Dreaming of Iran

A still from Majid Majidis 'A color of Paradise'

Friends, lovers, strangers have often chuckled at my obsession with Iran. It pops out of me quite shamelessly even when I don't intent it to. Its the place I read about, its the country I love, its on all my bucket lists, if there was a way of gene pool transfer I would turn myself into an Iranian for sure.
I have been asked Why Iran by amused people a million times! I don't suppose there can ever be an explanation to obsessions. Except that they seem to point towards where there is maximum juice for anyone. Isnt it? Think about what you think about the whole day and you will know how it fills your life with meaning.

I discovered Iran in Old Studio in AJKMCRC during my Film appreciation lectures. The landscape the stories were divine but it was the emotions that those films played with that brought the affinity that has lasted me now some ten years.

I still remember that scene from Majid Majidis 'A color of paradise' where the ageing old father abandons his blind son to die in the river and then goes back like a mad man feeling pangs of guilt and fatherly love. In that film there was a grey that all these years no other cinema has been able to match and yet this comes from a country which ninety percent of the world sees in black and white. Besides this was just one film. I dont think I have yet seen an iranian film I havent loved.

The next big wave of love came after reading the extraordinary expat memoirs of women from Iran. Things I have been silent about by Azar Nafisi opened a vein that is still bleeding in me even as the list of all that I eat up in books grows fatter everyday. (Will put together a list for all of you who want to read this)

A screenshot from 'The Things I have been Silent about by Azar Nafisi

After reading a bit about the Political history of the country I grew deeper in love with this rogue country that put the USA in its place good and proper- in culture and in foreign policy. The wars, the revolutions and the one hundred mutinies.

I still dont know if that is all. This is of course what I know above the surface. Who knows what lies at the root of this obsession/love/longing/belonging.