feeding the five thousand » Thenewcomer's Weblog

Even as I type, four girls out of five in Halifax are wearing shirt-dresses. True, they make a slender girl look four months pregnant, while an old veteran mother like myself looks at least seven months gone. But, they are extremely cool and comfortable, versatile, easy to dress up and down, and they look nice with leggings. What more does a girl want? As I stepped out of IKA two weeks ago and looked around at the Iranian women struggling with their scarves and manteaux, I was hit by a flash of lightening: manteaux are in fact, sort of, shirt-dresses. Only nobody knew. Longish, flow-ish, lots of different patterns and designs… Yes. I decided there and then to take back a couple of manteaux with me, to wear as shirt-dresses.

Of course, traditional manteaux are too ugly to consider- too long, the material too thick, too effective at making the body look ugly. My mother had bought one for me in anticipation of my visit:

Practically all the manteaux I have worn since childhood follow this same basic version; a bastardized version of western tailoring for ladies’ coats, as befits the name manteau. Some have beads, some have gold buttons, some have embroidered edges, some have contrasting trims, some have frills, some are short, some are long, and all are ugly ugly ugly. We pretend they are not, and follow the fashions as they are are dictated: red, army-green, bright pink, tight, loose, frilled, straight… But we all know in our hearts they are ugly, and not really the cool comfy seksy shirt-dresses we would like them to be.

Today I bought a manteau which was different, the first manteau I had ever worn which seemed to be in touch with Iranian sartorial roots. No buttons, but tied around with ribbons, and made of a soft and light fabric. Not really body-concealing, but whatever.

Not really a shirt-dress, but much, much nicer. A beautful manteau, which I will take back and wear in Halifax.

These days, we have time to conduct in-depth philosophical discussions about artists, singers, musicians and the like, and I feel it is a good time as any to lay out some firm opinions on the line. In general, I like songs, not singers. I don’t care about individual singers, their albums and lifestyles and partners and so on. However, like always there are exceptions which prove the rule, and the exception is, of course, Axl Rose. And given his eccentric and sometimes downright dismal fashion sense (including murderer t-shirts and sparkly blue headbands) and unsavoury social skills, I want to elucidate, why, exactly, I like the perfomer as well as enjoying listening to his songs again, and again…and again…

1- He does not give to charity, and does not adopt black babies.

OK, so maybe he does give to charity, but we don’t know about it. I can’t stand celebrities who give to charities and then trumpet it out, the Angelina Jolies and the U2s, who are goodwill ambassadors and who talk nonstop about their good deeds. In fact, I can’t even stand ordinary people who do that- let alone those who have access to global media.

2- He is angry.

The snarling anger which pours out of his voice and songs is pure and true- despite his success, he has never ceased to be angry, unlike others who have sold out (yes, Sting, Madonna, I am looking at you).

3- His lyrics are in fact about me and my life.

“I’m sorry for youuuuuuuuuuu…not sorry for meeeeeee….you tried to hurt me but…” (I don’t know the rest- who cares). “Don’t you ever try to tell me How much you care for me…Don’t ever try to tell me…how much you’re there for me…[screams, roars at the sky]” “There was a tiiiimmmmeeee…” (don’t know the rest, don’t care) “you don’t talk so loud…you don’t walk so proud ..Any more/And what for…” Yes. Precisely so.

4- He doesn’t care about his fans liking him.

“I love you, ladies and gentlemen!” “I wouldn’t be where I am today without my wonderful fans!” “Thank you! Thank you! I love you!” You can never hear such false hypocritical bile spew out of his mouth, unlike, well, so many others, too numerous to name. He doesn’t care.

5- He is not a hypocrite.

No comment necessary.

The eyes are heavily made up, with lots of thick eye-liner and so on. Plenty of orangy-yellow coloured hair flowing out of the front and back of scarves- nothing new here. Chalky-pink lips. Manteaux are medium and mostly dark, none of the bright flourescent pink and green colours which flashed through the city a couple of years back. The designs are elaborate with ribbons and buttons fluttering in unexpected places.

What is new, however, from eight months ago, is this stupid little upside-down bowl which so many girls have put on their heads, underneath the loose  scarves.

I really don’t get the bowl. It is too big and neat to be a chignon, and it is positioned right on the top of the head. I don’t have a clue what it is- none of my friends and family wear one, and I can’t go up to a complete stranger and ask “excuse me, what is that on your head, under your scarf? And why?” It is not particularly attractive, as it focuses the attention on the head, making it appear larger and more imposing.  How does it stay in one place? How is it fixed to the hair and/or head? So many questions! So few answers!

Dear reader, in case you are in the habit of affixing a large inverted bowl on your head and covering it with a large scarf when going out, please provide some answers.

The waves are warm, a soft grey-green colour so different from the harsh cold steely blue Atlantic waves or the smooth gold-yellow water of the lakes of Nova Scotia. I dip and dive, remembering my childhood amongst these soft Caspian waves, long clothes clinging to my body and revealing every contour. A long purple-pink scarf trails over my head, and I pretend it is my long mermaid hair, just as I used to when I was ten years old.  We used to stay by the Caspian in huge extended family clans, no longer possible as the extended family has long been torn apart by political, religious and personal sensitivities, and there is as much possibility of me swimming in the Caspian with my childhood companions as there is of swimming with Axl Rose.

I have my own family now, and I roll about with my son and daughter amongst my waves, screaming at the flash of tiny silver fishes and the floating seaweed. The soft brown sand of the isolated beach is strewn with rubbish, watermelon skins, old bottles, and the scent of cow dung flavours the air. Perhaps Iranians deliberately trash nature, as a form of subconscious protest? What else could explain this willful ruin of such beautiful places? My theory is greeted with hoots of derision and ridicule. Words float over me, over the waves: “…in Turkey they charge dollars and euros from westerners to lie on their pebbles and rocks, and here we have these beautiful sandy beaches, left to ruin and desolation…a bunch of traitors who have nothing better to do than stick their noses up their people’s bum…if they freed alcohol and women’s dress, believe me we would have people lining up to pay to visit these beaches…you can find alcohol in every home, in the room of every young man in Tehran…as if the prohibition makes any difference…ruining the country…evil…destroyed…barbaric…stupid…cruel…”

Political swimming. Political sandcastles and suntanning. Sun bathing with your limbs covered in long cotton clothing, amazing how much the hot southern sun will burn you still. But we are in the North.  I will keep my summer tan long after summer. A political tan.

My early morning dose of cuteness:

-Look mummy! Look! I’ve made a horse!

The golden boy waves a crude replica of a horse made with colurful building blocks in my face. Bathed in mother-love, the object really does look like horse.

-I’m gonna sit on it, and you’re gonna sit behind me, and we’re going to go to Iran on it! And visit (k)haleh and…

The princess screams: “And me! I’m gonna sit on the horse and come to Iran TOO!”

-”No! You’re gonna come by airplane! me and mummy are gonna come on my horse!”

The princess starts really crying. “No! I don’t wanna go alone on the airplane! I wanna ride on the horse!”

-Princess! it’s only a game! you’re not going alone, we’re all going on the airplane!

The golden boy, as soft-hearted as ever, relents at the sight of his sister’s tears. “OK, you can come on the horse to. You sit at the back. I’M GONNA DRIVE THE HORSE, OK?”

However, there are still details to be solved: “No! I dont wanna sit behind mummy- I won’t be able to see anything! You can drive the horse, but I’m sitting behind you, OK?”

The discussion continues. The horse falls by the breakfast table. Clever horse, taking the newcomer family across oceans and continents to see their loved ones.  Only a few more days.

My early morning dose of cuteness:

-Look mummy! Look! I’ve made a horse!

The golden boy waves a crude replica of a horse made with colurful building blocks in my face. Bathed in mother-love, the object really does look like horse.

-I’m gonna sit on it, and you’re gonna sit behind me, and we’re going to go to Iran on it! And visit (k)haleh and…

The princess screams: “And me! I’m gonna sit on the horse and come to Iran TOO!”

-”No! You’re gonna come by airplane! me and mummy are gonna come on my horse!”

The princess starts really crying. “No! I don’t wanna go alone on the airplane! I wanna ride on the horse!”

-Princess! it’s only a game! you’re not going alone, we’re all going on the airplane!

The golden boy, as soft-hearted as ever, relents at the sight of his sister’s tears. “OK, you can come on the horse to. You sit at the back. I’M GONNA DRIVE THE HORSE, OK?”

However, there are still details to be solved: “No! I dont wanna sit behind mummy- I won’t be able to see anything! You can drive the horse, but I’m sitting behind you, OK?”

The discussion continues. The horse falls by the breakfast table. Clever horse, taking the newcomer family across oceans and continents to see their loved ones.  Only a few more days.

My howl of anger and frustration towards the sky, as I learnt that our voyage to Tehran will coincide with the holy month, the month of love and of mysticism, of spirituality and of… oh excuse me while I vomit.  

Words cannot convey the horror to those who have no experience of living under State-imposed theocracy, the horror of the holy month for non-religiouf people.

The media cranks up the sanctity and piety a thousand-fold, with verses and holy anecdotes and sermons and tv series showing happy families breaking their fast blaring out non-stop. Drinking and eating in the public is strictly forbidden. Restaurants are closed during the daytime. (I said it was horrible). The traffic jams during sunset and twilight reach epic proportions.

Meanwhile, gluttony and food consumption during the dark becomes almost baccanalian, minus the grape-drink, of course. During the day, people talk obssessively about what they had for the early morning meal, and what their mothers are preparing for the early evening break-fast.

Some of my memories of the holy month:

Gobbling down smuggled candy in the girls’ toilets at school…fat family friends of my mother arriving extremely late for the evening meal party, exclaiming jovially that they sleep all day and eat all night…my mother, pale and faint from fasting, insisting that she is alright and will people stop bothering her…a young girl of nine or ten reaching out at a family gathering for the evening meal, and slapping her mother across the face, shrieking at her to leave her alone…my father, cursing and swearing…buying contraband stinky potato salad and fake ham from the store across the unversity with fellow students, and eating in the girls study room…offering food to a fellow-student at a party in Halifax, having him remind me that is “the month” and that “muflims” are fasting, oh sorry I came here to forget…

Stoning! Woman! Iranian! in Iran! next to Iraq! Iran! Stones! Women! Beautiful! Woman! Stoning! Adultery! Seks! Torture! Woman! Religious! Iran! Stoning! Woman! Veil! Seksy! Forbidden Seks! Lindsay! Lohan! Like! Iranian! Woman! Stoning! Small stones! Middle-sized stones! Torture! Pain! For Seks! Abuse! Iran! Religious! Fanatics! Stoning! Women! All! The! Time! And! They don’t like western pop music either! Lindsay! Lohan! Jailed! Iranian! Woman! With! Funny Name! Also! In jail! Stoning! Will be stoned! Used to be stoned! For Seks! Barbaric! Ahnadinezad! Hates! Jews! Stones! Women! Pretty Women! With Black Veil! On Her head! Nuclear! Weapons! Stoning! Woman! Veiled! Sanctions! Muslim! Woman! Seks! Stones! Forbidden!

The best way to trivialise and cheapen any issue: Let the western media get hold of it.

Oedipus was a stranger to the city. He killed the wicked king and married his widow. At the time, he didn’t know that the king was actually his father, and his new wife was actually his own mother- he doesn’t find out until the end of the story, when he is suitably horrified at what he had done. So I never understood why an extraordinary close mother-son relationship is called oedipal- the original Oedipus and his wife/mother Jocasta do not actually know they were mother and son at the time of their marriage, and throughout their life together.

What has this to do, you may ask, with very prolific and right-on Canadian kiddies author, Robert Munsch?

Robert Munsch writes story books which have glaring, obvious, middle-class morals: sharing is good! make-up is bad! and so on. Teachers and librarians love him, children less so.  He is the Canadian equivalent of our ethics and religious school texts, with the goddy bits mostly left out.

So I was leafing through this Munsch book called “Love You forever” : the story of a nameless mother and son. The first page shows the young mother cradling her baby, exclaiming that he is her baby, and she will love him, for ever and ever. The story is simple: the child grows older, behaving badly (flushing his mommy’s watch down the toilet at the age of two, partying with his friends as a teenager), but every night, after he is asleep, the mother comes to his bedroom, hugs her sleeping child and tells him he is her baby, and she will love him, forever and ever.

The oedipal climax of the story comes when the son has become a grown man, and moved away. Every night the mother, who now has white hair, drives across town, with a ladder on the top of her car (picture of her car at night with the ladder). She climbs the walls of her son’s house, enters his bedroom by the window, hugs her sleeping man-child (illustrated with a picture of an old lady sitting by the bed, a grown sleeping man in her arms, his long arms and legs dangling), and tells him he is her baby, and she will love him forever and ever.

Eeeeewwww!!! A feeling of watching some sick horror film crept over me as I read this simple child’s book. Is this just me, or isn’t this icky, isn’t there something a bit not quite right with this story, as a children’s story? Is this supposed to be an example of virtuous mother love, which all good Canadians should aspire to? Talk about Psycho!

And people accuse me of spoiling the golden boy.

Not funny. To whoever switched the men and women’s washroom signs in our office building: you didn’t succeed, you little gobsucker. A kind and extraordinarily alert female cleaner noticed your hoax, and switched back the signs first thing in the morning, before coming round and telling everybody about it.

Look here, women are paranoid enough with the their bodies, and peeing, and people watching, and that kind of thing, without anybody playing  these stupid jokes. Fortunately, your evil intentions were dashed by our super-cleaner.

Leave the toilet signs alone, joker.