Графоманство грядет...
Придется, похоже, выполнять обещание, опрометчиво данное шведским друзьям. И непонятно как и когда сооружать книжку про Иран. Поскольку в этом деле без помощи экспертов не обойтись, все главы придется перегонять в Иран на проверку. То есть, черновик будем делать на скверном английском языке :(( Ладно, ничего не попишешь. Поскольку дискеты теряются, а на комп регулярно нападают вирусы, все эти обрывки и фрагменты буудт выкладываться сюда (скромненько, под катами). Начнем с крохотного задела (часть которого уже была в этом же ЖЖ по-русски, кошмар! Приношу извинения за использование отчасти и информации, предоставленной доном Артемио (artemio1980 )
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While Behzad looks for the book, I keep staring at the bookshelves. Books old and new say much even to me, who can hardly read a single farsi letter. First I notice language - textbooks of English and French, and even Spanish course, hiding modestly in the corner. May be Arabic is here too, but, sorry, this I can’’t say for sure. Then goes something fairly complicated on physics and chemistry - fat books seems to be authoritative with letters glowing on covers, though old. History and philosophy must be also here, geography as well - English mixed up with farsi whenever I look. Still my friend is having a hard time, trying to find and English guidebook for me. Well, I had even more trouble, browsing through Tehranian bookshops, where as it seems one can find any book in the world.
Books (though not those printed abroad in foreign languages, of course) are twice cheaper here, than in Russia - which makes it three times cheaper, than in Europe. Learn some farsi, come to small place, where a smiling bookseller will guide you and take your pleasure. I’’ve been visiting one of those with Behruz - not too little though, but deserted as we came rather late. We had the most kind conversation with a bookseller about Russia, and some Iranian girl studying Russian here. Behruz tried to find some French phrase book, while I, as usually, tried to make pictures of great green-and-golden religious volumes of all forms and sizes (there is a special section in any bookshop for Islamic literature, surely). Then we said good-bye and left. We passes no more than a hundred meters, when Behruz slapped himself on the head, and rushed back to shop. At the same moment I also realized, that he eventually took that phrase-book with him, but forgot to pay for it. The bookseller saw clearly that we are going away with a book in our hands, but didn’t’ say a word. As it seems he could well sit like that and wait until our conscience will awaken.
- Wow, why didn’t he stop us?
- Well, he is like that. I could come here next time, and he won’t remind me.
Oh, those Tehrani booksellers! A Russian will enter a shop, and mixing up English and Farsi try to find something he needs: bookshops here sell not only books, but quite a big range of cassettes, music CDs, postcard, etc.etc. He would surely get what he wishes, even if the host of shop would have to speak to him using gestures. Then a year or two may pass, and the same Russian again comes to Tehran and, accidentally, visits the same shop. A bookseller would greet him by his name, invite inside to drink some tea, ask him how is Putin’’s health and show him the latest CD of his favorite singer… And it would seem to one that he never left this land and this city.
You may say, big shops are different. Here they are, real multi-storied giants with books, books, books all around. Some even have (a rare site in Iran!) prices printed on their covers. Those alarm systems, so common in Europe, were just installed in this shops (and may be that’’s why they hardly function) and escalators take customers from one level to the next.
But a minute you step away from this escalator, and see smiling seller, greeting you, you feel the same atmosphere. You know this guy - he got this place from his father, after his death. Dad made this company quite big, so how could the son abandon business in favor of, say, his favorite tennis? He made a good sportive career, but now he has to stick to real things. And here he is, speaking to customers at the counter: he knows everyone and everyone knows him.
Behzad’’s voice takes me away from revising of memories. “Here it is”, - he pauses.”Well, at least there is a good phrase-book here. May be you’’ll find it useful, dear. Unfortunately, nothing else in it is useful now”.
I look at small grey book in my hands. An guide-book of American Women’’s club. The year is 1971. The place is Tehran. I browse through index automatically. Nightclubs… Cabarets… Discotheques… The names of mosques mixed with names of restaurants and snack bars - with inevitable wine list. Adresses of foreign embassies, American being first of them, museums, galleries, cinemas… This is the way people used to live before Islamic revolution. Not of all of it has gone. Much of it has returned in last years. Still it’’s hard to imagine that just 30 or less years ago the wind was playing with the hair of girls’’s laughing at Tehranian streets. And bright lights mixed with loud music disturbed the silence of cold summer nights freely. But it doesn’’t mean there is no laughter or joy. Things change, but people can be happy - even if someone finds their ways strange.
And books saw it all. They saw Khomenei and Khomeini and Shah and Shah’’s father, and tens of other Shahs big and small over the centuries. Persian poetry - one of the oldest and most beautiful in the world. If you want to know the truth about Iranians, don’t go to mosque, don’t look at girls in black chadors or ayatollah’s portraits on every corner. Read the Hafiz, or Moulana, or at least Khayam (so famous and easy-to-get in Europe - while Persians themselves consider him to be more of the scientist, then of a poet). Try modern poets too: Sepehri (though Persian would rather call him Sohrab - by the name- as a friend or brother), Farrouhzad, dozens of others. On Middle East these are poets traditionally, who posses the gift of telling the truth.