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Adventures in Farsi: Kharbozeh

Friday, January 4, 2008

I don’t have the best hearing. I’ve always been just ever-so-slightly deaf. Not deaf enough for it to really matter (i.e., I don’t wear a hearing aid and medically, I don’t need one), but my hearing is such that I frequently mishear words and sound quite stupid upon repeating them.

So it should not really be a surprise that for most of my childhood, I mistakenly thought the Persian word for cantaloupe, “kharbozeh,” was pronounced “khargoozeh.”

So I pronounced it “khargoozeh” without really thinking about it until, at perhaps nine or ten years of age, I said it quite loudly in a Persian supermarket, in the presence of lots of proper Iranian ladies. Apparently my half-yelling, “Maman, can we buy some ‘khargoozeh’?” across the little produce section actually meant, “Mom, can we buy some donkey farts?”

Obviously, I blame my parents for this. True, I have bad hearing. But clearly, they must have been horrible listeners. Why else would they have let a crucial misnomer like this slide for years and years, quite literally?

Of course, from this experience and many others like it, I am extremely paranoid about making mistakes like this now. It’s a detriment to my Farsi language skills to be self-conscious about speaking Farsi, to be sure, but I’m far too old - and surrounded by far too many smart Iranians - ever to play off an error like that as cute. In fact, I think it is a huge liability to speak incorrectly when, for instance, I am interviewing someone and it’s important that they take my questions (and me) seriously, and that our conversation is natural.

So, what do you think? Is it better to make horrible mistakes in a professional capacity, as one perfects one’s mother-tongue? Or is it wiser to speak English, even in interviews with Iranians, which most subjects understand but which definitely does not yield the best answers from them because their best language is Farsi. I’m partial to the former approach, if only because it’s a question of access to certain subjects, and lately, the former has become my modus operandi because my Farsi is only going to get worse if I don’t use it. But I am curious about how other people would approach this issue, and if the poor Farsi is forgivable as long as the interviewer is trying.

Filed in Iranian | Comments (2)

On Airports and Sisters, and Shahrnush Parsipur

Thursday, January 3, 2008

As I get ready to pick up my fashion-plate little sister from LAX today, on her return from a trip to England (quick note here that my sister is far cooler than I will ever be, though she expects a certain level of chic from her older sibling, and this is why I have to worry about how my hair is going to look today), I’m also looking at this post about shoes in airport security lines, from T Magazine, and shuddering about the recent time I tried to circumvent the system by wearing flip-flops so I wouldn’t have to take them off. Much to my dismay and disgust, airport security made me take them off anyway, so that I was barefoot in the airport, like some sort of feral child.

It is hard to imagine an American experience much worse than air travel and a place worse than our airports, and that is really a shame. It would not be difficult for them (you know, Them - the TSA and the rest of the mad conspirators that think lip gloss is a potential bomb threat but let monkeys hidden in hats slip through) to make it more reasonable. But because it’s an experience that is hard to boycott, and there are few alternatives if you don’t, say, own your own jet, there is little reason for them to change anything.

And the airlines are all mediocre, too. Even Virgin America, which distracts you with a shiny entertainment system (that has only worked properly about half the time I’ve flown them), is just another airline, even if it is dressed up like a really fun, Eurotrash dance club.

Completely unrelated, I interviewed Shahrnush Parsipur recently and here it is. She’s pretty amazing, and I did the whole thing in Farsi, which was quite a feat.

Filed in Clips, Iranian, Miscellany | Comments (0)

SMITH Magazine Six-Word Memoir

Sunday, December 23, 2007

A while ago, someone sent me a link to SMITH magazine’s six-word memoir project and I fired off my six words on a lark.

I got a mass email from them last night and it turns out my submission will be in their book. But I have absolutely no idea what I wrote. I can’t remember. Hopefully, it’s not embarrassing. And if it is, well, at least it’s only six words worth of embarrassing.

Update: “Pop split; I write him in.”

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How I found my sisters via Facebook

Saturday, December 22, 2007

I have two half-sisters, one younger and one older, both my dad’s daughters. They live in Germany, where I was born. People are always surprised to find out about them, but I just don’t talk about them much because they were never part of my life. So, there’s not a lot to say besides, “Yeah, I have a couple of sisters but I know more about you than I do about them.” (And this statement would be true even if I just met that person and only know their name, age, and occupation.)

Last week, a cousin from my dad’s side found me on Facebook. I haven’t seen her since I was five or six years old but I recognized her name and so we sent a couple of messages back and forth. She’s around my age and lives in Holland, where she’s getting an MBA. She caught me up with the family haps and whatnot. We tried to reminisce a little but frankly I don’t remember much of the stuff she remembers, like camping trips. So I cut to the chase and asked this cousin to help me get in touch with my dad. And I asked her if she knew about my older half-sister, who I’ve been wondering about. Now I have my dad’s mailing address, but I have to remember German and/or drastically improve my Farsi writing skills to write him a letter. Plus, I have to come up with something to say that’s worth saying after ten or so years of no real contact.
The exciting part of this story is that two days ago, my older sister and I had an email conversation.  Which means we “spoke” for the first time since I was four years old and, if I remember correctly, that day I bored her out of her mind with my play-by-play of the most recent episode of Sesame Street. So here’s my chance for redemption.

My older sister is 30 years old. She is really thin and looks almost nothing like me, but we both have big brown eyes. She works at an ad agency. Her English is okay but not great. All pretty typical stuff.

But the kicker about my sister is that her name is not the one I grew up thinking it was. Her last name is her mom’s, not our dad’s, and her first name is a German one,  not the Persian name I was told it was my whole life. I’ve conducted so many Google searches for her the last few years, all in vain. This made me furious because I thought I’d been lied to, but it turns out that all I had to do was share that I wanted to find her, and the powers that be would have told me that I was searching for the wrong name. So then I was furious with myself for a while, but then I stopped being furious. Because it’s pointless to be mad about the past. And I’m actually really thrilled to have found her, whatever her name is.

I spent yesterday shopping with my younger sister (same mom, same dad, grew up together) and the whole time thought to myself, there’s a person who could have been to me what I am to my younger sister. It made me a lot kinder to my younger sister.

I know a lot less about my younger half-sister. My mom and sister and I left Germany when she was really small and I never met her. But as of yesterday, thanks to my cousin on Facebook, I know that she is now in LA so I will probably meet her soon.

It’s very strange to have two other people in the world that share half of my genetic makeup that I don’t know at all. It’s more strange that I could go for years and years without giving that a real thought. And even more strange yet that this part of my life is now on the forefront of my mind again just because my cousin found me on Facebook.

Filed in Miscellany, Social Media | Comments (0)

ComputerWorld

Monday, December 17, 2007

I wrote a quick post today on Searchviews about Google vs. Facebook, which was quoted extensively by ComputerWorld in one of their top stories.

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Eastside

Sunday, December 9, 2007

Cities rub off on you. It’s a shift that’s imperceptible unless you have flown across the country enough times to notice that on your way out East,  you’re friendly, and on your way back West, you’re surly. I noticed it this time. When I was making my way to the lavatory in the back of the plane on my flight home to LA today, I grimaced at someone that was looking at me funny. (Or I thought he was. I’d just woken up from a nap, so all bets were off.) Whatever, I shot the evil eye right back and I was ready to throw down, and this is the New Yorker in me.

I have so much of that New Yorker in me now (steely, cautious, a little jaded, knows better about smiling at strangers) that on my trip to San Francisco a couple of months ago, the disposition of the Bay Area’s people really freaked me out. Where else in the world does an “Excuse me” prefacing a request for directions elicit a cheerful “Hello!”? Certainly not in New York. Still… I wouldn’t trade New York for three San Franciscos, especially after that visit. Though maybe I’ll trade in LA again, at some point.

New York winter didn’t feel as bad as I’d remembered. The snow fell on my face like down feathers, I saw celebrities and had no desire to approach them, I ate out every meal, I couldn’t afford any of the clothes I liked, and I stayed below 20th Street except for the few nights I spent in a Times Square hotel. All in all, business as usual.

Walking down the main drag of my old Brooklyn neighborhood, I forgot for one moment that I didn’t live there anymore and thought that I was just going home. There was my old bagel place, and the pool I used to go to all the time, the stinky cheese store that still didn’t stock the German sweets I always checked for, and the little pretentious bookstore I loved/hated - everything just the same as when I left it four months ago. But when, in the next moment, I remembered that I don’t live in New York anymore, that I live in LA now and I get to try to be an adult in a city in which I’ve never really been a grown up, it didn’t feel so sad. I felt alright with LA, with my life.

And maybe that feeling came before a hipster lady ran my over my foot with her ginormous stroller, or maybe it came after. The point is, I’m content, and I’m going to make the best of it here.

Filed in Los Angeles, New York, San Francisco | Comments (1)

Homa Sarshar, Ardeshir Farah, Etc.

Tuesday, November 13, 2007

1. My interview with Homa Sarshar, the Iranian Barbara Walters, went really well. It’s so cool to talk to someone who does what you want to do and, in her case, has been doing it successfully for more than 40 years. She was really gracious. Now I have to transcribe our conversation, which always blows, but it’s better transcribing later than typing furiously during an interview. I will link to it here when it’s done.

2. Friday I am scheduled to meet with Ardeshir Farah, the Iranian Eric Clapton. They are not musically similar - the shorthand is just because they both play guitar and are both famous. Except Ardeshir Farah is not annoying whereas Eric Clapton is, if only because Clapton’s song Layla (video) gets stuck in your head and won’t get out. Also: I once heard a Christianized version of the song at church youth camp, in which the name Layla was replaced with the name Jesus. As in “Jesus, got me on my knees / Jesus, begging you, Lord please”. Obviously, that’s forever ruined the song for me. So I’m looking forward to meeting with Ardeshir Farah, and not Eric Clapton.

3. The best thing about covering a community that is small and not mainstream is easy access to its titans. It would take me about ten million years to get an interview with Barbara Walters or Eric Clapton, and they are probably so jaded that it wouldn’t make a difference and it would be much more difficult to build a rapport quickly - something that I think is really necessary to do a good interview. (After all, it’s just a conversation. Sometimes a very, very complicated conversation, but a conversation nonetheless.) Iranians are not as visible in the press (at least, not for the right reasons, not when they’re doing really great work, etc.) and as a result, I think they are much more open and giving. And I rarely ever have to talk to a publicist or press person… it’s awesome. I’m sure it also doesn’t hurt that I’m very young and I’m nice; I think it inspires some trust, maybe, and it means that basically just smiling and giving people my business card has been enough to get them to agree to talk to me. Knock on wood.

4. Video… I have this awesome project in mind and did an initial video that went really well except for my camera being an ass and messing up the audio. So I’m chalking that up to a test run and now I’m buying a new camera. Good times.

Filed in Blogging, Iranian, Miscellany, Video | Comments (0)

A+ for Charm

Tuesday, November 6, 2007

A man, Patrick Moberg, saw the lady of his dreams on the subway in NYC and instead of chatting her up (because nobody in NYC actually hits on you on the subway if they have any self-respect or are halfway sober, they just write missed connections on Craigslist later and hope you are really bored at work), he made this charming page on the Internet, with a very descriptive illustration. His illustrated self has the Adam’s apple of the man of my dreams, so I wish him and the lady in blue tights much happiness.

I’m sure the New York Times Style section will write a weeks-too-old, irrelevant, totally-misses-the-point story about this when these fine people find each other, so I’ll revel in the joy that still lives before they find and ruin it for me.

P.S. Here is a relevant video:

Patrick discusses the girl of his dreams from Jakob Lodwick on Vimeo.
Sigh!!!

Filed in Miscellany, New York | Comments (1)

Forough

Friday, November 2, 2007

“I go, but I don’t ask myself what road,
which home, what destination?
I yield kisses but don’t even know
who stands as a god in my unglued heart.”

- Forough Farrokhzad, “Lost”

Filed in Fine Writing, Iranian, Poetry | Comments (1)

And We’re Off, Sort Of

Thursday, November 1, 2007

1. Change of Plan: My much-anticipated interview today fell through because of miscommunication, but here’s hoping for a re-sked soon. Note to self: always confirm and re-confirm everything with everyone, via as many communication vehicles as possible, as many times as possible.

2. Distractions: I’m in the Coral Tree Cafe in Encino, attempting to start NaNoWriMoing. Terribly distracting, though, is the actor sitting across the room that I can’t place. He is black with a goatee but I cannot remember anything he’s been in, so IMDB is useless. I don’t even know why I care. You can’t do anything in the Valley without running into some B-lister. He is sitting with someone that looks like a television writer or reality TV producer: second-day scruff, bed-head, striped shirt, slouchy “cool” jeans, Chucks, face generically handsome and so forgettable you can’t even remember it when you’re looking right at him. Next to me is a lady who looks like a screenwriter - awkward-length khakis, clashing blue shirt, messy hair, very nice blue-framed glasses. Writers always have nice glasses, or should. The clincher on that one is that she’s actually looking at a screenplay on her laptop, so I’m not really projecting so much.

3. Reading: Review copy (for Pars Arts) of Sholeh Wolpé’s translated Forough Farrokhzad poems, entitled Sin. Amazing, amazing poems, and, I think, a nice translation. Hard to judge the translation though, as I am only halfway through page one of my book of Persian Forough poems. Incidentally, every time I think of Forough Farrokhzad or read her poems, I want to start writing poetry again. I wrote some good ones in college, sorta. Maybe I’ll make one of the characters of my NaNoWriMoing a poet. Yes, yes, I think I will.

4. Rhyme: Also, whenever I think of Forough Farrokhzad I think of my mom, who told great stories when I was little. She always ended them with this saying that I got a real kick out of (thanks to my early,  ongoing, and admittedly slightly unhealthy but clearly genetic obsession with rhyme): “Gheseye man doorugh-e, zan-e Majid Forough-e.” That means: “My story was a lie, Forough is Majid’s wife,” because the stories were made up, and our family friend Majid’s wife is Forough.

5. When I was a kid, my mom also told a freaking sweet series of stories about a girl named Natalie, who had a clever donkey named… Patalie. Patalie always insisted on doing everything Natalie did, like buying a backpack for the first day of school or going to the public swimming pool or playing cards with the neighborhood kids. I know, your childhood is totally jealous of my childhood right now.

6. Remember pogs? I’m trying to recall how, exactly, we played with them. Something about slammers and losing pogs because of slammers, and lots of fights in the school yard.

Filed in Fine Writing, Iranian, Miscellany | Comments (0)