comrade

I don't know about you guys, but buying a gift is a big thing for me, be it for birthday, Christmas, or any other nonsense occasion.

What makes this task even harder is the gender issue. I really feel awkward giving a gift to a man. I mean, a gift is always a token of sexual appreciation, is a way of saying "thanks for sleeping with me", or "son, thank you for letting me  sleep with your mother" or even better "dear mom, I appreciate that you slept with my dad".  Something like that. I mean even if you take your own hormonal issue out of it, then you have to add someone else's hormone into it, like giving a gift to a neighbor for not sleeping with your wife when you are at work.....Again, things like that.

I went to this bookstore to buy a book as a Christmas present for my diehard monarchist buddy. You see, we grew up together, lived in the same side of town, went to the same school, we entered our teen-age years and whatever goes with it together too, such as our discovery of the brave new world which was accompanied by a couple of fits of claps with the not-so-fancy scientific name of Gonorrhea, and a lot more in common until we gradually found ourselves on a peculiar political divide, as he went to the Right, and I chose the Left......I know "chose" is a catchy word, but let's take it easy....It's Christmas Day...

Anyway I'm not gonna bore you with a long meaningless life story (if it's not too late, already!). I chose a book for him which I thought he would certainly love it; full of Persian this, Persian that, and had a load of nonsense about Cyrus this, Cyrus That, with a huge chapter on the subject of the late AryaMehr's Royal schizophrinia "five more years to the Grand Civilization" thing, and tons of photos of His Majesty when He was advising the rest of the world how to manage their lives or else!!

As I was standing in line for the cashier, I thought it would be best if I adorned its first page with a quote by my friend's favorite son of Cyrus the Great. Yup, you guessed it: I decided to write a quote of Reza Pahlavi just to make my gift more valuable. But guess what? The more I thought , the less I found. It's really sad that after more than three decades you can not find a quotable sentence from someone who thinks he deserves to be our future king of kings. Oh well, "my father was a decent man" doesn't really count.

The line up was getting shorter, and as the cashier called me up, eureka! I decided to write a strong monarchist slogan, which actually summarizes their political platform instead of a never-to-be-found quotation of my buddy's would-be monarch, which is:

IN MELLATÉ OLÃGH GOH MIKHORAN, SAGÉ KI BÃSHAN REZAA JOONO GHABOOL NAKONAN. GOH KHORDAN. JÃVID REZA SHAH DOVVOM.

The cashier was still explaining their return policy when I stepped out of the door...I knew, he'd love the gift.

By the way this clip came with the book, as a bonus: