Hi everybody,
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As most of you probably know, my name is Maral Honarbin. I was born in Feb 25, 1983, in Tehran, Iran. I am the second child in the family. I have and older brother, Parsa. When I was born, Parsa was 9 years old. We used to live in a rented house while my dad was designing our own house.
I lived the first year of my life, in Tehran, which was before the war between Iran and Iraq started. That was when my Dad took us to the north part of Iran , which was safer. Thats where I spent the second year of my life, and I should say, I had a wonderful time living there.
I was the only baby in the little town we were staying in (Mahmood Abaad), and all the other kids had above 10 years of age. Mahmood Abaad was right by the Caspian sea. Sometimes my Parents, or other kids or other people in the town( everybody was trusted) used to take me to the beach to play. I was a year old and I dont remember everything now, but my parents always tell me about that time. Once, I took a water hose, and I wet everybody who was passing by, or was standing there, and nobody could get near me. I was laughing so hard, and so was everybody esle. They say I was so proud of bugging people and making them run around.
Once, a new neighbour was buiding some kind of a incline plane with cement. Before it was dry, I put my hand, and my foot in it, and created a foot and hand print. Now, after many years, those foot prints are still there, and i'm happy to say that nobody wants to get rid of them. They love me eh?? :P
I couldnt talk at that time yet, but my dad says, I used to stand infront of people, and it looked like i was talking about somehting really really important, but all I would say was, " aaaja ma hraa dada..." and so on.
We moved back to Tehran after a year. My memories from Mahmood Abaad are so many, eventhough I was a little kid. I will always remember that place and I will always love it.
When we moved back to Tehran, we were leaving in a house which I don't remember much of it. I only remember one thing from that time. I used to go to kindergarden near that house. At that time, I still didn't know the difference between holidays and weekdays. I didn't even know what holiday was. So, one day weekened, I was playing in the backyard. I didn't know, why I was at home and not at kindergarden like all the other days. So I thought I had to go myself, I couldn't wait for my mom and be late. So I waved to my mom who was upstaris and said goodbye. My mom thought I was just playing, so she said bye bye. So I just left. after a few minutes, our neighbour found me, a little baby wondering around in the street and took me back home. My mom always tells me that story and she thinks it's so cute. I think it is too :P
My family have always loved traditional persian music. Both my Mom and Dad used to familiarize me with this music. My dad used to sing for me, when I couldnt even talk yet, and I used to HUMMM and sing off tune after him. They recorded my voice and I still have the tape. You should hear the tape. You will wish to never ever hear my voice again ;P.
When we moved to our new house, I was about 5 or 6. I dont remember much about that time. I remember my dad always used to take me to see our unfinished house, and I used to play around alot. I remember once we drove there. My dad parked infornt of the stairs, which were faced down. Somehow, he forgot to put the brake down or something, and he got out of the car. The car started moving. Yes, me, a little child in the car, went down the stairs, and my poor Dad got so scared. However I was enjoying myself.
When I was 7, I started going to school , and I also started Taking Orf Classes. In Orf Classes they thought us how to write and read the notes and how to play some basic instrument. Basicly, it was a class, to familiarize kids with music.I took one term of that clas, which was about 2 years. After 2 years, every kid choose and instrument. Since I was brought up in a family in love with persian music, and I loved and Love it myself, I choose Setaar. I started taking classes with Miss.Fariba Hedayati by age 8.
I Loved school. It was a new world for me. Everything had changed. I had to go to school everyday, and I was feeling mature like my parents. They used to go to work everyday and I had to stay at home, and now, I had to leave the house every morning too. I found alot of new friends, and I had a big responsibility now, studying.It was fun for a while.Till it got harder. But oh well, we all have been through this and you all know how it feels. I had to take it anyway.
I found many many new friends at the place we were living. We were many kids, all of us about the same age. We were always together. Almost everyday after school, we used to go out and play. Sometimes all of us would ride our bicycles in our street. We were about 15 kids. The good thing about it was that all the street was not crowded. All the parents and other adults were friendly and they wouldn'y complian. I lived the rest of my life ( till I moved to Canada) in that neighbourhood. I stayed friends with most of those kids. I cried so much when I was leaving them. We still write to eachother.I love them all.
Years passed by, evey year almost the same. 4 years before we moved to Canada, my aunt, my cosin, and my aunt's husband came to visit us from England. By the same time, my uncle from U.S came. I had never seen them in my life before. I mead I had seen my aunt, but when I was a baby and I couldn't remember anything. It was such a great time. It was our new year too. Our house was so fool, and we were all having so much fun. It was awsome. I remember one day, my uncle and I went shopping, and I forgot to take the keys to the house, and after we got back, we had to stay outside. We had bread with us, so we just sat outside and started eating. It was so fun. I never wanted him to leave. But they had to. I love them so much.
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a year before we moved to Canada |
I was having the weirdest time the last year we were in Iran. Some part of me was happy for leaving and the ther part was sad. I was going to leave all my friends, my family, my country. the place I grew up in and I had so many memories with. It was hard. I knew the time was running, and I didn't know how to use it. I knoew I had to do it. The last few months, we sold our house and all our other stuff. We kept some stuff becuase we needed to take them to Canada. We moved to our aunt's house. I stoped going to school becuase it was no use anymore.
the funny thing is I was having so much fun, the last weeks. I started going mountain climbing every weekend with some friends, who I liked and still like so much. It was really fun. Once, we all decided to go to a movie. It was going to be the last time i was going to a movie in Iran. We were 20 people. When we got there, only 18 tickets were left. But we really wanted to get in. All of us wanted to. So we had to cheat somehow. We figured, ok, they are not gonna count us all, they are gonna count the tickets, so we say we are 18 people, and we give them out tickets. We were doing a bad thing, but it was fun... We were right, the guy didnt count us, he counted the tickets and let us in. we went in, and we sat somewhere, but there were only 18 seats. So we didnt know how to sit. We were messing everything up. we couldn't seat and we were climbing one another. It was so funny and we couldnt stop laughing. The 2 people who were sitting beside us, told the watch guy that somehitng was weird about us. He said we were more than 18 peopls. But the watch guy said no its impossible I counted them. They are 18. I duont know what happened but the watchguy ended up kicking those 2 people out. IT WAS SO HILLARIOUS. However I feel really bad about what we did now!!By this time, I was 14.
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My mom, my cousin Shabnam and I |
Maral Honarnbin
Canada, Vancouver