There were endless lazy afternoons playing backgammon, or being lulled into naps by the gentle harmonies of my brother Mike and his best friend Bijan strumming their guitars. Such were the memories accompanying our getaway in August 1978.
The summer was waning, along with my first year out of college. I felt an exhilarating sense of suspension which I shared with the world around me. Although I had been accepted to grad school in the US, a letter I wrote to a friend confirms I intended instead to stay in Tehran.
My engagement book for the year, later salvaged by my dad during one of his trips to Homeland in the 1990s, reveals a manic lifestyle filled with hard work and much fun. Skiing, hiking, outings to the horse track, discotheques, hotel bars, clubs for the expats, the British Council library, lectures at the cultural institutes, Fellini and Scorsese films at the elite Farabi Film Club, world-class directors and movie stars at the Tehran Film Festival, bookstores everywhere, an arts and intellectual scene fuelled by cosmopolitan interchange as much as by oil wealth. My beat as the third-string arts-writer for daily newspaper Kayhan International brought me brief but intense encounters with artists from around the world.