In Azar Nafisi's memoir Things I've Been Silent About she opens up her past to us; we meet her parents and see how their hopes, aspirations, disappointments and frustrations have left an indelible imprint on her life. Since finishing the book a couple of days ago, I keep thinking about this particular passage she wrote about her father, a former mayor of Tehran who was jailed during the Shah's regime on alleged charges that were never proved:

In personal life as in politics you either accept the rules or you openly and on principle rebel against them. In both cases, there is a price to be paid. Fortunately, no one goes free. But what price? Not belonging to either camp, my father paid a double price. He had neither the comforts of convention nor the satisfaction that comes from breaking with what is expected of you. All through his diaries two opposite tendencies come up: the desire to break way, to embark on the life he wanted, coupled with the fear of what could happen to him if he did.

I'm not sure if I understand yet why this passage continues to haunt me, but it carries a sadness and poignancy with it that possibly reminds me of my own father and his ambivalencies that he struggled with thoroughout his life.

Another passage that really stayed with me is this one:

Those who are close to us, when they die, divide our world. There is the world of the living, which we finally, in one way or another, succumb to, and then there is the domain of the dead that, like an imaginary friend (or foe) or a secret concubine, constantly beckons, reminding us of our loss. What is memory, but a ghost that lurks at the corners of the mind, interrupting our normal course of life, disrupting our sleep in order to remind us of some acute pain or pleasure, something silenced or ignored? We miss not only their presence, or how they felt about us, but ultimately how they allowed us to feel about ourselves or them.

Reading this memoir has really touched my heart in an unexpected way.

Bread Rising

I did it! I made bread that actually turned out today. Let's hope that's a good omen:)