Musings

Last Saturday I received the copy-edited files of Among the Iranians. Every single correction and amendment has to be checked, queries raised by the copy-editor addressed, bits and pieces added or moved around. And all this has to be returned to the project editor by Tuesday 20 October.

One day last week I was walking home from the metro station. I had been shopping at the Central Bazaar of Tehran and was fairly exhausted. On the way home I passed a lovely small square with grass, trees and blue-and-orange benches, just like the one to the north of our block of flats. There are four such squares in our neighbourhood, where mothers and children, youngsters or elderly people often spend some time in. That day the square was unusually quiet; maybe it was still too early. A middle-aged man brought an elderly man in his wheelchair and helped him settle on a bench nearby. He asked him if he would be all right on his own for a bit, until he went to run some errands. The old man nodded.

He sat quietly and looked around the park, at the trees, at the little sparrow that came to perch on his bench. He smiled to himself and whispered, “Khoda-ra shokr” (Thank you, God.). I thought of my father in Athens. His dementia is progressing in such a way that every time I return to Athens, he remembers less and speaks less, but he still smiles the lovely smile I have always known. Since the previous winter he has given up his usual afternoon walk round the block, because he can only shuffle his feet along and Athenian pavements don’t cater for such needs. So in the afternoons he takes the lift up to the roof and goes round a couple of times.
While I was there in the summer, we often went up to the roof together. The view is interesting from here: beyond the television aerials and the satellite dishes one can see the Lycabettus hill with the white church of Saint George perched on its top, the Sina Observatory, and the other hills around Athens against the famous clear blue Attic sky. On the evening before I left, we went up again.
Dad kept commenting on how lovely the sky was, and admired the buildings. He exclaimed how tall they were, and wondered how people managed to build them so tall and how come they don’t fall. I envied him then, for a moment, for being able to admire the beauty of nature and human ingenuity as if for the first time, just like a little child. He may have lost a part of himself –his memories- but has got back something perhaps as valuable: the pure, childish pleasure at looking at an animal or a baby or a beautiful flower. And he can’t miss me anymore now, because as soon as I leave, he’s forgotten me until I speak to him on the phone or go back to Athens. That spares one a lot of pain.