Refering to some sermons by Mr Joel osteen , and about my cousin' s Farang and Kamran 's Miraculous Success Stories
Mr Parveneh my aunt's husband died all of a sudden .... i mean we knew he had yellow fever because he had turned yellow , but since he lived a very healthy and sane life with no bad habits , we thought it was impossible that he should exit the scene so early in life. His children who had never showed great signs of affection certainly bore the loss with difficulty. Infact my cousin Farang who had been the only cousin to play with me when i was a child , totally changed.
She had been a very intelligent student of mathematics at school and there had been talk of a real future talent . Even tho she was sickly and "annorexic looking" and too pale and thin for comfort ..... as a child i was in love with her. She never hesitated to play at dressing up and doing theater and dance with me. She had a suitcase full of clothes with shinny decorations and extravagant looking things like tiaras , Sarees and pieces of cloth. We just had to use our imagination to make up costumes with whatever we found in her box . Later on she went to a painter's atelier and was creating oil paintings with the help of the artist who gave her and Sharzad lessons. This is probably where i received my first obsession with becoming a painter and a creative . . I was about ten years younger and about eight or nine when she was eighteen, but we were on the same page
. It was just before her final collage exams that she lost her father. She had been an angelic young teenager , but after her loss she suddenly changed and became interested in wearing fashinable clothes and going out to restraunts and dancing and to places where good girls usually wouldnt be going on their own. She had become interested in life with a capitle L and having finished college , she was worrying everybody with her female adulthood . it would have been different if she had lived in the west where women had more freedom to live their life . Even my cousin Ameneh who lived in the UK was restrained by family , but since Ameneh 's father was now our uncle Ismile who was a substitute father for my widowed aunts children and he was very much a leftist , she was free from restrictions and even went to live on campus .... in the UK ... it would not affect her reputation. Fortunately my aunt Sharbanoo was able to communicate with her children and to get them to a good place even when they were having their issues.
. It was just before her final collage exams that she lost her father. She had been an angelic young teenager , but after her loss she suddenly changed and became interested in wearing fashinable clothes and going out to restraunts and dancing and to places where good girls usually wouldnt be going on their own. She had become interested in life with a capitle L and having finished college , she was worrying everybody with her female adulthood . it would have been different if she had lived in the west where women had more freedom to live their life . Even my cousin Ameneh who lived in the UK was restrained by family , but since Ameneh 's father was now our uncle Ismile who was a substitute father for my widowed aunts children and he was very much a leftist , she was free from restrictions and even went to live on campus .... in the UK ... it would not affect her reputation. Fortunately my aunt Sharbanoo was able to communicate with her children and to get them to a good place even when they were having their issues.
Farang and Kamran , both entered a crisis and they didnt manage to get over it on their own . My cousin Kamran was at University and into maths and he had to drop out. He was the same age or younger than my brother Taher , but while my brother continued to study and finished his BA in electronics , Kamran had to take pills and stronger stuff to controle his moods. My brother too felt worried and affected because these cousins were very close important childhood friends for him and he was emotionally involved with them . In the good times they had had parties and danced the twist listening to the Beatles and all the bands which were in vogue in the 60's , but now no one was ready for what was happening to these two young people. It was almost unbelievable ! I was a child and didn't know that things happen to people and that they dont remain at the same point .
These were the years when we were watching Peyton Place on TV . Later on during the revolution and after it too Iranians were watching Korean soap operas instead of American ones and Oshin was the story of a girl who people could connect with ..... What was really the problem for the family was that my parents had already had to cope with my eldest brother Dara ailment on their own . At the bottom of all this was the fact that having mental problems was a tabu subject in the 50's and the 60's. It is probably still a dark cloud that casts its shadow on people and families in most of the third world. If some members of the family suffered from "psycological disfunction " then people didnt know how to cope and how to behave . And this shadow hung about the whole family. It meant that not only did we have aunty Parveen who wasnot "normal" and suffered from autism , but now we had two youngsters going in the same direction of disfunction .... . It was true that Parveens parents had been first cousins , but Sharbanoos's husband was not a relative so his children had had a breakdown purely because of their loss of a parent (even tho they were adults).
Mr Parvaneh was not vociferous and never threw his weight around as the breadwinner of the family. This trauma was amazing , i mean that his children suffered so much after his death . His silent gardening all those years had generated a lot of feelings of love and security in his family. He had been a very important "sane" person , even if he didnt drive a car or do other things men usually liked to do. Meaning to say that people don't have to be achieving anything special .... but their presence and their attitude in a group situation , can influence everyone around them.
These were the years when we were watching Peyton Place on TV . Later on during the revolution and after it too Iranians were watching Korean soap operas instead of American ones and Oshin was the story of a girl who people could connect with ..... What was really the problem for the family was that my parents had already had to cope with my eldest brother Dara ailment on their own . At the bottom of all this was the fact that having mental problems was a tabu subject in the 50's and the 60's. It is probably still a dark cloud that casts its shadow on people and families in most of the third world. If some members of the family suffered from "psycological disfunction " then people didnt know how to cope and how to behave . And this shadow hung about the whole family. It meant that not only did we have aunty Parveen who wasnot "normal" and suffered from autism , but now we had two youngsters going in the same direction of disfunction .... . It was true that Parveens parents had been first cousins , but Sharbanoos's husband was not a relative so his children had had a breakdown purely because of their loss of a parent (even tho they were adults).
Mr Parvaneh was not vociferous and never threw his weight around as the breadwinner of the family. This trauma was amazing , i mean that his children suffered so much after his death . His silent gardening all those years had generated a lot of feelings of love and security in his family. He had been a very important "sane" person , even if he didnt drive a car or do other things men usually liked to do. Meaning to say that people don't have to be achieving anything special .... but their presence and their attitude in a group situation , can influence everyone around them.
My aunt Sharbanoo,had been widowed now but she had a bit of luck because one of her daughters found a distant relative of the Indian family side, who asked for her hand. It was a very positive thing when Sharzad who was a very pretty and gracious 20 year old was married off ( to the disappointment of my brother who was about the same age as her) . Her husband was thirty years old and had money and whisked her off to the UK and then to Spain. She was not to be seen by her mother or siblings again . She had a child called Setareh who then became a researcher at university and now has two children with her spanish husband .
Farang too found a cousin from her father's family who was interested in her even tho he knew she had some issues. My aunt who had been a talented pianist had had her wits about her when she wrote certain sentimental letters to the young man. I think of Jane Austin novels when my thoughts turn to Aunt Sharbanoo. She had been trained to play Chopin and Beethoven and all the classical composers , but she had burried her ambitions when she got married and dedicated the energies and talents to her family. (Typically a male sciovanist ; my brother Taher thought i should have followed her awsome example of serving her husband and her family!)
I norder to encourage the groom to be into her family. He too was interested in mathematics and had a master's degree in the subject. She invited him to come and stay with her family for a while, and finally being very able and dedicated to her children's wellbeing she managed to get Farang to marry her cousin . This too was very positive since it brought the good vibes to a situation which could have looked a bit hopeless f if things had been left to run their course . Farang recovered by taking her pills and worked as a secretary for some years in the Oil company where her father had worked when he had first moved to the country. She eventually bought a house together with he husband and had two sons.
What my aunt achieved was important because my mother didn't manage to do the same , even tho she had two sane children who did't create any issues for her . What i think is that she was simply not interested in us that much . We were our father's children .... in the islamic tradition. She thought a woman brings up a man's children for him and they dont really belong to her ... but they belong to their father ..... in this tradition a wife is just a sort of custodian and she has to be paid for her work .
Ofcourse real mothers dont look at things in this light
I am trying to point out that some times God gives you certain things which hinder you , but then you come out the winner of the game anyway , and this is what happened with my cousin Kamran. He had been seriously ill after his father passed and could only stay at home . My uncle Ali who was a writer was interested in helping him and introduced him to his own profession of doing translations (persian to English and vice versa).
Fortunately Kamran got married and lived in a lovely place which was the house he had grown up in ..... it was a villa type house with a big garden of a thousand meters and the family sat out in it during the warmer months. Many times my brother too was involved in bringing Kamran in and out of hospital and his situation didnt look good . Forsome reason he himself had started to say his prayers and became a staunch believer .... this perhaps was the best medicine he could have taken in order to gain controle of his life .
One of his ambitions was to get married .... we all would wonder which girl would want to take so much responsability and more than her , which family would want a groom who wasnt working and was having medical treatment ? He wanted to get married because he thought it was his God given right and soon one of his sister's friend' s accepted to marry him! Rudabeh the eldest sister was now working at the Post office and she was the only one who had been a tower of strenght for her mother and very supportive of her family . She herself dedicated herself to her mother's health. Both bride and groom were both very social and knew a lot of their neighbours from old times and a lot of people came to visit them .
Kamran liked one of her friends who was very talkative just like Rudabeh and since their families knew each other .... they accepted his illness and allowed the knot to be tied . A child was born of this marriage and that confirmed Kamran as an accepted member of society because he was now a father !
This was an unexpected victory for Kamran ! (This story reminds me of some of Joel Osteens sermons where he talks about God making the negative situation work for your benefit and where you walk into victory even when you have done nothing much to deserve it, it is simply God who makes it all work out for you .. "who would have thought ? " asks Joel in one of his sermons ) that Kamran or Farang would have turned out to be very respectable members of society ? which they did even tho they didnt have much money left to them by their father (because my aunt spent all the money he had left his family on health issues ) ...... Kamran would not have been considered to be an able bodied man in other societies, infact he didn't serve in the army during the war between Iran and Iraq (which was also lucky) .... but since he was now living in a new islamic regime .... he was considered socially on a higher level than my brother Taher who never got married and didnt have any children.
Infact my brother and i were both traumatized by my parents having had a child who had not been well . Dara was a first born who was a healthy child for some years but he began to show signs of mental handicap after some years .... Both of us thought that it had something to do with genetics because our parents were first cousins .
So hats off to Kamran's prayers because they worked for him .... while my brother was secular and believing in achievements (but he always kept fast during the month of Ramadan) he lived alone for many years until he came back to my parents home. After having lived in LA for seven years and he drove vans for a living , he had to come back to live in the caos of Tehran Traffic because my parents needed him . But even tho he was a sort of ladies man and he tried to be charming and women liked him, he never could make the connection . .... He lived with my parents happily for some years . Then he had an opportunity because one of his friends who was living in the US but had a wife in Shiraz , got seperated from his wife , and even tho this lady was willing to marry him, he didnt pursue the issue because he thought it would look very tacky for him to marry a friends ex wife and he didnt act to achieve his own happiness ( just because he cared about what people would say and their opinions of him were all important. I think this was a silly reason. , because he died in 2005 of a heart attack all alone in his room . While having to look after our mother who had dementia ....
I norder to encourage the groom to be into her family. He too was interested in mathematics and had a master's degree in the subject. She invited him to come and stay with her family for a while, and finally being very able and dedicated to her children's wellbeing she managed to get Farang to marry her cousin . This too was very positive since it brought the good vibes to a situation which could have looked a bit hopeless f if things had been left to run their course . Farang recovered by taking her pills and worked as a secretary for some years in the Oil company where her father had worked when he had first moved to the country. She eventually bought a house together with he husband and had two sons.
What my aunt achieved was important because my mother didn't manage to do the same , even tho she had two sane children who did't create any issues for her . What i think is that she was simply not interested in us that much . We were our father's children .... in the islamic tradition. She thought a woman brings up a man's children for him and they dont really belong to her ... but they belong to their father ..... in this tradition a wife is just a sort of custodian and she has to be paid for her work .
Ofcourse real mothers dont look at things in this light
I am trying to point out that some times God gives you certain things which hinder you , but then you come out the winner of the game anyway , and this is what happened with my cousin Kamran. He had been seriously ill after his father passed and could only stay at home . My uncle Ali who was a writer was interested in helping him and introduced him to his own profession of doing translations (persian to English and vice versa).
Fortunately Kamran got married and lived in a lovely place which was the house he had grown up in ..... it was a villa type house with a big garden of a thousand meters and the family sat out in it during the warmer months. Many times my brother too was involved in bringing Kamran in and out of hospital and his situation didnt look good . Forsome reason he himself had started to say his prayers and became a staunch believer .... this perhaps was the best medicine he could have taken in order to gain controle of his life .
One of his ambitions was to get married .... we all would wonder which girl would want to take so much responsability and more than her , which family would want a groom who wasnt working and was having medical treatment ? He wanted to get married because he thought it was his God given right and soon one of his sister's friend' s accepted to marry him! Rudabeh the eldest sister was now working at the Post office and she was the only one who had been a tower of strenght for her mother and very supportive of her family . She herself dedicated herself to her mother's health. Both bride and groom were both very social and knew a lot of their neighbours from old times and a lot of people came to visit them .
Kamran liked one of her friends who was very talkative just like Rudabeh and since their families knew each other .... they accepted his illness and allowed the knot to be tied . A child was born of this marriage and that confirmed Kamran as an accepted member of society because he was now a father !
This was an unexpected victory for Kamran ! (This story reminds me of some of Joel Osteens sermons where he talks about God making the negative situation work for your benefit and where you walk into victory even when you have done nothing much to deserve it, it is simply God who makes it all work out for you .. "who would have thought ? " asks Joel in one of his sermons ) that Kamran or Farang would have turned out to be very respectable members of society ? which they did even tho they didnt have much money left to them by their father (because my aunt spent all the money he had left his family on health issues ) ...... Kamran would not have been considered to be an able bodied man in other societies, infact he didn't serve in the army during the war between Iran and Iraq (which was also lucky) .... but since he was now living in a new islamic regime .... he was considered socially on a higher level than my brother Taher who never got married and didnt have any children.
Infact my brother and i were both traumatized by my parents having had a child who had not been well . Dara was a first born who was a healthy child for some years but he began to show signs of mental handicap after some years .... Both of us thought that it had something to do with genetics because our parents were first cousins .
So hats off to Kamran's prayers because they worked for him .... while my brother was secular and believing in achievements (but he always kept fast during the month of Ramadan) he lived alone for many years until he came back to my parents home. After having lived in LA for seven years and he drove vans for a living , he had to come back to live in the caos of Tehran Traffic because my parents needed him . But even tho he was a sort of ladies man and he tried to be charming and women liked him, he never could make the connection . .... He lived with my parents happily for some years . Then he had an opportunity because one of his friends who was living in the US but had a wife in Shiraz , got seperated from his wife , and even tho this lady was willing to marry him, he didnt pursue the issue because he thought it would look very tacky for him to marry a friends ex wife and he didnt act to achieve his own happiness ( just because he cared about what people would say and their opinions of him were all important. I think this was a silly reason. , because he died in 2005 of a heart attack all alone in his room . While having to look after our mother who had dementia ....
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