when we find what we find
The alleys and little streets in Teheran are named after people we've lost in the wars. Most of them in the last few wars, I believe, and it's unsettling to see how many alleys we have.
My nails are a bordeaux red that varies in its taints. Yesterday me and my father spent 135 toman which is about €90 or $135 on cosmetics from the store of my cousin's husband.
My driving lesson, two nights ago, was from 23:00 till 01:00. Driving through the city at night, the wheel, the whole car thrumming under my fingers, underneath my body. I'm rereading a good book and listening to the same CDs every night, and I'm full of wonder at the sudden appearance of Family. People who look like me, or share the same characteristics, people with my nose, my eyebrows. People who randomly walk up to me and come lie in my arms, or kiss me, people who tell me who I resemble. Seeing my own white hairs in my female cousins's expertly done hairdos.
This is a world of fruit juice, scorching heat and a city that is my own. Seventeen million people in this city I was born in, the same number of people in the country I usually inhabit.
I dream of home, Netherlands, GBG, and they feel like nightmares. Sometimes I feel brainwashed - when I just arrive back in this country, or when I'm just back in the Netherlands.
I went to a wedding where I didn't expect to know anyone but my uncles, but the man at the door who turned out to be the groom I knew, and a few seconds after I heard a scream that was my name. Turning I saw a pretty girl with funky gorgeous hair who held me tightly, took me into the room where all the women were (so many strangers who knew me) and slowly I started to remember who she was.
A hot land full of dust and headstrong people with bubbling desires and crimes of passion and stubbornness.