Summers in Tehran...

Something magical happens, right around that time on a hot Summer day when the temperature starts to drop from the very hot to the pleasant warm.

At that exact moment, I always take a deep breath and keep the air in my lungs for as long as I can, and then exhale feeling happier than moments earlier.  It happens like clockwork, I have been told by a very observant four year old who has me under her keen surveillance most of the time. 

It all has to do with my childhood days in Tehran.  We would spend those hot summer days mostly at home.  Home was cozy and relaxing.  There was never a preplanned activity for the children by the adults.  Some days my cousins and I would swim in the pool for hours and hours under the hot sun.  But since the revolution, and then the war with Iraq, swimming in the pool which always made us laugh too loudly and even shout in childhood abandonment after each canon ball jump into the pool, was not a smart option.  Pools, which required wearing swimsuits, were seriously frowned upon by the new government.

And so, even though the pools were kept clean and ready for swimming mostly out of defiance, we spent most of those long hot summer days indoors.  Daily outside chores like buying fresh produce and bread were done early in the morning, usually by my grandmother who insisted on her own pick of the freshest fruits and meats for the day.

Inside, the houses were kept religiously cool by the Coolers.  Everyone took all the care in the world not to let out the cool air. 

I hardly remember seeing other family members around the house.  We would each fade into our solitary past times during the mornings... reading, listening to music, doing English workbooks, playing the same repertoire of songs over and over again on the piano, making candles,  knitting, crocheting, and playing Solitaire with playing cards (Persians think of Solitaire as "fortune telling", if you solve it, the question you had in mind will come to fruition). 

I do remember though my grandmother, seated on a large floral plastic table cloth, spread on the floor most summer mornings.   She was petite, well below five feet tall, and meticulous.  And each day I would find her sitting cross legged with her back perfectly straight, behind a mound (I am talking restaurant quantities) of fresh herbs, fruits or vegetables...   One day it was cleaning, chopping and sauteing tens of Kilos of herbs for freezing.  The next day was juicing two or three large merchants' burlap sacks filled with tiny limes.  She would juice them one by one on a hand held juicer and then freeze the juice in ice cube trays, for serving to visitors in tall and skinny glasses of water with a spoonful of simple syrup.  And then there was my favorite, sour cherries.  She would stem and seed them for making our annual supply of sour cherry jam and sour cherry syrup, which was also served to visitors in tall, skinny glasses topped with ice cubes and cold water. 

 This image, the sheer volume of fresh produce and my grandmother's graceful presence, would always draw me close... I couldn't help but to want to run my fingers through the stacks of herbs, or the boxes of freshly picked cherries...   But before I could even reach out, I would be stopped in my tracks by my grandmother's quick "Either wash your hands, sit and help or go back to your own work".   

My mother on the other hand was never invited to sit and help.  She hated housework for herself, for her mother, or for any other woman as a "feminine past time".  My grandmother suspected that the few times she had allowed my mother to take part in her activities, my mother was guilty of discarding much of the produce in the garbage bags each time my grandmother had turned her head,  evident by the significantly lower output on days that my mother had helped.  And since my mother wasn't busy helping, she had time to complain incessantly that "it wasn't kosher for the family to enjoy food that requires so much work from "one petite older woman".  My grandmother seemed not to register any of it in her Zen state. 

By lunchtime, whoever was in the house that day,  would gather for lunch.  On most days there were at least one or two cousins that had come to spend a few summer days at our home.  The afternoon hours that followed were slow.  But then, right around four or five O'clock an energy would radiate through the house.  My mother and grandmother would reapply their lipsticks and rouge.  A large platter of fresh summer fruits would be washed, elegantly arranged and placed on the living room coffee table.    We would turn off the Cooler and open the windows to invite in the lovely afternoon air.  My mother would hose down the stoned deck, and the smell of evaporated moisture would quickly rush inside through the windows to my utter delight.   Fathers would come home from work, and so would begin the evening activities, outings, shopping trips, and dinner parties...

Today, here in suburban America, that special hour outside when the light changes and the air become lighter holds little significance to my life inside, as we march by the drum of our precious and always fleeting, valuable time....

... to be continued