Stinky Arrival recalls haughty salmon haircut
On Friday, Nazy and I drove Darius to Los Angeles for his flight back to Beirut. This visit was momentous. He met my cousin Chuck who I hadn’t seen in more than 50 years. Darius visited with my college roommate who I hadn’t seen in a decade. He saw a David Copperfield magic show. He bought Beatles™-branded memorabilia at the Mirage Hotel. He completed his teaching and research statements for the promotion review at The American University of Beirut. He..
“… got engaged, Dan!” Nazy interjects.
Once again, Nazy is correct. I was going to say that he arrived with a girl friend and left with a fiancee, but…
“Christiane was more than a girl friend when they arrived and, since she returned to Beirut a few days before Darius, he didn’t leave with his fiancee either,” Nazy notes.
Darius said 'goodby' to young Tiger. Then, Nazy, Darius and I stopped at Mitra and Stefan’s in LA before heading to the airport. We had a great (and healthy) lunch before Stefan led a moving going away ceremony for Darius.
As I write this note, Darius is in a giant Airbus 380 en route to Dubai. In a scene of cosmic irony, Dar will arrive home in the midst of a ‘You Stink!’ demonstration.
“I assume, Dar,” I said, ‘that the demonstration is not directed at you personally.”
“Of course not, Dad. The landfill is full, so the garbage hasn’t been collected in about a month.”
“That must..”
“ … stink, Dad.”
“So, Darius," I said, "garbage collection joins water and electricity delivery as a new challenge for the citizenry. Some entrepreneur will come up a solution.”
"I hope it's all settled by the time I get back to Beirut."
“Don’t worry, Dar, everything will turn out fine.” I said - encouragingly.
Darius left with a new passport because his ten year old, 128 page, stamp-filled testament to world travel (Jordan, China, South Africa, Cambodia, India, Egypt, Ethiopia, Mozambique, Australia,… Romania, Thailand and Montana) had expired. His new documentation features a single “LAX” stamp. I bring this up because..
“Tiger,” Melika noted, ‘needs a passport. He’s going with us to Cabo next month.”
Interestingly, collecting the required information (we don’t want Donald Trump to call our grandson an ‘anchor baby&rsquo
and filling out the relevant governmental application forms was easier than getting the lad to sit still for a passport photo. To no avail, I tried to reason with him.
“You don’t have to look great,” I explained. “In fact, a rule of international transit is simple. If you look like your passport photo, then you’re too sick to travel.” He looked good with his new haircut - the ‘mullet’ was gone.
The whole experience brought back memories of our kids’ first passports. Mitra got hers before she was two. She went to (pre-revolution) Iran with Nazy, Shahrzad, Layla and Ray. Darius (age 4) and Melika (age 2) got their first passports when we moved to Vancouver.
We had prepared the young children for the move and Darius was especially excited. There was, however, a fly in the ointment. I had become queasy about the financial stability of our potential Canadian employer, positively squeamish about the mental capacity of new management and genuinely concerned about the company’s approach to conformance with Canadian law. Accordingly, Nazy and I decided to delay our trip. I had explained this to Darius.
Background: At the time, Darius, age four (4), had memorized his Atlas. He knew the capitol of every country in the world. He was rvery excited about moving to Vancouver.
I explained that we were not going to leave right away. I explained that ‘everything had to be in place’ before we left. I reminded him that my new boss had demonstrated ineptitude by sending a ‘fresh’ king salmon via ground transport to Memphis in August..
“Remember that Darius?” I had asked.
“Yeah. The car stunk..”
“You’ll revisit that smell during a Beirut garbage clash when you grow up, son.” I replied.
“You drove a long way from our house to find a dumpster for the Salmon.” Young Dar recalled.
“I know. Do you understand that we are not going to Vancouver right away?”
“Yep, Dad.”
“Great.”
“I just can’t wait to see that 18 wheeler in front of our house tomorrow - loading our stuff.”
“Let me try this again, Darius,” I replied.
Vancouver era family photos (Darius & Dan, Mitra and Phydeaux the parakeet, Melika after self-hairstyle)
A few weeks later, challenges unresolved, we arrived in Vancouver. Mitra was in third grade and we wanted her to attend a Montessori School. The initial visit didn’t begin well.
“We have found,” the snooty admissions officer expounded in a truly British accent, “that children from America, especially the southern regions, are never prepared for the rigor of our classes. We will give your daughter an admissions test, but we expect that her performance will be disappointing.”
“You will be pleasantly surprised,” I replied. “Your haughtiness,” I thought.
Mitra took the exam and while we were driving home, I asked her how it went.
“It was pretty easy, Daddy,” she said. “Except —they don’t know how to spell ‘color’.”
Although Mitra was accepted, we decided that the pretentious snobbery was not what we were looking for.
While Mitra was taking her test, three year old Melika was a home watching Sesame Street. Her hair was in her eyes, so she got a pair of scissors and fixed that problem.
Our short-lived stay in Vancouver was filled with exciting events. Meetings with the RCMP and InterPol before our departure confirmed that my concerns had been valid. Maintaining my flawless professional track record, we moved to an equally exotic location (Texas) — but this time I shunned the risky world of small software companies and chose something solid and stable: oil. We spent a short time in Houston - oil prices crashed and the Challenger space shuttle blew up. In my new job, all I did was fire people. And, Darius was sent to speech therapy classes to ‘correct’ the British accent that he had picked up in British Colombia.
for last week's letter, click here
One more Vancouver-era collage (followed below by a couple of cat photos)
Mitra Darius Melika
Mitra and Gorbeh in Memphis …. Tiger and Monster in Santa Barbara