The Inukshuk of Alborz

Mazandaran Provinvial Park  Circa 1975

I still remember the gentle stroke of his hand up and down my back to help me fall asleep.  

I don’t quite remember where I heard this for the first time, but someone once said music is nothing but pauses interrupted by sound. By the same token, one’s trajectory in life seems to be long stretches of mundane interrupted by significant people, memories or events that enter the scene and then leave or disappear. And as times goes by and memories merge with desires, one begins to remember these sounds of times gone by and somehow finds their echo resonate in one’s present.  

After my father’s passing I began to recall the long expanses of time I was away from him; these long pauses, had awakened a certain consciousness, a certain awareness of things he had brought into my life; characters, notions and ideas he had represented and symbolized that now I find surprisingly missing altogether from my surroundings. Things that one thought little of or not at all, somehow have become more relevant, more necessary. I began to become aware of the missing elements that should have mattered to me much earlier. 

He was born in the Caspian Sea region. A region commonly referred to in Iran as “North”. I recall the many trips we used to take across Alborz Mountains when I was a kid to visit where he lived as a child. Now, thinking about those years, it all seems like a dream: surreal and remote, a different continent, a different life, where your family tree stands, anchored by the centuries old of its roots, strong yet alone. I question my choices: are the things I gained worth the things I lost? Do I belong anywhere? Am I an eternal alien no matter where, no matter when? 

I, this latter-day nomad of once undiscovered shores, can hear the drumbeats of native chants as I navigate my path through the limitless horizon of the new North. Which one, my past or present, is the True North? Where are my roots, once deep and wide, now a twig in the limitless horizon of white? What became of my trunk, once ancient and strong, now a stem whose bloom is yet to come? This tree, once branching sky high, now a lone maple in the short spring of bloom. I hear the calling of the father, the eternal guardian of the valleys I once passed through, the ever present Inukshuk of Alborz, whose son now sings the native ballads of the Algonkians.  

Those decades that became fleeting moments; those seeming oceans of everlasting love that became but drops in the invisible realm of absence; this time that cannot be captured nor conquered; this unbridgeable past; the separation that could not be undone; this noble soul who is now a native in the concourse above. The great spirit who flew over the cascading ranges of Alborz, whose voice echoed in the Caspian ever greens, now ever-present if absent, is with me through the dimensions unknown: 

O! gentle reminder of forgotten times, hear my cry if you can; I am North, don’t let me astray in the perilous journey of life’s glens and groves; call me if you can, don’t leave me lost in the far away trails of my solitude’s inlets and coves; take me once again through the green valleys of Alborz as I sing the native chants; set me free, unbound me from the concentric rhythm of time, for I too search for the lost roots of my generations past. 

The primal will has called him to be the gardener of the changeless beauty of the ever-blooming spring of after-life. In the picturesque echoes of memories, frame by frame, reel by reel, I remember, ingrained in the depth of my soul, those seemingly forgotten years that are but an illusion now.  

***

Circa 1960

I remember the excitement of being taken to a military base in the back seat of a jeep watching the soldiers salute him, or walking in the middle of a field watching the Drill Sergeant in action while standing close to him. I remember how walking late at in the streets of Tehran, back when nights were quiet enough to hear the silence punctured by an accidental car passing by and stars were not yet hidden behind the fog of smoke and sulfur, he'd put me on his shoulders so this five-year-old could lean on his head half sleep with a smile on his face. I have never stood that tall again.   

How those nights and days passed us by, the mortal moments disappeared and so much of life remained un-lived. Mind has a time of its own and so it seems the rest will be in the unseen kingdom. I’ll always remember him standing firm, both in faith and life, an accomplished officer, a true gentleman wounded by a land that is alien to justice and removed from fairness. There was something unmovable, unshakable in his character that seems so out of fashion and yet so needed. It is curious that only now I realize what a great role model he was, something I wish I had told him at least once. 

Regrets are a many but in my mind his image is that of an Inukshuk that will help me navigate thought life for the rest of my days. I do miss him.