|
My Little Cocoon By: Fariborz Mofidian ------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------ |
| It all seems light years and galaxies away. Though in historical or
geographical terms, it does not seem that distant. You see my friends, I
once lived in a magical
little cocoon a few miles wide and a fewer miles long. It was the late fifties and early sixties and the place was Tehran. I was
neither of royal blood nor born with a silver spoon in mouth. We were ordinary middle class and I had not traveled outside my homeland. But I didn't have to. The world was at MY feet ! At home, on a hot summer afternoon, I could go to my mother's bookshelves and find Balzac, Tolstoy, Chekov, Dastayevsky and Hugo and lose myself in a fantastic journey of time mad place. Next to them were Khayaam, Hafez, Forough and Parveen to remind me of my strong and colorful heritage. I could go upstairs into our living room, and open the record player and indulge in 45s and 33s from all over the world. I spent endless hours there, listening to Nat King Cole, Sinatra and Ray Charles, Piaff, Montan and Aznavour, Kolthoom and Atrash and Banaan, Delkash and Shahidi and enjoy and appreciate them equally. We lived in central Tehran in an "L" shaped street, each end opening into a major avenue. it's hard to believe, but on our left lived a Zoroastrian family, right across from us a devoutly Muslim family with an absolutely gorgeous daughter named Akram, on our left an Armenian family whose daughters Anahid and Kenarik were close friends of my sisters. Next to them were two houses owned by Bahaii families, and at the end of the street there was a Jewish doctor who often took care of my endless injuries and bleeding nose free of charge! We, the kids I mean, were all friends. We either played "Daj-Ball" out in the street together, or went into each other's houses for different games and fun. Dads always welcomed the friends and moms always cooked or prepared something seasonal for all the kids. The movie nights were the most magical, mostly accompanied by my younger uncles or aunt. Tehran was lit with thousands and thousand of neon lights. Niagara, Metropol, Radio-city, Cinema- Mahtab and cinema-Royal were the theaters. The anticipation and the following excitement are indescribable. We could watch the latest movies from Hollywood and Europe. They were all dubbed, and many years later when I traveled abroad I was amazed on how identical the voice of those Iranians were to that of the real actors!! We saw everything. We laughed with Jerry Lewis and Norman Wisdom, admired John Wayne and Charlton Huston, loved Monroe, Sophia and Bardot. We watched the westerns, the musicals, the historical epics and the horror and love stories with same zeal and fascination and shaped and formed our worlds. But we also watched Fardeen and Parveen-e- Ghaffari with the same enthusiasm. Every now and then, the school principal would send us all to the high-way close to our school which was on the way to the airport. We were always given a different flag to wave, depending on who the visiting foreign dignitary would be. We waved and cheered for all of them with the same excitement and enthusiasm. De-Gaulle, Gromiko, L.B.J., Heile-Maryam-Siassi......, from emperors and kings to presidents and prime ministers. We always used the chaos afterwards to sneak out to Andre Bakery and celebrate the arrival of the new dignitary with either a mouth watering French pastry or a delicious Akbar-Mashti ice cream!! My cocoon had four clear, beautiful seasons. In winter I was knee-deep in snow. In fall I would walk the side-walks, covered by a sea of colorful dry leaves. In spring, the smell of roses and blossoms were everywhere. And nothing beat the sleeping in "Pash-e-band" on the terrace on a hot summer night. The sky was velvet blue and you could almost reach out and catch a shooting star.
|
