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