When This War Is Over
11 o'clock, February 22, 2003
These days I only manage to get out to the slopes about once each winter, but I’ve been skiing since I was four or five. When I first learned to ski, we were living in Tehran, a few blocks off Takht-i-Jamshid, now Taleqani Street.
My dad drew this cartoon in 1978, the year we came back to the US. My mom and I had our own skis, my sister wasn’t born yet, and we didn’t bring our own sheep, but aside from that, the cartoon’s pretty close to how I remember it. I’ll let Dad explain:
“The Farsi names... are the three main ski areas near Tehran: Ab Ali (where we all learned to ski), Dizin (where we did most of our skiing) and Shemshak. Our family never actually had a chance to ski at Shemshak, but some of the folks did.
“And, of course, the ‘e’ in ‘eSKI IRAN’ is there because that's how the Iranians pronounced it, as in ‘eSport’ or ‘eStupid’.”
Ab Ali, Dizin and Shemshak are all still open. Someday, when this war is over, I’d like to go back.
I don't ski, and I suck at (but enjoy) snowboarding, and there are some aspects of Iranian law which terrify me ... but i'd like to go too. Iran is probably the first country on my list now.