March 26 : A Week's Snap Shots
Walking from home to the Khomeini Institute for our Quranic Studies class, we pass a beautiful candy store that sells Qom’s famous “pistachio brittle“ candy (soaked in saffron oil). Looking in the plate class window I see a young chadorid woman busy behind the cash register. Overhead, dominating the wall, is a framed reproduction of da Vinci’s “Last Supper.”
We worship with a burgeoning church in Tehran founded by Messianic Jews before the Revolution. A woman on violin and man on flute accompany the congregation to heartily sung, hauntingly beautiful hymns in Persian. Over the door outside, the elaborate flowing script next to a simple cross, reads “This is my command, that you love one another.”
David browses through the English section of the excellent Imam Khomeimi Library. He finds Salmon Rushdie’s "Satanic Verses" and "A Feminist Critique of the Quran."
We have lunch (a feast of fish, chicken, rice, lentils and pickled peppers) with an Iraqi family from Karbala seeking refugee status (anywhere!). An extended family (2 sets of parents and 7 kids between them) live in two rooms with a tiny kitchen and a toilet “out back.” The home is clean and welcoming. After we eat we are invited to the tiny kitchen to wash our hands as the host holds a clean corner of the communal towel for hand drying. After we are again seated on the floor, he comes with a spray bottle and perfumes our hands.
Noor is with us in the Iraqi household. She is 16 years old, obviously brain damaged and can walk only by holding onto a wall or a hand for "balance support". (Going down the flight of stone steps to the “outhouse” in the yard is a major feat for her). Noor smiles at us and then goes back to watching her soap opera—“Days of our Lives” with Arabic subtitles. Noor was a bright, vivacious 12 year old when a rocket landed on the family home in Karbala. In panic, she ran out into the street to escape the burning roof and was hit by a passing car—sustaining a devastating closed head injury. In Iraq (and now in Iran)--- no therapy and no rehab. When she isn’t watching the soaps, says her mother, Noor sits and cries.
We go to the Armenian Club in Tehran for dinner with two Armenian pastoral couples. It is such fun to be in western dress (no scarf and manteau), laughing and perusing the fine menu. We note that they don’t offer the omnipresent “Turkish coffee”, here it is strictly “Armenian Coffee”. A piano player starts up in a corner of the room and soon a guy is crooning “I Can’t Help Falling in Love With You.” We can hear voices wafting up from the big reception room downstairs—in Russian then in French. (The Armenian Club is open to all Christians in Iran, non-Muslim visitors and diplomats.)
We follow a car through Tehran’s traffic. It has an “ichthus” sticker on the back, marking the driver as a Christian. I wonder how many Christians back home in N. America would have the courage of a simple bumper sticker in this complex and sometimes volatile context.
We climb a large hill (pure desert dirt and gravel) 6 or 7 km from our apartment. It is “Khidr Mountain” with a little shrine to St. Khidr (a mysterious person in the Quran who has a conversation with Moses—rather like Melchizadek and Abraham in the Old Testament). We are with 4 young university students who have packed a picnic lunch for us all. Iranian families gape at we two Americans as we walk by. (It feels a bit like being an enormously unusual and colorful bird that people want to watch and point to). I smile and “salaam” to the women as our eyes meet. One woman says (translated by our young friends) “I will pray for you in the shrine.” Another woman puts her hands on her heart and says “May you live forever” (i.e. “May you inherit eternal life”).
We worship with a burgeoning church in Tehran founded by Messianic Jews before the Revolution. A woman on violin and man on flute accompany the congregation to heartily sung, hauntingly beautiful hymns in Persian. Over the door outside, the elaborate flowing script next to a simple cross, reads “This is my command, that you love one another.”
David browses through the English section of the excellent Imam Khomeimi Library. He finds Salmon Rushdie’s "Satanic Verses" and "A Feminist Critique of the Quran."
We have lunch (a feast of fish, chicken, rice, lentils and pickled peppers) with an Iraqi family from Karbala seeking refugee status (anywhere!). An extended family (2 sets of parents and 7 kids between them) live in two rooms with a tiny kitchen and a toilet “out back.” The home is clean and welcoming. After we eat we are invited to the tiny kitchen to wash our hands as the host holds a clean corner of the communal towel for hand drying. After we are again seated on the floor, he comes with a spray bottle and perfumes our hands.
Noor is with us in the Iraqi household. She is 16 years old, obviously brain damaged and can walk only by holding onto a wall or a hand for "balance support". (Going down the flight of stone steps to the “outhouse” in the yard is a major feat for her). Noor smiles at us and then goes back to watching her soap opera—“Days of our Lives” with Arabic subtitles. Noor was a bright, vivacious 12 year old when a rocket landed on the family home in Karbala. In panic, she ran out into the street to escape the burning roof and was hit by a passing car—sustaining a devastating closed head injury. In Iraq (and now in Iran)--- no therapy and no rehab. When she isn’t watching the soaps, says her mother, Noor sits and cries.
We go to the Armenian Club in Tehran for dinner with two Armenian pastoral couples. It is such fun to be in western dress (no scarf and manteau), laughing and perusing the fine menu. We note that they don’t offer the omnipresent “Turkish coffee”, here it is strictly “Armenian Coffee”. A piano player starts up in a corner of the room and soon a guy is crooning “I Can’t Help Falling in Love With You.” We can hear voices wafting up from the big reception room downstairs—in Russian then in French. (The Armenian Club is open to all Christians in Iran, non-Muslim visitors and diplomats.)
We follow a car through Tehran’s traffic. It has an “ichthus” sticker on the back, marking the driver as a Christian. I wonder how many Christians back home in N. America would have the courage of a simple bumper sticker in this complex and sometimes volatile context.
We climb a large hill (pure desert dirt and gravel) 6 or 7 km from our apartment. It is “Khidr Mountain” with a little shrine to St. Khidr (a mysterious person in the Quran who has a conversation with Moses—rather like Melchizadek and Abraham in the Old Testament). We are with 4 young university students who have packed a picnic lunch for us all. Iranian families gape at we two Americans as we walk by. (It feels a bit like being an enormously unusual and colorful bird that people want to watch and point to). I smile and “salaam” to the women as our eyes meet. One woman says (translated by our young friends) “I will pray for you in the shrine.” Another woman puts her hands on her heart and says “May you live forever” (i.e. “May you inherit eternal life”).
posted by Quakers in Qom at 3:57 AM
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