We do not need words.

Christopher is a cute three-and-a-half year old Polish boy with a funny hat.  He came and stood next to my seat and looked at me while sitting at a gathering.  Then, he started talking to me in Polish.  "No polska, angielski", I told him with a smile.  He did not mind, he kept talking to me in Polish.  I looked at his mother. She translated, "he wants to go to the garden with you". I laughed, and agreed, wondering how he chose me and came to me.  Seems like no matter where I go I have to spend time with the kids.  He was obviously thrilled, leading the way and constantly talking.  He knew I did not understand, his mother had told him, but he was telling me stories or something.  We went to the garden, and he points to the playground as he was still talking.  At the end of a sentence, he asked "Tak? Tak?", I agreed to take him to the play ground, "Tak!".  He uses a few English words he had learned in school, showing off his English.  Soon his dad came and I was relieved that I did not have to spend the whole day with him.  I went back to my table.  A while later, tea and desert was being severed.  There he appeared next to me again, with the same request, to go to the garden and playground with me.  "After I finish my tea", I told his mother to translate.  He went away as a sign of understanding and respecting my request.  He came and went three times before my tea was finished.  Kids are something.

The time for saying goodbyes arrived and little Christopher came and stood in front of me and stared at me.  I gave him a big kiss and said goodbye.  The grandmother of the family hugged me and kissed me so hard I felt her bony cheeks and my glasses came off.  "Do not damage her", my brother-in-law said.  "Everyone wants to kiss you", he joked.  Christopher's parents did not bring him to the wedding that followed that gathering, worried that I would have had to babysit him during the whole party.

Elizabetha is the mother of the groom, the lady of the family I was staying with. She knows Polish and Italian, and only a few words in English.  I know English and only a few broken words in Italian and Polish.   In the wedding, Christopher's mom wondered how I communicated with Elizabetha everyday at home.  I had to think to respond.  I was amazed I really did not have any problems communicating with her.  I could ask her what time we were leaving the house for a gathering by pointing to the clock and she would tell me the numbers, one for the hour, one for the minutes. We would have a coffee together at three p.m. every day.  I would ask her if my dress was appropriate for an occasion and she would tell me "formale", or "no formale" so that I know how formal the gathering was and how I should dress. When I was not sure about my appearance, she would reassure me "bene Nargess, bene".  We would even gossip after a party about the guests.  I would say the name of a lady and then ask her how old she was or how many kids she had.  "Christina.  Jasmine?", with Jasmine representing babies.  She would say "Uno", or "Tre".  She would ask me how well was the English of the people I talked to.  "Magda, English,  Bene?".  "Bene", I would say.  She would put food on the table for me and say "eat, Nargess, eat".  I even learned that she used to work in Italy and that is how she knows Italian, and that she likes Italy a lot.  She would ask me about my work and if I liked it or not.  All these without a full sentence in one language, rather by borrowing words from three different languages and pointing at things.  We even afforded to taarof a lot despite the language barriers, a tradition that Polish people share with Persians.  I learned it is more important that people be willing to learn about each other and listen to each other than really know the same language, for we always find a way to communicate if we wish to.  The day after the wedding, she missed her son. For the first time in twenty seven years he was not there and this time he was gone for good.  She broke to tears at breakfast table.  I reassured her he is still in Lublin, Poland. He is close, he comes to see her. "Lublin, no America", I told her as I gave her a kiss.  With her teary eyes she pointed to the telephone and told me "Nargess, Mama", asking me to call my mother.  A mother in Poland felt for a mother in Iran.  We talked together and felt together.  It was amazing. 

The day for saying goodbyes arrived and Elizabetta cried for my departure.  And for the first time after so many years, in fact since thirteen years ago when I left Iran for America, I cried when leaving for a trip

Torun

In the country of too many churches and John Paul the Pope, I took a three hour train from Warsaw to Torun to make one pilgrimage only: to the home of Mikolaj Kopernik.  A middle-aged lady was sitting across from me in the train, reading the paper over a cup of tea.  After a while, she took out her laptop and started working on it.  A scene I had not seen very often here.  She was entering some data from the daily paper into her computer.  When I needed a translator to talk with the conductor, she came to my rescue and we started talking after that.  Her English was very well.  I could tell she was highly educated and not an average Polish woman.  I learned that she worked in European Union and her job was to coach and consult entrepreneurs and businesses so that their businesses flourish and succeed.  She showed me a chart in the newspaper that had plotted PKBs of different countries.  "Do you know what it is (PKB)?", she asked.  "No", I responded.  It was the Polish abbreviation for Gross Domestic Product or GDP.  Poland was listed towards the end of that table and U.S. was ranked third.  "We are like a sleeping country", she said.  I nodded.  Maybe that is what the silence was, they were a sleeping country.  "At least you have made it to the list, there are many countries that are not in that table", I commented.  She mentioned that now EU is working hard so that Poland's economy booms because their economic condition affects that of the Europe.  She was being paid 600 zeloty per hour for her coaching classes, that is a little less than $200!  "That is a lot of money in Poland", she told me.  "That is a lot of money in the U.S. too", I responded surprisingly.

"Why Torun?", she asked me.  "Because of Nicholas Copernicus", I said.  "Then we take the taxi together, it is close to my office", she offered and I agreed.*  We had to cross the Vistula river.  The view of Torun from the other side of the river was breathtaking. "It is the most beautiful view in Poland", my new friend claimed. We soon arrived in the downtown area.  She did not let me pay.  We came out and she showed me her office.  It was called "Excellence Counseling".  "I am in the second floor", she said.  She gave me her phone number and asked me to call her if I had any problems.  She regretted that she had to teach a class otherwise she would show Torun to me.  She led the way to take me to my destination.  "I do not want to take your time, thanks for all your help thus far", I told her. "No, no", she laughed.  Literally two doors down the alley, we stopped.  She faced the house and presented to me "this is Copernicus house". 

Wow! I could not believe it, "You are neighbors with Nicholas Copernicus!".  How nice and odd it was to sit in front of her in the train who not only spoke good English but was so kind and was also going exactly to where I wanted to go.  I thanked her and we departed.  I could not wait to enter the Kopernika Dom. Kopernika's Dom was large by today's standards.  He was from a well-off family.  He was not just an astronomer.  He had studied medicine, bought and sold properties, and wrote on economics as well.  He had translated poems from Greek to Latin.  There were hand-written recipes of different dishes written on pages of some of his books.  He was a well-rounded man, living a good life.  There were tools by which he had measured the distance of the moon from earth and its position, tools for determining sun's position, etc.  I did not learn about his personal life.  Did he ever marry and had kids? I have to find out.  Rumor has it that he also was a priest and for this reason he did not marry.  Being a priest did not mean just being religious in ancient Poland, rather belonging to a highly educated class of people and having access to more opportunities.  Some disagree with this claim that he was a priest and say the mistake initiated when Galileo first referred to him as such in a letter.  I did not see anything approving this claim in his Dom, and honestly I find it hard to believe, or rather prefer to think he was not a priest.  There was a letter signed by Chopin framed on a wall.  It was in Polish.  I pleaded to one of the guides to tell me what it was about.  With his broken English he told me it was a letter Chopin had written to his friends about his visit to Torun, about Kopernika, and about the ginger bread that is famous in Torun.  It has a secret recipe that has been passed through generations.

There were thick copies of Kopernika's book there, including his famous De revolutionibus orbium coelestium (On the Revolutions of the Celestial Spheres) that changed our view of the solar system and our position in it.  There was Galileo's dissertation proving Copernicus observations and claims.  There were records of the houses Kopernika had bought and sold.  His admission letter to a university in Krakow.  There was also his doctorate degree, and the surprising part was that it was smaller than any other document there.  Family trees and records, property records, etc were all written on long nice papers with a sense of formality.  The doctorate diploma was on a very small piece of paper that seemed to have been cut from a larger paper. Did it mean ownership of properties and family heritage were considered more significant than having a high degree?   That would not surprise me as there are many who belong to this school of thought even in our era.

Torun was happy and lively, yet calm and peaceful.  Music was being played in down town area around Kopernika's statue, where different groups of school students would come and go to take pictures with.  There were many pigeons being fed by tourists.  Small kids would run after them and play with them.

There was another famous ancient building with nice design in Torun called the Star building.  I knew there was a museum inside it.  I assumed it had to do something with astronomy, Kopernika, or Torun.  I went inside and to my surprise it was an oriental museum with ancient things from China and Mongolia.  I was surprised to see things from that part of the world there.  An old world traveler/dealer had apparently brought them to Torun.  I made a quick round and as I was leaving, the lady who worked there pointed to me that there is also a basement.  Trying to be polite, I went down.  Then, I saw battle tools from Persia, helmets,  axes, and shields were titled with their Persian names "Kolachood", "Tabar", and "Separ".  That was the last thing I expected to see there, who would have thought?  Behind every door a world of mysteries and surprises is hidden, and one won't know about them until s/he opens the doors and step in. 

Finally, I found myself at the bank of the Vistula river with beautiful flowers.  A perfect place to sit and reflect on my journey and to relax.

* Later I was blamed for being so naive and sharing a ride with a stranger, and that I could have been kidnapped by my daring Iranian family.  The fact that it was an official 'Taxi' did not convince them either, it could have all been a set up.  I was quickly shut up before I could start to tell the story of who I met and how nice she was and what she did for a living.  They never heard my story, and probably many more ones.  How easy it is to close our eyes and hearts and miss out on so many things because we let fear take over.  Funny part is I always considered myself too cautious and never bold. Is it that no matter how capable we Iranian women become, our compatriats rather think of us as naive and gullible ones rather than worldy, capable, and sociable ones?

Poland: First Impressions

Poland is a quiet and peaceful country, beautiful too. Even in the most crowded places all you hear is the friction of people's shoes or luggage with the ground.  There is no noise pollution, just natural voices and sounds.  Loud speakers are not loud enough for me. I have to tune in carefully to grasp the train announcements.

There are too many churches in every corner, and they are not just historic or cultural sites.  People are truly religious here.  Every major street of any city is called Al. Jana Pawla II (John Paul Second) after the Polish Pope.  People stop at the churches on their way to home, work, or groceries, kneel down, say a prayer, shed some tear drops at times, and leave.  The silence in the church is usually too heavy, too spiritual, easily capable of breaking one down to tears should you stay there long enough.  Some churches were hospitals during world war II.  Some were ruined during that era and have been rebuilt.  Maybe it is the spirit of all the wounded, killed, painful memories, that contributes to the heavy silence.  I feel like they hear my every breath in the churches, I do not dare to click on my camera for a photo, I walk as slowly as possible not to interrupt their prayers. During communist era, Polish people could not express their religion and pray freely.  So, being religious was a rebel against government.  Being religious was being in opposition, being part of the uprising movement, in contrast to the current situation of Iran's government at surface.  Now Poland proudly celebrates this right and freedom to worship and be religious. Sunday masses, or any day masses for that matter, are crowded and a testimony to this celebration. Songs and prayers are soothing and nice.  They say prayers, knee down, pray some more, at the end greet their neighbors with whom they were sharing the pew by shaking hands.  At the end, some money for the church is also collected. There is a special mass for children, giving them religious education, with the priest asking them questions and encouraging them to go forward and join the discussion by throwing some coins in the air for them to come and collect.

There are reminders of war everywhere.  Statues of unknown soldiers in every corner, and almost all of them are always decorated with fresh flowers.  The war might be over, the communist era might be gone, but there is no way you can forget what this country has gone through if you walk in any street in Poland.

I have not figured out the silence here yet:  is it due to them being peaceful and spiritual, or are they going through a depression and grieving period as a society because of all they have gone through during World War II?  Are they simply happy and content with their lives, or does their silence signals indifference, lack of ambition and goals?  Is it the result of the communist era and them not being used to expressing themselves loudly and clearly, always being cautious?  Or is it simply the fact that cities here are not as densely populated as other large famous cities?  After all, Warsaw's population is 1.7  million people only.  Or have I got too used to the wild wild west?  I do not know.  Maybe all of the above.

I am not complaining about the dominant peace and quiet.  It is very soothing and pleasant.  In fact, I appreciate it very much considering how I always dislike loud TVs, loud radios, and in general too much noise in the U.S.  Their peacefulness and kindness radiates and transfers to me and gives me a calm feeling.  It is just enigmatic.