After my own heart

I received an email via thesuperheavy a few months ago from an American woman living in Iran with her Persian husband. An artist, she was looking for my recommendation of a seamstress in Tehran to help her with a textiles project she's working on. Considering the disaster that was my wedding dress our conversations quickly turned to other things: namely what it's like to live in the Middle East; how interesting, charming, and downright suffocating the closeness of family in Iran can be for a Westerner more accustomed to and trained for autonomy to the hilt; what it means to have to don a uniform each and every time one wants to leave the house; how ironic it is that, as women, we must obey the law dictating what we wear but that as Iranian citizens we are allowed to not only vote but run for parliament. We talked about art and philosophy, travel and family.

Through the course of conversation I learned that like me, she has a hard time with the scarf-business but otherwise loves Iran; that, like me, she is seven years older than her darling; and that, like me, she is an insatiable travel addict.

I casually invited her to meet me for lunch here in Kathmandu, offered the couple a room in our house, and assured them that the tourist visa process for Iranians in Nepal was a piece of cake.

I've invited quite a few people to come stay with us here in Nepal, friends, family - and although many started out excitedly researching the possibility of a holiday in the Himalayas not one was able to rationalize the lengthy journey and close to $3,000 plane ticket. But this woman whom I'd never met packed herself and her husband up and flew all the way to Nepal from Iran (a solid 24 hours journey each way) for a ten day visit.

We met at Mike's Breakfast, a local joint run by an American midwesterner and a new favorite, and while sipping Bloody Mary's over lunch she gifted me an exceptionally beautiful piece of her original art - in Persian script, it is a talisman on paper, embodying the energy of movement and travel, the joy and love of new experience. I made her sign it at the table and while she was doing so I was struck by just how small this world is, and how precious the adventurous spirit.

Truly, after my own heart.