according to ' many' Iran is no place to miss

according to 'many'...Iran is no place to miss.

... A place filled with dirt, pollution and reckless drivers;
People are rude and smell horrible.
Men never shave and women...well...according to 'many' don't exist.
Education is forbidden.
It is the country of corrupt economy and nuclear program so dangerous it can blow up many countries at once!

but i still miss it...

I miss it when I think of Tehran.
I still miss it when I think of our small apartment on the fourth floor;
my room which was shared with my little sister;

each neighbor had their own story.

I still miss it when I think about the the nosy neighbor who would lean forward of the hallway window for hours to make sure she is not missing out on any of the neighborhood action...

or the 'namaki' who would appear in the middle of the summer afternoon to sell and buy any plastic topoware.

Or my sister who would run down the stairs with a glass of water to greet my grandma half way on the second floor every time she would come to visit.

I remember my sister and I would wait hours for our dad to come home only to beg him to take us to the tiny little park up the hill!

Or when we could not wait to get home from school to take off our scarfs which in most cases had already made a bush out of our hair underneath and had to be unpeeled from our scalp.

According to 'many' Iran is no place to miss...but they might not know that...every Thursday night was family night.

every Thursday night, my Aunt and cousins would come over .

the smell of sunflower seeds, peeled clementine, and Persian peeled cucumber with salt would fill the whole house.

Adults would eat and drink Persian tea and my cousins and I would talk about anything and everything. I still can hear the conversations and laughter.

Every Thursday night, I would think.." nothing can make me happier"...That is gone and I miss it.

I miss Hajar high school. A place where only girls were allowed; Where our nails, eyebrows and upper lips were checked every Saturday morning; God forbid if we had nail polish on or had touched the manly hair of our faces...

Where I did not do much homework, but learned a bunch from our conservative, covered in black chadour teachers.

The night I left Iran, was a joyful night! I thought " I am finally leaving this bleak place and I am never coming back." But that feeling soon left me as soon as the plane landed...

The truth is that one day I am indeed going back.

Going back to undust the memories and relive the forgotten moments.

Taking it for granted

Once I read somewhere that humans are the most flexible animals; well, not physically per se, but mentally and emotionally. I didn't really care much about this statement back then; just thought about it as a simple saying and it wasn't till recently that I truly felt its meaning.

The simple truth is that us, humans, get use to things so unconsciously; Situations, conditions, locations, behaviors, wealth, health,etc. sometimes it might be the lack of awareness and the capacity for sensory perception as merriam-webster would have it. What ever it might be our souls become so moldable, just like water; It fits and changes as its poured into any shape and form jar... and that is a beautiful thing until we get stuck in one stage for too long...

then we tend to get used our surroundings. We think too highly of ourselves. We begin to like it. We begin to think that we deserve it and we should have been here from day one in the first place and that's when it happens. We take it for granted....we take it for granted until it is taken away from us. When the nice things are gone, when rich is poor, when wealthy is sick, when pride is replaced by humbleness. Then we begin to blame everything and anything in our power including ourselves."...well, maybe if I had acted differently, if I had tried a little harder, if I was a little nicer,..." but the truth is, none of these things matter. life is going to happen before our eyes and most of the time, we can't do much about it.

I feel like my life has taken that route in the past year. As I think about it tonight, I have taken many things, situations, people, etc, for granted as if they are going to be there forever...and now that I feel some of them have been taken away from me, I feel the emptiness...

i know, or better said, I've learned today that any situation is a good situation. Any condition is a good condition. The variable is us. We can be happy, rich, healthy, miserable or poor in any setting; Just depends on how we look at it...so, don't get stuck in one spot for too long and when you've moved on, don't forget about the past, for the past is always a part of your future.

thanks for listening!

Goodnight....