Camera Moments (when I didn't have my camera)

* Way back when, when we chosen ones with the tickets were in our special seating at the commemoration of the anniversary of Imam Khomeini, a wizened old lady -- whom I took to be a villager -- decided that she was going to join us too. Since she didn't have a ticket, she made the logical decision to climb the freshly painted crowd control fence. I watched in admiration -- and the security in consternation -- as she made her methodical way up the fence, her well-worn chador blowing back to reveal a shock of repeatedly hennaed hair. But was most striking to me was her dress. Unlike the somewhat masculine coat-and-pants which you have to wear under your chador to be fashionable in the cities, bits and pieces of her long, brilliant, emerald green dress flashed by as she climbed. Far from being simplistic, her dress swished and swirled to reveal layers upon layers of bright green fabric -- some with patterns, and some with lace.
I really envied her and for a moment wished that I was living wherever she was living so I didn't have to wear the ugly coat-and-pants under my chador anymore. I felt genuinely sorry for her when the security -- consisting of girls in their early 20's -- removed her from the fence, and I wished that I could have traded her seat with mine.

* The other night, I chanced upon another, even more elderly woman at the shrine of Hazrat Masoumah (saa). The distinctive blue tattoos covering her face and hands (and which, many years ago, I used to think was a strange sort of hopefully incommunicable face disease) as well as her gossamer black shawl immediately pegged her as another villager -- this time from Iraq. Something about her struck me, and I watched for a moment as she raised her wrinkled hands and in a very thick accent prayed to God to utterly and completely destroy Israel.

And, on a lighter note...

* A middle-aged man of average build walking down the street in Tehran with a T-shirt featuring a photo of Arnold Schwartzeneggar and screaming GOVERNATOR!!! (I never even saw that one in California)