SHAH'S TIME

The man himself.


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In between taking care of non-de-script business in the often vacant seat of the senior engineer, my mind - oddly sensitive to repetition (heh?), noted the forth playing of an Iranian oldie looping on the nearby computer.

This nostalgia inducing song - no doubt a classic from the "shah's time" - appropriately pined for the loss of someone, somewhere as so many Iranian songs do. I looked up to confirm whether the image on this AV file was also repeating - as indeed it was. The fast pace of a photo slide-show was cutting in and out with the most shameful of graphic transitional effects, showing pictures of a decadent yet charming looking chap, often posed with a beautiful woman or some world icon. I recognised the odd face - Prince Charles and President Carter, yet only guessed others by context. Blending in and sliding off, loosely familiar faces smiled in the lush spectrum only found in early colour photography. I turned to check whether this was being watched by others in the room, and indeed it was - they were fixated, silent and in a trance. Each person old enough to be my father and old enough to have remembered these photographs the first time around. In entered another old pair of eyes with not a head in the audience rotating. A glimpse of the screen was simply enough for them to be captured. Silence and music, thoughts and memories.

Something prompted the break-up of this journey and all but one of the audience left silently. The music - still uncomfortably out of sync with the picture change - failed to bother the last audience member who slowly drifted off to sleep only to later be woken by my closing of the file.