My Imaginary Lover!

The man with no name... He

Here I am,

glued into the velvety warmth of a sofa,

drowned in the reverie of a man made of dreams...

staring outside onto the autumnal air

the colourful leaves resembling my inner being;

an ensemble of a sparkling fire and a flowing river,

painted vividly in a vision in my mind.

The grey clouds dim the mood yet flow the thoughts

of a man with no name,  

only the heavens above could have brought him to earth,

my heart yearning with lust,

he enters my soul.

From the moment he grabs me at first glance,

opening the door to his hungry look,

eyeing me head to toe with pure lust,

tingling my every cell with desire

for the stroke of his hands touching my bare soul.

A passionate embrace to tremble the earth

laying beneath my feet, 

now gently floating off the ground

swaying as a feather into a space of infinity.

He devours me as a lion on prey

with a devotion that has lasted over a decade

and yet each time as new, fresh, as the morning air.

There are no words to add to such splendour of a feeling,

craving for passion, cherishing each sensual second of the hour,

a longing for the bodies entwined, where the souls reach;

a state of utopia.

He is the song I cannot sing. 

He appears, sweeps me off my feet,

only to disappear as a phantom

in an opera filled with ecstasy.

The hours pass in a state of delirium,

a declaration of lust, the sensation of each caress

turning the world upside down;

in encounters enriched with passion.

Our lives could not be further apart,

Destiny brought us together 

and it will take its course to do as it pleases.

He leaves to his as I continue on my road

of a life rich with joy and blessings.

There is no guarantee in anything in life.

Why would I live with any expectation

but that of an exciting, bright journey ahead.

Thus, he is gone one more time.

I do not miss him

but reminisce about the good times

with a smile at the unknown future that awaits.

I am life!

The Criminal Sisters back in Action!

'People come and go in your life, but the right ones will always stay'.

I pay great importance to family. The drift, which lasted one year and nine months between my sister Hala and myself, highlighted people opening up about their relationship issues with different family members. The message was that life is not easy (a repeat, I know,w), but as long as we have options, we must consider ourselves blessed. If you look deep enough, there will eventually always be an option you can take to help divert the situation. As far as I can see, we drifted apart in my relationship with my sister. Anger came out of us in various ways, including harsh words and judgment. We are not here to point fingers at each other for making the other wrong. The only way forward is to pause, whether this takes hours, days, months or sometimes years, and wait for a moment when you genuinely miss each other's company and begin thinking of all the beautiful moments you created together. The key to success at this point of making up is to forgive deep inside any lousy feeling and gently allow the love you feel to flow from one to the other and vice versa.

If there is anything I learned from the experience, the love I feel for my sister Hala is next to none. The loneliness sometimes tore me in, allowing this space to pass between us; despite all the wonderful people around, I missed my sis. But the feeling had to be blocked until we were hungry for each other's love and affection at the 'right' time. We share many similarities in how we simply are: surrounded by great friends, love adventurous travels, meet people in what most think is the dodgiest of circumstances, and are free. It has to do with genes. Do not take that lightly.

Thanks to Troy, our brother from another mother, who invited us to a lavish lunch at Roka's on a Sunday. It took no time before we put the past behind us, where it belongs, to stay and start afresh, without any further conversations on 'you did this' and 'you said that' going on. It was the best day of this year for me, and it was the visa versa. I have missed my partner in crime, my other half. Absence makes the heart grow fonder. I pray that everyone settles their differences between family members and walks in peace and love.

As the great Dalai Lama says: 'Don't let a little dispute injure a great relationship.' And 'Remember that the best relationship is one in which your love for each other exceeds your need for each other.' A few days after our epic making-up date, I picked Hala up for a two-hour hike around Richmond Park. The autumn sun shone, and the air was as mellow as we must have felt inside. Walking through Isabella's plantation with only the two of us in the surrounding area was magic. We simply discussed lost times and experiences and began planning for future globe-trotting adventures. Sublime!

Isabella Plantation in springtime

I had a dinner party a couple of weekends ago with the Fabric crew I had met through the years of clubbing there. The love of music has brought us together, and we have mingled and chatted mainly in club scenes. Now, we were all in a small group; three of the girls got their partners, and Lady Judes showed up at the end of the evening. As we sat around the lounge feel of the living room, picking on the Persian dishes I had personally made (I have taken up cooking again!), I started telling Judes a brief version of my history. She seemed taken aback by my tale.
"Really Haldita?"  She would exclaim time after time. "I'd no idea!"

Basically ...
I was born in Tehran just before the beginning of the '60s; yes, that makes me 56 and super blessed of all my years, every single one. My mother is an avant-garde beauty, a pianist, a poet's daughter, and a free thinker from a small family. While on my father's side, with 8 siblings, all the men were involved in successful businesses, it was a family name well accounted for in the public eye. At the time of the Shah, Iran was considered a fast-growing economy with an elite class; indeed, La Belle Epoque. My mother had decided to send my sister Hala and me to boarding school at the beginning of my teens after attending a Catholic French school in Tehran. It was a shock to the system to be surrounded by girls mainly of British origin; being a foreigner in those days was not in one's favour, and especially no fluency in the language did not help. It was the most effective way of learning it, for sure.

Our parents, with a group of friends from Tehran, would travel to London each Christmas and Easter holiday for three weeks and fly us to the most exotic spots around the globe. From the island of Kawai in Hawaii, the Caribbean, Far East, to North and South Africa, at the time of apartheid, I may add, forty years ago. Going back home in the summer holidays and enjoying the lavish lifestyles of swimming pool parties in the day, with a 12' LP of Stevie Wonder blasting in the garden, to early evenings with Hala and our closest friend Grace spent at Tehran's renowned Bowling, set on the ground floor of a building, with a roller skate ring on another, a swimming pool, movie theatre (showing foreign films), multiple restaurants/bars and a billiard salon, a hang out for the young as well as the middle-aged. Iran was quite Americanised, as they called it, with an American TV channel and radio playing the latest music from Hotel California by the Eagles to songs by America and Donna Summer's Love to Love You, Baby comes to mind. Strange to think such a reversal in history can throw a nation's way of being/feeling so far behind!  
I will continue my history in later blogs, or this will never end.

Last week, I called François; he has been my tutor and mentor, the therapist who helped me. I found myself again amidst a roller coaster of thoughts at the time, wondering whether life would hold the same unhappy routine forever. I would no longer call it hard times because they happened to be the key to searching for true happiness to last a lifetime, no matter what. Of course, I make mistakes, but no life-changing lesson comes to one on a silver plate. But I am willing to make every effort to search for answers as long as I breathe.    

Looking back through the years, I cherish the good and challenging times. There will always be matters out of our hands that we cannot bear facing, and yet, once we do positively deal with them, the result will surprisingly benefit us one way or another. When you look back at memories of feeling helpless and sad, what do you focus on? How pathetic did you think, or how courageously and, at times, miraculously did you manage to escape the situation? Do not underestimate the power you hold within, in mind, as in body.  

My mind got drawn to the past, of the frightened girl I once was, not that long ago and now, how I changed my world into a fantasy life filled with Possibilities. What the future holds excites me to no limits, only because this is how I train my mind to dream big, allow time for quiet moments of discovery within, and come up with solutions that can only put a smile on my face. After a lengthy conversation over the phone with François, enquiring on how well he thought I had done in learning my life lessons, he answered in his gently spoken tone, smiling: 
"Oh! `you got yourself a PhD in Haldita!"

I look back and think perhaps my guardian angel is noble and kind enough to have guarded me through moments of madness across the globe. I let go of any fear and followed an intuition granted through years of tuning into the universe and following unspoken orders with an open outlook.

Every subject I searched tonight defined the following messages in my mind...
People around you are going through their own struggles/battles. Do not take their harsh words seriously, and yet do not allow yourself to be drained by their negativity. Pause, even if that pause would take days, months, or years of silence. Let go of toxic people around you and leave space for the ones who love and accept you the way you are. If we all spoke with honesty, integrity, and love, imagine what a world we can create!  

My favourite man in the world at present is Pope Francis. In his latest speech at the White House, he said: 
'Do unto others as you will have them do unto you. Let us treat others with the same passion and compassion as we would like to be treated.'

What happened to my usual text colouring?! Computers! Oh well...