Memories of a Wonderful Time

People in Iran find it interesting that I love it here. They wonder why seeing that I am coming from America and my response has been that this is where my family is and it is where my family is from. Although now most of my family has left Iran, I still have enough to visit. I think I love it here because it really reminds me of so much of my childhood. When we were kids we would visit Iran every 2 to 3 years, but we would spend 2 months here. Some of my fondest memories have been with my cousins during those summers being crazy and playing all day.

Within the last week, my uncle and cousins and I have talked about so many memories and all of us have different ones. It’s actually interesting to see what each of us remember about the same time. One thing we all have in common is that it was a great time!

On Friday we all went to my uncle’s villa about an hour outside of Tehran. We spent the day there. We walked through his garden which is full of every kind of tree and plant you can think of, we visited all the chickens and helped one that was sick, he ended up dying the next day :( For lunch we cooked kabob’s outside on the grill. It was such a fun and relaxing day. Once we ate we all sat around, talked and played cards. Once again we reminisced about the time we spent at my great uncle’s villa in my dad’s home town.

That was a time to remember, there were about 20 of us there, his garden was huge or at least it was to me being a small kid. At the very end of his garden there was a river that we spent hours playing in and along the edge. I remember the river having a very fast current, every once in a while one of us would lose a sandal and watch it go down stream. The rest of the time we were catching crabs and filling buckets full of them. We would then go back into my uncle’s garden and race our crabs seeing who’s would win. This took up hours of our days and while the kids were having fun all the adults were sitting drinking tea and playing cards or backgammon and talking. There was a beautiful sitting area hidden in the far back right corner of my uncle’s garden, this is were all the parents would sit and have fun.

I remember all the ladies in the kitchen preparing lunch and then we would set a huge cloth down (called a sofreh) on the floor and all 20 of us would sit around and eat a huge feast. In the evenings there was a ritual. After dinner my uncle, being the comedian that he is would go put on his “special” dancing pants and the fun would begin. He would dance and joke around getting everyone hyper. I even remember all the songs that he wold play. By the end of the night after the dancing was done we would sit around while one person played the Tar and another would sing. I loved this time. It is probably one of the best childhood memories that I have.