In contrast to the disturbing Jocasta compliment I also got one of my favorite ever compliments this weekend, if only because of its surreality. It’s definitely my favorite compliment since moving back to Alabama in any case.
I have a three doors down neighbor who is a character in search of a 1980s Judith Krantz miniseries. I’ll call her ‘Miri’. She’s a very sexy and intelligent well educated Iranian lady of mixed Persian, Arab and Jewish ancestry, in her 40s I would guess but looks younger. She’s the object of one of my rare hetero crushes and we have one of those casual friendships where we’ll run into each other while I’m walking my dog and end up talking for two and a half hours, then go three months without seeing each other.
She reminds me of a darker skinned Cher in some ways. Her family came to the U.S. when the Ayatollah took over, she converted to Christianity soon after, she speaks English in a beautiful but very clear accent (easier to understand than a lot of native Bamans) and several other languages as well, and she’s currently a semi-agnostic very liberal divorced mother of three. The youngest is about 12 years old and he’s doing a poster for his literature class based on a book about some martyr who was hanged for his beliefs (I’m not familiar with it).
So last night she knocked on my door and said “Hi, my son needs to know how to tie a noose and you seemed the logical choice.” (This is similar to the compliment but not quite it.) He wanted to paste a miniature noose to form the I in the book’s title and evidently came up with the idea independently.
I responded with the usual way I respond when swarthy foreigners ask me to help their son make an implement of death: “My place is a total mess, let me get some string and I’ll be right out.”
She knew that I could tie a toy noose in part because I’m a librarian (and we find info, of course) but mostly because for some reason one of the times we talked about being the weird kid in school (she for being Iranian and me for- well, I’m not sure why, really) I once told her the story of a 6th grade history project that got me my first ever standing ovation (from the class) and recommendation for counselling (from the teacher, who was not amused) and paternal praise (my father thought it was absolutely hysterical and had me “perform” it for every old woman in the family).
As fate would have it I have some hemp twine left over from my last move which worked better than the white string and though it’s been over 25 years I was able to remember the vaguely mu shaped form and “loop around the pencil” method I used more times than I should admit in my childhood to carry out the verdicts of the courts on various action figures of all sizes. (Supposedly riding a bike is one of those “never leaves you” things as well, but I suppose the fact that I’ve never learned to ride a bike is why I can still remember the difference noose tying.)
After I finished showing her son how to either snap the neck of his sister’s BRATZ action figure or strangle it, dependent upon the severity of the crime and the judge. (The BRATZ figure isn’t part of the poster display, but just a "completion of knowledge’ thing.) Miri insisted that I stay for dinner. It was a traditional Persian dish called “Chicken Enchiladas” and followed by the traditional dessert of decaf mocha and 12 cigarettes while we talked for a while.
Miri’s apartment has exactly the same floor plan as mine though you would never know it as mine is faithfully decorated in Early Modern Katrina and hers is a hodgepodge of world cultures and antiques that would brook no complaints from the favorite concubine of a vizier. Her ancestry as closely as I know it: her father, a (from what I’m guessing extremely) wealthy businessman before the fall of the Shah, was a nominal Muslim (he studied the Koran and even performed the Haj but was privately so secular that he drank and even ate ham when away from Iran on business). Her father’s father was 100% Persian while her father’s mother, whom she describes as a bitter and cruel woman who was strikingly beautiful even in her sixties, was born Jewish but her family was forcibly converted to Islam when she was a girl. After the family fled Iran when she was about seventy she disowned her entire family (husband, children and grandchildren), moved to Israel and resumed her Judaism and they don’t know if she’s living or dead (she would be very old but not “inconceivable that she’s still alive” old) as she refused any contact with her family. (Miri likes to stress that she’s not anti-Semitic, just anti-grandma.) Miri’s mother was mixed Arab and Persian ancestry with she believes an English ancestor over a century ago. Her ex-husband, the father of her children, was a white American from Virginia (and supposedly a descendant of Pocohontas she says, “but he lied about everything else so he could have been an Argentine Nazi for all I know”), so all told her son has about 1 cc more Arab blood than me or most other Alabamians.
So the compliment-
Miri: Thank you so much for doing that. You’re probably the only person in Alabama who would stop what he’s doing and show an Arab boy how to make a noose. It speaks well of you.
The followup conversation:
Me: Well not that it matters, but he’s not Arab.
Miri: True, but to people here Persian and Turkish and converso and Armenian and anything else from between Poland and China means Arab. You wouldn’t believe how many people are trying to get me to accept Jesus Christ within two minutes of learning where I was from. And they used to all assume I was Hispanic because I’m dark and have a not from here accent and even then they’d witness because they thought I was some kind of voodoo Catholic. Very irritating. And the other thing is that when they learn I was born and grew up in Iran, they’ll actually ask me ‘were you scared the first time you saw a television’ or ‘did your father let you wear shoes and underwear’ or ‘can you read’. I can read several languages thank you! When I was younger and before 9-11 when they’d start out thinking I was Hispanic, I’d tell them I was Iranian and then if they thought I grew up in a tent eating Christian babies I’d get irked and tell them ‘Look, I mean no offense but it’s simple historical fact, when your ancestors were painting themselves green and living in caves and worshiping mud totems mine were building ziggurats 70 stories high and writing epic poems and making gold statues, we’re really not a stupid people!”
Me: What do you tell them since 9-11 when they ask if you’re Hispanic or ever seen a TV?
Miri: I tell them, ‘¡ Si, la televisión es la más grande!”
As I was leaving she thanked me again and again reiterated “It’s a good thing to have a neighbor who knows how to tie a noose.”
Me: Well, it’s just luck actually. A noose and a half-Windsor are the only two knots I know how to tie.
Miri: Well, what others do you need to know? Between the two you can take care of most situations that you need in interacting with other people.
Pointless afteward: I recently bought some of the Best of the West action figures I once had (well, duplicates of course) cheaper than expected on e-Bay. I still had the rope. I had an old black sock just like the one Geronimo’s dress was made from when I was a kid (though unfortunately I can’t sew so I couldn’t make sleeves), so I took a little visit down memory lane. The “plop” sound they made hanging from the staircase railing was just as curiously thrilling as I remembered.
They’re still hanging there which means that for some odd reason my apartment complex manager will almost surely have to get in to the apartment while I’m at work today and will leave screaming and I’ll arrive home to find a dark car that always seems to leave at the same time I do for the next few days. But even so, damn if those things weren’t the perfect weight and neck stretchabilty for hangin’- it can’t have been coincidental to the design.