Prolific Living

memoir

Someday I Will Go Back to Iran

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Going back to Iran

Someday I will go back to Iran. It will be summertime so the roses will be in full bloom, the air will be full of optimism, tinged with a trace of nostalgia, and the warm Tehran sun can quickly dry my tears to save my lush eye makeup, just in case.

My life revolves around a sense of urgency today. It is a reality I have created for myself and would not trade for the world. Yet I accept that some dreams cannot afford the luxury of immediacy in this life. They cannot happen just yet. The right stars have to align and the right circumstances have to emerge first.

The time for some dreams has not yet come.

Hence the word: someday.

Someday, I will go back to Iran. [Read more…] about Someday I Will Go Back to Iran

Understanding the Invincible Bond of Childhood Friendships

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Searching the Ripples of my Mind for Childhood Memories

“Do you remember the time in school when…”

Childhood Friendship Bond

The place is Razi Elementary School in Iran. The time is in the early 1980s. The question is posed by a long lost childhood friend who found me by sheer accident on an otherwise ordinary Monday and has since turned my life inside out with indescribable joy and bliss. To my own disappointment, I did not have a clear memory of her and was sure she has the wrong person. Assured by the facts, she came back exploding with joy and stories and no sooner had I read the names of our mutual friends, names dearest to my heart, that tears were streaming down my cheeks. What unexpected happiness to find yourself instantly richer when the dearest childhood friendships resurface after 26 years of separation? [Read more…] about Understanding the Invincible Bond of Childhood Friendships

Marjane Satrapi: “Persepolis”

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Reading Satrapi's Persepolis | Memoirs of IranA picture. A few words in a book. A flashback. That is all it takes for our memories to be triggered from their dormant existence in the quiet corners of our mind. It can be nearly 30 years later and much may fade away in this life but some memories are pertinacious. No sooner had I opened the first page of Satrapi’s “Persepolis” that I remembered the first day returning home from school in Iran. [Read more…] about Marjane Satrapi: “Persepolis”

Mental Musings of a post Family Reunion and a new Decision

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March 20th 2010 – The first day of spring and the Iranian new year more commonly known as Nowruz (spelled at least half a dozen different ways in its tangled translation to modern English). The dawn of a new day, new season, and new beginnings. In a traditional Persian style, one of my cousins married his new bride. What marks the occasion in particular is not only the happy couple and our celebration of their love and union, which we tended to in abundance, but a family reunion that had been long since overdue.

[Read more…] about Mental Musings of a post Family Reunion and a new Decision

“The Last Station”: One year in the life of world’s beloved novelist – Leo Tolstoy

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Leo Tolstoy Quote | Everything I love

Reading Anna Karenina has been so overwhelming and gratifying that I chose to walk away from it for a short while. I decided to take time to digest the scope, the breadth, the depth in this masterpiece of a novel. It is of course an overly ambitious task to ever digest it all. This is only my first reading by the Russian novelist, Leo Tolstoy, but most definitely not my last. So it was especially fortuitous when we chose to watch “The Last Station” about his life on a girls’ night out celebrating Russia’s International Women Day on Monday, March the 8th. [Read more…] about “The Last Station”: One year in the life of world’s beloved novelist – Leo Tolstoy