If you take my picture. ..
..my husband will divorce me giggled the falafel lady. So
she gestures for me to step behind the counter of her little restaurant on
wheels. Snap. And here's Bob in his new career as falafel chef. We munch away
watching families picnic, kick soccer balls around, and sleep on the grass in a
park overlooking a shipping lane near the Caspian Sea.
Earlier in the day we
wander up and down the steep paths of the mountain village of Masooleh fueled
by deep-fried walnut stuffed bits of pastry heaven. We wash that excess down
with more healthful chunks of sesame candy.
But since 'too much of a good thing is wonderful' (Mae West) we stop for another dose of yesterday's fabulous baked chestnut pastry at another roadside dispenser of gastronomic paradise . The usual warm welcome has a new twist.The pastry man says: 'People say Iranians are terrorists. Do you think we are terrorists?' and gestures around him to his two pastry colleagues. We give the only answer that makes sense to us. Smiles erupt, pictures exchange hands , calories flow across the linguistic divide.
By now Hossein has
discovered some new body language. Here we are in one of his favorites: the
martyr's velcro-on-the-forehead preamble to 'oh well, I'll suffer through it',
here sarcastically applied to the tragedy of having to eat one more of those
pastries. And here he is in the operatic Italian gesture of exuberant approval.
That's the Caspian Sea his feet are in.
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