Returning...

Bye Tehran!


Coming back to London is odd. The strange familiarity, the feeling I may have changed, although I don’t know how yet, but that everything around me most definitely has not. I thought that I would find London very shiny, after living in khaki covered Iran, but to the contrary it has been incredibly grey. Rain has punctuated nearly all of the days I’ve been back. The streets feel grittier and dirtier than I remember and I feel even more aware of the number of alcoholics and beggars around my tube station. Shouts of ‘fucking wanker’ penetrate nearly every journey I take on public transport, someone or other annoyed by something or other, and making sure all around them know it. In Iran you have to be aware of your behavior in public, you’re not necessarily free to act however you want, wherever you want, not only because of law, but because of etiquette. I’m not sure that this is a bad thing, witnessing the aggression and coarse way my compatriots expressed themselves on the streets of the capitol. There is a certain code of behavior most people follow in Iran, most of the time. In Farsi there is a magical way of being extremely rude, while being incredibly polite. Transport and traffic also brings out the crudest of language, but that’s usually expressed in the confines of one’s own car, not at the bus stop.

Back in England I also feel confronted with flesh…breasts and legs are everywhere. It isn’t even hot, its 18 degrees, and raining, but the fact that it is August means people will dress in summer clothes. Is this the stoic Brit I see before me, in thigh-hugging denim shorts, uncomfortable looking sandals and a vest top, refusing to acknowledge that it IS freezing because it IS summer? Again, forced Islamic covered up-ness didn’t seem so bad, in the midst of orange peel thighs, ill-fitting bras and beer bellies.

Salaam London!

I have tried desperately not to convert everything back in to toman, and accept that being broke in London is horrible. Filling up the car at the petrol station with my mum I laugh as it come to £46, reminding her that in Iran it comes to £1.50. Oil is heavily subsidised, but still everyone complains about the prices.

I go to the local beauty salon, but don’t entrust my eyebrows to any of the girls there, even though they insist. Never have I seen an eyebrow shaped with as much skill and dexterity as I have in Iran and I’m unwilling to let jus anyone have a go on them!

But then, window shopping on my local high street I finally had my first I love London moment. Yes, most people in Wood Green do look like they think they are on MTV Base, but the busy-ness, the ease of everything, the shouts from market sellers offering flowers and fish, even the friendly chat of the God squad outside the local church, there was something enticing in the chaos around me. Baffled by all the choices available, I couldn’t deny it was pleasing to have them. We are all creatures of habit (aren’t we?), and by nature end up living fairly routine lives (don’t we?), but knowing my choices here are infinite is still a good feeling, and admittedly one I did not have in Iran.

Since then I’ve had many more of these moments. At the Notting Hill Carnival dancing in the streets feels good, as does smiling at anyone who catches my eye. I’m entertained by the thought of not seeing more than a fore-arm on the streets for the past 9 months, and now seeing the majority of the people around me letting it all hang out. It’s a funny old world isn’t it?

It's carnival time, gonna have a good whine...

I have bumped into Iranians everywhere I’ve been. They were always everywhere, but now I feel more eager to chat, to show off my Farsi and share news from Iran. On my first day back I went to my local pizzeria, where just like in Iran, I managed to get a taghvif (discount), simply because I was a dokhtare gol (a nice girl, just like a flower). A few days later the washing machine needs to be fixed, and in roll two more Iranians, I direct them upstairs in Farsi and they seem pleased, if a little surprised- ‘We thought you were South American!’, ‘But look at our carpets’ I joked, ‘they’re a good clue.’

Speaking to my mortgage advisor I was reminded about how little most people know about Iran ‘I don’t know if you’ve heard, but in the Western world we’re experiencing a credit crunch’. No, no, I hadn’t heard. A friend also told me when she’d told her mother that I was in Iran, she turned to her with a worried expression- ‘Well I hope she’s safe’. And finally, someone asks if my Arabic is better since I’ve been living in Iran. No, oddly enough it hasn’t really improved (in some ways not strictly true, in learning more Farsi I have learnt some Arabic, in learning Farsi words that have Arabic roots, but I don’t think that was what he was implying). It is of course not that surprising that most people have no clue about what Iran is actually like, only popping into the news when nuclear warfare is discussed, although there are now numerous attempts to show that Iran isn’t like THAT, but I guess you’d have to be interested to even find them (If you are interested: http://www.documentiran.com/ http://www.picturesofyouiran.com/ http://www.lifegoesonintehran.com/ or look at some of the blogs to the right). I also remember my own concerns before visiting; having heard about crackdowns I emailed Iranians in Iran asking how bad it really was, I worried about exactly what to pack and what might be confiscated at customs- all legitimate worries, but now that I’ve lived comfortably in Iran for nine months, I realize again how little I knew about how daily life is lived.

In returning to London I remember what I like about Iran and why I want to return, again. I don’t have to think everything there is better, or that everything here is worse, but that right now, it is where I want to be. Interestingly a lot of my friends live abroad, and seems even more are deciding to go. What has become so unsatisfying about Britain that we’ve all felt like leaving?

Hi, my name is.................

I’ve experienced my entire life as someone with an unusal and somewhat long name. Ordering things over the phone is always a time-consuming ordeal as I have to spell out all three parts. Introductions can also take time, especially in a loud environment:

What’s your name?
Leili.
What, Hailey?
No, Leili.
Huh? Leila.
No Leili, like Hailey with an L.
But it already has an L.
No, an L at the beginning.
Huh?
Leili.
Did you say Lady?
No, Leili
Leili ?
Yes, Leili
Ah, Leili. How do you spell that?
L-E-I-L-I.
What?
…. And so on.

Being in Iran my experience is completely different. My double barreled surname- the first part Polish and coming from my mother, the second part Iranian, and coming from my father, is reduced to just the Iranian name in Iran. Being called Mohammadi is like being called Smith. It is so very common There aren’t so many Leili’s these days, but they can still be found. Leili is like the Persian Juliet, the main character in a famous love story by Nizami called Leili and Majnoon. It means that everyone has heard of the name. Its an old fashioned name, sort of, but not in the way that Gertrude is, its just been around for a long time, but still considered a pretty name. Blending in is cool. Being able to introduce myself simply, not having to spell my name, it’s a weird kind of luxury.

Modern day Leili & Majnoun- a new film

In my nine months of life in Iran I’ve only met another Leili. It was odd, as up until now I have only ever met one once before, we both worked at the same Iranian instituition, but in different departments so rarely were we in the same room together. It meant I never had the experience of someone calling my name butn not actually calling me, until now. The second Leili I met was at the house of a mutual friend. After being introduced, I had that moment most other people do when people say your name but they are talking to someone else and you turn around. Then an awkward laugh spreads contagiously around the room. Then someone suggests we are called by our last names to stop any confusion. This pleased the host, as he is named Mohammad, so he liked the idea of calling me Mohammadi.

At the salon I waited to be called in for my manicure. When my name was finally announced , three Miss. Mohammadi’s stood up. I’ve turned round when a mother called her child in an ice cream shop, and a friend shouted to her companion in the swimming pool. In taxis I hear songs about Leili, mainly about Leili and Majnoun. On the TV I see music videos too- a new song called 'Laili Jaan' (I couldn't find the clip to upload here.) There are Leili alleys, Mohammadi alleys, but I’ve yet to find a Leili Mohammadi alley. I’ve always wondered what you need to do to get an airport or a park named after you but maybe I should aim smaller and go for a small alley in Isfahan? Hearing and seeing my name everywhere sort of makes up for when I was little and wanted Leili stickers, or pencils or anything with my name on it, but of course could never find it. Now I am everywhere!

Leili Alley

I guess my way of experiencing my name in Iran mirrors a lot of my experience here in general. Just as my name fits right in, so does my face. I can pass by completely anonymously, can now get through most daily transactions without a raised eyebrow or a barrage of questioning about who I am and where I have come from. In Iran I experience a variety of different identities at any one time. In Isfahan, I would put on my maghneh and walk to work, feeling as if I was just another ordinary Iranian girl, with the same worries and woes. Invitiations to the houses of my father’s friends would come flying in, and he’d regularly respond with ‘She grew up in the West. She does what she wants, I can’t force her to go’. My status once again returning to selfish foreigner. In Tehran I once spent the day with three English boys from my Farsi school. We spent the day in a coffee shop and walking around Northern Tehran. Two grils passed us and we heard them say ‘Look at that girl, pesar baz' . From the outside I appeared to be a pesar baz, a flirty Iranian girl sticking to these foreign boys, and not a jolly foreigner like them. Taking them to restaurants and tea houses I would be encouraged by waiters to order traditional food for them and would then be asked the same series of nosey questions. But for once the focus wouldn’t be on me.

Leili 'Joon' graffitti

My Iranianess is constantly being tested or questioned or accepted. Amongst the hypehanted Iranian crowd I spend most of my time with in Tehran I can move up and down the scale of Iranianess instantly: my use of different slippers for different areas of my house makes me very Iranian, my inability in the kitchen makes me un-Iranian, my good grasp of Farsi lets me in, but then we’ll stumble across a phrase that pushes me out again. I am compared, and compare myself to the others, especially the half ones - Whose Farsi is the best? Who ta’arof’s the most? My American-Iranian friends claim I am very Eastern, which I like, but I wonder how my Easterness is being quantified? In a discussion about public displays of affection with American Iranians, English Iranians, an English boy and myself, it was unanimously claimed that I was very Iranian with my displays of my affection, and my English friends ended up shouting that I wasn't even English! Ok, back over the line I guess.

At Farsi school we had a variety of discussions about bohran-e hoviat or identity crisis. My class was 90% Farsi zaban, farsi speakers as my teacher called it. She wouldn’t call us Iranians, as she said we weren’t quite that. The majority were full Iranian, brought up in the States, and one from Sweden, there were three of us who were do rageh (meaning two veined, the farsi term for mixed), then two nice Korean ladies and an increibibly strange Syrian girl. The topic would come up at least bi-weekly, as we’d talk about funny childhood stories, or odd phrases we learnt when we were younger. One day our teacher finally layed down the verdict; two of the class members were very Iranian, the rest of us were failry Iranian, and Jesse, a half- American, Half Iranian, who was in Iran for the first time and spoke Farsi with a strange, mixed up Turkish- American accent which meant the whole class strained to understand him when he spoke, was branded with not Iranian at all. I realised how pleased I was to have gotten into the 'fairly Iranian' box, as if my whole time here, getting to know Iran and my Iranianess, was validated by my sweet Farsi teacher who really barely new me. Relief.

How many arches are there in Iran?

A friend from England just visited. We hung out in coffee shops in Tehran, bargained our way around Isfahan, and were awestruck in Shiraz. She studied art history and archeology and has a penchant for an Islamic arch or two. It made me wonder, how many arches are there in Iran? I doubt I will ever know the answer to my question, but here are some of the ones we saw....

White Palace, Sa'ad Abad, Tehran

Regent's Mosque, Shiraz

Jameh Mosque, Naghseh Jahan, Isfahan

Si o Se Pol, Isfahan

Sa'adi Mausoleum, Shiraz

Jolfaa, Isfahan

Restaurant Sonati, Naghsheh Jahan, Isfahan

Show me Shomal!

I have just returned from 3 days in Shomal, the north of Iran. Shomal means North and is a generic term, pretty much describing all of the regions around the Caspian sea, north of Tehran. To be more precise I went to Mazandaran province, to a house in the mountains between Chaalous and Ramsar. We drove through a constantly changing landscape of desert peaks, lush forests, emerald coloured lakes, the biggest dam and longest tunnel in the country, and finally along the sandy shoreline of the Caspian. I often ask people what colour they associate with Iran. I always pick khaki, an obvious choice, as the scenery I have seen here is always that colour, desert sands or dusty alleys. Khak (dust) that gets everywhere. Somehow the colours in Iran always seems faded, the green leaves on trees not quite vibrant enough, the blue lines painted along curbs washed out and drab, as if a layer of khak has covered the whole country and dulled everything down. But in Shomal the colours are alive. Green leaves of walnut, orange and mulberry trees. The turquoise blue of a salty sea I finally dipped my toes in. Deep purple blackberries picked at midnight from trees over our heads.



I had been told I would like Shomal because the scenery and weather is just like England- green and rainy. The ruggedness of my surroundings seemed far from British though, and indeed along the journey from Tehran and through the Alborz mountains various comments of where we could be were made; this is like Western Canada, or Northern California. Oh, that hill looks like it's covered in heather, just like Scotland. Oh and that stream and those rocks, it looks like the peak district. The fisherman over there in his baggy waders, hanging on to his net, for a minute I thought we were in the Caribbean. We stopped for ashe reshte against a foreboding backdrop, where the people selling soup wore cowboy hats and their skin was the same colour as the rocky mountains behind them. Ah, now it felt we had reached the frontier, of what, we were no quite sure.



Caribbean?

Canada?

California?

A frontiersman and his soup

I had also been told that Shomali's are the biggest wasters in all of Iran- something about the sea air means people are always drunk or high on something or other. I was in for a big weekend, so I thought. On arrival at the villa the fridge was opened only to discover that the 3 litres of aragh sagi (homemade alcohol) were not there. A few manic calls home and we discovered the maid, thinking it was water, had poured it away. A weekend in Shomal without booze? Unheard of. Two of our party went on a mission down the mountain and into town to find some. There are people who can find you a villa, girls and contraband so I was assured that it wouldn't be a problem. An hour later they returned with nothing more mind-altering than sausages, crisps and cake. We would look at this weekend as de-tox, away from the almost nightly whisky drinking I'd been indulging in Tehran (more on that later). Breathing in the sea air, waking up to an incredible view, hearing the moos of cows nearby...I didn't need an altered state to feel that life was all around me, and here it didn't seem covered in khakh, or dirt or the thick layer of pollution weighing down on Tehran. I could get used to shomali life, if lived there maybe I would where chador and tie it round my waist like the local women, maybe I would make mulberry jam, catch fish and every now and then send someone down the mountain to get me something that would make the colours around me even more alive.


A colourful shomali sky

Merry Noruz

It has been the new year in Iran for over a month, but I have been distracted and haven't posted for awhile. Here is my slighlty out of date story of my first proper Noruz (from start end) in Iran.

It is the new year. The past few weeks have involved a huge amount of preparations for this moment. It is now the 14th day, which means the13 days of national holiday are over. Today life resumes as normal. The Noruz break is one of those national holidays when you are never sure if things are open or not, if people are at work or not, like the 2 weeks of Christmas and New Year we have in England. Preparations for Noruz ususally take longer than the 13 days of holidays. In my household started in earnest 3 weeks ago. First, 2 days were spent doing khune tekooni, or spring cleaning. All the furniture was moved, all the walls were washed, everywhere was dusted and in the end the house sparkled. A few days later was the big samanu cooking event (see previous post) which meant we now had the first of our seveb things needed for the haft sin. My grandmother then spent two days ordering me to wash various china, move furniture around, and generally make the house ready for the fifty something family members who would drop in on us for eid didani (the first 13 days of the new year are spent visiting family and friends, starting with the oldest person first).

For Noruz a haft sin is made. Haft Sin means seven sin's (a letter from the alphabet) although more than seven objects (each with symbolic meaning) are put out on a table, and not all of them start with sin. Haft sin’s take on many shapes and sizes nowadays. Ours would be fairly simple, but there is a new art to haft sin making, and you can even go to classes to learn how to decorate the dishes or where to tie ribbons around your table. Over Noruz haft sin's are everywhere, not just in homes, but in offices, shops, schools....so I could compare the different styles at my chemist, cake shop etc. At a gallery in Tehran I saw a very arty haft sin, that meant you really had to search to see the seven sin's. We pushed a table intop the corner of the room, covered it with a table cloth, pulled a mirror of the wall and leant it on the corner of the table. I was then sent in search of candlesticks whil my grandmother pulled out seer (garlic), senjed, serke (vinegar) and sekkeh (coins). We added an apple and then she boiled eggs with red onions so that they became an off purple colour. My Ameh was making sabzeh (wheatgrass) for us and would bring it round just before the new year, so all that was left was the goldfish and sonbol (hyacinth). There is a risk they will both die, so I had been advised not to buy them until the last minute. Over night florists had put out tables covered in sabzeh and sonbol and tanks full of feeble looking goldfish. Over night florists had put out tables covered in sabzeh and sonbol and tanks full of feeble looking goldfish. My dad and I proudly spoke of the fact our goldfish has lasted 2 whole Noruz’s. Everyone had warned me that the shops get ridiculously busy over eid, and so I saw the popluar shopping street near our house was five deep in people traffic. For the new year you are supposed to wear new clothes, so an excuse to get a new outfit, plus with all the mehmouni’s (parties) to go to, most women head out to buy a new roosari or two. So the house was pretty much ready as was the haft sin, I would buy a goldfish and sonbol on new years eve.

Traditional Haft Sin



Arty Haft Sin



Salon Haft Sin (with ribbons)


Chemist Haft Sin

The last Wednesday before new years is chahar shanbe suri, which is usually spent at a big garden jumping through fires on the previous evening. I went to a friends garden with my Ameh and her family. There was indeed a fire, but a pretty small one and logs around for everyone to sit on. I was scared about jumping through fire, I’ve neved done it, although I understand why you don’t burn, but still, it seemed dangerous. First there was a round of firecracking throwing, the small kind that make a loud bang, a puff of light and a lot of smoke. Then it was time for sandwiches, then car stereos were turned up and it was time for dancing round the fire, and running and jumping through it. Everyone started jumping without warning. My cousin grabbed my and and we jumped, really not a big deal, actually quite invigorating and warming. Jumping through the fire is supposed to be a form of cleansing, getting rid of the bad things of the past year, and getting ready to the good things in the year ahead. Driving home that night there was the smell of smoke in the air, and remnants of fires all over the streets. Shops were open and people were busy buying last minute shireeni and goldfish. It did sort of have a new years eve feel, people seemed excited and there was a sense that people had had fun that evening, something that is some times hard to find here.

On new years eve I dutifully went out and chose a healthy looking goldfish and a full hyacinth. Different family members dropped nuts and shireeny over during the day. My grandmother spent a long time mixing all the nuts together and filling up the huge bowl that would dominate the mehmun khune (drawing room) for the next 2 weeks. In the evening six cousins, one aunty and her husband came over and together with my dad and grandmother, we ate the traditional mahi va sabzi polo (fish filled with herbs and nuts and rice with fresh herbs), drank vodka and danced around the living room.

It became the new year at 9:15am the following morning. We didn't count it down, and we weren't even in the same room together, instead all of us occupied with normal morning activities like breakfast and washing. We then put on our finest and... waited. During Noruz it is traditional to visit the oldest family member first, which meant today, new years day, would see the whole family drop in at some point or another. So we waited. At 11am my cousin came over with his wife and two children. The chai (tea) had been brewing for awhile and I immediately jumped to attention, as the only able bodied female in the house, pouring tea, filling plates with fruit and nuts and repeadetly offering shireeni. After about 40 minutes they left, I cleaned up and then.. we waited. We had lunch, we waited some more, we had naps, we waited some more. Finally at 5pm the doorbell rang again and would continue to ring relentlessly throughout the evening. From that point on 30 or more family members poured in at different points throughout the night. After all the waiting I had forgot about prepartion, and ran around pouring more chai, filling plates with fruit and nuts and repeadetly offering shireeni. I am not very experienced at Iranian style hosting, so I recruited young female cousins to carry round trays of chai, re-stock a depleting fruit bowl, and help me wash all the tea cups in time for the next thirsty guests. By the end of the night I was completely knackered, I hadn't really sat down, or actually spoken to most of the guests. But my grandmother had been telling all of my aunties how hard I had been working, what a lovely girl I was and so forth. It was as if I had passed some sort of initiation, I may still be a khareji (foreigner) but I can host and ta'arof as good as the locals!

Knotting the sabzeh

Over the next week the eid didani would start in earnest, each day spent at a different family member or friends house. I was escaping to Tehran which means I would miss most of it, although the day after new years we visited my oldest aunty for lunch and my oldest uncle for tea in the afternoon. I returned to Isfahan in time for Sizdah be dar (13th day out) which is traditionally spent outside in a park or private garden. Nearly every year the family pile over to my aunties house and garden outside of the city, and this year was no exception. The ususal eating and dancing enused, both inside and outside the house. By late afternoon, storm clouds were looming, so my cousin came round with the basket of sabzeh before it rained. Using only one hand each girl has to try to tie a knot in the stem of one of the buds. This will bring her good luck in the coming year, and of course, hopefully a husband too. I was allowed two go's and managed to do it the second time, but then protested I really didn't want a husband in the next year to which I got the response 'Ok, well if not this year, then next year'.

The Queen's English

My favourite students (Grandad in the middle with the hat)



Before coming to Iran I was adamant that I wouldn’t teach English. I didn’t want to spend my time doing a ‘boring’ job, or speaking English too often. Iran is not exactly inundated with TOEFL qualified students on their gap year, so being a native speaker meant I was hot property around town. Against all my better judgment, within a month I’d lined myself up three different jobs at three different language schools across town. The English language teaching community in Isfahan is fairly small, and I soon realized that various colleagues from various institutes all had some prior connection to each other. It also seemed that competition was rife, and I was soon tapped for information by my various bosses about the other institutes: what books to they teach from? How many students do they have? Do they do any special classes? I gave up all the information I had; they could fight it out between them.

The shaking minarets

At no point did I claim that I was real teacher, or an expert on grammar, and luckily my bosses listened to me, so I only taught free discussion/ conversation classes. Basically, I chose any topic I liked, allowed my students to do a little preparation for it, mainly by trawling the internet, and then (usually) a lively debate would ensue. It took my students a little while to get used to my accent, as they are all much more used to American ones (through films and TV shows, lots of people watch Dubai based TV channels available on satellite that broadcast un-dubbed American shows like Desperate Housewives and Friends), and it is indeed that accent of choice for anyone studying English at university. I also asked them to call me by my first name and not to stand up every time I entered the classroom, I wasn’t used to getting this much respect. Teaching all female classes was difficult as nearly all of them are always too shy to speak, except for one mouthy one who completely dominates the class and ends up interrupting when one of the other girls actually plucks up the courage to say anything. Classes of all boys are a lot more relaxed, but always go off topic as instead I am asked: Do you have a boyfriend? What is your favourite alcoholic drink? Do you get tired of wearing hijab? What do you do for fun in your country?

Pelicans and a white peacock at the bird sanctuary, Najnoon Park

My favourtie class was a group of very advanced, mixed gender and mixed generation students. One of them, known as granddad, always came to class armed with horoscopes or poems he’d found on the internet that he liked to quote when he felt the debate was getting too heated. Over the course of the past few months we’ve discussed racism and prejudices, compared educational and legal systems in England and Iran, talked about the environment and ecology, the positive and negative effects of tourism, our favourite books/ films/ music and the growing generation gap. In the lesson on crime and punishment I spent a long time explaining about date rape, which interested the younger students a lot but made the older ones look very uncomfortable. The unanimous response I had already expected was that date rape does not exist in Iran. (How can it? Dating/ unsanctioned relationships/ sex before marriage are all against the law, and as far as proving a husband has raped his wife, I might be wrong, but think you’d be laughed out of court).

Me as tour leader in a fetching body-warmer

As well as teaching I’ve also been leading bi-monthly tours, where we take the students to a restaurant, or a hotel or shopping and get them to do all the transactions in English. Most of them have never been abroad and as getting a visa is so hard, have no plans to. This is the only way they can use their English in a practical, real-life situation. I once had to lead them

around the Aremeian church, having learnt the history of the building half an hour before. I managed to bluff it pretty well and realized had it been a mosque I would have been harder, growing up in an Atheist household, in England and travelling around Western Europe meant my knowledge about churches and Christianity was far superior to my knowledge of Islam. For our last class my favourtie group arranged a day of touristy fun for me, visiting the shaking minarets, a bird sanctuary and a traditional restaurant. At our first stop, the minarets, there was a big group of Japanes tourists who seemed to take a particular shine to me, and lined up to have their picture with me. We all giggled quietly, none of us having the heart to tell them I wasn’t really a typical Iranian girl.

My new friend

The down side of being a native speaker in a language institute is the endless questions from students and teachers, and the dissapointed, almost disgusted looks I get when I don't know the answer. One teacher came to me with a list of postcodes asking me what citities they stood for, and then proceeded to ask about all the different methods of sendings letters and parcels in England. My British politeness failed me and I responded in sarcastic Farsi with ‘sorry I’m not a post man’. My students are all obssessed with learning idioms, so I’d come armed to classes with phrases such as ‘water of a duck’s back’ and ‘eye of the tiger’. They’d then want to know the root of the terms and I’d struggle; ‘Well, erm, separating the wheat from the chaff, well the wheat is the good part of the plant the famers would keep and, erm, the chaff is.. is .. the debris, yes, the debris that they would get rid of’. I’m also constanly asked advice on how they can improve, where again not being a teacher, I’m not really sure what to suggest. The biggest issue I see is the lack of exposure to natives, which means students are learning from teachers who speak with terrible accents. My advice; it is near impossible to sound like a native, but try at least to not sound like an Iranian : ‘Hhello, I am f-erom Ee-ran. I am leeving here e-six ye-ars. I go to e-school.’ (know it is familiar to some of you!)

Sa-ma-nu! Sa-ma-nu!

Every year my dad's cousin Nosrat cooks up a big pot of samanu and invites all the family over while she is cooking it. Samanu is a wheat pudding, made from wheat grain, water, hazelnuts and almonds (no added sugar). It is one of the things that are placed on the haft sin for Noruz, and so it is traditional that it is cooked around this time, just before the New Year. It is also believed to be a good omen. Samanu burns very easily, but takes a long time too cook, which means it has to be continually stirred until it is ready, usually taking at least 48 hours. This samanu party is the kind of traditional gathering that is hard to find nowadays, even in a city as traditional as Isfahan. So as friends of mine partied with ambassadors in Tehran, I was at a much more exclusive engagement.

Nosrat's house is the old fashioned kind, with a courtyard in the middle and rooms coming off opposite sides. For the samanu cooking the whole garden was covered with a huge chador (tent). We entered through the back garden, and straight into the heat emulating from the huge copper pot the samanu was cooking in, and the gas underneath it. The garden was full of about 30 women, and 5 men. Traditionally cooking samanu is something women do, probably because, well, cooking is something women do. It means that at a samanu party the ratio of women to men is always very unequal. Everyone had their roosari's on. Neither my cousin or I were sure why, but decided as the average age of the guests was 60, and the kind of ladies who don't take their roosari's off, the youngsters must have decided to keep them on in their company. So we did too. After a long round of hellos, with many comments directed at my Ameh "Is this your brother's daughter?", "The one with the foreign mother?","Mashallah!" (literally-May God preserve you, but an expression of praise) etc, a few gave me big smackers on my forehead, and then continued questioning my Aunt; "Does she speak Farsi?", "How long is she here for?", "Does she like Iran?'". Only one deemed to address me directly, but then commented to my Aunt and not me; "Oh her Farsi is good!". The huge wooden spoon was passed between us to stir the samanu and make a wish for the coming new year. There is also a special song/ prayer that is sung, but seemed no one could remember much of it. The joke is that girls wish for husbands, and are even teased for going to the samanu party for that reason. Clearly there is nothing else worth wishing for. Not to break tradition my Ameh took hold of the great spoon, rolled up her sleeves and as she turned the spoon announced how she was wishing for husbands for her daughters and me, to whom the older ladies responded with cries of Enshallah (god willing), and again a few big kisses were placed on my reddened forehead. It was one of those situations I often find myself in Iran, where everyone knows who I am and I don't have a clue who anyone else is. It's not just that they know who my dad is, they know me, they know I'm the younger daughter and they know my name. Luckily my Ameh was on hand to fill in the blanks about everyone as we plonked ourselves on a ledge next to the pot of bubbling samanu. The gossip was fairly usual; she can't have kids, she is trying to immigrate to America, her dad is a criminal. Tea, juice, ice cream and cakes were offered, until ghormeh sabzi was ready. We sat on the ledge eating, gossiping, listening, others inside the house, and others in another corner, everyone just spread lazily wherever there was room. Eventually we said a long round of goodbyes, and went home with full, warm bellies.

I wish I was a little bit taller

I wish I was a baller

I wish I had a rabbit in a hat

We were back the next evening, to an even fuller garden (at least 70) and accompanied by more of my aunties and cousins, although all the males in our family chose to stay away. We all carried buckets and pots to be filled with samanu and carted home the following morning. Overnight the colour of the samanu had deepened from a rich caramel colour to a dark chocolatey brown, with hazelnuts and almonds bobbing along the edge of the pot. The night unfolded much as the previous one had, with slight differences: we sat inside, we ate Ash-e Reshteh, we gossiped about different people. On leaving we were told to take a big handful of sweets and nuts. They're called moshkel goshaa (problen solving) sweets and nuts, while you suck on them your problems somehow melt away.

By the following morning the samanu was finally ready. We drove the 3 minutes to Nosrat's house, as we would be taking all the family's samanu home, and couldn't manage to carry it all. There were a few girls and Nosrat in the garden today, with rows and rows of pots filled with the chocolate coloured samanu arranged on the floor. The huge copper pot had been washed and discarded on its side, to be hidden in an attic until next year. No roosari's were worn today, revealing disheveled hair, and limbs heavy from a long night of stirring. A feeling of satisfaction hung in the air, a good deed done, hopefully proving auspicious for the year ahead.

On getting the samanu home I finally had a little taste. I'd tried it before, and wasn't keen, but that was the store bought variety… of course the fresh stuff is better right? Wrong, as suspected it was disgusting, the kind of thing you only eat once a year. Doesn't matter.. .....someone enjoyed it.

Mama Khanoum khayatee doost darad

My grandmother likes to sew