Vanilla
IRAN MEMOIRS
“But all this world is like a tale we hear - Men’s evil and their glory, disappear.”
- Shahnameh by Ferdowsi
I come from a land where there was a thing called a Shah. That’s king in English. And he was almighty and powerful and very rich. And he was out of touch with the poor. Then I came to a land without a Shah, but I found I was mistaken. Shah-en-Shah. King of all Kings. A leader who thinks he can dominate all leaders from all countries. So I think to myself, how far has my journey over oceans and seas taken me? Who knows, maybe the rulers in this country, the country that boasts of democracy, are Shahs at heart, too. Here I find autocracy or plutocracy or hypocrisy or something of the sort. I’m not so good with politics, I just know what I feel, and things don’t feel right.
I open the freezer…Rocky Road…Strawberry Surprise…Cookies and Cream. Caramel Mint Swirl…New York Super Fudge Chunk. As the ice cream melts in my mouth, it takes me back to many such occasions where ice cream melted in my mouth in a similar way. Its frozen texture takes me to a Friday night.
The flavor is strawberry as I indulge on the hood of a beige Carmenghia. I am small, the world around me large, and it all seems to be gathered here in a square called Shemiran in the north of the city. Mothers, fathers, daughters, grandmothers, wives, children. Herand and Anush and Alek and Alice. Not a soul missing. Such a pleasant, cool summer's night. Dark in corners. Light where the light chooses to shine. Perfect for a summer drive after dinner and then to stop for ice cream - such luxury represented only in the sweetness of the dessert in the year 1966, when such luxuries can still be afforded amongst the people of Iran.
Another Friday night. This time I taste a creamy vanilla as I observe the happiness around me. Bright lights surround the live area until it becomes almost day. A band is playing at one end and everyone is dancing. Boys with girls, girls with girls, moms with grand-moms, dads with moms and every other explicable combination. I sit at a table at the other end soaking it all in. As I watch the dancing, I sense something so sweet, so incredibly pure about this gaiety, it leaves the appropriate taste in my mouth of vanilla ice cream. That was 1970.
The next time I vividly recall tasting vanilla ice cream is four years later, a Friday night in 1975. We sit at one of the many newly opened outdoor restaurants. As you walk in the front entrance, you pass through a series of waterfalls so thin they resemble walls on either side. I sit facing these walls. I like to watch the people as they walk through. They are distorted and blurred, shimmering as though in a dream. Our party is quiet and reserved, conforming to the newness of the atmosphere. I eat my ice cream with a touch of boredom. It fails to awaken in me the delights and passions of previous years. It tastes somewhat different, a mature, more tired vanilla than that of before. I sit in my disillusionment and wonder at the shimmering figures that continue to enter.
I never tasted ice cream again in Iran after that night at the new restaurant. Somehow, it lost its flavor for me then. The 1979 revolution swept away the Shah's monarchy, along with a lot of other things, and brought the Ayatollah Khomeini to power.
It is Friday night ten years after the 1979 revolution as I sit in Los Angeles with a tub of Haagen-Daaz. I swirl the vanilla around so as to extract every hint of its flavor. It tastes sweet and cold and its texture carries all the physical characteristics of ice cream but that is all. I think back to the revolution that happened soon after the night of the shimmering figures and I wonder how long it will be before Iran regains the flavor of its people, the pureness of its land, the joy of the past. But, most of all, I wonder how long it will be before I can taste the sweetness in the air of a cool summer's night.
…to be continued.