Madhavi writing to start: We descended on the expansive night light city scape of Tehran. On arrival, we were showered by warm hugs and kisses and flowers from Nima's family who had begged and pleaded their way into baggage claim. We couldn't wipe the smiles off our faces all night and really rarely throughout our first week with them. Ame Manijeh, Ame Parvin, and Ame Monir (who lives in Toronto and whom I met before) are three of Nima's dad's sisters (Ame means father's sister). Sara (15yo) and Peyman (33yo) are two of his cousins, Khaleh Nahid is Nima's grandmother's sister, and Agha Kosari is Nima's uncle (Parvin's husband). We spent the week with all of them, catching up on decades of life. Peyman, though, was often conspicuously absent - little did we know it was because the day we arrived he happened to meet the woman of his dreams, beginning a whirlwind romance that we'll describe later. The whole family seems to be gifted with an incredible sense of humor. We learned the drama of the extended family - love, passions (like Sara's deep love of the music group Arian), divorces, revolution, brushes with the Revolutionary Guards, hopes, and loneliness. We found a wonderful Farsi teacher in Ame Monir who improved Nima's ability to speak Farsi and taught me to read and write the Farsi script like a four year old. Everyday we felt Ame Manijeh's love in her words, stories, and hugs. Ame Parvin constantly protected us - after Agha Kosari took us on a challenging but beautiful mountain hike she was so worried that we were overtaxed and would fall ill that she warned poor Agha Kosari to not do that to us again. Khaleh Nahid is perhaps the funniest person I have ever met, in a way that's so hard to describe - you need to just watch her in action in every day life.Nima writing now:
In this eight day stretch with family I communicated almost exclusively in Farsi. I savored the opportunity to improve though occasionally I just wished that invisible language barrier would disappear so I wouldn’t constantly sound like a 6 year old. I had never before appreciated how much your perceived IQ drops when you’re speaking a foreign language. Like when I tried to formulate a question about Iran’s nuclear program but got stuck with my Farsi and asked Ame Monir for assistance with vocabulary: “[What’s nuclear energy again],” I said, and looking bemused she replied Well, they take these atoms and smash them together…]”. Despite such trials I persevered, aided by the unreliable pretty blue Persian-English dictionary that was glued to my body. Meanwhile Madhavi (as usual) started picking up words quickly – no thanks to me as often either I couldn’t translate what others were saying or I’d just sort of make it up. The first time we walked out in daylight we looked up and held our breaths for a moment. Rising thousands of feet into blue sky and draped in snow that belies the warm sunny city below, the Alborz mountains were staring straight at us, like the fortress wall of north Tehran. They are a stunning example of perhaps the greatest motif of the Iranian landscape: towering snow-covered mountains visible from base to peak contrasting sharply with everything below. As far as seeing the Alborz, we were apparently lucky as the air quality in the capital during our visit was unusually good - Tehran’s air is usually among the most polluted in the world, though it may be improving in part because Iran finally stopped producing a horrible exhaust-spewing clunker of an automobile called the Peykan (Lonely Planet accurately describes it as “a shitbox of the highest order”).
Our time in Tehran was quite relaxed. We did make it to the main bazaar, where we fell in love with a brilliantly colored tribal Kashkai carpet that we eventually bought. We didn’t do too much sight-seeing. One notable sight, however, was the National Treasury, which houses an astounding collection of priceless jewels including the Persian Peacock Throne and the largest pink diamond in the world. We also visited the old royal palaces, which were often depressingly gaudy but worth seeing anyway. One night the whole family took us to Alighapoo, a famous restaurant (on Gandhi St.) set underground with rich and colorful décor, solid food, and live traditional Persian music that starts at 9PM and runs well past midnight. The tombak (Persian drum) players were scintillating, the santoor (Persian xylophone) and tar (Persian guitar) players were very good, and the singers were terribly cheesy without ruining the whole thing. The urban culture and attitude of Tehran mostly reflect one overarching idea: we hate our government. From cabbies refusing to pick up mullahs (who, perhaps for safety reasons, are rarely seen in public), to women loaded with make-up with their headscarves pulled back revealing bleached blonde hair and walking hand-in-hand with their boyfriends who sport tight Armani T-shirts and punky spiky hair, to the general malaise palpable almost everywhere.
Of course, one of the best sources of opinion and perspective were the Iran’s ubiquitous taxi drivers. The drivers are mostly young-middle-aged men who nearly universally hate the Islamic regime. “[Iran is ruined]” was a common refrain. Often the criticism was laced with hilarious Persian humor deliverable only in the Persian language – we’ll give some examples in a future entry. One conversation, though, left us depressed for hours. The 20-something cabbie is college-educated, works 2-3 jobs, takes no days off, still lives with his parents with no prospect of ever buying a home (houses in the better neighborhoods in Tehran are more expensive than those in San Francisco) and is thus unlikely to marry anytime soon. I asked him if he had any hope, if the youth were capable of changing the system. “No,” he replied emphatically. I asked why. “[All the kids are depressed. If they’re not taking Prozac they’re doing drugs].” I asked what kinds of drugs. “[Opium, heroin, crack cocaine].” He continued, “[And the government likes it this way. If they catch you with alcohol you may be in trouble but if they catch you doing hard drugs you get a little slap on the wrist].” Another experience offered more hope. After detailing the misery of life without a future under the regime, the young driver said: “[The Persian people are smart. The Persian home – the family – is still special. We could be a great country. And despite all I’ve said, if anyone put their foot even 1cm onto our soil, I’d park my car that day and head to the front lines].”
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