Chapter 2

13/05/2025 @ Mashhad airport. Waiting for my flight to Istanbul.

Chapter 2 is done. I left Sydney on 10/03 and now more than a month has passed.

The sequence of events were as follows:

My mum and dad, sister, brother, niece and nephew and in laws came with me to the airport to say goodbye and it was quite an emotional departure.

When I arrived I didn’t expect any of the stuff that happened. A lot happened in the past month and I suppose I have fulfilled the unplannedness of this journey so far.

I arrived in Mashhad, then had a trip to Sabzevar and stayed there for the most of my stay, then a trip to Gorgan, in Golestan province in north of Iran, then back to Sabzevar, and finally returned to Mashhad two days ago.

I lost a friend, a great friend and sadly I couldn’t say farewell and I also made a new friend.

I spent time with my aunts, uncles and cousins.

I experienced lots of love. Even though it was quite overwhelming, that was the last thing I told my sister. Pure love, was something I clearly received from my family though it was too much.

My older brother put too much effort into reconnecting with me. He shared lots of issues and touched lots of old wounds. That stuff really overwhelmed me in a way that emotionally I couldn’t handle them at the time.

And right after that, about a few days after my arrival, I contacted my best lifetime friend, the one I was really looking forward to seeing him on this trip and spend some time with and I realised he was in a coma.
I wanted to see him, but since I was in Sabzevar, getting to Tehran wasn’t very easy especially around Nourooz. I failed to say goodbye and he passed away the night after.
That episode as well as the communication with my brother made me so emotionally overflowed.

I hardly had any alone time and I didn’t have a chance to mourn my friend. And I don’t think I have yet.

My family, specifically my sister and brother helped me to have a good internet connection throughout my stay to enable me to work without interruption. They were super protective and they all worked tirelessly to keep me away from any stressful situations. I don’t think it was for any reason but pure love.

I managed to help my dad at his shop, which was quite fulfilling.

Nourooz, the Persian new year happened on the 20/03 and we celebrated it with my family after 20 years. That was quite an outstanding experience.

I spent a lot of quality time with my niece. She is 21 and it was so much fun spending time with her. She has an angelic voice and we sang a few songs together.
She gave me a necklace this evening which really touched my heart.

In the past weeks my sister’s best friend joined us in Gorgan who was so much fun. We had lots of parties, dancing and singing.

More details come next…

22/03/2025
At the Share-Bazi- park Sabzevar – Iran
19:10.

Today is the second day of Nourooz, the beginning of the Persian new year.

I have already been in Iran for 10 days. And I can admit that a lot has been happening so far. More to swallow. Too much to absorb. A lot of unexpected events.

I haven’t had a chance to process what’s been happening. Today is the first time that I came out on my own for a short stroll bravely in my shorts.

Yesterday I discovered the day of my departure as well as the first destination.
So, I simply know the end of chapter 2. Though I am not going to spoil it for you.

There are two major incidents that I need to write about. My relationship with my older brother and my best friend of thirty years.

I also need to write about my feelings. About why I am so overwhelmed, why I am so disconnected to the self I have been knowing in the past many years.

My diet is different and my sleeping time is varied. I must be filled with lots of love and my heart must be full of joy, but I am afraid, I feel nothing.

I am trying to find a key, by writing down these words, to this locked box, I honestly don’t have any idea what’s going on.

I am sitting in front of a little playground with the sound of dropping water of coloured fountains where children play among them.

I was looking at the stars and I was wondering if these stars were the same as before, of what I could see back at home.
I was wondering if they were the same, if they still could remember me and my story.

I am at the place where I was born but this place doesn’t feel like home. My parents, my sister, my aunties live here, although I feel lost.

I can speak the dialects to perfection though I feel like deaf and mute.

I have a photographic memory and I could and can remember lots of details about the town as my brother couldn’t, but then again I felt totally disconnected.

Last Wednesday, when I arrived, the weather was quite chilly. Luckily I had warm clothes. I passed the customs and the immigration without any unexpected event and after the gate I saw my sister, brother, sister and brother in-laws, my niece and my nephew. I was meeting my six year old nephew for the first time.
My parents stayed in Sabzevar as I insisted on that because I didn’t want them to have an unnecessary trip.

My welcoming committee and myself, all got very emotional. Especially my brother, he was holding me so tightly and crying.
Then my dad called, he could even complete his sentence as his tears took over. My parents left Australia about a few months ago and I was utterly unresponsive to so many emotions.

Anyway, I was certainly overjoyed and over loved.

We drove back to my brother’s apartment in Mashhad.

I am not sure if I have mentioned it before, one of the reasons I travelled back to Iran was because of my older brother’s persuasion. He was very worried about my niece’s state of mind and he was asking for my help.

From the moment I arrived my whole focus was around my niece.

One of the topics we talked about on my arrival was about the pain.
I was telling her that pain is a very important mechanism, it tells us about the stuff they need attention of or need repair or amendment/ adjustments. I told her that self-inflicted pains create misery.

My sister is going to join me.

To be continued.

30/03/2025
@ My parents house, Sabzevar, Iran

It is another Sunday, the tenth day of Nourooz, a sunny warm spring day around 26 degrees, my brother, his wife and my niece as well as my sister, her hubby and my nephew, are all here and that feels nice.

There is some truth in life that we may not be ready to face them. One of them was visiting the place I was born at. My birth happened at home, I was in such a hurry to start my journey and couldn’t wait to get to the hospital, hence I decided to make my own way out. And since then I never stopped.

We went for a walk around the town with my brother and I can’t say it was very inspiring.

Sometimes life evolves in a way that drifts significantly from our roots. And when we get back to those roots, it turns out the picture we have created in our head is not the same as reality.

Since I have arrived, my brother has been trying so hard to connect with me and I have found it quite overwhelming.
He keeps talking about the past and about different memories. Some of them are quite heavy. I have learnt over the years to forget and move on and now, keep hearing about the past makes me uncomfortable.
I told my brother today that I don’t trust him and the only way we can build up our relationship is the consistency. Words are nice but not enough. As in our culture, to do good means you need to align deeds with words and thoughts, the three goods altogether. I still don’t know about his agenda, whether he is sincere or it’s all only crocodile tears.

Tomorrow, we are going to visit my uncle in another town in the north of Iran near the Caspian sea. It is about five hours away.

31/03/2025 @ on the road towards Gorgan

The road is quite dry. The desert is surrounded by the mountain range. And every now and then you can see a single tree in the distance.
My dad is driving and the way he drives makes me nervous.
Did you know there is also Miami in Iran. It’s about 90 km away from where we are now. It’s before Shahrood.

14/04/2025

On the plane from Mashhad to Istanbul.
Turkish airline.

I am craving alcohol after a month of being sober.
Well, it doesn’t sound too right does it?
I am not an alcoholic, but I always appreciate good wine or nice chilled beer.

My sister’s friend brought us a bottle of homemade red wine, it was quite young and more or less was like grape juice, but of course it was better than nothing.

My trip in Iran had two significant aspects.

The micro aspect was about me and my emotional experience with my family.

The macro aspect was about my experience with society.

The other day I went for a walk with my sister’s friend and when she mentioned about people in the village near her hometown that she believed they didn’t have culture, I told her that, “from my perspective”, culture meant the way a group of people live and behave at a certain time, in a certain place.

For instance, in Iran, it doesn’t matter if you are rich or poor, when there are more than ten guests at your house, they sit on the floor and have their meals there. It’s the culture of people.
You can’t say people don’t have culture, you may say they are not cultured as they don’t listen or understand classical music or understand literature, but every group has their own culture. We may not like their culture, but that doesn’t mean my culture is better than theirs or vice versa.

And during this trip I realised the common culture in Iran doesn’t resonate with mine as it didn’t before either. And perhaps that’s why I left Iran in the first place.
Mobile phones play a significant role in the lives of people. People are quite superficial and they like to compete with their friends and relatives in order to show off their wealth and their achievements. People are so much into making money, no matter how, and in my perspective Iran is such a Godless society.

Iranian people have been pressured and undignified by the current government and the whole world in the past 47 years. That really breaks my heart. Maybe the reason I am so harsh to the common culture is best I wanted them to be stronger and not allowing all these forces to bend them.
I don’t want to be unfair to them. I understand how hard it could be living in Iran and dealing with a tremendous amount of uncertainties days and nights along. Iran has been under severe sanctions from the west for almost the length of this new regime in Iran. And I am so impressed how people still can laugh and still can celebrate Persian conventions. My heart is bleeding for them and again I feel so uneasy towards those who brings bad names to the whole nation. Those who claim asylum deceivingly and based on lies. Again I feel sorry, I feel ashamed that I can have a comfortable life only because of my Australian passport, and in Iran people feel patronised.

@16/04/2025 12:30 pm.
On flight tomorrow Krakow.
Revision of my thoughts about my trip in Iran.

I had a conversation with my brother in law about his work and his life.
He is very ambitious. He works for an engine company. They design and produce high performing turbines, electric and diesel industrial engines.
The factory is outside Sabzevar.

I came up with an idea of defining colour coded blocks for our days for a good visualisation of our daily routines.

For instance a typical day of a working person could consist of three blocks. Sleep block, work block and leisure block.

The reasons for these blocks are to understand how seperated our blocks are from each other.
If blocks have negative impacts on the other blocks use red shadows on the affected blocks. For example if you don’t sleep well and you feel tired during the day, make the sleep block red and put red shadows on the other one or two blocks.
If the blocks are well seperated from each other use different colours for each block
For instance
Yellow for work, pink for leisure and blue for sleep.
If any block has a positive impact on the other blocks use green shadows on the affected blocks.

Then in each block, try to isolate to quality moments. For example in the work block, figure out when is the most efficient block inside that block.
Or if there are challenges, how can one isolate them in a seperate block which wouldn’t impact the rest of the day.

This strategy can help to visualise the quality of our days and also can help us to see how practical our goals will be based on our daily routines.

Anyway, when I described this to my brother in law, he enthusiastically shrugged. 🤣😂

If you remember, before departing Australia we found out that the company my younger brother works with in Brisbane went through some troubles and they shut down their branch in Brisbane. My brother and his family were gutted. It was quite challenging for them.
I promised them that I was going to support them and I asked them to stay firm together and worked through this storm without going through lots of stress.
I told my sister in law to get to the mindset of “no matter what, we will sort this out together” mindset.
On the 11/04 my sister in law sent me a message and she said she wrote a confidential email to the wife of ceo who used to be the HR manager and explained how the whole situation created a turbulent in their life and since they were very happy with my brother’s expertise, if it was possible they hire him for their office in Melbourne, and guess what.. they said yes.
I was so proud of what she did. It was so brave. That was one of those moments where I was telling myself a good partner, is not someone who brings an equal amount of money or does equal amount of work, but is someone who can think and support their partner whenever required unconditionally.
And I think the contract has gone through today ( 16/04/2025) since I have received a message from my brother asking about some contacts in Melbourne when I was at the airport in Istanbul.
I am so proud of them. I am praying for their peace and success.

I may write more when I remember anything else.
The unplanned journey won’t be starting properly until chapter four. Since these parts are sort of anticipated.

For now this will be the end of chapter two.