A Recipe for Sorrow

Today, I was cooking a rice meal called "Lubia Polo". It contains green beans, rice, lamb, and turmeric. It's pretty healthy and you can always take the meat out if you're not a meat-eater.

As I was cooking I was thinking about a bunch of different aspects of my life.

I'm cooking for 6 people, 4 of which are the gardeners, two my husband and I. I usually cook for the gardeners at lunch because it's a good thing to do. It's also supposed to be like helping the poor in a way. They are Afghans. If you notice, they're all quite skinny and hollowed-cheek looking- they eat very little so the lunch they get with us usually makes them heavy set by the end of the year. Unfortunately.

One of the people we know, has told my mother in law that he is going back to his hometown to divorce his wife. Apparently, she was not the "stay at home and cook" type. I'm not exactly sure what happened with them, but his story is that the wife was always going out with her mother and sister during the day while he wasn't home and apparently she wasn't a good cook or housewife type.

I suddenly felt chilled when I heard that they had a 6 year old son. At the court hearing, which he finally went to, the judge agreed that once the boy was 7 or the father had paid 7,000USD in equivalent tomans to the wife, he would no longer have to support his child...

The child would be left with a single mother and grandparents, while the father was no longer under responsibility for him. He was paying 250 thousand tomans a month to support the boy.

When I met the guy, I always felt a bit strange around him. It was really a strange feeling, I felt as if he wasn't a nice guy. Maybe it was just the way he warmed up to my MIL and not to me, or the way he tried to say he knows how to clean my house when I'm asking him to do it the way I like it...or just the vibe you get when you walk by someone and they just don't like you?

Anyway, I was thinking about that boy and that woman. How is she going to support herself and the boy? She's already a burden on her parents, and she's lucky to even have their support. The little boy, what is he going to think of his father? Won't he ask why they didn't just figure out their problems? What's worth such horrible things?

Is it worth it to spend all your time with your girlfriends and mothers when your husband doesn't want you to? I don't know.

I feel like maybe I'm an idealist and I truly believed that people marry for love, not for food and clothing.

But I was wrong. I was really wrong, because in Iran, it's not this way at all. It's very rare, to find love, like finding that elusive deep sea creature that you only see once in a hundred years. Or like a story. It's just a story there.

If two people love each other for who they are, don't they adore each other?

What if I lost my legs in an accident and my husband and I could not make love to each other and I couldn't cook for him like I used to? Or what if, the non-malignant cancer that I barely brushed away from a while ago will never give us children?

Will he move his attention to another tree, because mine bear beautiful little pink flowers in spring but give no fruit to sustain him in the summer?

What would he see in me then? An empty cook, maid, and sex toy? Or who I am without those?

I don't know why, I cried over the food as it cooked. I feel so sad looking at that pot, it just looks like dirt to me now.

Maybe it's a sad TRUTH. A reality that families and people are torn apart by such small things, not impressed by a love that could otherwise have sustained them?

My heart was sad for that boy, and for the women and men I have heard of who end up separated. Over things, many things, that shouldn't matter.

In the end, I just wait for it to cook and turn it off; but that's life. You have to put these spices and "stuff" together and hope it turns out that you love it, no matter what. Otherwise, you throw it away and start over.

In Iran, not only are men and women marrying less in the city, they are divorcing just as quickly.

The difference is that usually it's the women who loses in the end.

I am reminded of my MIL's words to me after the ordeal of my hospitals and blood tests and therapies...Men can have children far into their nineties, tsk tsk, but not for us women and they can have them like flies all over the place with anyone they want...it's you who can never do that

Post-Its

For the past year there's been heavy gossip about the removal of government subsidies for all Iranian households.

That means when you were paying 4 USD for your phonebill if you were a middle-class Iranian (comparable to someone on Welfare in the West, middle-class earning I'm calculating is about 800 thousand Tomans at a high) you're now going to pay just as much as your Western counterpart except that you're not on welfare and you're not shopping at Ralph's with your food stamps.

That means, if you are a wealthy Iranian who imported your wealth from smart investing in foreign lands and thought you were ahead of the game paying 90 USD a month on just your electricity bill in your lux apartment in northern Tehran (or a palatial villa in the suburbs) fueling your desires for big rotating disco lights and 4 microwaves, you will now be paying about 500USD a month- and you're probably STILL ahead but that'll only last until the real estate bubble bursts even further in the next year or two, 3 years if you're lucky.

Suddenly, the taxi driver is pretty sure that because he has two daughters to support for college and marriage and a well-cushioned future, he might as well ruin yours ("Believe me mister, I'll be the first to climb those sissies' walls"-taxi driver) because you were so obviously born to such luxuries and don't need anyone's sympathy (if you did, he wouldn't give that to you either).

But, in the end, you finally get safely home because people here haven't resorted to such criminal acts of desperation. Hopefully he didn't notice that you got off two blocks and a turn away from your real destination, because you really never know.

Then, the next morning, you unluckily turn to the frontpage of the newspaper and you see the headlines:

Rich Family Shot and Killed in Velenjak (Worth Over 50Billion Tomans...)

Choke on coffee here.

Nah, people will know that you earned all of that. They'll nod and smile approvingly at you when you load up the back of your shining white SUV with a ton of groceries because you worked hard overseas and studied your ass off. Then, they'll probably also admire your beautiful, expensive italian head scarf as you dine at one of a dozen sissy restaurants in the city...your fork held high over a platter of 'let-them-eat-cake" (a special of the chef on Thursday nights- you know, the nights when about all of the rest of the country is at home sharing half a chicken between 5 grown bellies).

Did I mention that you were watched, or rather stared after, as you walked into the Rolex store on Vali-Asr or formerly Pahlavi st? And you pretended like you were just one of them- window shopping. Forget the blaring neon lights above your head that everyone else who has no time to do even that can see blinking on your forehead.

Nowadays, they can tell without even second guessing. Haha.

So, yes, after all that bamboozlement a few months ago, things are still back to normal, aren't they?

And you thought, naively, that green was the color of gold. No, unfortunately, gold is only always going to be gold, and as long as the people are going to be given free potatoes and 50,000 tomans a month as the people will, remember that.




continued later

300% import taxes

Yesterday, driving to go for a walk in the city. Since the suburbs don't provide much of a trek in terms of interesting shopping areas we left for central/Northern tehran (shariati/mirdamad area)

On the way, I was surprised by the clear change in these streets. Only 5 years ago a Nissan Pathfinder was the biggest and best car imported into Tehran- then came Toyota corolla and even a hyundai model trailing behind. People of lower income were blown away by these new cars. Around 2003 you wouldn't believe it but the import tax on luxury cars was at around 300%. That's a chilling rate, seing as you could drive the same car in the States (for example) for far less!

After the import of a benz in 2005 (with the total import+retail coming to 300,000.00 USD) it was impossible to drive on the streets. People staring and chasing the car...it was truly impossible to own a luxury car and that was a hard learned lesson. Obviously, most people make money in order to spend some of it on higher-end objects.

But in Iran, the influx of luxury cars is explosive, now, in 2008. Everywhere I look I see a benz or three, a bmw or four, a Toyota prado or ten, and many other less expensive cars like the Hyundai's and Toyotas.

Apparently, it's nearly capped at 1.5 billion USD in imports of cars from abroad to Iran.

People are wealthier than ever and spending too. Even in this time of upheaval and chaos I've just heard that a distant neighbor's home was given an offer to buy through check for 25,000,000.00USD and that neighbor has refused (through the agent's word of mouth) . Apparently, they want 30.

At the same time, when you talk to the businessmen and women, the factory owners, and the figures you get the same answer: We'll just wait for it to get better. This is Iran, we always go up, plateau, then keep going up. Even during the Iran-Iraq war, real estate was going up while bombs were being dropped in Tehran!

..

Twitt-Iran

Twitter and Iran.

Twitter postponed maintenance of its website until 1-2AM Tehran time, so that Iranians who protest would continue to have access to at least one of the only communications they have left for exchanging messages.

The exchange consists of news of and reports on protests and the wellfare of protesters as well as planning and timing of demonstrations.

This is probably the day Twitter will forever be written down in History as having supported the protesters in their time of need.

But really, a coincidence that Twitter leadership decides for the need to provide maintenance at such an important moment in their company's history, besides the opening of their website?


Unfortunately, Iranian youth are not impressed with BBC or CNN's coverage. CNN reported this morning that 7 people were killed in the demonstrations last night. THey didn't mention the fact that the shooters were Basij dressed in black on the rooftop of the Basij building.

Oooops.

Similiarly, BBC news is not being provided in my area...it's been totally blank (not even staticy) since 22 khordad.

I just continue to pray for peace among the people. The worst thing we can see is the two sides of Iranians pitted against each other. Hardliners versus Centrists and Leftists.

I'm back to writing about experiences here in Tehran, and around the world as I either ferment at home or travel abroad.

: Prices for groceries have gone really high. Recently, I bought enough fruits to last two people a week and enough dark green leafy vegetables (Mmmm) for about two Iranian dishes and it came out to 13,000 Tomans (not exact). It's only about, 12 USD? But for the Iranian civilian worker earning bottoms of 200,000T to highs of 500,000T that's not feasible. In other words, when I used to eat dinner with one part of my family, 7 typical servings came out to be 1 chicken breast, 2 chicken legs, and a thigh. It was meager but they seemed to eat it all and fill up while I was busy licking the bottom of the pots (sorry). I'm ignoring the fact that the 3 adolescents in the family, two boys and a girl, all over 18 weighed in as follows: 90 lbs, 115 lbs, 130 lbs...The father was probably 140lbs and the mother the same.

In single life, I met two girls working in the production group of a film. One was a tan-bed addict with bleached platinum blonde hair and fuscia lipstick, the other an aux-naturale with brown hair, minimal makeup (eyeliner) and a beautiful face. Both of them loved to gossip, especially about Iranian "guys". The kind of guys they were talking about were rich, single, and obviously been around (with these same girls and more); this in Iran, not L.A. One of them was telling me about her ex-boyfriend who was from Rasht- in her words poor ugly thing with a lisp, but who drove around in his Aston Martin and had at least 5 stunning girlfriends at a time and he didn't need to pay for it either!
We saw the Aston Martin, you couldn't miss the sky blue car from miles away going down Shariati (a busy street) and she was right- poor thing. Everybody stared at the car, most of them either men jealous or women wishing.

Then she went on about her now-boyfriend, who incidentally broke up with her a week later, and whom she slept with as his main girlfriend. Apparently, he lied a lot, made lots of excuses, then went on at the age of 26 to buy a three-story penthouse (with an indoor pool, sauna, jacuzzi, butler service, etc) in one of the high-end real estate properties (visible from Modarress North Highway in Elahieh Neighborhood) against her wishes.
She tried to convince him that he doesn't need that place, it's too big for ONE guy...apparently, she was in deep denial. Any man spending more than 10 million on a penthouse in Tehran and single is NEVER alone. The line of girls streaming out of his apartment a week later was a testament to that.

So relationships in Tehran have gotten difficult to sustain- I can't count how many women in just ONE part of my extended family haven't gotten married, and some of them are successful leaders in their work bringing in enough money to SUPPORT their husbands. They just won't marry. What they lacked in money decades ago they now lack in substance. Men who can afford it here don't marry one woman; they marry one, Sigheh another and then spread babies like maggots all over the place. Men who can't afford it happen to do the same. It's all relative. Women who seek support from a man without marrying them don't differentiate between a man who owns two apartments and a toothbrush factory or a man who imports (for example) Toyota into the country. Even a little bit counts when it comes to survival and for women, they'll grab onto anything, even if it means their loss of social status here.

An acquaintance of ours, an older man (in the import/export business with a net worth of God-knows what) is married to one woman but happily announced at dinner in front of my sister-in-law and the hubbies that women were made to be cared for by men, excusing himself of having 16 children, 13 of which are illegitimate and through Sigheh.

Have to go finish cooking Lubia Polo...here's a good recipe if anyone wants to try it.

Christians with Christians, Jews with Jews....

People usually come together based on a common ground they share. Usually, you can look at it like the foundation of a house, the more commonalities/building blocks, the safer the house and the less damage when an earthquake hits.

Commonalities are religion, ethnicity, language, social status, lifestyle.

When you look at all animals, the majority of them stay within their own species and within their own groups. The elephant female usually stays within a herd or a close herd, and with that developmental memory they share commonalities like humans do within their herds.

The Iranian-American must be a class of its own. We don't sink our roots in either place. The cultural and linguistic memory our grandmothers or parents instill in us seem out of place in the West and the Western memory seems lightyears away from Iranian metropolitan life.

That makes us a rare breed of human but still entirely adaptable and yet always a visitor.

Lahzehaye Zendegi...

Iran migeh bemun. Zendegi bekon. Be in fekr nakon, be un fekr nakon, be khodet fekr kon. Iran migeh adam bash. Labhato vaz kon nafase amigh bekesh. Nafas bekesh va vaista, arum arum baraye khodet.

Iran migeh zabune dorahi, harfe dorahi, fekre dorahi; divune mishi. Iran migeh az khodet begu, az khubiat begu, az khandehat begu ta vaghti oftadi ruhet joda mishe namuni ke "chi shod, koja raft, chera? chera? chera? chera?"

Mishe chera nagi, mishe harf nazani? Mishe beshini va bekhandi. Az in donya nakhah chizi, az ino un chizi nakha. Faghat ba khodet bash, va baghye miyan be tarafet.

Be happy. Be patient. Let things come their own way, and you will receive what you wait for. Eventually, every push comes to shove. Every frown is anger and every tear is sorrow. Get your hands out of your pockets, and take what little comes to you. Appreciate your own self, appreciate others and their selves. Respect for life.

Everyone can survive, but few can live.

Un Dare Az Man Dur Mishe

Un khuneyi ma dareh baraye man ghur mishe. Un dele man nemizare, az in khune dur beshe.

In dele man dareh baram mikhune, telesme seda mishe. Bezar beram az in khune; nemizareh.

--
Vaghti neshastam, sedam migireh, too dellam mishe sange siah. Vaghti misham avaze parande, mikhunam ta az miyune bargha dellet vaz beshe. Panjereh baste, ama surateh shekaste poshte shishe dareh avaz mikhuneh. Vaghti bal gereftam, too asemuneh rangin mineshinam, yadam be un seda, yadam be un khoda ke goft khune darun ma -donya misuze bar pa! Hanuz munde in seda, ke vaghti shirin mishe labha nafase sha'er mishe ama sedaye ghalbha munde ta be ham berese.

The heart is a valley of light, where one lives in a quiet way and strangers come and go. They pass beneath your window and your breath catches. What they want, what they say, what they do. Your heart beats on its own, the river runs through it a cold spring bringing life to the sparse green and animals. But you know how to care for your heart, how to please; every nook and cranny a garden. When you plant those seeds in your garden, and a beautiful white rose takes root, you show it love and patience. You show it happiness and your garden grows. Full of leaves and thorns and the scent of those roses. But one day, you leave your heart, you take a look at your bed of roses and promise you'll be back. But you won't. And when you do, you die in their arms, the thorns prickling at your skin and piercing till your blood runs dry and nourishes that long-forgotten soil.

Shhhh! It's Secret!

There's a popular internet community website that hosts the profiles of thousands of young Iranians living in Iran. They make friends, lovers, and enemies through those profiles- maybe not as dramatic as I make it appear, but it is a social networking site. It used to be Orkut, then it was Myspace, now it's this new one.

It's like looking through the little hourglass shape and seeing what's going on in the minds of educated, wealthy/middle-class young men and women. I sometimes see exactly the opposite of what I'm told. In fact, the more I realize that these people are so similar to adolescents in the States and elsewhere around the world the more I realize how dented the popular view of Iranian teen society is.

The other day, while I was buying something to take to my cousin, a fellow Iranian-American asked me why I don't buy something from a lower-marked-sometimes-used clothing store for them "Oh, they will LOVE it! I bet they will even pay you for things like that"...it confuses me since even the middle-class areas such as Narmak-Tehran Pars, and Karaj have items marked at 15USD or more and the store she was mentioning has prices at around 5-10USD for the same type of Tees/Pants.

Ignorance is not bliss...unfortunately.

Iranian Student Commits Suicide on Campus

It's a sad but deeply hopeless end for a young student in Iran. Unfortunately, it's told that he was under pressure from University/Authorities who were attempting to hinder his studies; If I find out more I will post it.

This is truly one of the videos I almost could not watch but did anyhow. I don't need to know what happened but the reason behind it is even more horrendous. The video doesn't go into detail about why, it's just the act and the people who try to stop him.

Occurs in Hamedan, Western Iran. Bu Ali Sina university.

What chills me and causes me to wonder are the reactions from people when they see videos like this or hear about them; Some are malicious, and downright evil in their responses. I'm not just referring to the forums and comments but to real life situations where people are glad that this may happen to someone. Is it xenophobia? Is it hate? Is it the excitement of violence in humans so high these days that we even need to express, loudly, our satisfaction with videos like these?

I hope someone finds out more about him, and what led to it. Because I think any student who is cornered by the authorities in Iran goes through the deepest feelings of loneliness (nobody to turn to, nothing to protect you)