Khoresh-e Gheimeh

Khoresh-e Karafs

Sizdah-Bedar 2007 in Irvine

Today, something like 65,000 Iranian-Americans lined the banks of a park in Irvine to celebrate the thirteenth day after Persian New Year, and I was there through most of it, sleeping on a blanket in the shade. All 65,000 of us had to pay at least $10 for parking.

A Persian grocery store (it's on Westwood Blvd. by UCLA) wished us all a happy new year via air message. It says, "Happy Norooz Jordan Market." Two years ago, Reza Pahlavi, Jr., the exiled prince himself, had the same idea. But his little plane said, "Happy Norooz Reza Pahlavi, Jr."

There were no kebabs for sale! People just brought their own meat. . . and teapots and Persian rugs and backgammon sets and desserts and fruits and cheese and nuts and rice and waterpipes and soccer balls and dogs that fit in purses. . .

. . . and almost every family had their own personal old school grandma with a scarf on her head. She's not mine, I just took a picture of her.

By the way, Wikipedia has pretty informative articles about the ancient Zorastrian-Persian traditions of celebrating Norooz (Norouz) and Sizdah-Bedar.

If My Iranian Grandmother Invited Gina Lollobrigida to a Tea Party, Does That Mean That I Got the Italophilia Gene from Both Sides?

It's the Friday before finals week. One of my professors cancelled our take-home paper and gave us all full credit, so I've only got three exams and a lengthy research paper left to finish. Graduate school applications are due next week, and I have until January to finish the Colonus translation. I will be "home" for the break from December 18 to January 7, and my mom said that we might go up to the mountains to visit her husband's family for New Years.

Maybe some wilderness will cause me to pick up my camera again, especially now that Taleen has given me a tripod as a belated 21^st birthday present. I turn 22 on January 8.

Even though nothing has inspired me visually lately, the nerves in my skull have been firing incessantly: before I go to sleep, all through the night, in the morning, while people are attempting to have conversations with me. . . This is the first time in my entire college career that I am actually excited about going to the library and staying in it all day. (The Querini Stampalia Library in Venice doesn't count because I went for aesthetic and atmospheric change.) I can't believe it, but I actually love learning again. I don't think I have been this excited about school since fifth grade taxonomy!

What a relief it is to have the pliability of my brain back.

Anyways, enough of bookishness. Without any acrobatic frogs or springtime lighting to tickle my fancy, my index finger is lacking in exercise. I have to keep resorting to old material, and this time it is really old.

These pictures (circa 1970) are of my dad, Fariborz, and his mom, Farah, in Iran. I think I look a lot like her when I am not wearing my glasses. My dad tells this great story of how my grandmother invited Gina Lollobrigida (Italian actress) to a womens' society tea party in Teheran. She actually showed up, but they had no common language, so they communicated using my favorite body language tools: smiles and eyes.

This is an even older picture of my grandparents, Farah and Reza, on their wedding day. Possibly mid-1940's? Yes, that is a Persian rug under their feet.