Roses

The Shah of Iran was overthrown in 1979. I turned fourteen that year.

Navarre was -- or still is if he yet lives -- sixteen and a half years older than me. My recollection is he went to prison at age twenty-seven and somewhat unexpectedly was released at age thirty.

His father was a professor. I'm guessing he was a student protestor in the events leading up to the overthrow of the Shah. 

We had a funny conversation once about fame. Funny as in odd. He assured me it was nothing I wanted, as if perhaps he had firsthand experience informing his opinion. 

The Shah was installed by the US government. He paid a personal price to kick the fuckers out, as he once said about it.

He spent three years in prison and was questioned under torture to free his country of an evil influence and then loved a woman many years later from the country of his enemy.

I don't know what he felt about me. He once said "You try to figure out how to express your feelings in a second language."

I'm not saying he was in love with me. I'm saying he was good to me in a fashion and to a degree for which a lesser word does a disservice to his kindness and wisdom and personal generosity. 

He was not only personally older than me, he also came from an older culture than mine.

Iran is home to one of the world's oldest continuous major civilizations, with historical and urban settlements dating back to the 5th millennium BC.

That makes my mother's homeland of Germany look young, never mind the US. 

I'm the victim of incest twice over and he repaired something in me when the world says once something has been broken in that fashion, there's no hope no matter what you do.

And I believe I was good for him. Most likely, he was drawn to my bubbly personality and stuck around because he never met anyone else who could keep it light and upbeat and positive without being just crushed by his story.

He was older than me. I was very ill.

We took things slow in many ways and there were no goals, no milestones, no objectives. There was no rush to get someplace in particular. 

He spent time with me to spend time with me. That was the goal.

And I don't know if I will ever remarry because everyone else seems to have a goal, a deadline, a metric that must be met, a future something they talk about endlessly as if enjoying my company right here, right now has zero inherent value and if this moment is wonderful, then they need to extract a promise of marriage and make plans to reproduce. 

Most men pay no real attention to the woman they are with. And they promptly suck the life out of the whole thing if they really like you a lot, like you're a flag to capture. 

I'm not capable of accepting that having had something better.