iran - 2

Blog 2

I have become an expert mosquito catcher.  I killed
six in ten minutes tonight.  My insomnia is no longer
due to the time difference (which is eleven hours
ahead of California) but my defiance in the dominion
of these wretched creatures over my body.  They know
no bounds.  If I wasn’t sitting here at four in the
morning keeping watch over my precious skin like my
life depended on it, I have no doubt that my face
would be completely masked my mosquito bites, as that
is the only part of my skin I will allow myself to
expose in this dangerous time of night.  Annoyance is
no longer a driving force to me, but rather, pure
vengeance for crimes they’ve already committed on my
skin and are now plotting to commit as I type these
words.  I cannot rest until they all suffer death.

I have come to the conclusion that my grandmother is
an unusually strong and opinionated woman, for better
or for worse.  For example, the woman simply will not
let me sleep.  This is my third sleepless night in a
row and inconveniently, I am also as sick as a dog,
but any attempt to make up for lost sleep during the
day is immediately thwarted by her with the excuse
that “I’m sleeping too much.”  Various family members
she has complained to about my “problem” have tried to
come to my aid, urging and reasoning with her to let
me be and to allow me time for me to adjust to the
time difference but they all come up against a brick
wall.  She is relentless.  Due to my sleep depravation
and my general feeling of shittyness, her last
unexpected interruption of my afternoon nap today
nearly brought me to tears with frustration.  After
she roused me against my will and my fruitless pleas,
she forced her family picture albums upon me, turning
the pages slowly and narrarating each picture while I
sat dejected and yawning, seething with anger and
hopelessness.  I dare not go into that anymore suffice
it to say that it is her way or the highway and I’m
simply not a fan.

On the upside, all of her sons have married the same
type of strong and colorful women which, I believe, is
due to the effect that the headstrongness of my
grandmother had upon them.  My last aunt-in-law to
visit actually sat in the living room and smoked a
cigarette right in front of my grandmother, a pure act
of badassness as women rarely smoke here and no one
smokes in front of my grandmother.  I was stunned, and
all things considered, was elated to have her as my
uncle’s wife.  She is nothing short of amazing, and
likewise, has raised two amazing children.

I have eight cousins here.  There are three boys and
five girls, four of which are in high school.  I think
I have fallen in love with these four girls but the
two daughters of my aunt whom I have spoken of are by
far my favorite.  They are the most amazing people, so
sweet and cheery I find its authenticity difficult to
believe but it truly is.  One of them is a total
badass tomboy.  She’s fourteen and she’s obsessed with
sports and dresses like a boy (compared to the other
ones).  She wants to be a computer engineer when she
grows up and programmed her computer to destroy the
censors here so that they can access any website they
want.  She’s the shyest towards me of all of them but
I think I like her the best.  She’s visibly different
from the crowd and you get the sense that she is
independent of everyone and she likes it.  Her sister,
who is sixteen, is so lovely to talk to I could sit
and talk to her for days without stopping.  She is the
social butterfly of the two and loves parties her
friends, which makes me feel more kindred to her than
my other cousins who are more family oriented and
generally more shy.  She’s adventurous.  While it
appears as if most young people here want to stay in
Tehran and tend to rely on the comfort of family and
things which are familiar to them for support and
happiness, she wants to go to school abroad and likes
to test her boundaries socially.  She relished at the
idea of traveling with me while I’m here and is keenly
interested to learn about the different things that I
do in America.  I don’t feel that she would judge or
be scared of my lifestyle in the states like I feel
the others might, she seems open to anything.

She showed me pictures of her friends at school and
they seem crazier and less inhibited than I was at
that age.  They seem to make the best of every
situation and are always laughing.  We talked about
women here and she informed me that women aren’t
allowed to sing, hence the lack of famous women in
music here.  She also explained that boys and girls
cannot attend the same schools anywhere in Iran.  I
simply cannot fathom how people actually meet their
significant others here.  Relationships between a man
and a woman who are not related seem out of the
question.  The sexes are unavoidably segregated here
and female sexuality is non-existent.  For example,
all the pop and dance songs consist of men telling
each other to get out of their seats and dance with
each other, but in that hardcore gangster rap kind of
way.  I had to bit my lip to keep from laughing at the
ridiculousness of it.  I have not heard one popular
song mentioning a woman yet.  Similarly, the streets
seem totally vacant of women.  The centre of Tehran is
teeming with women, dressed head to toe in black and
scurrying off to work but here, an hour away from the
center, there are no women on the streets.  Contrary
to what I heard from my family, most women do dress
conservatively, black sheet and all.  They look like
human blackheads scuttling about.  They do not linger
or walk leisurely, probably due to their discomfort,
not to mention the danger of walking alone as a woman
here.  My cousin cautiously explained to me that
Iranian women endure the risk of kidnapping and murder
rather frequently here, especially at night.  I can’t
imagine why she would still want to travel around the
country with me.  I suppose this atmosphere produce
one of two choices: to live in fear or in denial.  I
guess she chooses denial.