Following the long trawl around doctors and medical practitioners, I came across two philellenes. One was the young assistant of the top Tehran neurosurgeon who examined me before his professor. As soon as he realised I was Greek, he asked me about the correct pronunciation of names and places and mentioned stories from Greek mythology and Ancient History. Theseus and the Minotaur, how Ariadne was abandoned in Naxos, and how Aegeus killing himself falling off the cape of Sounion, Darius’ and Cyrus’ expeditions against Greece, the battles of Marathon and Thermopylae, the sea-battle of Salamis, Plataea, and then the Peloponnesean War. He said that even though he has never been to Greece, he has all these places in his mind.
And how come a neurosurgeon is so immersed in Greek history? His father is the chief editor of the academic journal Andishmand (The Intellectual) and the young doctor has always been interested in ancient civilisations.
The second philellene was the doctor who took an electromyogram of my legs, to assess nerve function. He had spent the Iranian New Year holiday in Greece, visiting Athens and the neighbouring islands of Hydra and Poros. He was very impressed by the friendliness of Greeks and saw many similarities between their character and that of Iranians. Then he mentioned something I had forgotten myself: about twelve years ago an Iranian television program called Iranian Bride had featured my family and myself. He remembered that in that program I had talked about my Greek background and Greek cooking.
Even so far from home, I often feel surrounded by friends
