new blog!

hi there!

i have a new blog and a website called

negeen sobhani photography.

come check it out!

this blog will continue to hibernate for the time being.

have a great day and thanks for stopping by!

negeen

most random t-shirt siting in the elevator at grand kanyon mall in haifa. for a second i thought i was at penn square.
this one's for you, omeeed. :)

months

it just occured to me that the months september-december start with the latin roots for the numbers seven through ten: sept-, oct-, nov-, and dec. and september would be the 7th month of the year, if the year started in march, which it does for certain calendars, including the baha'i calendar.... i suppose it might have for the romans as well... interesting.

lots of lasts

june 08 was memorable. from its first hour to its last.






my cousins payam and pedram came on pilgrimage with their parents (my aunt tayyebeh and her husband bijan) from texas.

typical village mentality

if you haven't heard by a parent living here by now, israelis are very child-friendly. everywhere you go with a baby or small child, adoring eyes and warm smiles surround it. i've yet to feel like my crying baby or whining preschooler disturbs people around me. no rolling eyes or heavy sighs. often, people (women and men, young and old), will even try to help. if keon is whimpering or crying and i'm having to tend to aliyah, it's not at all uncommon for someone nearby to lean over his stroller and make clicking noises or talk to him soothingly until i finish whatever i'm doing. since i haven't been a mother anywhere else but here, i wonder how common this sort of attention to strangers' children is elsewhere...

once when aliyah was really small... maybe just over one, we were at mcdonald's and she was sitting in my lap looking over my shoulder. i glanced behind me and saw that she was looking at a man, must have been in his sixties, eating an ice-cream cone. she must have watched him eat it from the first lick to the bottom of that cone because she did not budge from my lap for a full 10 minutes. the man knew she was watching him too, because when he finished his cone, he went to the counter, bought another ice-cream cone and brought it to aliyah. just gave it to her, smiled and left.

today i was at a clothing store and the saleswoman helped me find a pair of pants. while i was waiting for a dressing room to free up, keon started fidgeting in his seat and whimpering a bit... after a few minutes of doing this, the saleswoman said, "is he hungry? he looks hungry." i told her, "yeah, he's hungry and tired."
back to waiting for a dressing room... a few minutes later, she comes back to check on him as he's still making tired baby noises. sees me still waiting for a dressing room. looks at me concerned for keon. i assure her, "he's ok. i'm going to feed him as soon as i finish here." back to waiting. as soon as one door opened, and a woman came out to look at the clothes she was trying on, the saleswoman asked me if i'd like to go in her dressing room (while she was out of it looking at herself in the mirror). i kind of hesitated because the woman using the room wasn't finished, but, what i loved was the attitude of both the saleswoman and the customer: of COURSE you should take the dressing room! your baby is hungry!

is it just me or is that really special?

bahji beauty

last night i went to bahji to visit the shrine and i had my breath taken away by the beauty of the gardens. never have i seen the gardens look so beautiful. everywhere i looked, flowers and colors were bursting from the ground. the santilna were trimmed to razor-sharp edges and the grass was so green and lush.

i was so moved that i went back this afternoon with the kids just so i could photograph it. fortunately, victor was also in bahji working so the kids could hang around him while i quickly took pictures. he and some others were hanging the recently re-guilded chandelier from the portico of the shrine. the luster and gold shine of the chandelier under the low orange sun was gorgeous. there was no mistaking that the pristine gardens and warm setting sun were perfect welcome for the festival of ridvan beginning that very evening.

tree

tree, originally uploaded by negeen.

who would have thought a tree trunk could be so rich in color and texture?