Since the latest entry, my back condition has been improving slowly; on some days I feel better than others, and generally I need to rest more than usual, but on the whole it’s been a great improvement from the excruciating pain of three weeks ago. After a rough night during which I stayed up with leg pain, I received a telephone call from a friend, a female theologian I met last year when I attended her class on religious rulings. She was in Mashhad, visiting the shrine of the Holy Imam Reza; she knew that I had been unwell and rang to say that she was in the courtyard of the shrine facing the golden dome, waiting for the call to prayer and praying for my health. Then she told me to say a prayer myself and turned her handset towards the shrine.
I have only been to four or five of her sessions, and seen her maybe another two or three times, but she had the kindness to think of me in my pain. When people ask me (quite often) why I left England to come and live here, I think that it is these little thins that matter in my life among the Iranians.
