Marathon Men

Jean Baudrillard, America, pg. 19:

I would never have believed that the New York marathon could move you to tears. It really is the end-of-the-world show. Can we speak of suffering freely entered into as we might speak of a state of servitude freely entered into? In driving rain, with helicopters circling overhead and the crowd cheering, wearing aluminium foil capes and squinting at their stop-watches, or bare-chested, their eyes rolling skywards, they are all seeking death, that death by exhaustion that was the fate of the first Marathon man some two thousand years ago. And he, let us not forget, was carrying a message of victory to Athens. They also dream no doubt of bringing a victory message, but there are too many of them and their message has lost all meaning: it is merely the message of their arrival, at the end of their exertions, the twilight message of a futile, superhuman effort.

An afternoon cup of tea

Impatience with paparazzi

Recession specials and an angry employee

A moment in time

Waiting for the bus one February afternoon.

What's in a name?

In eastern Newfoundland there is a charming seaside village called Dildo. Yes, they know it's a silly name but they like it and they're keeping it. In fact, they are cashing in on it -- christening their own superhero, Captain Dildo!

Not so the people of Gayside, a town so embarrassed by its name that residents petitioned to have it renamed. This story may or may not be true but it was told and retold by proud Newfoundlanders so many times that I chose to believe them. Apparently in defense of the name change, one elderly resident reported to a local television crew, "When you tell people you live in Gayside, they looks (sic) at you right queer!" The new name, reportedly, is Baytown.

Other quirky Newfoundland place names: Black Joke Cove, named for a notorious pirate ship; Devils' Dressing Table; The Tickles; Slambang Bay and Come by Chance.

Beer, burgers and beastly humidity

It's that time again. Time to barbecue slabs of red meat, drink beer and send small gunpowder-filled rockets into the night sky. It's the 4th of July (and, by remarkable yearly coincidence, Canada Day as well).

We're back in North America now and feeling happy, tired and befuddled. We're in the middle of packing up a house that we barely lived in and already we feel so disconnected to it and everything inside and around it. The things that feel most familiar and comfortable are those things that we just brought over in our suitcases. It's a strange life.

Iran seems like a lifetime ago, and it has only been one week since we left. Were we ever really there? Walking through the supermarket here picking up groceries, it all seems so normal and North American -- hard to believe that just a few days ago none of this existed in our reality.

Extra, Extra!

This country has perfected the art of making you want to leave it. The insane drivers, the snarly service, having to balance a piece of cloth on your head, not being allowed to go swimming in a lake... the list goes on and on.

It will be hard, however, to add to my collection of fantastically funny front pages when I leave. This one is my favourite so far.

Move over Aamir Khan...

... here come Mahmoud and Rashid.

Don't these guys have star quality? They are SO ready for their close-ups!!

When they make it big in Bollywood remember, you read it here first!

More hijab hijinks

My friend told me a story about how she went to see the gynecologist here. She, of course, was asked to strip from the waist down and wear a gown. But she was requested to keep her head scarf on!

Another friend told me about an elderly tourist who arrived at the airport only to discover she had packed her scarf in her luggage. When she reached the passport control desk they stopped her and after explaining her story, they resorted to covering her head with a plastic bag!

Big cheese

I've always believed in having a Plan B -- a little dream you can put into action when all else fails. Just when I was reaching a low point with my work and a high point in frustration with this country, it seems I might have stumbled on an answer.

I can be an intern! (Albeit a 34-year old intern with a Masters degree.)

But this is not just any internship... this is in the Artisanal cheese caves!

It may seem an unusual dream, but it's one I've had for more than a year... to learn about cheese with the idea of one day having a small seaside cheese shop of my own, carrying selective, delicious cheeses.

Cheese! How can anyone not be excited by it! I feel like singing "Climb every mountain"!

Take this hijab and shove it

I'm leaving tonight for 10 days of reprieve... Time off for good behaviour.

It will be great to see family and friends, eat pork and walk with my head uncovered. After almost a year, I still can't quite figure out the whole head scarf thing. It's a pain in the ass when it keeps slipping and covering our hair really does nothing to protect a woman's modesty. I probably get more stares, jeers and lewd comments here than I have anywhere. Thankfully I don't understand exactly what is being said but the body language says enough.

The issue has come to a bit of a head at work too, where schools have started to refuse to visit our resource centre because the women there don't cover up. What amazes me is that it's still a problem even if it is a group of girls. Apparently it is just too difficult for the teachers and parents to explain to the girls why some women don't wear a head scarf. I guess telling them that the world is full of different people with different religions and traditions is asking too much.

Full Frontal Foolishness

One of the things I like best about the prophet of Zoroastrianism is that he was a man. He was not the Son of God sent to Earth to free mankind from themselves. There was no Immaculate Conception, no angels flying in through windows, no magical garden in the sky or anything that far-fetched.

Zarathustra was a simple man. He tended sheep. He had a wife. He had children. Oh, and yes, he had a penis.

The beautiful statue you see here was created by Australian artist Peter Schipperheyn as a metaphor for the dualistic and ever-present struggle we face every day. The image came to him in a dream and after struggling to discern its meaning he stumbled across our ancient prophet. He named the sculpture Zarathustra in homage to the man who first taught of the struggle between good and evil.

Being one of the smallest religious minorities in the world, our community should have been grateful and proud of this artistic recognition. But in an ironic twist, Parsis badgered and bullied the man until he was so confused and upset that he gave in and changed the statue's name! It is now called 'Thus Spake', which to me undermines and detracts from the true meaning of the work and instead pays homage to Nietzsche.

The complaint, it seems, was that the prophet was depicted naked, which people considered insulting and offensive. The community immediately hit the keyboards and started emailing bellicose messages expressing:

"...deep disappointment, sadness and astonishment that you would name this sculpture Zarathushtra, the name of a great Prophet.. The statue is neither a likeness (nor should it be) of the Great, all knowing Prophet but to depict Him nude is both disgusting to our sentiments and offensive... The religion and its peoples have always been open, forward thinking, honest, tolerant and sensitive to all other religions, castes and creeds. I would never encourage or give plaudits to anyone who did it, but I wonder how you would feel if someone were to do depict your God or Prophet inappropriately (i.e. as a full frontal nude)?"

I hate this kind of knee-jerk defensiveness and think it goes really counter to the main teachings of our religion: Good Thoughts, Good Words, Good Deeds. In an attempt at a good deed of my own, I sent a message of support and congratulations to the artist and got back a sweet and thoughtful reply, a portion of which I am pasting here:

"I decided to call my sculpture 'Zarathustra.' This all happened quickly, and as far as the commissioner was concerned I was making a sculpture with a strange sounding name derived from a book by a mad German philosopher that no one really understood.

However the sheer poetry of this beautiful sounding name totally obsessed me, in my heart a mystique was enveloping the sculpture I was to make. As my understanding grew of this book and as I researched more and more the meaning of Nietzsche's book I began to get more and more interested in whom Zarathustra was and then began to research who he was.

When I read about the concept of dualism of the eternal struggle between the forces of light and dark and between good and evil, "He was wise enough to recognize that all the motives of human beings are based on action and reaction" I thought "That is it. I have found the spiritual meaning of the clenched fist and the open hand gesture that I had dreamed all those years ago." It meshed entirely in my mind with what I was trying to express.

The more I researched the more excited I became, to learn of an individual who lived so long ago whose teachings have been woven so tightly into subsequent spiritual traditions including my own [I was raised as a Christian] and yet whose presence has faded from contempory knowledge, in general I have found most people [in the West] know next to nothing of who Zarathustra was let alone the history of their own traditions. I am often saying to people now, "You know the three Magi in the Bible ... you realize they were Zoroastrian Priests."

I don't understand how we could squelch this kind of enthusiasm for our religion? I think it's awful, small-minded and petty. No wonder we're shrinking into obscurity.

I encourage everyone to visit the artist's homepage to see more photos and read the full story behind the sculpture. Until then, here's a sneak preview.

Some gals will do anything for kicks

I have always had a bit of a penchant for 1940s pulp fiction so imagine my surprise when I saw this little gem at a flea market in Tehran. I bought it for its sheer shock value (plus the fact that it only cost around a buck). Unfortunately it's not in perfect condition since, despite its racy content, some kid got his hands on it and put pen scribbles all over the cover.

For those of you who, like me, are curious about what passed for licentious literature 60 years ago, here's a sample:

"She wanted something, and she was willing to buy it. That much was obvious. she was throwing me all the cues.

I put my arm around her and pulled her toward me, then planted a long and deliberately passionate kiss on her velvet lips. She pulled away a little, drew a breath. Then she pressed herself hard against me and wriggled her body just a bit. This was it. My hand reached inside her gown..."

Not bad, eh? If the suspense is killing you, I'll let you know that the relationship didn't last. This, alas, was not love for Johnny McCoy.

Here's a brief summary of the story, which in the end turned out to be not bad. Johnny McCoy is a New York City jazzman who used to blow with progressive jazz great Tommy Vissano. They were revolutionary but ahead of their time and when we meet Johnny he's a bit down on his luck. That luck changes when he meets Lindsey (see above) who proposes that he front a progressive jazz quartet and give the thing one more chance. The only catch... the other three musicians are dames. Chicks playing jazz... can you imagine!

Anyway, to cut a long story short, Johnny shows all of them a thing or three, has some wild nights, misses his real chance at love and ends up in the clink.

Not exactly prize-winning fiction, but the greatest thing about these books is their advertising. I mean, just look at that cover... How could anyone resist it? The promotional text on the back cover contains this gem: "It looked like a picnic for Johnny and his harem of hep-kittens..." Pure genius!

I'll keep my eyes peeled for more like it.

Pigs don't sing

Tomorrow is the day you will all get to set your clocks forward and lose an hour of sleep. The benefit of this time of year is the wonderfully long nights, when at the height of summer it stays light until late at night and you feel the evenings could go on forever.

Well banish these thoughts you evil heathens!

Daylight savings is un-Islamic. This according to the government of the I.R. who banned it this year. Although it was a measure brought in to the country 14 years ago to save energy by making the most of the natural sunlight, the fear is that it throws off the natural rhythm of prayer. People get confused and then pray at the wrong times. So forget the potential cost savings and conservation benefit... electricity is cheap and on-time prayers more important. But, I ask, isn't that what the muezzin is for?

I am told time after time in this country... Don't look for logic where none exists. I guess it's like that old saying "Never teach a pig to sing. It wastes your time and annoys the pig."

Mercury Madness

It's a long-standing joke that Iranians invented everything. But there's one thing I take exception to... Please, Iran, stop trying to claim that Freddie Mercury was Iranian!

Freddie was born Farrokh Balsara in Zanzibar, Tanzania. His parents were Indian Zoroastrians. Granted our ancestors (Freddie's and mine) originally came from Persia, but that was 1,000 years ago! Freddie was more African than he was Iranian, really!

We Parsis have so little. Most people have never heard of our prophet and think Zubin Mehta is Jewish. One of our few worldwide claims to fame was aapro Freddie. Even though Freddie changed his name, lived a wild life that probably didn't always include good thoughts, good words and good deeds and left little to the Parsi community when he died, we still want him. In fact, we NEED him.

So forgive me, Iran, for being a little defensive on the Freddie front, but you have so much to be famous for and we Parsis are holding on to what little we have. So back off... or I might have to refer the issue to a higher body!

I'm a one-comb-woman

Last weekend I stopped at a street-side fortune teller near the bazaar in Zanjan. He was a fascinating-looking character with a full white beard and a woolen cap pulled low on his head.

My expectations of what he might tell me weren't too high, but I was hoping for a little clarity on our currently muddled life situation... a hint of things to come? A glimpse of where we might land?

Our mystical mate asked for my first name and my mother's first name. Then he set to work flicking the beads of an abacus around in no particular order. When he was satisfied with the results and the abacus was safely back in its plastic covering, he took a very battered book from his lap and began reading in a monotone voice, speaking heavily Turk-inflected Farsi.

My friend AmirReza translated a summary of my fortune thusly: "Don't share your comb with anybody. A person with red hair is your enemy. Be good to your husband. Buy a turquoise ring for good luck."

Finally! Words to live by...

Like a virgin

This is my first ever blog. Wish I could say it is something I've been wanting to do for a long time but, really, the idea just came to me. Please enjoy responsibly.