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 Nane gol
Maybe I wish I could have lived a more simple life like my nanny
By Azadeh Ensha
March 28, 2003
The Iranian
I'm currently sitting at work, and though I should be working on an upcoming profile
I have to write (in case anyone including my boss reads this: I plan on writing the
piece tonight at home), I find myself drifting off and thinking about anything and
everything other than what I should. And maybe it's because I haven't eaten anything
all day or maybe it's because its 4:14pm-the time when that infamous sugar slump
hits the body-but I find myself feeling very sad.
Suddenly, my thoughts wonder off to a nanny we affectionately called "Nane".
My mom said her real name was Roodabeh, but her own family life was so convoluted,
I don't think there's any real way of verifying her name. Not that that matters in
the end or in the here and now.
I thought of her because I'm sitting in a law office in midtown Manhattan, where
I work, and I started thinking about how her life was so different than my fast-paced,
American, consume and produce, produce and consume lifestyle. She never knew 90210
was the zip code for Beverly Hills. Hell, she barely wondered outside of Tehran during
her entire life. Jimmy Choo Shoes. Manolo Blahniks. Mercedes S-class. These things
never entered her vocabulary. But they have mine. And I think my life has suffered
all the more because of it.
A lot of us say we strive for a more simple life, that we want to go back to simpler
days, that we wish we could be kids again because life then was simple. But everything
we do and how we live our lives is the opposite of simple. Riddle me this. Why are
so many Persians in law school and medical school? Because they all love law and
medicine? Yeah, right. More like there's money and prestige in those careers. And
I know very few Persians who don't have a Mercedes or a piece of Louis Vuitton luggage
(real and fake). But maybe that says more about me than it does them.
What the hell I'm trying to say here I don't know. Maybe I wish I could have lived
a more simple life like my Nane. For her, a bottle of real Coca-Cola was a treat,
as opposed to the generic brand they also sell in Tehran. She was like a kid, even
in her late 80s. So much so that when I went to the corner store in Tehran, she often
told me to bring her back an ice cream bar, and then I would watch her lick the ice
cream with the delight of a child. I wonder whose life will be better, or whose life
is better, since I am still living and she is not.
 She
never knew a Prada bag or a semi-annual sale at Saks. Her feet were in horrible need
of a pedicure, and she never could boast of having traveled to Italy, France, or
somewhere similar. She was born, lived, and died within a small fifteen mile radius
of Tehran. I have traveled to numerous places from Switzerland to nearly all of the
Caribbean islands. Whose life is better?
I will soon have a masters of science from Columbia University. I don't even think
she finished third grade. Whose life is better? Though my resume is an impressive
one, I still feel empty and want more. She always was content with what she had.
I miss her terribly. I think I'm going to start crying if I think of her more.
So I guess I'll tuck her away somewhere where she'll be safe from contamination,
somewhere where she will never know what the leather seats of the latest S-class
model feel like, or what the dinner crowd at the latest "it"restaurant
looks like. She always told me that I was like a flower. "Azadeh gol,"
she would say. What I'd give to hear those two words now.
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