driver.

2005-12-29T13:41:00.000Z

There was once a time when hearing someone speak English in an Indian accent brought a smile to my face. I have always enjoyed hearing English in different accents but the French and the Indian accents were always my favourites. Unfortunately though these days I do find that I have somewhat become allergic to the Indian accent for it seems a day doesn’t go by now when I don’t get at least one phone call from India by someone that is offering me a new mobile phone or wants me to change my phone company to Tele-dodgy or asking me if I want a new kitchen or telling me, ‘congratulations, your phone number was randomly selected from millions and millions of phone numbers and now we are offering you a new mobile phone.’ (The interesting thing about this is that I had six different phone calls at six different times by six different Indians telling me this exact same thing which means if they are telling the truth, my phone number was randomly selected amongst millions and millions of phone numbers, not once, not twice but six times! Which makes me…I was going to say an extremely unlucky person but I don’t think that is going to do it justice. It’s more like whatever you are going to call the person who gets right all the six lottery numbers and wins millions and millions of pounds, I’m the exact opposite of that.)
The best one was the other night when someone called at about half past eight at night asking me if I wanted some people to come over and measure all my doors and windows! I was a bit taken-aback by the strangeness of this offer of course but it did tickle me a bit as well. I mean it really did sound like a comedy film, ‘Oh hello madam. I’m calling on behalf of Thieves Anonymous and I was wondering if you would be interested in having all your doors and windows measured by our company. We also have a special offer at the moment which means we will also measure all your furniture absolutely free. May I just ask you a few questions now? Do you have a guard dog? When are you off on your holidays? Where do you keep your jewellery?’
I mean what kind of people would answer the phone one day and invite complete strangers into their home to measure all their doors and windows? And why on earth would anyone want to do that anyway? Which is exactly what I asked the lady on the other side of the phone (I asked her this in a nice way though because I know it’s not her fault and she is just some poor woman in India trying to make a living)
‘Madam’ (read in an Indian accent for the best result) ‘we are offering to come and measure all your doors and windows for you absolutely free and then we will give you a quote on how much it would be if you wanted to change them.’
‘Thank you but all my doors and windows are brand new and I don’t want to change them.’ This was a lie of course; I just wanted to end the conversation in a polite way.
‘Oh no madam but you don’t understand. You don’t need to change your doors and windows, we just want to come and measure them for you. This is a fantastic deal madam.’
‘I really can’t see what is so fantastic about this deal.’
‘It’s free.’
‘Yes the measuring part is but not the window fitting part.’
‘Oh no, that you would have to pay for madam.’
‘But surely if all my doors and windows are brand new and I have no intention of changing them, measuring them is going to be a complete waste of time for you.’
‘Oh no, not at all madam and our prices are so reasonable that sometimes people are tempted to change their doors and windows even if they don’t need to be changed.’
‘!!!!!!!!!’
‘May I take down your address?’

I don’t want to be rude to them but really what do you say to this?

For a while I thought the best way to deal with this is to say I’m not me. When they said ‘Is this Mrs Adl?’ I just said no, she’s not in. That worked well but the problem was that they kept calling back. There was this one lady who had called three times and just wasn’t giving up. So the last time she called I said, ‘I’m sorry but my sister has gone to the hospital and she’s not very well so we don’t know when she’ll be able to come back home.’ She went quite for a little while. ‘I’m very sorry to hear that’ she said, ‘Did you say you were her sister?’
‘Yes’ I said and felt bad for having lied through my teeth like that because she sounded a bit concerned now, or so I thought.
‘May I ask you madam if you own your own property? Because we have some fantastic offers on our kitchens at the moment that I’m sure any home owner would be interested in.’
I couldn’t believe it; I was on my deathbed in some hospital and this woman was trying to sell a new kitchen to my sister!
‘Are you kidding me?!’ I said.
She put the phone down. Thank god for that. One down, another five hundred to go.

2005-12-26T19:31:00.000Z

You know what I said before about Christmas being all about shitty presents? Well I like to take that back please because yesterday I remembered exactly what Christmas is all about: eating.
There is something Iranians do when they hold their hand in a karate style and with it touch their neck repeatedly saying, ‘Thank you but I can’t take another bite because I’ve eaten up to here.’
Well yesterday I experienced exactly how that feels when I took one bite of this extremely delicious chocolate cake that my cousin had made and realised that it literally had nowhere to go! This was after two helpings of Turkey with all the trimmings (one and a half actually because the second helping was quite small), one slice of cheese cake and some trifle.
Not bad you might think, but I was disappointed with myself. You see, whenever I go some place where the main activity is going to be eating a lot of delicious food, for some reason I always end up eating a lot less food than I had planned to. After thinking long and hard about the reasons why this is, I came to the conclusion that this happens only because as soon as I arrive somewhere (yes I know; I really do need to get a life but until then this is the sort of thing that I will spend my time thinking about) I start picking at things (all the lovely nibbles the hosts have put out) and so come dinner time, shock horror, I’ve lost my appetite! And can only have one and a half portions instead of five! Awful, don’t you agree?
‘So’ I said to Kamyar yesterday morning as we hit the M40 on our way to London, (desperately trying to find a comfortable sitting position with my heels getting stuck in the carrier bag in front of me with my boots in it; in case I tripped in my heels and twisted my ankle or something and a map balanced on my knees), ‘I’ve worked out exactly what I need to do.’ A little pause. ‘This time I’m not going to pick’ I said, ‘I’m not even going to have one little thing because that’s how it all starts’ and then in my most determined voice I added, ‘I won’t eat a thing until dinner time.’
Alas they had a big bowl of nuts; I relapsed straight away. Now I have to wait another year.

Tuesday, 27 December 2005

I just saw a few spelling mistakes on here and corrected them. I’m sorry if you have already read this and thought it didn’t make sense.
Posting stuff after a few drinks just isn’t a good idea. But then again it’s Christmas init ;-)

2005-12-23T12:39:00.000Z

Going to town the other day, I was walking next to a tall gangly guy who does nothing all day but staring ahead and walking down the road to the end and then turning round and coming back up again, when I passed an old lady with her hair in two plats and two bright red circles on her cheeks, clinging onto a teddy bear. On the other side of the road there was a guy having a strole, wearing a pink dressing gown and a big straw hat with big plastic flowers stuck on top, nodding in the direction of a surprisingly normal-looking guy who can go through sixty different facial expressions per minute, staring at a big girl with an overpowering smell of vinegar, with headphones on and music blaring out, shouting at some frightened Japanese tourists for no particular reason.
Yes, there definitely seems to be an overabundance of nutters in our neighbourhood.
Don’t get me wrong, I absolutely have nothing against nutters. And I even believe that to be able to function properly, a neighbourhood needs a couple of nutters just as much it needs a bus stop, a chemist, a post office and a Chinese takeaway.
Now we have more than a couple, a lot more than a couple actually, which is great. The more the merrier, that’s what I say.
What does worry me though is that if we have so many here, there must be other neighbourhoods out there with no nutters at all. So in this season of goodwill, I have been thinking about how other neighbourhoods such as ours, with such richness of nuttiness, can share their great blessing with other, less fortunate areas of the country.
To start off this great spreading of joy, I’m offering my own services to any nutter-deprived neighbourhoods that might be interested (I come complete with a purple wig and a yellow pair of flares with red and blue flowers on them).
Let us hope there will come a time when every neighbourhood in the United Kingdom will have at least two nutters they can call their own.
Amen

2005-12-18T11:17:00.000Z

I’ve not been around for the past few days as you might have noticed. It’s because my eyes have been hurting and I haven’t been able to look at the monitor much. I will give them another day of rest today and hopefully they’ll feel better tomorrow.
I’m sorry about not answering to your comments and emails :-( but I’m really trying to spend as little time as possible on here.
I’ll be back :-) soon.

PS Mum, please don’t be running out to buy a phone card to call me because I’m really fine ;-)

2005-12-15T13:22:00.000Z

All thanks to my good friends Holly and Stan, I’m getting all excited about Chrimbo now. Holly likes these dolls called Polly Pockets and Stanley likes Hot Wheels cars. Kamyar had a whale of a time looking through this huge box with loads of little Hot Wheels cars all thrown in together. At the end he picked out five and lined them all up in front of me. It was very clear that he wanted all of them because every time I would pick one, he would say, ‘What about this one then?’ and I would say, ‘Well get that one then.’ To be honest I wasn’t really paying much attention to the cars as I was too busy drooling over the Polly Pockets myself. They had little handbags and little high heel shoes and everything. One of them had a swimming pool with a slide and a dolphin. Why on earth would I want to waste my precious time in the toyshop looking at tiny cars when there were Polly Pockets?
We bought two little cars and one doll at the end. After breakfast this morning, we both sat at each end of the sofa, studying our toys. ‘Can I keep the Green one?’ said Kamyar at the end. I gave him a motherly smile, the kind that your mother would give you when she had bought a birthday present for a friend of yours and you wanted to keep it for yourself. So he went back to admiring the car through its box again. Meanwhile I was dying to open the Polly Pocket myself and see what she would look like with her hat and shoes on, holing her handbag and her bunch of flowers.

PS I love this :-)

2005-12-12T13:15:00.000Z

As girls we are expected to do certain things when we are home alone, right? First we have a good soak in the bath, while reading a book and then we put on lovely nighties and sit in front of a soppy movie, eating chocolates, cakes and ice-cream.
Well my routine is very different to this and I think if you think about it, it makes a lot more sense as well. First of all; the bath. Let me just say that reading in the bath is a myth. Trust me I’ve tried this and it’s impossible to do without getting the book completely soaked and since I borrow most of my books from the library, I don’t even try it anymore. Now I like a long soak in the bath as much as the next person but the way I see it, why get yourself all cleaned up like that when it’s going to be just you all by yourself? Same goes for the nice nightie, why wear the nice one if no one is going to be there to see it? When I’m alone, I usually choose comfort over looks and go for these pyjamas I have that are very comfy but unfortunately make me look like a cross between a political prisoner from Evin and a survivor of the Holocaust.
Now to the eating part. Instead of chocolates and ice cream, I usually like having soups with big chunks of vegetables and noodles and a lot of beans. It makes sense as well when you think about it because you can always eat your chocolates and ice cream and all that when you are with other people but no one likes to watch a smelly girl dressed as a political prisoner munching her way through a big bowl of noodles with beans an broccoli. Am I right?
What’s more, in this way when the film is finished, with all those beans you’ve been having, you can form your own one man band and entertain yourself into the early hours of the morning. This can be very amusing of course, although again it’s probably something that others would not appreciate.

So I guess here’s what I’m trying to work out: Am I alone in acting in this way, or is the bath reader, ice cream licker, sexy nightie wearer girl altogether just a fairy tale?

Again I have put my neck on the line here for scientific research purposes and have revealed my worst habits to the public but of course I don’t expect you to do this as well. I’m safe you see because I’m married and if Kamyar wants to get rid of me now, he first has to give me seven hundred gold coins and three camels, I think (and let’s face it, that’s practically impossible on a factory worker’s salary) so he’s trapped for life basically but I can understand that a lot of you still need to find and trap partners of your own so feel free to comment as anonymous on this one.

2005-12-10T18:29:00.000Z

Since today is the one week anniversary of me having my toe crushed by a very jolly, skipping heavy metal guy, I thought it was an appropriate time to let you in on a couple of things I found out about heavy metal fans at this Opeth concert that we went to last Saturday. By the way Opeth is a Swedish band that Kamyar likes and I quite like them too on account of them being the only band he likes where the lead singer is not only ever making the kind of noises that you hear coming from the toilets of a students’ hall of residence after a big night out.

As we entered the hall, the first thing that I noticed was that there was a very strange smell in the air. I couldn’t quite put my finger on it at first but then after a few more sniffs here and there, I managed to work out what it was. Yes, it’s official; the sweat of heavy metal fans smells like cumin! It’s hard to believe I know but it’s true. Go to a heavy metal concert and experience it for yourself or if you’re not brave enough to do that, just take my word for it.
It was obvious that these fans had really done themselves up for this concert. You could tell they had spent a lot of time shampooing, conditioning, drying and straightening those blonde locks of theirs to perfection. You could smell all the different hair products from a mile off. From what I gathered Pantene Pro V was the number one choice there followed by Loreal Elvive Vitamax Shampoo. You couldn’t help wishing they had put some of that stuff under their armpits as well but what can you do? It’s not that I dislike cumin or anything like that, it’s just that it did give a weird Indian restaurant feel to the place that I felt we could have done without. The way I see it there is a time and a place for cumin and an Opeth concert is definitely not it.

2005-12-08T13:12:00.000Z

This friend of mine from school, who had a baby two months ago, is making me very broody. Every morning I open my mail and there are more pictures of this baby in my inbox.
To add insult to injury, I spent the whole of Sunday with an extremely smiley baby who took an instant liking to me (I suspect it had something to do my unusually full breasts that day, thanks to the trusty padded-bra. Yes, it can even fool babies; the so called breast experts!)
And then last night on the television series, Lost, that girl finally gave birth and considering she had to do this in the middle of the forest without a doctor or anyone who knew what they were doing, it all looked quite easy. Mind you the parallel story they had going on with this was some poor guy having his crushed leg mended and then having it nearly amputated without any anaesthetics so maybe that’s why her giving birth looked like such an easy task.
Actually that wasn’t a very wise thing to say I don’t think. I will probably end up getting a lot of stick for it from women who have given birth. I can even hear it now ‘What are you talking about? Giving birth is far more painful that having a leg amputated. Try having a leg amputated without anaesthetics and then having it shoved all the way up one of your nostrils and then you might be getting closer to feeling the pain of child birth.’

Hmm, hang on a minute; I think just by writing that I might have actually put myself off babies for life!
I was going somewhere completely different with this post but now thanks to images of people with severed legs shoved up their noses I can’t even remember what I was going to say.
Now I’m seeing people crawling around with two legs dangling from their nostrils. Damn you suggestive mind!