For the doctor

For the Doctor

I’m commuting for almost 2 hours a day to a job that you probably would not have approved. I’m not a physician. I get up 5 in the morning and get back around the same time at night. Working hard for average living. I don’t contribute anything to the betterment of my people’s lives. I just sometimes sound like I am but there is always the moment of truth and I guess after a hard day work in a bakery that’s the moment of truth for me, the long commute lets me think over and rerun my life through my head. I’ve realized with all that has happened to me at best I have been echo of who you were. No! I didn’t become a surgeon, stay home to fight the tyranny, didn’t join the World Health Organizations efforts to combat tuberculosis nor did I open a sliding scale clinic for people of my region. As a matter of fact I don’t feel any belonging to any region, the mere fact that I have problem writing these lines in my native tongue is testimony to the fact. When you were at my age, you were already an M.D from Tehran University Medical school, had married with your first son on his way, prior to that you were active with the labor and anti imperialist movement against British and U.S conglomerates, had organized landless peasants, workers and others to oppose the C.I.A orchestrated coup. You didn’t escape the country for a resort by the Black Sea; as members of that dreadful central committee did. you went to the jungles By the Caspian and hid for almost two years until they arrested you. Most regrettably though I never heard you talk about all that you had done the more I think about this I see how you resembled the fruit baring tree in our folk slang that has it’s branches down. You never boasted of all that you had achieved in such short lifetime. I heard about you through people, the ones that loved and admired you. I still tell your anecdotes, people find them hilarious. Like the one about the man who could not bear the weight of Karbalas martyr’s banner!
Life turned out to be more difficult than what you had pampered us with. Home in the capital and the way you provided for us, vacation home by the Caspian. Going to places from restaurant to the Bazaar and people treating us so nice just because we were son or daughter of the Dr. In that whole village I thought every one knew who you were and that made the world of my childhood such secure and safe place, that is why, I have had such hard time adjusting to my life in exile. Exile is a world of its own; it’s like living on an eggshell, unpredictable. More than anything you could imagine. Every day of this past 15 years have passed in a state of anticipating capture and murder of friends back home or right here far from the actual battle lines. Ten years ago they murdered Ali while he was driving cab in Washington. They had threatend to kill him two weeks before actually carrying out their evil plans. He had just graduated and was planning to go back to Sweden. I remember how you used to point to him and say how proud you were of him for becoming a champion and continuing his education while working hard at Keyhan. They murdered him and they have murdered so many others to a point that most activists abroad feel the terror in Tehran.
I miss our long trips to the Caspian Sea or to you favorite spot 5000 feet above the sea, where the familiar myst of late after noon fog surrounded you and your entourage, as you smoked your pipe. Your love of people so rare and distant these days. I believe in the Communism that you practiced was so different than what was hated by many under its rule. This was easy to see whenever you walked in the old bazaar people gathered around you talking, some seeking medical help, others for a job in the city. I compare and I constantly am confronted with how little I’ve achieved. I tried to cover all this by putting your generation down and now all that my generation had done and said, all my generations loud mouthing and deafening agitation mostly have stopped at that level. Don’t get me wrong though as I write these lines there are dedicated selfless revolutionaries who are holding high the red banner of oppressed and dispossessed. When I compare and the predominant apathy of my generation and the ones after me I bow my head down to you!!!
I think of you almost everyday, things you used to do, I used to take long naps with you as you took your afternoon naps before going to your little clinic in the heart of poor district. As you slept you used to listen to radio Tehran’s afternoon traditional Persian music. I remember the first time you heard the voice of young Siamak Shadjarian, you were so impressed that you were telling every one how talented he was.

I’m glad that you never had to experience life in exile, You can’t imagine the immense feeling of being uprooted, and the feeling of guilt for the ones you left behind as they died under torture or in battle. More than anything this longing of being there at least to say farewell to you when they buried you. I wanted to see with my own eyes that people were not mourning your life, rather they were celebrating a good life. Even in your death in the way people glorified you and came from all over to show their appreciation, you taunted and ridiculed the fanatics in power that people love their servants even though you died a communist. Over thirty thousands showed up and I wish I was there even for a few minutes to see what you and your life meant to so many!
They killed Majid too. I remember Majid on his new motorcycle delivering our organization's paper from town to town. I knew they would kill him the way he was known for his activities he was working closely with the group in the jungles, very committed to our ideals.
I’ve heard how father of Majid came to your funeral ,crying over the death of his son. After they tortured him for hours and then it was his own uncle who carried out the execution. It was said that the whole village could hear him cry like a wounded Tiger as he heard the last bullet ripping through his son’s heart. I’ve also heard that he was asking you his old friend to go patch up his sons wounds the day they were preparing your body for burial. Whole town heard him cry loud “Dr. my son’s body is torn to pieces go heel his wounds” as he beat his chest and pulled his hair.
Now I understand what you meant when you’d say “heaven and hell is here, you rip what you sow right here”. For hours on I wonder over the bits of information that I remember. This is another aspect of life in exile it is like gathering all you can from a frozen picture framed in your memory. You try very hard to recreate the views, sounds, tastes, and emotions. Like the way you’d spread all the papers on the ground and try to make sense of the way things had changed. The hardest of all is to remember your face your voice ah I’d give anything to once more hear you sing just like the times we would drive together to the North by the Caspian. I know some day I’ll be closer to the land I was uprooted from, I know some day I’ll go and get lost in the haze of 5 o’clock fog and may be then I’ll regain all of you that I’ve lost.