The Unbearable Politeness of Being

Persian culture is not for the socially lazy. Take this scene:

Several years ago, at a Tehran bazaar, I was flipping through a pile of small handmade carpets as a portable gift for a friend back home. I spotted a lovely gabbeh, like the one in the photo, hand knotted by Ghashghai nomads. The carpet had striated shades of green, with a man astride a donkey in one corner.

My sister-in-law hovered at my shoulder. “Don’t let the bazaari see how much you like that,” she instructed. “Glance casually through all the carpets and try not to admire any one piece for too long or we’ll never manage to negotiate a good price.”

The gray-haired vendor eyed me sharply, lips curled into a knowing smile, and I realized that with decades of experience selling his wares, there wasn’t a customer trick he couldn’t detect a mile away.

I made my selection with what I hoped was an air of absolute indifference. As though the only reason I was purchasing the item at all was to spare him the embarrassment of offering such mediocre merchandise.

We settled on a price: 100,000 rials (around $10). I counted out a neat pile of green-and-blue 10,000 rial notes and handed them to him. He counted them again, smiled at me and just as I thought the bills would disappear into his metal cash box, his demeanor changed abruptly.

He tossed the money back at me with a dramatic flourish. “Ghabeli nadareh!” he exclaimed. “I cannot take your money for such an ugly, worthless little rug.”

I stared at him and, after a moment’s hesitation, turned to my sister-in-law. “He doesn’t really mean that, does he?” The problem was that I couldn’t be sure. In Iran, people are always giving me things—even bazaar shopkeepers. But not usually merchandise worth more than a few cents.

“He wants more money,” she said. Apparently the negotiations, which I’d considered concluded, had just been reopened.

We were engaging in a peculiarly Persian custom called taaroff, a complex social ritual that serves many different purposes, in the above case a business transaction. For no social interaction between Iranians is ever simple or straightforward but enveloped in layers of symbolism and implied meaning.

Anyone who has had even the most superficial relationship with Iranians has likely encountered taaroff, even if it was such a simple matter of offering them a glass of tea and seeing it politely refused. For the rules of taaroff dictate that it is rude to accept hospitality right off the bat. An elaborate show of politeness must ensue, with one party urging insistently and the other refusing until both people have established that the offer is meant sincerely and can be accepted with grace.

My biggest personality flaw when it comes to taaroff is that I tend to take everything at face value. So if a dinner guest says she couldn’t possibly eat another bite, I tend to believe her (while my Iranian husband will simply spoon another helping onto her plate). And if a bazaari tosses my payment back into my lap, my instinct is to say “How very generous of you. Thanks!” I think this could easily cause a small cultural war.

So back to my original point: Persian culture is not for the socially lazy. Every interaction, even a simple carpet purchase, is a social event. The goal is not just to pick out an item, hand over the cash, and go your merry way. That would be too cold and impersonal a transaction for Iranian sensibilities. There has to be a challenge, a pitting of wits and negotiation skills for both parties to feel they have gotten their money’s worth.

Off The Beaten Track: Inspired by Architectural Details (Don't Forget Your Walking Shoes)

Gigi Pandian is a mystery writer and photographer in the San Francisco Bay Area. She was awarded a Malice Domestic Grant for her first mystery novel, Artifact, featuring treasure-hunting Indian-American historian Jaya Jones. You can learn more about Gigi and her writing at www.gigipandian.com and check out her mysterious photographs at www.gargoylegirl.com.

One of my favorite things in the San Francisco Bay Area is a favorite of mine in any city – walking around to check out the architectural details.

In San Francisco, it begins with the beckoning skyline as you approach the city. Once here, walking through colorful neighborhoods of restored Victorian houses and high-rise buildings from every era gives a taste of the city. Walking along the historic Barbary Coast trail in the downtown area provides a glimpse of the city's seedier history – for example, saloons that have been here since the Gold Rush, built from abandoned ships left behind by the crews in search of gold.

San Francisco doesn't have as many gargoyles on its buildings as I'd like, but it makes up for it with its character.

Of any city I've visited, New York City has the best walks for stopping every few feet for a new stunning architectural detail – like a dragon below a window, and this ornamental face above a doorway, shown in these photos. 

 There are so many gargoyles and other ornamental carvings on buildings in New York that there are tours set up specifically to view these architectural details.

In London, even the government's Parliament building is adorned with whimsical gargoyles. But in London, stepping off the beaten path leads to some of the most interesting stone carvings. A few feet from bustling streets, you can find yourself in a secluded Victorian cemetery full of beautiful hand-carved angels. It can feel like you're a thousand miles away from the crowded sidewalk you walked down to get there.

None of these cities needed to put these stunning details on their buildings and gravestones. But there's something compelling about adding beauty and mystery to our creations.

Here are three self-guided walking tours if you find yourself in any of these cities and would like a touch of mystery:

San Francisco's Barbary Coast: http://www.barbarycoasttrail.org/

New York City's "monster walks" in search of gargoyles: http://www.aardvarkelectric.com/gargoyle/walks.html

London's Victorian cemeteries: http://www.timetravel-britain.com/articles/london/cemeteries.shtml

New York City: Skip The Clichés

Boy, oh boy, where do I begin? Every New York corner hides a culture adventure of some sort. Some of them are well-known, some really aren’t. So I decided to share a few that a typical New York City travel guide may not list.

Skip the Empire State Building – all the hype around it is not worth the thirty bucks and a dozen lines you’d have to stand in to get onto its observation deck (or fifty dollars, if you want the express elevator). You can leisurely observe that same Manhattan skyline from the 42nd floor of Marriott Marquis Lounge with a Manhattan in your hand. And if you long for that speed-elevator experience, the Marriott's glass elevators will whisk you 48 stories above the city in seconds, literally and physically taking your breath away. The lounge is revolving so if you pick out a spot by the window, you will be taken on a 360-degree, one-hour city tour, floating by such famed landmarks as the Chrysler Building, Carnegie Tower, MetLife, or The Intrepid. And by the flocks of the unhappy tourists shielding themselves from the wind on the Empire State Building deck.

If you love art and fashion and are torn between going to a museum and attending a fashion show, kill two birds with one stone and visit The Fashion Institute of Technology Museum – the most fashionable art collection in New York City and perhaps on the planet. It may not compare in size and grandeur to the Metropolitan, but it owns the largest collection of costumes, textiles, and apparel in the world, dating from the 18th century to present times and counting more than 50,000 objects that include garments, shoes, and accessories. The costume collection features Christian Dior, Chanel, Yves Saint Laurent, and Vivienne Westwood. Its millinery medley boasts 3,000 hats, and its handbag collection includes purses, pouches, clutch bags, and portemonnaies by Gucci, Coach, and Roberta di Camerino. However, because the museum is small, the exhibits keep revolving. There are also special exhibitions. The latest one covered eco-fashion, featuring clothing items made from bio-degradable fabrics such as organic cotton as opposed to polyester. The show also explored the challenges of sustainable fashion delving into issues such as natural leather, which requires disposing of salts in the process, versus its synthetic, oil-made cousin, revealing that neither approach was particularly planet-friendly. The admission is free, but there are no fitting rooms. And no sales!

Horseback riding is certainly not the first activity that comes to mind when you are planning a trip to New York City, but you may be surprised to know that every borough maintains stables and bridle paths. Out-of-town visitors are often amazed to see equestrians in Central Park, where horseback riding is actually permitted year round. The recently rebuilt Central Park bridle path is more than six miles long and goes around the Jacqueline Kennedy Onassis as well as the North Meadow. In Brooklyn. One can rent a horse or take lessons at Kensington Stables, which was built in 1930 as the last extension of the Brooklyn Riding Academy. A part of it was torn down to build the foot bridge over Ocean Parkway, but the rest survived. Bronx offers the Pelham Bay Park Trail with its beautiful vistas of marshland and woods, as well as the Riverdale Equestrian Center in Van Cortlandt Park.

Forest Park in Queens boasts a four-mile equestrian path that meanders through 600 acres of magnificent oak woods, up and down the hills. The path was opened to horse lovers in December 2002 with a ribbon-cutting ceremony as a gorgeous gray horse pulled a surrey through blankets of sparkling snow – New York had just been hit with its first winter storm of the season, but horse enthusiasts made it through the drifts to show their support for the project.

The time when New York City was nothing but horses pulling coaches, milk wagons, and carts is long gone, but city horsemanship is far from dead. So when you visit the Big Apple the next time, you can skip the cliché carriage ride around Central Park, get yourself on a real horse, and gallop through its woods instead.

A Spy-tastic Adventure

It was a cold and rainy day. My heart raced as I zoomed around dirty snow banks in my shiny Mini Cooper, across the Roosevelt Bridge, past Watergate and stoic memorials, with the nation’s Capitol looming large in the fog ahead. When I reached D.C.’s resurgent Chinatown, I met another operative at our pre-designated location. It had been over a decade since our last joint mission, but I spotted her, at the bar, of course, in a trench coat and leather boots. She had a new disguise, replete with long, blonde tresses. We caught up over martinis (liquid courage), avoiding discussion of what we’d been working on since we’d last met. Instead, we reminisced in a sort of cryptic code: “Remember that cockfight in Tijuana?”

Most of the above is true. Only it wasn’t a fancy sports car; more like a mommy wagon. We had caipirhinas instead of martinis, followed by a mighty fine lunch at one of Chinatown’s latest hotspots. We hadn’t really been to Tijuana, but that was an old joke from years ago that came in handy for this write-up. The rest of it is true though.

My real mission that day was research for today’s blog. Washington, D.C., has so many interesting cultural attractions, it was difficult to narrow it down to just one for this piece. But there was a relatively new offering I’d been wanting to check out for some time.

The International Spy Museum is a sleek new museum in D.C.'s Penn Quarter, nestled among the National Science Museum, the Smithsonian’s American Art Museum, the Newseum (devoted exclusively to news media), and Madame Tussauds. As a crime writer, one of the offerings at the Spy Museum that attracted me was the opportunity to actually experience being a spy. The museum offers several “sightseeing” packages that for an additional price above regular admission equip visitors with a COBRA-brand GPS device and clears them to take part in a two-hour counterintelligence operation. Oh, what fun!

We chose the Spy in the City mission, and once we were debriefed, we “accepted” our mission (Operation Catbird). Out on the street corner, we received an encrypted message that charged us with locating a suspected terrorist in our midst. We followed one clue after another to locate him. At the night depository, we had a choice of deciphering a code through fingerprint, microdot, or chemical analysis. My friend and I (aka Agents Olive and Ruby) chose different options to experience all the possibilities. Our findings led us to Ford’s Theater then to the stunning new Navy Memorial. We even had a chance meeting with a navy officer who happens to write spy novels himself. (Not part of the tour, by the way, just a very cool coincidence.)

We were supposed to be on the lookout for another operative, someone leaning against a subway sign reading a newspaper, but we sort of sidelined at the memorial. It really was a cold and rainy day, which I thought quite enhanced the experience until my hands froze, as did my GPS. We returned to the museum to turn in our devices, disappointed that we hadn’t completed our spy missions but ready to return for another visit. Then we zipped over to Zola, the sleek bar adjacent to the museum. Amid its elegant décor of secret code, foreign scripts, and red velvet, we downed smooth martinis (the real thing, this time), surrounded by windows overlooking a grand Smithsonian building.

All in all, a worthwhile day in one of the world’s truly most mysterious cities.

It's All Greek To Me

Image courtesy of http://www.crossed-flag-pins.com

Don’t tell anyone, but I’m having a love affair—with a city. I love Melbourne, Australia. I love being able to go to a sporting match during the day, then pick any country in the world and find a restaurant that dishes up their authentic cuisine. I love that I can move on to cocktails at a swanky bar and go to a concert or theatre production by world-class performers. I love the rattle of the trams down suburban and city streets, the open, green spaces and I am proud that my Melbourne became a UNESCO city of literature in 2008. What I love most, though, is the way this city embraces multiculturalism and anyone, no matter what nationality, is welcome. 

A classic example of this is Melbourne’s adoption of the Greeks. When I tell people that Melbourne has the world’s third largest Greek-speaking population outside of Athens, their eyebrows raise and a guffaw slips out of their mouths. “But it’s true!” I tell the cynics who shake their heads in disbelief. Then I take them to the Melbourne suburbs of Port Melbourne, Coburg, Preston, Oakleigh and Doncaster. The doubter’s nostrils are filled with the aroma of lamb, garlic, and rosemary wafting out of the restaurants with Greek names like Cafe Greco and Zorba’s. With a wry smile, I hear the sceptics say, “Oh. Maybe you’re right.”

Ever since the gold rush in the 1850’s, Australia’s state of Victoria (Melbourne is the capital, for the geographically challenged), has had a steady flow of Greek settlers. When the English arrived in Australian waters, the Greek sailors left their watery homes to try their hand at panning for gold. They had dreams of returning to their homeland with riches, but the elusive gold made them paupers and so they stayed in Australia to work in restaurants, cafes, and the retail trade.

Since then the Greek community has grown steadily through chain migration—relatives joining the settlers already in Australia. The rate of Greeks arriving on Australian shores increased so dramatically that a Greek-language newspaper was established in 1913 and still thrives today.

After World War II and during the civil war in Greece that followed thereafter, more than 160,000 Greeks came to Australia, with most settling in tight-knit communities in Victoria. At first, the immigrants worked in factories and farms as unskilled or semi-skilled laborers. Even the educated migrants had to undertake manual jobs. But as Melbourne grew and institutions taught English to the Greeks, the skills they possessed in their homeland were fully used in their new country. Australia boasts many knowledgeable and successful Greek-Australians across an array of professions.

It’s not uncommon to hear Greek being tossed around on the streets and city beaches. At the local markets it’s easy to find baklava and souvlaki sold alongside meat pies, an Aussie favorite. It’s hard to imagine Melbourne without the vibrant Greek population, especially during international events such as the Olympics and the World Cup (soccer, or football, depending on your take of what constitutes football). Greek descendents swarm the streets with blue and white flags and shirts, jumping up and down, hugging each other, and singing the Greek national anthem. “Skips” (Australians of Anglo-Saxon heritage) are often hauled into the mob and get to be honorary Greeks for a while.  

The bond with Greece is so strong that in 1984 Melbourne adopted a sister city--Thessaloniki, Greece’s second-largest city. In the suburbs where there is a high percentage of Greeks, it’s easy to find signage, including street names, in Greek and English. And even though Greek-speaking Australians speak English, many are taught Greek at school or take classes outside school hours. Quite often, Greek is spoken at home. 

Melbourne Exhibition Buildings

In March this year, the theme for the Melbourne Food and Wine Festival will focus on Greece and the amazing cuisine from this country. And in the same month, the Antipodes Festival, a celebration of all things Greek, will be held in Melbourne’s city centre. We’ll devour Greek salad, saganaki, olives, tzatziki and rizogalo while the hoards listen to some of Greece’s hottest singers and bands. The streets will come alive with the aroma of fresh Greek coffee and, of course, we’ll consume the odd shot of ouzo (Greece’s aniseed liquor). 

My love affair with Melbourne is partly due to this city’s romance with the Greeks. In a way, I’m involved in a loopy love triangle. At times, it can be fiery, especially during sporting events, but somehow the combination of the Greek passion and the laidback Aussie lifestyle works beautifully. So in this particular love story, there is a happily ever after.

Local Market for Global Cuisines

I have a weekly ritual. Every Friday, I head for the nearest mall, where a farmer’s market sprawls across one side of the Sears parking lot. Now, this may not seem like much of a cultural experience (our topic this week). After all, doesn’t everyone shop for vegetables? But I live in an ethnically diverse area here in Northern California, and my local farmer’s market supplies the ingredients for a range of global cuisines.

Not only do many of the vendors reflect a rainbow of nations—China, Japan, the Philippines, Mexico, Germany, India, and Greece—but so do the customers. As I wander through the stands, spilling over with their bounty of leafy greens, multicolored fruits, and mounds of root vegetables, my ears are filled with the sounds of Chinese, Spanish, Farsi, German, French, and a few languages I can’t identify.

Produce isn’t the only item sold at my neighborhood market. Flowers, freshly baked breads, and finger foods from around the world also put in an appearance and scent the air with exotic aromas. There is the Indian man who sells a range of flat breads. He stands behind a row of green, yellow, and orange sauces, holding out tasty morsels to passers-by. A Russian woman offers homemade pirozhki with a variety of fillings, from meat and onions to spinach and cheese. And a Vietnamese couple sells spring rolls: shredded vegetables and slices of chicken or whole shrimp, enveloped in a translucent rice wrapper.

A kind of cultural food exchange is happening, as items move back and forth from the open-air produce stalls to more mainstream venues. Chinese bok choy and white Thai eggplants used to require a trip to the farmer’s market but now show up in almost any grocery store. Pomelos, with their thick skins and grapefruit-like flavor, can be found at Costco these days. And until very recently, I had to stop at the Middle Eastern market for slender, seedless Persian cucumbers, but now a few local growers have added them to the outdoor market’s bounty. At our house, we add these favorites to the fruit bowl and eat them out of hand with a sprinkling of salt.

Although none of the vendors at my local market is Iranian, the produce stalls do offer up many of the specialty ingredients I need to put together a good Persian meal. Pomegranates are in abundance at the moment, and recently my mother-in-law added the seeds to the pomegranate-flavored jello she made. Next month, when green garlic appears (it looks just like scallions, but with flatter stalks), I will combine them with parsley, cilantro, and dill to make the traditional Persian New Year meal of sabzi polo ba mahi, or herbed rice with fish.

One of the great pleasures of shopping at the farmer’s market is the chance to meet the growers and chat with them about their wares. It was a Japanese vendor who first told me that you can eat the skin of a Kabocha squash. And the heirloom apple grower, whose table boasts an impressive 25 varieties, is happy to point out which ones taste best in pies, as applesauce, or for eating out of hand. Indeed, the vendors are not the only ones happy to share their knowledge and advice. Other shoppers freely exchange their favorite recipes as well. For some reason, this never happens at the supermarket.

Fava beans will be back in season soon, and someone is bound to ask me if I know what to do with them (it happens every year). My answer: steam them until the pods disintegrate, then separate the beans and serve them piping hot with a splash of vinegar and a sprinkle of angelica powder for a delicious Iranian snack.

Winner of the Christina Phillips Contest

Thank you to all who left a comment on Christina's blog post last week.

The lucky winner is Cathy Dunn!

Please email Alli (see profile for email address) with your postal details and advise if you would like a copy of Captive or Forbidden.