From Diary;Conversations With Barbara who has adopted Paris as her home for the past fifty or more years!

Conversations With Barbara About The Coming Elections In The U.S. 2016

Actually a year ago  I had moved out of my room in the appartment on Blv Ney in the 18th district  and was sent back to the Foyer on rue Servan in the 11th district of Paris. The excuse was pretty lame .....they said i was not cleaning the place. The city of Paris took care of homeless women like myself  by giving us a room to live in ,  and favorable rents.  I was grateful for the experience but i didn't seem to achieve much.  I was hoping to find work .  In any case i was fed up of living in the  high rise building even tho i loved it . It was too far away from the shops .  My thoughts were elsewhere , i was getting  an old itch ie wanting to walk  to far off places  .

In a way it was a relief  to move back to my old room in the Foyer   which was next toBarbaras .....  I was worried about having to  socialize with the ladies there .   Even though Barbara was always interesting and charmingly intelligent , i was wary of her because i thought in the bugged rooms of the social housing , who knows how our conversations would be manipulated.  Infact i'd seen for myself how a conversation between my flatmates and myself would have consequences.

 I would be happy without  talking to any one at all since now a days ......    everything you say is usually manipulated in a political sense by "the listening people" .  It was normal for the women living in the foyer to gossip .  There was a boarding school atmosphere, and there would always be a little gossip about the manager Virginie and the psycologist Andrea and the assistant Audrey .....and they would probably get to know what we said about them ..... so it was always better to Zip it.

Barbara and i usually talked about world politics because she is an intellectual and reads a lot of serious history books ( for example books about President  De Gaul's life , or Mitterand's biography, books  which i wouldn't ever dream of reading myself).  Apparently being a Harvard girl doesn't save you from poverty and eventho B. has travelled a lot all over the world  and studied Persian language and lit at University .....  she is a lady from a wealthy back ground living in the house for poor and helpless women in Paris .

  It seemed as if poverty  hit women at a certain age.  I  thought it usually took women who were unmarried or foreign like me and my "copain", but recently i shared a flat with a French woman called Sabine who has four grown up children who found herself rolling down the hill in her late fourties ......  she told me that she had been working in the administration for about twenty years  .....   she is very slim and like most French women  she likes to look very young ..... andinfact she looks like she is in her thirties .  Nevertheless she has spent some years in social housings like the rest of us.

Barbara is heading for seventy while i still have a couple of years to reach sixty .  Thank goodness i still keep on meeting people who lived through the prosperous years  (when the world was not boiling over with jihadists in every nook and corner ) and are full of the good cosmopolitan  experience in the 70's , be cause the world seems to be heading towards the biblical years of the locust and something like austerity is in the air.

Recently in one of our morning coffee breaks  I asked Barbara  if she liked Mrs Clinton , and to my surprise she said she didn't because Ms Clinton was not "honest enough" for her taste, in politics .  This  was a beautiful example of naivete on her part ( i thought)  ,because being born and bred in  Asia   .....  I could never imagine looking for an honest soul in politics myself ....

It made me think of the prophet Joseph who was a truthful politician,  he  had had the dream about the seven years of plenty and having predicted the coming of difficult years  of austerity, he started to look for solutions .  Who could save the world economy now?

 I was telling  Barbara that i loved Ms Clinton because she was very intelligent and i forgave her for following the paths which were generally acceptable  ...... and i wondered why the Americans had difficulty in accepting a woman as President of their country when in Europe there had been several women who had ruled the world including Ms Merkel (who was in my opinion  a genius and I prayed for many blessings for her and her Germany  ) .......  I know that Ms Clinton would probably not have the courage to make such unpopular decisions as Ms Merkel ,  but i feel that she probably means well and wants people in general to be doing well (  her believing in the national health programe is a sign that she cares  about people .....)

So i asked Barbara if Mr Trump would win the elections and she said:" yes! Most probably" ! That made sense !

 I had had arguments about Mr Trump representing the American people with some onefrom  Australia who thought that he was rude and brash and arrogant etc ......

and here was Barbara saying that this wealthy man had promised to make America great again and that was why she believed in him.

 Many people had  criticized Mr Trump as being the typically unlikable type ,  who excludes the rest of the world and their existance ,  but i had also seen  the other type .......    there is also a beautiful American type who makes me want the whole world to be American" ......  the type whocreates a whole new system  .....  don't we owe the Bill Gates types and people like him anything at all ?  I wish I lived in a system which allowed for such minds to florish , and i wish i had changed civilization  while  tinkering with electronic stuff in my garage when i was a teenager.  I know there had been other people before him who had contributed to the creation of  the PC  as we know it today   .....  not withstanding this,  the human civilization owes a lot of applause to a certain mentality which had allowed this creativity into life .

Perhaps the next genius working in his back yard will save the world from the manipulators of the "Security craze" and "collective witch hunt hysteria" and we won't need to have people going through our bags and messing around with our individual privacy in the name of the gods of security and protection.  One day excuses like" transparency" will finally be behind us, people will be free from it  and the Sun will come out from behind the clouds again. 

All of this reminds me of the film "The Reason Why I Didn't Eat My Father" by JemalDebbuze where there is a terrible "witch" in the community of the human/apes who wants to keep everyone backward so that "she" can rule the roost and continue to be a cannibal !    .....  as long as she keeps people fearing in their pants and busy with their sexual organs ..... she can continue to live with her elitist privilages  ......  but once people make the great leap forward  out of their state of fear and ignorance   ........     by the grace of God they speed ahead to newer pastures of prosperity and well being for everyone.   That is what we all want .....i hope ......       

 "The Life Of Brian" (film) and the Brian I knew in real life "

 The Monthy Python film "The life of Brian" , is one of the most exhilarating films which i connected with  .

 Many years later, while living in Paris , i got to know an Irish-American from L.A.    Now a refugee in France,  Brian  claimed to be a refugee because he was anti-Freemason and said that he was being chased by this powerfull group because of his opinions .  I often wondered if Brian was for real.  He often mentioned the fact that he had studied at Harvard and infact he looked like some kind of  a professor. In his sixties, he took great care to appear in public with a perfectly trimed beard,  and he had an air of self respect which hung about him like a halo.

 But what has a funny film about the Romans in the Holy Land have to do with some one like Brian?  An inspiration was working in my mind and telling me about the use of theater and acting in our times  ... ...  where life and art mixed and mingled .

The story of  Brian in the film is the story of mistaken identities , where Brian,  an innocent bystander is taken to be the  "Prophet "of anarchy"  who recently appeared on the scene to tell the crowds about a new all powerfull God who didn't have anything to do with the Romans and was probably more powerful than Ceasar himself.

One of the funniest bits of the film is another case of mixed or hidden identity when a group of bearded fanatics were  busy throwing stones at adulterers as punishment . These however  turn out to be women in disguise and trying to keep on their false  beards  (probably meaning to say that the opressed have no compassion for people in the same situation).

For someone somewhere the Brian in the film  is the secular "everyman" who is like our neighbourMr Smith "caught up in an incomprehensible historic time warp"  .....he is wondering why it has to be him .....  because all he wants is to be left alone to live his little life in peace.

 Back to my " real " acqaintance. In  a way the language of  detail talked about Brian ( in real life) , it made me feel as if by complaining about the FMs ,  he was just trying to get other people to come out  talking about their complaints and opinions about the Freemasons too.

That is why i called him "the mysterious man".

Why does it seem quite natural to find  normal people going about their lives with out any awareness of being involved with secret societies?  Entities which protect themselves from " the masses"  and use them to their own benefit  at the same time.

   Perhaps today ,   we all read the news papers and watch TV and listen to the radio ,  as if we were the Brian in the film .....   we are totally unable to comprehend what is really happening in the world ., because even tho we have an education , our minds are running after personal goals .....  and we couldn't care less about understanding who is really in controle and what they are trying to do and were our experiences may be taking us.

Some people  say provocative things, in order to know your opinion about the subject  . And that is how it felt when the American Brian talked about his vision of the Freemasons .....perhaps the Romans too were building their empire , and ruling it with the same self confidence as the Freemasons.  They were thinking that Jesus couldn't ever find a crack in their wall  .....theydidn't count on the crazy altruistic idea of a selfless love of  "the other".

Even now a days Materialists think that Ghandhi types could never possibly win the day .....or change the game .....   

"PourquoiJ'ai Pas Mangé Mon Père" An Animation By JamelDebbouze( The Reason Why I Didn't Eat My Father)

This is a very fresh view of the story of how our anscestors :  Neanderthals and Homo sapiens and the Homo erectus began to evolve into  creative humans ..... a very amusing and awesome  film inspired by a story  from a Book written by the English writer and journalist  Roy Lewis .

Edward and Ernest are twin brothers , but Ed turns out to be the weakling who is thrown away by his father , but is saved by a kind and friendly ape and grows up to be an inventor and a genious ..... a sort of Leonardo Da Vinci of his age  .....

    Growing up in Tehran in the 60's 

 Always love to remember the sunny but modest appartment where my parents lived in Tehran. Aban Street is still there and so is the hospital which is now called a new name .  This hospital is where my mother went to give birth to me .  She then wrote a whole report about how the birth went . Back then the Russians ran the hospital and it was very cheap with people prices …. it was something good and run well and because of it people believed in the Soviets.

According to my mother ( who always complained about my father , saying that he was rather irresponsible) ,  he didn't want to be the chaperon and the protecter of his wife by  taking her to the hospital when she was about to give birth ….   .   Infact my mother never explained why my father hadn't accompanied her to the maternal ward. Now i wonder why i hadn't asked for more details about everything she told me.  Motherhood itself gives people the right to conceal and reveal whatever they think fit, however   I suspect that my father must have  been traumatized .

 He had lost a son to nature and her games of chance (or religiously speaking to God's will) .Dara was their  first child and he had been born a healthy and lovely baby and  yet after the first few years he started to give signs of being a  retard …..  he wasn't mongoloid and no one explained how and why things did not work out for him. I can only immagine that this could be the reason why my father howled in his sleep at night, and had to be woken up so that he wouldn't wake up the whole neighbourhood.  

  My mother seemed to have the strenght since she didn't ask anyone to accompany her to have her baby: however   going to the doctor alone was unheard of in those days ,  and, in her case,  my fathers sisters who were after all her relatives but  didn't accompany her.

Perhaps one of the reasons why the first baby was not healthy was because my parents were first cousins, and my fathers parents too had been cousins .Today  genetics explains it all .... even so ,  it is probably always a risk because such chilren are born to all sorts of unions .

 My parentsparents had been related. My fathe'rsfather , a scholar and historian , was the self made man who had become wealthy  and successful.  He was one of the three  brothers born to MrShushtar, a priest in the Persian speaking community (living in Hydrabad) was actually  from the town of Shushtar in the South of Iran.  My grandfather had worked his way up by working in a merchant ship  as an accountant, and  had travelled all over the world and had had an adventurous life. later on he made a life for himself in India and worked as a professor at the court of the Maharaja of Mysor.

 He was my grandmother's (mother's mother) brother both from the same parents.  This lady  who was the daughter of a priest  had married a man who was very religious and from a very well known  and reputable  family known for doing public work and charity but he himself was unworldly and unwell . Eventho he was a merchant he didn't know how to  make any money at all. 

My Parents had been brought up in the same community and  my mother felt her uncle was awsome and he inspired a lot of people to get a higher education.  My mother had married her cousin because she felt safe being with her own relatives …. .  Nobody infact had wanted this marriage since my father had had a reputation for being tempremental  and  moody. 

my mother is sitting on the floor, first right, at a University gathering

my grandfather is sitting with his cane

Contrary to what my mother had imagined,  these family ties didn't really mean an extra bond of affection for her.

It was the strangers who delivered her baby. The maternal ward in the Russian hospital was run by  Russians and since it was next to where the family lived, it had been convenient to just walk round the corner . It was 1959 and what was to be the last Shah of the Pahlavi dynesty had permitted the hospital to work for people for free. My parents where unsetteled  at the time , because they had moved from India to a new country following my granfather to Iran.  They didn't know much about the new country:  they had just started out in their careers.  My father was working for an Anglo-American company  and then later on as a translater in a company . While my mother was  a journalist for the english newspaper.

  They had had to go through the partition of India, and then once again had  immigrated  from Pakistan to Iran .  Eventho they had lived in the Persian comunity in India and  Pakistan they had had to learn the language and the ways of the real Persians ….  the people who lived in the country of their ancestors and had a relatively stable situation ….. 

By the grace of God the new baby came out into the world not caring a hoot for any of the issues which were worrying the grown ups and other members of the family!  and that was me stepping into the picture!

     My 2nd brother Taher was considered to be very good at school and very creative , always making maschines .  He was always putting together bits of metal and putting a motor on it so then he could have them run like a car or swim in the little pool in the front garden. He felt confident because he could work for the adults and be one of them . He had been brought up in the country and knew the language and the custums of the people much more than my parents.  Later on when he was a grown man ….  he was always trying to protect and save my parents from their mistakes and the cultural misunderstandings  they encountered.

Perhaps he felt sorry for them because he as a child must have witnessed what my parents had to go through by  having a retarded child .  There was not much help for such families and they had to find a way of looking after him .  It is probable that his fear of having children himself  was partly due to the situation he had seen with Dara.  

As my parents used to be at work allday , and my brother spent a lot of time at school and with his friends , i spent a lot of time playing with other children in our street .  The main street was full of big old Toot trees which had  berries which were light green in colour and sweet.  In the summer  a lot of children enjoyed eating these, picking the fresh ones off the trees and the ground.  A lot of time was spent in exploring gardens and building dams in the waterways and gutters which run next to the streets .  My parents didn't trust to leave me with hired baby sitters and people who they didn't know, and since they weren't there i would go to the next door neighbours house where a young teenage girl had befriended me. 

Soheila and her father lived in several brick rooms in a piece of land next door to us.  I always wondered why they lived in rooms which looked very  makeshift and poor and not like a real apartment like the one we were living in. Soheila too was usually on her own …. she took care of me as if i was her younger sister and she showed me how to eat fresh and young wine leaves, and told me about how people cooked Dolmehs using the bigger wine leaves to envelope a mixture of rice and meat .  Although she and her father were kind , my mother had begun to feel uneasy when the neighbours collected me with their own children and gave me hospitality in their own homes.  The people in the neighbourhood weren't used to mothers having to go out to work and  earning money was mainly a mans job. My mother could afford to ignore these lovely old fashioned ideas  since  in a sense she was a foreigner and hadn't grown up according to these customs.

My Personal Wish List For 2016

 I usually ask Santa for lots of nice things to eat ; A huge feast laid out with :  a roast turkey and lots of crispy oven cooked vegetables and potatoes , garlic bread and jacket potatoes  ...   Biryani and  different curries to go with it , espesciallyKeemah , and then Samosas and chutney, hot chicken thikah and paratas !!!!! ..... chinese food and Sushi .....   Italian Lasagna .....   Persian Qormehsabsi and white rice, ;arabicshawarma

as for  sweets , Sacher tort 

Tiramisu' and Golabjamoon ......

Thank God I don't desire jewels or fur coats , or a big car and lots of the latest modern gadgets ....  I want good friends and family ..... good achievements , merited success , and health and well being  for me and all the good people .....

Every one of us realistic people who has some experience of life, thinks that  at times there is no use even wishing that things were different.  It is allowed for us to pray and in our prayers we wish for the impossible to come true ......   well this is something like a prayer for the world to become a better place for all the creatures who are living on it. would it be like walking into a surreal picture painting ?

One of my biggest wishes is for clean energy production to replace the poluting ones. Although Solar and Wind turbine energy production is being used all over the world in a big way, it is fracking which seems to be in the  future of my generation.  Perhaps it is the expence that is putting governments off of  placing solar panels or wind turbines in deserts and all over the places where these can work. I wish for the cleaner energy production to win the day.

I wish that the elephants and Rhinos and all animals living in the wild and the ones living in our areas would be saved from the attention of      the profiteering people    and pray for the animals in the arctic zones , ie the Polar bears , Seals and Penguins to be saved from the human talent for changing nature. Some people argue that Climate Change is good, obviously hoping that all will go well as it has  in the past centuries ......  i wish we could work together to save The Environment. I wish we could save the waters from oil spills and contamination , and lakes from disappearing (eg  The Aral sea) and wish we could make them come back as good as new .

I pray a lot for animals because they can be a great source of joy .....i wish people wouldn't take other peoples animals away from them ,  and wouldn't need to play power games in order to achieve their goals.  I pray for the human population and hope that it will learn to controleitself .....teaching people and helping them )  not to have big families is an achievable dream .

I pray that Peace would reign the world and people didn't have to run away from their countries for political and economicalreasons .  I wish for a (simply)  achievable, high standard of living for everyone :  ....  things like health care, and education , political and economical and social justice can be possible in Asia and Africa just as much as it is in the West and that people didn't have to migrate if they didn't want to.

 I wish for peace espescially in the Middle East where we have a lot of history which is being destroyed by wars .

I hope to God that the profiteering people who create (on purpose) war and conflict where they can (and then get away with being the good guys)  ....can someday be controled by an invisible force  .....  and made to work hard on peace and prosperity for every one (and i pray that they will loose their elitist attitude and gain in having a heart for everyone  and all creatures  .....