Mustafa Irani.

When we arrived at the hostel in Pakistan the Iranians and boys from Mauritius, and Malaysia decided to join us at mess. With this, a lovely friendship began between us and the boys from other countries.

A few weeks in, Mustafa from Iran came to my room and said he liked the way we South Africans spoke and would like to learn to speak English the way we spoke it.
Nobody had time for that so we laughed it off.

He came to us with a Persian, English dictionary, every day for two years. All we had to do was say a few words out loud for him and he would write these strange phonetic symbols into his dictionary.

He was loud and crass but very funny. It was then that we realized that all jokes are universal and every joke he ever told us, was a subtle regionalized version of jokes we had heard back home. It was as if there are only so many jokes in the world.

They adapted to the countries they ended up in, and evolved with technology and politics but always remained at the heart, the same.

That, however, is a discussion is for another time.

Mustafa Irani began, after the first year to sound like us.
He had a very good ear and an incredible work ethic.

When the Shah of Iran was dethroned he refused to go back to Khomeini and as a result became stateless. His life as a stateless student in Pakistan was very hard but he soldiered on. He had several episodes of depression and once even a  total meltdown, and we had to admit him to the hospital out of fear that he might harm himself.

The boys took up a collection and got him a one-way ticket to some Scandinavian country that was offering refuge to Iranians who were fleeting the Khomeini regime.
We were told he made it, and as far as we know is speaking Swedish with a South African accent.

We were so young and stupid that we didn't care enough to ask the really hard questions.

I wish I had asked him to describe his life. And allowed him to talk more about himself. We were arrogant and didn't really care too much about others except superficially.
Now I feel, that I missed so many opportunities to have shared in the extraordinary lives of the people we bumped into along the way.

Someday I might feel like I didn't allow you guys to share your thoughts by hogging the stage.

Please share your thoughts and experiences. It's the ultimate way of opening up and letting others visit the museum of your minds and experiences.

M Parak 2017