Christmas Hanukkah Yalda

Since Christmas coincides nicely with the longest night of the year that we celebrate as Yalda we decided to give Yalda cards for the holidays this year and hopefully for the years to come.

I have realized that Hanukkah is being advertised and celebrated more publicly these days. I think it rhymes very nicely with the festivities of the Christmas Holidays. At around the same time we Iranians celebrate Yalda, the winter solstice, the longest night of the year. We celebrate the light conquering the darkness. We recognize that even though till then the length of night was increasing, from then on the length of the day increases and spring is in sight. We cherish how darkness, even though trying, can never prevail. We celebrate the hope and beauty of light.

It is as if we are keeping all these meanings and celebrations to ourselves. It is indeed a Persian celebration but how nicely it alludes into the spirit of Christmas and Hanukkah.  Yalda is more ancient than them both and  I think Yalda can very well be recognized more widely.  How about giving away Yalda cards for the holidays?

Imagine a card with the pictures of pomegranate and Hafez and Shahnameh poetry books and nuts in the middle of red and green cards of Santa Claus and blue and white cards with Menorah.  It will be festive, peaceful, united, and global. It will be understanding and accepting. It will expand horizons and exude friendship.
I wish you all happy holidays in advance!
 

http://www.iranreview.org/content/Documents/Celebrating_Yalda_2.htm

Add http://live.longhill.org.uk/?p=7193

http://www.localnomad.com/en/blog/2012/12/05/why-decorate-the-christmas-tree/

I do not Belong Here

It is a Halloween night.  I am staying home with a headache and a bitter taste in my mouth. I cannot wash it with however many candies I eat.  I eat nothing. I decide to do nothing too. Perhaps tomorrow is a new day with a fresh taste. It is only 7PM and a long time till the next day.  I have to kill the time. I think of watching a movie instead.  A break. A time away from all the thoughts and all the feelings. I blindly follow the recommendation on Netflix: Safe Haven. I have read the book a couple years ago. One of those airport-bought books to read at the airport and to recycle at the airport too.  She flees away from her house; she stops at a small town and soon settles there. She falls in love and she finds what she was looking for. She finds what she deserves. She finds where she belongs. That's where the movie ends. That's where my next day begins.

Memories

She was sitting on a chair by the curbside after taking a long walk. She had her notebook open; a cup of tea that was almost chilled and a pen in her hand.   No word written.

The memories were faintly circulating in her head. She remembered how hard it was back in the time to think of those cheerful events and bright feelings as memories. She thought all would remain in her head as bright as the sunlight. But then the dust of time sat on her mind and she couldn't remember how she was feeling, thinking, comprehending.

All she had now was a notebook full of white papers and a head full of fainting memories.

I Love That Land

A: "I want to go to Iran. Not because it is smelly [he means polluted thanks to awfully refined gas"; not because people talk a different language [i.e. his mother tongue!!]; not because it is on the other side of the world; but because my grandparents are there."

Ah!

"Even if Iran is nothing but a damaged land

Still, I love that damaged land"

Or something like this:

اگر ايران بجز ويران سرا نيست

من آن ويران سرا را دوست دارم

Artichoke Heart

Yesterday my mom had an artichoke heart salad and seemed to really enjoy it. Great! Now every time I have artichoke heart I'm reminded of her too.

I wish she hasn't have to go. And I'm whining like a little girl. But I am her little girl who is a mother of two now.

I just wish ...

The Sorrows of An Immigrant

Separation.

The most hurtful fact of immigration.

It literally pains thinking about my mom's departure in a couple days, to leave her at the airport, to come back to a house with an empty guest room.

It all started with the departure.

I left Iran for the first time in the fall of 2000.  I packed all the things I really liked and left them in a storage, let my parents drive me to the airport and then left them behind the glass doors to the departure gates.  My grandma also came to the airport, sighing every once in a while. She has grown much older now, has suffered a stroke since, and looks more wrinkled.

I have lost many great moments since. Many births, many marriages, some losses.

It is a long time thirteen years. My brothers, then twins and teens, have grown to be young men now.  My parents have matured.  My sisters have married.

I have missed a lot. And it feels really sad thinking about it. Worse, I am missing more and more everyday.

I don't want my mother to leave. But she doesn't want to miss things. So she is going to go back.  I am going to come back to an empty guest room and continue missing, dwelling in the sorrows of the immigrant that I am.

"Rome, Tehran, Tokyo"

In an ad campaign for Hilton Hotels, "Magnificent cities" was the description used by Don Draper for Rome, Tehran, and Tokyo in the same sequence in Mad Men, Season 3, Episode 9. 1963.

2013. Exactly 40 years later, and there is no more any Hilton Hotel in Tehran.  In fact, who would think about vacationing in Tehran except for Iranians and some very rare tourists?  Who would put magnificent and Tehran in the same sentence? How often would one think of Rome and Tehran at the same time?

Alas! I can't stop but wonder how the world could be if there still was a Hilton Hotel in Tehran. Perhaps I was still living there, just blocks away from  my beloved mom and sister. Perhaps the sky of the cities in the land of Persia was still blue and not hazy with dust. Perhaps Iran was listed in the drop down menu of Expedia. Perhaps my kids could read and comprehend Ferdowsi's poem yet I was not reciting it in my head dozens of times every day:

دريغ است ايران كه ويران شود

كنام پلنگان و شيران شود

Alas if Iran is destroyed

Alas if Iran is housed by leopards and lions

Notes from a Woman with a Bump - Finding Baby Name

It's a huge deal for us; name of the baby. We like the name to be Persian, meaningful, strong, and global. We want it to pronounce well and mean good, at least not bad, in most common languages. We want it not to be too popular, too foreign, too old, too new. We want the name to have our parents approval in the end.  We want it to be short and sweet.
It's a project by itself.
I realized that we had more possible options with the name of my son compared to a girl's name. One theory I have is that Persian girls' names, even though meaningful and strong, but hard to pronounce in English. For example, some of my favorite names: Mehrangiz, Saghi, Shaghayegh.
There are several websites with name ranking and name meaning, and several forum asking for suggestions (not my kind of thing). But I found this website the best:
http://www.thinkbabynames.com/
It provides with the name's meaning, other names that rhyme with it, some statistics, and different  prononciation and spelling. What's really cool is that you can search for names that rhyme with another name, for example an older siniling's name.
It's a cumbersome yet fun project in the end. Kids deserve pretty and meaningful names. Good lunch finding yours!

Rira

"We are all doing fine!
But you don't believe it."
How I miss it deeply suddenly.  His voice.  Khosrow Shakibaii. God bless his soul!
And his words!  Ali Salehi.

There was the high school era.  The time to meet friends, every day.  Every single day.  And the time to dream, dream among those friends of the same thread.  Dream, every day.  Every single day.  Dream all the dreams in the world.  The presence of those friends was enough to make many many dreams seem possible.

"ziba! havaaye hosele abrist"

Now, today, being thousands of thousands of miles away from them, residing on the other side of the world, being out of school for years already, being the wife of a man I love, being the mother of a boy I adore, being the employee of a company I admired, I bump into stop signs on a daily basis.  I see people eye to eye while they are looking at me with their dreamless eyes, with their waxed ears, with their closed mind.  I see people who are looking but cannot see.

Those friends of the same thread are not here to dream with me every day anymore.  Yet, I will continue with my dreaming.  I will continue seeing what other might not be able to see.  I will continue dreaming of bigger dreams.  I will look at the stop signs of the dreamless people and walk through their stop signs.

I am.

charshanbe suri

Tomorrow is the last Wednesday before the new Spring, which marks the beginning of the Persian New Year.  So people are out having parties and cleansing themselves with the fire.  We are planning on an outing next Tuesday night.  But it was fun to hear the announcement on NPR on my way home.

The Missing Thing

A girl friend.
The thought of it makes me feel so lonely. The thought of confessing to it, even more so.
Once my aunt asked me about a series of questions the answers to which would tell you about you... So there is a road ... It ends to a hut... You open the door... There is a table... What's on the table? I said a bowl of fruit. She said you like company and you care for your friends.
I do. Both.
But I miss my friends. Someone who cares deeply for me.  You has my back. Who is strong when I'm weak and who shares her weaknesses with me wanting my strengths.
I am so lonely here. May be it is like so everywhere.

Iran and America Through a Different Lense

A photographer from New York embarked a journey to Iran in December.  I admire his vision and his fact-finding nature in not limiting himself to political media to learn about Iran, especially at this time out of all times.

Enjoy his blog as I absolutely enjoyed every word and every picture!

Super Bowl, First Time I Watched

Since I have emigrated to US, this was the first time I watched the Super Bowl.  What enticed me was the fact that the San Francisco 49ers were playing after many years.  At the beginning of the game M reviewed the rules for me and this time I actually could follow it as I paid attention.  We watched the first quarter with friends who had a new baby boy and then joined our relatives in Walnut Creek for the rest if the game.  It was almost unbelievable that there was a power outage in the middle of rhe game.  But seems that was the time needed by 49ers to gather their focus as they made up very nicely with a couple scored fumbles and touch downs.  I found the 49ers quarterback very humble looking and that seemed a huge contrast to the Ravens erogant looking quaterback. In the end 49ers lost with only 3 point difference and more than feeling sorry for their loss I felt bad for the Ravens win. At least though I enjoyed the game for the first time ... more and more infused in the American life ...

Turquoise Howz

I want to build howz, a fountain.  I want to bring in those blue turquoise mosaics and decorate my howz inch by inch.  Those mosaics that are baked in a local shop deep in the bazaar, and painted the perfect smooth color of turquoise by the artistic fingers of an old man. I want to buy the smallest mosaics, and carry them all the way from that land of my grandparents and build a fountain in the middle of my garden.  I want my children to remember the color of blue such that it was in those ancient fountains in the middle of those gardens.  I want to build a turquoise blue fountain.

Last Night - Odense - Denmark

I was impressed with Odense in this trip spending 3 nights here.  It is a calm and green city.  We walked from hospital back to hotel both today and yesterday which was a 30 minute walk.  This got us an opportunity to observe the city and the people a bit more closely.

The city is humid, and naturally green.  The buildings are mainly old but well maintained.  There are many strange status and fountains around the city.  People walk a lot, and bike a lot, even now which is winter time.  There are special bike bath everywhere and there are many Christiana's Bikes around the city, some even carry their kids and baby's in the front cabin.

It seems like the handy crafts are still valuable here.  I observed a sewing shop with many sewing machines and people working on them.  And many many yard shops.  Apparently people knit a lot here because they were all very crowded too.  Also wood works and straw utensils abundant in the shops.  Kids appear relax and I found groups of kids chatting or walking or even sitting in a cafe having a snack by themselves.  No sign of paranoia as I am used to observe in kids in US.

People are not rushed.  They walk and bike and leisurely go through the shops.  I was impressed how the cafes were crowded, always parties of two or more, and all the time chatting!  I observed many women groups.  It was real fun to watch. In the restaurants and cafes waiters and waitresses are friendly but they do not smile.  And they wont check on you unless you ask for it.

I did not see many foreign looking people I must say.  Even though one of the neurosurgeons in the hospital is actually Persian. But not many black-haired people in the street I must say.

All in all, after a work assignment accomplished successfully and satisfactorily, I am happy with the city and ready to leave for Paris tomorrow.
.

Christmas Eve and A

This is a unique Christmas eve at our house. For the first time in A's life we are actually home. Add to that the fact that my dad and stepmom are here and my siste S and brother-inlay are arriving from Canada in an hour enshala.  On top of this all we have a Christmas tree and lots of presents.

I have tried imagining A a few times waking up to,or row and opening all the presents that are his.  He was worried that someone would stay up past midnight tonight and Santa doesnt show up. We assured him before putting him to bed that we will make sure all is quiet at home by midnight.

I am glad he can imagin all the magic. I think this will help him undesrtand later on that not all he sees is real and not all he cannot see is unreal. It's essentially a philosophical teaching in addition to developing his imagination.

Merry Christmas to all who believe and all that can imagine!

Pause

Laying down sleepless for hours. Freed myself from the nightmare of repeated mistakes to wake up to the reality: repeated mistakes?
What is happening? Why? What went wrong? How to make it right? What is right?
War?
I remember the calm. I remember the running water in the city's beautiful river. I remember the kindness in the eyes of the men and the women. I remember the compassionate people. I remember the support.
I cannot imagine what it is like today.
Alas.

Welcome Home!

We arrived in San Francisco Airport and rushed to the passport check.  There are two separate lines: one for citizens and permanent residents, one for visitors.  We have bought a house here, our son goes to school here, we both work here and pay taxes and dues and social securities we will never see a penny of.  Yet, we are considered aliens because we are on visa.

Long long lines were moving forward and it is our turn at last.  I talked to the immigration officer:
- We came here because we live and work here
- Yes our son goes to school here
- Yes we have been to all over the places
- I have been working for the same division for more than five year now

- I work as a Global Product Manager for them

- Yes San Jose is our home address
- No we don't have any meat of fruit or alcohol with us
- ...
He stamped the passports, wrote on some papers, punched some keys on his keyboard and returned the passports to me: "Welcome home"!
Yes.  Home.
I graciously thanked him and smiled.