Tradition of Kindness
In the summer of 1965, I was a newly wed bride. I had moved with my then husband from Tehran to Shiraz. He was an engineer working with the British telecommunications company, Redifon at the Shiraz Airport. Each morning he would go to work at six o’clock and come back for lunch time, then return to work in the afternoon. I had nothing to do. I knew no one in that beautiful city and felt somewhat isolated. We had a one bedroom flat that overlooked a little pond. Since we were to stay there for just a short while, we possessed the bare essentials. We had a bed, table, four chairs and the kitchen necessities. Our home was barren.
I asked my husband to bring some of the wooden crates from the equipment needed for the airport, which he did. We converted these into bedside tables and bookshelves. I bought taffeta to cover the sides and topped them with glass. We put two crates together to make bookshelves, for one could never have too many of those. In that manner, we converted the empty space into a home. I familiarized myself with the town and sauntered about the bazaar and picked up knickknacks. I discovered the garden of the hotel where my ex-husband used to stay before we wed. It was a beautiful garden. It was filled with trees and fragrant flowers. Nightingales and other birds sang in the trees. Water fountains splashed into little pools of water. There were comfortable seats with plump cushions scattered about the various areas of the garden. It almost seemed to be a part of paradise, but then the beautiful city of Shiraz was dubbed as the City of Flowers and Nightingales.
I walked to the hotel at about ten o’clock some mornings with my book. I would order something to drink and get engrossed in reading, as I listened to the water fountains trilling and the nightingales warbling their hearts content. It was so peaceful there. The people at the hotel kept a protective eye on me, for I was the young wife of a long-time guest of theirs. Lunchtime my husband would pick me up. We would either go home to a meal I had prepared or have lunch somewhere. There was a three-hour siesta time. Everyone would sleep then, for the workday started at either six or seven in the morning. Four o’clock it was back to work until seven.
Time passed. Soon the Jewish New Year was upon us. We found a synagogue to go to. The congregation welcomed us warmly into their midst when we entered their house of worship. They discovered I was a bride from Tehran. The elder and his wife graciously made us feel welcome and then he even invited us to their home for the High Holy Days. He told me something that left a deep impression within me. ‘You are now a bride and a stranger amongst us. There will come a day when you will be established with a family and a home of your own. Do not then forget the strangers in your midst who do not have a family to celebrate the holidays with.’
During the first year of marriage, we moved from one city to another. When I was expecting with our son, we went back to Tehran. We stayed with my parents for a while until we got our own place. The first time I entertained for the High Holy Days, I remembered what the elder in Shiraz told me. I looked for someone who had no family to celebrate with and found him. It became a tradition. Sometimes I found a few people to share our holidays with and I felt happy. Over fifty years have passed since then. I continued the tradition. Now I am getting old and tired. My holiday table has shrunk and my strangers have become like my family. Each holiday I smile and think how this started by being inspired by the Shirazi elder of one synagogue welcoming two strangers to his home during the High Holy Days in 1965… What a nice way to play forward such a lovely tradition that once belonged to someone else and is now my family and mine.