So I’m out here in Los Angeles, and I’ve actually been aware that I’ve been pushing my friend to talk to me about her past as we work on this memoir.   She didn’t talk about it for many years, because losing the love of her life and so many of her friends after the Iranian revolution was so hard, and in many ways, her whole family has led a diminished life here in Los Angeles;  if things had turned out differently, they would have been among the educated elite in Iran and they have all had to to live in enormous losses and start over from scratch here in the U.S.

I am aware of my own inadequacy when she tries to express certain concepts that she would be able to express them brilliantly in Farsi.  She comes from a family that recited poetry and her father wrote several volumes of it himself.

Today, my friend told me I should consider the rest of my time here vacation, which is something of a blow.  I haven’t said it in so many words;  I have tried to gently suggest it, but I didn’t come all this way; I didn’t pay for a plane ticket just to hang out in Los Angeles.  Truthfully, I’m not crazy about the sun and palm trees.  I don’t mind the slush and snow back home.  I’m here to work and there are certain things I can do only when she’s around.

Not sure what to do.  Don’t want to be insensitive, but I’m not really here to be on vacation either.  I have stuff I could be doing back home.  Maybe I’ll give her a couple days to see if she’ll change her mind.    I should really be blaming the violent men whose torturing and killing ways led to her being here.