Roots
I briefly felt safe in paradise
until suddenly my paradise was turned upside down
November 25, 2004
iranian.com
I remember watching a BBC television
documentary, a few years ago while I was still living in London,
in which a grey haired British
journalist walked through the streets and bazaars of Tehran
describing to the viewer how much he loved Iran and the warmth
of the Iranian
people.
Rewinding my memories to the very first set which
I have, back to a time when I was barely three or four years
old, I am reminded of a time when I briefly felt safe in paradise
until suddenly my paradise was turned upside down and the dangerous
environment of revolution and war replaced everything in my life.
By 1984, my father, with whom I had lived since
my parents had divorced a few years earlier, faced a dilemma.
To keep me in Iran would keep us together but it would also mean
more of everything he did not want for me. Even more than I,
he was deeply affected by my tales of school teachers who would
beat me in morning assembly at my school for not chanting "Death
to America" and "Death to Israel".
He was shocked
when he witnessed a huge gang-like fight one day after school
in which kids from the North of Tehran and the 'Joonoob shahri's"-
the kids from the South of Tehran - had clashed with chains and
knives in an after school brawl which was really a battle of
backgrounds and morality. And yes I was participating chain in
hand.
He must have realized my dormant emotional repression
when my best friend's father had died while in the custody of
the
'Commiteh' - the revolutionary police - only after they had raided
his apartment one floor above ours.
And finally he must have
known our time together was up when I whispered in a faltering
voice, "Baba, I am scared", one night when he decided
not to drag me down to the shelters for the fourth or fifth time
that night and to take chance with the bombs being dropped on
the city - we sat together at the edge of his bed and stared
at the war outside. He knew.
The period of my transition from Tehran to Berkshire
England is a blurry one with smears of childish emotion obscuring
the focus of the actual events that would form my memory.
 Today, more than twenty years later, my heart exists
somewhere between my roots - those first few years and the colourful
textures of Norooz in Tehran, most of the rest of my life in
England where I once again carved out a life, and finally now,
my new life, and the grind of touring America with my band and
sacrificing everything on the alter of music.
.................... Peef
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About
For more about Buddahead, aka Raman Kia, and his band, visit buddaheadmusic.com
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