Me at a ghanat in Mashhad ,vozu, before praying

royaghanatmashhad
Originally uploaded by roya parsay.

Our house had two doors, one was iron and the other made out of wood. Dar choubieh was its name meaning the wooden door.click on header the door is behind us. Our house was the last house to your right in a deadend alley(koucheh bonbast). To our right was hedayat street one side of it would go to sare ghanat the other to falakeh. Ghanat is a stream of water coming from the mountain and getting to surface of the ground at a place called ghanat. People would drink its water that was better than evian water. I loved going downstairs to it. I don’t have a picture of it but in mashhad I found one and I have a picture of that. Muslims have to wash their hands and head before praying and this is what I am doing here. Anyway sare ghanat was were all the shopping stores were for vegetables, meat and all… The iron gate in our house would go to sheybani street and darroos and dowlat on one side and chaleharz on the other. I met a reporter in Michael Jackson trial called Haraz which is the name of a road going to seaside of Iran. His father was Iranian and loved Iran like Tehran's father. People love Iran and had to leave it…
Anyway at that time everybody in that alley would send their servants thru our house and people were usually trying to go fast or look around and go. We almost lived with all the neighbors as unexpected guests at any moment and once in a while my mother would get angry and close one of the doors and in a matter of 2 hours dar choubieh was open again. Right behind dar choubieh was a biaboonie(uninhabited land) and we used to play there, bake potatoes under ground or bury our favorite cat Maloos that was poisoned by our grand-pa one of the reasons I did not like him. Well this was interesting cause we had deer, dogs, cats, hens and roosters and chickens in that yard a.

We had carrots, radishes, leeks, onions, mint… and cherry trees, albaloo, gerdoo and shatoot(berries) in that yard. We had an amazing childhood and wish my son did ,thou he was migrating from this country to the other… pity… well back to servants..
P.S This picture is me and 2 of firoozeh and ali’s sons and my brothers with a new dog we got then. Abedin is the last small boy to your left and he used to come and stand outside the bathroom and sing outloud so I wont be scared of spiders and beetles….dont you dare laughing at me. All my allowance money would go paying Abedin! Later at Purdue, Shokoufeh a girl friend used to do that after I saw the movie Exorcist and was scared. I do get scared easily unlike my mother who was exceptionally brave. The servants stories follows in the next posting