|
 Jeegar-e-toNot without my laptop (2) By Joni Mashti March 27, 2002 The Iranian I'm still getting ready to travel to Iran. As I told you last week, I'm telling everyone about my trip - week by week. 1978-1979: Jigar-e-To Bekhoram I will never know why I wasn't more careful about planning what was supposed to be my last term in college in 1978. I had somehow forgotten to take one of my math requirements. My adviser called me to tell me that I had to change my schedule three weeks into the 10-week term. I will never know why, when I discovered this requirement, I chose to take statistics rather than business math (known as "math-for-morons" by most of my engineering student friends). I do know that if I hadn't failed that statistics class, I would have graduated and I wouldn't met my future husband back at "Across the Street U". I was in the gym/registration room when I saw him. He had just entered and was approaching the first table as I was leaving the last table when our eyes met across the crowded room. He was so cute. Dark brown eyes, dark moustache, thick black curly hair. As we passed one another, we both nodded and said hello as if we had known each other for years. A few days later, we found an excuse to meet. Within a couple of weeks, there he was offering me a box of trinkets. "Jam-sheed," I said as I looked into the box - I remembered the dream as I spoke his name. The trinkets were obviously made in Iran. Silver rings and necklaces decorated with hand-painted pictures of polo players wearing turbans. I had only known Jamsheed for two weeks and I was quite sure he hadn't visited Iran since he met me. Eventually, I forgave him for trying to give me a gift the he couldn't have bought with me in mind.  Jamsheed taught me a lot of new Persian words that year.
Naaz-e-tobaram (my sweetness), eshgh-e man (my love), juuuuun (dear), jigar-to-bekhoram
(I eat your liver). It took me a long time to figure out the last one - I would have
thought it meant that he liked my cooking - but, even I don't like my cooking, so
it really couldn't be that. Jigar-to-bekhoram actually means something like "you
have a delicious personality".That was about as far as my Persian language lessons got that year. Things got crazy in Iran. Jamsheed couldn't get money from home to pay for college and decided to go back to do whatever it is a guy does in a situation like that. I graduated from college. But, I knew that the liberal arts degree that I had wouldn't get me far, so I got job in restaurant management and started taking computer classes. So, I still didn't speak Persian and with a revolution going on in Iran and the American Embassy held hostage, I guess it really wouldn't have been the best time to go to Iran. But, the real reason for not visiting in 1979 was that I couldn't bring a computer. Even if I just wanted to bring a few programs to work on, it would have required lugging around boxes of punch cards. Next episode : Jedeee Migeee - Na baba - Rustisho bogu.
|
|
|
|
Web design by BTC Consultants
Internet server Global Publishing Group