MISSING SPRING GARDEN

The office where I work part-time has moved. You can now find the newcomer in a snazzy, environment-conscious(which means we aren’t allowed garbage bins in our rooms) suite of rooms located in the heart of the campus of one of the many smaller universities which are so numerous in this part of the world.

Everything is new and shiny, with lots of light-coloured faux wood. There are glass partitions, which I hate, for obvious reasons. Colleagues keep stopping by and congratulating us on our move, as we are no longer “isolated” on Spring Garden avenue, and have joined the mainstream university. I am grateful for their sentiments, but I am missing Spring Garden horribly.  

I don’t want to sound like a tourist brochure for downtown Halifax, but honestly, the food! the shopping! Just in the last week, I got a nice-sized fresh crab-cake with a generous portion of beet salad from Spring garden food court for 6 dollars. Turkish, Indian, Lebanese, Japanese, Italian, continental and country cuisine were all five minutes walk from the old office, and at reasonable prices. You want caramel and pecan pie? Just across the place where they do steak-and-kidney pud.

Here, the options are: the student cafeteria, the student union, and the staff lounge, which I am told has the most limited options. Considering that the cafeteria offers ONLY turkey BLT sandwiches, the staff lounge probably has only stale bread and coffee.

Oh, and did I mention that the turkey blt sandwich cost over 7 dollars?

Oh, the good old days…

FORN STARS AND FROSTITUTES

Last week was a party for forn stars and frostitutes on cyberspace. First, I read about Dr. Brooke Magnanti, a PhD student in computer science living in London, worked for years as a frostitute to supplement her student income, and blogged about her seks-life, in a very successful and highly-read blog. Then, I hear than a famous American forn star has changed her name, stopped being a forn-star, and now has a book deal and generally received a lot of publicity about her memoirs, experiences etc etc. She too is blogging (under her new name)- her mum and dad read her blog and are so proud of her…

Their revelations has caused a fair amount of controversy, which does not really interest me- though the statement made in relation to the PhD student-frostitute made me laugh and firmed my resolve never to apply for PhD: ‘I did not know any girl who was not a PhD student at the brofel’. What is fascinating for me is the overwhelmingly positive feedback these ladies are receiving from  their society, as evidenced by their book deals, the comments on their blogs, their TV appearances, their media interviews.  They are not ashamed of their lives, they are proud of what they did, their mums and dads love them, they’re wonderful, independent, brilliant, strong, blah blah blah.

How different, how absolutely different from Iran.

Other Iranian bloggers have noted how, if a woman gets recorded having seks in a Western country, she shoots to popularity and fame (who had ever heard of Paris Hilton before her boyfriend did her a favour and put the recording he had made of their union on the internet?), but if the same happens in Iran, the woman has to flee, she is prosecuted, she is persecuted, she is rejected from society, she becomes a worthless piece of filth.  

The point I am trying to make here is that it is not just the Iranian regime who hate women who have seks outside marriage. Iranian society as a whole has a problem with -let’s call them unconventional women. And basically,  any woman who has a boyfriend is an unconventional woman. And she must hide her life from her family.

It doesn’t matter how well-educated or liberal a family is, how many years they have spent in European and American universities studying nuclear physics and neurosurgery, how much alcohol they consume at their elegant in-house secretive parties. Their daughters simply don’t have seks. That guy she’s talking with, holding hands with, laughing with- that guy over there? Oh- he is just a family friend, they plan on getting married, he is her university classmate. Our daughters don’t know what seks is if it came and hit them in the forehead.  

You want their technology. You want their freedoms. You want their movies and their books. You want their science.

Can you cope with your  girls talking about being frostitutes and form-stars? Will you be proud of them? Will you listen to their interviews, read their books and blogs, treat them with respect? It’s all part and parcel of the same package deal, you know.

LONG BLONDE HAIR

Perhaps you think Canadian ladies don’t follow a rigid code for their appearance,  but you would be wrong. They have a code, and although it is unwritten and there are no semi-legal, paramilitary bullies to enforce them, the ladies obey it as rigidly as if there were.

The code is most tangible when it comes to hair. Here are several of the classifications you can find around academic environs:

-Lady professors and high-ranking lady managers: Always, always short hair, MAXIMUM to the shoulders. I have never seen a lady professor with hair below shoulders. Always natural colour, or a dyed colour AS CLOSE AS POSSIBLE to natural colour. I believe it is part of their contract: You Will Not Have Long, Dyed Hair While Employed By This University.

-Students: Only one hair colour allowed: Black. In high-schoolers, you see some blues and greens and pinks, but by university, the only hair-colour you see is black. Otherwise, natural blondey-brunette, often blow-dryed, longish, swinging by or below shoulders.

-Other Lady Staff: By which I mean all the other ladies who run the university on a day-to-day basis, the admin assistants, the co-ordinators, the secretaries, etc: long blonde hair. No natural colour, but a bright distinctive yellow, with long curled waves well below the shoulders, and long bangs just above the eyes. 

The reason for this is of course that they have the most boring and/or annoying jobs, and by virtue of their job, they look upon the other two groups (faculty and students) as major irritants. And they have discovered that there is nothing which disguises their annoyed expressions as well as a mane full of swirling long blond hair.

YOU ARE OPPRESSED, AND YOU ARE VERY CONFUSED

OK, Maryam Rana, you 21-year old student at Toronto University, you who have decided to wear a niqab which covers all your face,  I will rise to your bait. I will give you some more publicity, which you clearly crave, with your bright green Calvin Klein headscarf, your bright red shoes and your willingness to be photoed and displayed in newspapers to talk of your modesty. I read about you a few days ago, and saw your photo with the black cloth hanging from your scarf and covering your face, and I have been seething with rage ever since.

So you don’t think you are oppressed, huh? You think your decision to wear a niqab, followed by the subsequent decsion to appear in national newspapers and talk about yourself and your faith is a purely private, personal matter, and people should respect your decisions, and stop giving you dirty looks in the street?

No madam. If you really think that, then you clearly haven’t been paying attention to your university classes, or in fact to the world. The decision for a woman to cover her face as a sign of her “religion” in a country where gender equality is the law, and then publicly discuss her decsion in newspapers is definitely not just a purely private act. And it most certainly does not deserve respect.

Because madam, in case you don’t know, there are countries in the world where women are forced, under the pain of extreme corporal and humuliating punishment, to wear headgear as a sign of their supposed “modesty”. There are countries where  women who are forced to wear hijab are also forced to have a man take all their important life decisions for them. These include forcible marriage and denial of education, just to name two. By choosing to cover your face, you are signalling your solidarity with the oppressors of these woman. You are saying, yes, that is right. That is what the system should be. You are showing your covered face in the newspaper, and you are sending the message: this is what the ideal woman looks like. Like me.

Don’t give me that twaddle about respecting other people’s faith and religion is purely private blah blah blah. Of course you have to say that, in Canada! But you know in reality, that brand of religion which you subscribe to is no way near private and personal. It is a very public religion, and it demands that all humanity be incorporated into its community, the “ommat”. Have you never heard of the ommat? Did your religion-studies teacher never tell you? Do you see what is happening in the countries where this “religion” of yours has the power?

Will you allow your father to forcibly marry you to a man forty years older than you? Will you allow your husband to beat you because you don’t obey all his (seksual) wishes? If he tells you you must stay in the house, and not visit your parents, not go to school, will you obey, or will you scream for the (Canadian) police? Because you do know, don’t you, that is what your “religion” demands. You can’t just pick and choose the parts you like, and say, ok, these other parts are not for me. Religion is a whole, a whole way of life, and it literally means submission. You know that. And I have spent many years in the mandatory religious education classes of a theocratic regime, so I know that as well.

So just shut up, Maryam Rana. Shut up about your personal decision to wear a niqab, shut up about your red shoes and green designer headscarf. Wear a niqab, if that’s what you feel you must do to get some attention and feel all self-righteous and virtuous about yourself. But don’t blather on about your so-called personal decisions, and don’t put your picture in the newspapers, please, it just makes the women who came to Canada to escape all that feel sick.

ODE TO GLUTTONY

People have been killed, others have been tortured, others have been exiled, and so on. Old news. Here is the list of restaurants I’m going to visit in Tehran during Christmas, in no particular order:

• The Blue Duck.

With its magnificent view of Tajrish square which mysteriously eliminates the traffic, situated at the top on one of Tehran’s most elegant and fun shopping malls, this restaurant offers an all-you-can-eat buffet-style menu with both continental and persian fare. A white-hatted chef prepares the plat-du-jour as you watch, and there is a wonderful salad bar.

• Farid.

Best known for its steaks, chateau-briands and beouf stroganoffs, and… the memories. Memories, memories, memories.  The last time I was there, just my luck, there was a memorial service for a dead father on the bottom floor, and I had to feast to the sound of wailing and the sing-song voice of the chief mourner. By the time the mourner began “and his son, overseas and alone, crying father, father…” I was hiccupping with sobs into my steak with mushroom sauce.

• Safa.

Dirty, crowded and noisy, Safa is in the heart of Tehran downtown, close to Tehran University and Enghelab square, and serves chelo-kabab straight from the pots of heaven.

• Suren.

A quiet old house off Hafez avenue, decorated with elegant dusty old chandeliars, heavy velvet curtains and a large old-fashioned garden with a stone pool. It is always almost empty, like a haunted house, and the old proprieter sits at the front, murmuring courtesies. The beef schnitzel, served with a fried egg, is the best.

• Small House

Off Fatemi avenue, if you arrive by eight in the evening you have sit on the pavement for an hour or so until your turn comes and you can get a seat. Never mind. The weird and wonderful stir-fries are worth the wait.

• Hafez Eatery

Filthy, yes. But the brain and tongue sandwiches are delectable, while the grilled trout, wrapped in foil, is to die for.

• Stewed sheep’s head somewhere close to Manouchehri

I actually can’t remember the name of the shop. It has a huge aquarium covering one wall with horrible monstrous huge fish swimming from side to side, fed on scraps from the pot. However, the stewed brain and eyes, spiced with cinnamon and fresh lemon juice (Seville oranges in season), are so delicious that even the sight of those hungry silent monsters do not dim our appetite.

• Liver kabab, anywhere south of Enghelab.

All are good. I love all of them.

So, if you come looking for the newcomer in Tehran during the Christmas season, you know where to look. There are people I suppose I should see, grandparents and old friends and such like. As far as I am concerned, they can babysit while I hit the pots.

MOTHERS LIKE COFFEE

Or, WHY YOU SHOULDN’T MAKE FRIENDS WITH THE PARENTS OF YOUR CHILDREN”S FRIENDS

Even when an adult friendship is well-established beforehand, it tends to dissolve after the two adults have children, if they are of the same age. Or if not actually dissolve, re-negotiate the boundaries, as the academia jargon calls it. Because, as any parent knows, but cannot say outright, there is nothing more pernicious, dangerous, loathsome, and generally more evil in this world than Your Children’s Friends. And since you have to blame every unpleasant action of your children on those friends, it is a good idea not to become friendly with their parents, even if you see them constantly. Because you are sworn enemies.

The Friends are in fact nothing other than a gang of evil aliens in the guise of ordinary kids put in your child’s school / daycare with the express purpose of corrupting your darling innocent baby. I heard my mother express – no, howl and scream this sentiment ten thousand times as I and my siblings were growing up, now I am feeling it with my own flesh and blood. And the awful thing is, you actually have to pretend to like The Friends.

The Friends have taught the princess about playing games on the internet, about boys kissing girls and vice-versa, and other icky-yucky stuff. They have taught her say “none of your beeswax” when she wants the phone to call one of Them, and you ask why. Basically, they have taught her to challenge parents constantly. And I am pretty sure that The Friends have taught the golden boy his impressive vocabulary of Farsi swear words, even though there are no Iranian kids in his daycare. I mean, everyone knows that swear words are universal, so there is no reason why little Tom or Jack from the daycare should not know that mothers drinking coffee is in fact a terrible swear word in Farsi. Otherwise, why would the golden boy talk about mothers and coffee ten times a day, every day? (and in case you’re wondering, no, his father doesn’t swear in front of the children, either) 

Don’t ask me why. I didn’t even know mothers and coffee was awful well into my twenties (I’m not joking. Tell any Iranian man that his mother likes coffee and he will freak out and go bat-crazy, do you remember what the Zeinuddin Zeidan did to the Italian footballist? Something like that, only worse).

The worst thing is, the golden boy’s vocabulary has influenced mine, so I, such a language puritan, find myself talking of mothers/coffee constantly. The washing-machine isn’t working? God, his mother sure likes coffee. The laptop is hanging again. This mother-coffee-drinker is driving me crazy. And so on.

See you horrible Friends, what have you done? Your mothers are all coffee-drinkers.

“THEY’LL SHOOT YOU IN THE AIRPORT! NO JAVAD, DON’T GO!”

So cried a devoted British wife to her beloved Iranian husband, upon hearing he intended to return to Iran to visit his family. It was a couple of years after the Iranian revolution, and lurid stories about Iran were circulating everywhere. However, my parents, close friends of this couple, found the hysterics of the lady to be particularly hilarious (no, my parents are not particuarly nice people. Interesting, but not nice), and her cry became a watchword for ill-informed Westerners who made superficial judgements about Iran based on what their media and government fed them. Shoot him in the airport indeed! Where do they think Iran is- Cambodia?

But, now, sitting on the fence myself, I feel sympathetic to the lady with the Iranian husband (who was never shot in any airport, and is now a happy grandfather.) I am going back to Iran for a family visit, just like Javad, and a sneaking part of me is afraid, well, not of being shot in airport, but of something unpleasant happening.

Take my passport. The first couple of pages bear a photo of me wearing strict Islamic hijab. then, several pages further on, you come across another photo of me, nestling in a Schengen visa, my hair frizzing about my shoulders in their wild natural state. No Hijab. Sorry, I forgot. Is that bad? Will airport officers notice? Will they make a fuss?

Take this blog. I have actually heard that one guy, who was the friend of somebody who was the brother of somebody, was arrested in the airport because of his blog. He was jailed and sentenced to execution. No- not that guy. Someone else, someone ordinary, not notorious or well-read or highly political or anything. Just an ordinary guy, with a blog reflecting his personal thoughts and stuff. A lot, probably, like mine.

 It’s paranoia, I know. I mean, how many Iranian travellors are there? How is it possible to keep tabs on them all? Why is it even necessary? When you have everything, why would a not-important blog or picture be threatening?

So we will go, we will have a wonderful time, we will bask in love and delight in the company of our most cherished people. And nothing bad will happen.

SOUP, SOUP, BEAUTIFUL SOUP

My creativity these days is severely impaired by the flu season. Any energy I have devoted to making different sick-foods. So here goes:

The secret to making good soup is stock. And the secret to making stock is to just make it.

This is our household soup-making routine these days

Day 1: In the morning, prepare stock. Stock is ready by evening.

Day 2: prepare soup with stock made yesterday and eat.

I make stock in small quantities as I don’t have the utensils or huge pots for large amounts. For stock, I put any chicken parts, plus any available vegetables (including tons and tons of garlic) in a pan, and cover with water. Bring to boil and let simmer for hours and hours and hours. From morning to night. At night, I strain the mixture, pressing some of the pulped solids through the sieve in to the stock, and refrigerate. In the morning, I have beautiful bowl of jelly-like stock,  ready for use.

Here are two recipes for the soups I made this week:

1-split pea and vegetable soup: This is a nice thick yellowy soup.

Wash split peas, cover with water, bring to boil and let simmer. Add a nice bowlful of stock. Chop and add available vegetables; but not too much or not too many different varieties. I had potato and celery, annd just one small carrot.  Don’t let cook for too long. at the very end, add some snipped parsely.

2-Mushroom and rice soup: This is a filling creamy soup.

Wash and chop mushrooms, melt butter, add mushrooms to butter. I also  added some celery, simply because I have some sitting in the fridge. After a while, add some flour. Keep stirring. Slowly add some milk, until you have a thick creamy paste swirling around the vegetables. Add a bowful of stock. Add a handful of washed rice. Bring to boil, and let simmer. Finally, add some snipped parsely. You can have this with grated cheese for a more savoury kick.

In any case, making soups isn’t particularly easy (think, preparing and chopping all those vegetables), the kids make a helluva fuss eating it, and nor has it succeeded in banishing the flu from the house. We are drowning in soup and flu. Nevertheless, I continue making a pot of soup every other day, following time-honoured tradition. There is something morally decadent about not having soup when  you’re sick.

However, tonight, I am hoping to have a chicken and mango pizza from the local delicatessen. Death to soup.

GOLDEN RICE

If I may say so, I think zereshk-polo-ba-morgh (chicken, rice and cranberry-like berries) is pretty much overrated. Yes, I know it is the standard fare of weddings and restaurants, and I know Iranians eat it while moaning with pleasure, if not actually bursting into tears of delight, but the greasy chicken in the orangey-red sauce, and the saffroned rice with the little shrivelled red zereshks  never did it for me.

My favourite chicken-and-rice dish is tah-chin, which can be more or less translated as `layered at the end` or something like that.  Here is how I make it, which can vary significantly from how other families do it:

Cook chicken (can also be made with pieces of meat, but I don’t like that so much) with onions, turmeric etc- you know the drill now. Let cool, de-bone, so you are left with a heap of white chicken meat.

Bring a pan of salted water to boil, add rice. After a short while, drain rice.

Peel and slice a potato.

Put several spoonfuls of yoghurt in a large bowl, and mix with salt and saffron until yoghurt is a deep golden-yellow colour. Do NOT add tomato paste to this mixture. Do NOT add eggs. Some people do, but we don’t know them.

Taking spoonfuls one-by-one, add about one-third of the parboiled rice to the saffron-yoghurt mixture, carefully stirring, until the rice is well-coated with the yoghurt.

Meanwhile, put some water in the bottom of a deep non-stick pan, add some salt and a good knob of butter, and put on heat until water is boiling and butter melted. Arrange the potatoe slices at the bottom of the pan. Let the potatoes fry a bit in the buttery-watery mixture in the bottom of the pan. Gently begin adding the rice-saffron-yoghurt mixture over the potatoes.

Once you have finished spooning the rice-saffron-yoghurt, smooth it, and arrange the pieces of chicken on the top of it.

Then, add the rest of the white rice, filling the pan up.

Put a tight lid, and turn the heat low. Let cook for about 15 minutes. Turn off the heat, and wait. Inside that pot is a raging inferno. Yes, I know you’re starving and the smell of melted butter and saffrony rice is driving you crazy, but believe me, you have to wait until the rice cools enough to be served without running the risk of second-degree burns.

Then, turn the pot upside-down  on a flat serving tray. If you are a grandmother, the pot of rice will fall out beautifully, like a round golden cake decorated on top with golden fried potatoes. If you are the rest of us, the white rice will crumble out, and you have to stab at the rest with a fork and scrape it out. In either case, the taste will be delicious, I promise you.

SIESTA

So I’m sick. I cough and my chest aches, I feel fuzzy, I have a sore throat. No, according to my doc, it’s not the you-know-what, it’s bronchitis.

And it’s great, because I get to stay at home in the afternoons and sleep.

I love the Canadian sick-leave culture. Back home, when people stayed home on sick leave, other colleagues raised their eyebrows and made snide comments. And any decision to stay at home due to sickness was accompanied by dread feelings of agonizing guilt, paranoia that something is going to wrong and they’ll blame me, and so much stress that I often ended getting up going to work by 10:00 am anyway.

Not that Iranians are workoholics -not that I know. It was just the place where fate had put me- it was one of those places with a very definite “corporate culture”, I believe the term is.

But here, oh love. Pure love. You have a sore throat? Stay at home, don’t come near. Coughing? Stand back, stand back or I’ll shoot you now. The managers and colleagues practically fall over themselves telling you to stay at home, grace a Mr. H1N1.  

And it’s nice. My bed catches the afternoon sun, the children are in school/daycare, the flat peaceful. I fall into deep warm afternoon slumbers tinged with a drug-induced haziness, I stagger awake and make myself some tea, drink several cups with chocolate and then get the kids, ready to face the evening rioting.

Honestly, I feel I am resting from a lifetime, not just this bronchitis. I often hear- how do working, studying mothers manage? When you are in the midst of it all, you don’t know how you’re managing, you just know that you are doing things one by one, as necesssary. It’s only when the machinery breaks down  that you realise how much you need these siestas.

Now, if only I could be sure none of us would die from the flu, I would be quite, quite relaxed…