in the cold

I bought a second hand air-conditioner today. $100. He said he’ll buy it back when I’m leaving… Maybe $60. $40 for two weeks, of temperature dropping from 40 to 20. $2 per degree Celsius. Me, in the cold.

I remember two weeks ago, back in Soosangird with all the school kids. By Wednesday the word had got out that the movies were being shown for the kids, so we had more kids coming by from other schools to see the films and meet the “Stars”, and, we had kids from the days before who wanted to come back.


Try to imagine a Hall with 450 capacity, by 4pm in the 40 degree heat, and double the capacity, and “Movie Stars” from the North who “… just can’t stand the heat”.


Yes it was great.

The kids were hot. Movie stars were just sticky. Me, loving it.

Same thing is going to happen next week for the kids in Abadan and Khorramshahr. It’s already hotter. And South-er. Me, loving it.

I’ll be work-shopping a book called “Chess with the Dooms Day Machine” by Habib Ahmadzadeh next Monday for a week, with 15 Abadan theatre actors. Me, loving it. The air-conditioner at the place doesn’t work.


My Azat, won two Cohen CDs on the radio for singing one of his songs. Me, loving it.

Missing the boss and my daughter. I, lonely.

Salam. Many over due and left over letters/blogs to pass on. Things changed. The BLOG’s order needs the same. Change of order.

Here I am in my three room house, Keh 30, # 2, Koyeh Kargar, in Abadan.

I was born in one of these houses, two blocks south. Alif 20, #1.

These houses we
re built for Abadan’s oil refinery workers, back then, about 80 years ago, under the BP. Later on, world’s biggest oil refinery, until the Iran Iraq’s 8 year war. Right on the border to Iraq’s Basra. Divided by our story’s famous Arvand Rood (river).

And here my Arvand divides me from Iraq.

There a few things that have happened here since I came from Halifax. Maggie has filled some of them in. I’ll jump some for now since I would rather tell you about the kids.

For a whole w
eek I went- with a good friend, Habib Ahmadzadeh who runs this- to a film festival for middle and high school kids, north of Abadan, Also close to the border to the small towns of Soosangird, Hoveizeh and Bostaan. A farming country. 20 years after the war, some of their lands are still covered by land mines.

We set up shop in five venues, for six days, two shifts a day and served over 21,000 kids. Some of them had not been to a movie theatre or out of their villages before. Some of the buses traveled for almost an hour to cover everyone in the triangle.

We had some of Iran’s most famous actors and directors who dropped by from Tehran to see the kids. It was cheers and laughs and whistles.


In any of these towns, every time I asked for directions, someone was sent with me to show the place and then I was asked to go over their house for lunch or dinner…

I’m going to regard the rest of the blog as one letter.
Right now I have to go to that English class. Thank God I found someone- who’s English is much better- to slowly replace me.
I will miss the students greatly.

later,
s

Where is Shahin?

Hi all - it's Maggie (Shahin's other (better?) half).

Shahin promised a blog - and here I am to write it.
Unfortunately, Shahin has been temporarily felled by technology and adventure - I'll explain:

Shahin arrived safe and sound in Tehran at the brand new airport - which is conveniently located nearly an hour and a half away from Tehran (makes the airport in Halifax seem accessible by comparison). He spent a few days at his sister's house and went to a bunch of meetings to look into touring The Veil to Iran. The system is a bit byzantine there - so there's all sorts of people to talk to about how, when, where, etc. I'm looking forward to seeing how things progress on this front.

Anyway - once he'd had enough of Tehran (about 3 days) - Shahin flew to Shiraz and the next morning he drove to Abadan. Where he promptly set up house and found out that his request for high-speed internet had not been fulfilled - dial-up only, baby! Hence - felled by technology. It took Shahin nearly two weeks to get high-speed and he couldn't blog.

Fortunately for me, his cell phone works fine, so I got daily updates about the goings on in Abadan - so now I can take up his blogging responsibilities.

By my estimate, it's been about 30 years and one war since Shahin has lived in Abadan (assuming you don't count the 2 wars just over the border in Kuwait and Iraq - to get an idea check out where Kuwait and Basra are located relative to Abadan.) Finally, he's HOME . Here in Nova Scotia, where Shahin and I are both "come-from-aways", there is some magic to being known by "your people" - your parents, grandparents, etc. In Nova Scotia, nobody ever asks if he is Ali Sayadi's son, but in Abadan - his "people" are relevant.

My impression is that Shahin has mostly used the first days in Abadan getting settled and re-acquainted with his home town. I think, most importantly, he has been exploring how the Iran/Iraq war and siege of Abadan affected the people and the city. It must really bring things home when you meet community leaders and find that most of them were injured during the war. Even though Shahin was living in Iran through most of the war (in Shiraz and Tehran), I get the impression that living in Abadan is bringing Shahin a new understanding of the war.

Among other things, Shahin has been volunteering at a community centre teaching a nightly English conversation class - apparently it's very popular. Each night, they have a different topic - restaurants, job interviews, travel, etc. So the group (mostly young adults) get to practice their English and learn about "Western" culture. He's been having a lot of fun here and he's met all sorts of interesting people through this group.

Also, he has been looking into re-building his grandfather's home in nearby Khoramshahr. Again, the system is apparently quite complicated, fortunately, Shahin will be there for a few more weeks, so maybe he can get things underway.

So, of course, as soon as Shahin gets his high-speed hooked up, he left town. That's the adventure part - more about that later....here's a hint - apparently, Shahin is now traveling so close to the Iraq border, the British security forces are able to pick up our fascinating cell phone conversations...

tomorrow's highs, halifax 7, abadan29

leaving tomorrow, for two months… for two months.
the kid already knows she’s not going get everything, because daddy’s not going to be there. She ain’t happy. don’t even ask about the missus… and what am I doing?

you guessed it, polishing my shoes. I’ve done all the shopping for gifts and stuff. Have to print bunch a papers for the Iranian officials about onelight and the veil tomorrow, go to the gym ( that’s right, it’s been going on since I stopped smoking, can’t you tell from the waist) call my mother ten more times, leave some notes for the office… and… oh yeah I picked out the picture I want the missus to publicize if I ever die!!!

got a call today from my oldest friend, telling me that I must be making good money in canada telling people that I climbed trees when I was a kid…

i’ll call you all from iran

with love,
S

kick off with the sharks

Over a year ago, I wrote "Rivers, Sharks and Trees" a letter to no one in which I examine my feelings about the modern history of my hometown, Abadan, Iran. This letter was the genesis of "Return Ticket: Halifax-Abadan-Halifax" a new play that I am developing as part of OneLight Theatre's Civilian Project.

On Monday, April 7 I will be traveling to Iran so that I can continue to write and develop the play. Through this blog, I invite you to join me on my journey.

To kick off the voyage, I have attached "Rivers, Sharks and Trees" below.

Rivers, Sharks and Trees
On Saturday, a day before the end of 2006, I called my sister in Tehran, Iran, to see if she had heard the news that our father’s murderer had been executed. She had not. In fact she wasn’t much interested. Only then I realized that I was not much interested, either. Why were we not interested in such news? And if we were not interested, why am I writing about it?

Arvand Rood, the Persian name for the river which, according to some others, is the Shat ol Arab, runs behind my paternal city of Khorramshahr, on the very tip of the Persian Gulf. It forms part of the border that separates Iran from Iraq. My Father, his parents and their parents were born in Khorramshahr. Myself, along with my mother and my siblings were born in Abadan, twenty minutes south of Khorramshahr, along the same river and border to Iraq. Every Friday, my mother would take my sister and I to Khorramshahr to visit our grandparents. They lived in an old house that, to a child, was somewhat scary and mysterious. Not a big house but big enough for a six year old to find a lot of hiding places. Beside my grandparents, my two great-grandmothers also lived in that house. The yard-where my grandma Zahra would barbeque lamb kabobs for us- had two very tall and very old trees in it; this yard was my main playground. Every time we were there I would try to climb these two trees and every time I would fall down and hurt myself and get in trouble. When I was ten, I finally succeeded in getting to the top of the date tree and from there, after eating a bunch of half-ripened kharak dates, of course, I remember looking around and seeing, on the horizon, the outskirts of a city. I asked my mother, who was standing below, praying loud and hard that I would not fall, where that city was and she said it was Basra, in Iraq.

Six years later, in the year 1980, Saddam Hussein Tekriti went on Iraqi national television and ripped to pieces a treaty that was signed between Iraq and Iran to recognize that Arvand Rood was a shared territory. He then declared war against Iran.

Saddam wanted to take my river. That river was full of sharks. My river, my sharks and my tree.

On 27 Shahrivar 1359 of the Iranian Calendar (September 18, 1980) Saddam’s jet fighters bombed my city of Abadan and the war had officially started. On that day 21 people died in Abadan. The first day of the war. One of the dead was my father. The Iraqi ground troops had started moving towards Khorramshahr, crossing Arvand Rood and in less than a week they were walking over the ruble of my grandparents’ house and destroying my date tree. I forgot to tell you that at the foot of that date tree, there were two shrubs. One a green fig and the other a black fig. The black one was, and still is, my most favorite food. The fig trees were gone too. I remember the day that my grandparents, with only their birth certificates in their pockets, slippers on their feet and the clothes on their back came to our house. They did not know, yet, that their only child, my only father, had died.

Saddam, backed by many of the countries in the region, along with Europe, Russia and, of course, the US, went on killing hundreds of thousands of my people, causing displacement of over five million of my country’s men and women, and testing-yes testing- chemical weapons on Kurdish women and children.

But, we took back Khorramshahr and yes, Arvand Rood is still Arvand Rood.

A few years ago I took my wife to visit that house, well… I mean where once the house stood. And in couple of weeks we’re going to visit the same ruble, but this time with my daughter. What do I tell the four year-old about the house? Does anyone know? How do I explain to her what happened to the date tree? Since she’s a big fan of the Shark Boy and Lava Girl, I’m certainly not going to tell her about what happened to the sharks.

Saddam was prosecuted for crimes against humanity and he was hanged quickly. Why? When are we going to hear from Saddam why he attacked my country, why he used chemical weapons on innocent Iranian children, and if he was just doing his job who was he taking his orders from? Yes, that is why Saddam was executed so quickly. My judgment was that Saddam should have had a much longer prosecution and perhaps a life sentence. Evil cannot be answered with evil. What I got for the New Year was nothing more than justice the American way. GWB is trying to fix my house because, apparently, he is more skilled in the upkeep of my river, in the health of my tree and in the way my sharks swim. So if that was justice, you can see why my sister and I are not so interested.

Shahin Sayadi
Halifax, Canada, The End of 2006.