Saturday, April 23, 2005

Dad's been here for the past month. This means going to junkyards to find and buy something for the garden. This means tasty Persian food... cooked by my father a genius in the art of cooking and last but not least a new addition to my little girl's favorite people! Dad isn't well and isn't anything like what he used to be. Mom's death has driven him to a different state of existence. We are one of those kiss and show affection families and I love to embrace dad in my arms and kiss his face several times. The little girl is reflecting it and I want to eat her up like watermelons. When my husband leaves home for office or to jog, she says: Dad, I miss you. (Baba! Delam barat tang shod) On another note. I have written a new poem with Ron Hudson and I like it a lot. We each have described our individual experiences with the revolution in Iran. I'm only posting two parts from the poem. Tehran I She smiled and spoke softly of Tehran and her family, of her uncle who left to buy bread, never to return home again. He was found a month later, bullet-ridden in an alleyway, once Khomeini had returned home. Terror filled our expatriate hearts at the taking of the Embassy and the thought that our youth would be lost for a war that we did not desire. Perhaps out of sense of responsibility, or because they, too, felt exiled in France, our Iranian friends invited us to meals or offered us rides when we faced long walks to and from home in Montpellier. Decades later, I attended a concert of classical Persian music. Luck would have my friend Sam and me seated in the very front row as Shajarian "The Iranian Paravotti" sang. At the end of the concert each musician bowed and placed his hand over his heart before reaching that hand toward us, the audience: a loving gesture... from their hearts to ours. Teheran II When the students scaled the walls of The House of Satan – their name for the U.S. Embassy – I would cry myself to sleep in fear of losing a loved one to the men, those handing out red flowers while holding machine guns. Soon public executions began - mass murder of dissidents and religious minorities; stoning, arbitrary arrests, flogging. Countless people were buried or burned. We feared and trembled with eyelids closed, a frightened gesture, a fearful prayer... from our hearts to theirs. ... and the poem continues