"Before Mesopotamia," with a sweep of the hand as if conducting an orchestra and at least two child choirs, said "Fourth millenium, BC -- imagine! -- and a large country, diverse, not just desert: consider Mount Damavand, and Shomal's rain forests and the Caspian plains."
Continued, "home of Persepolis and Zoroaster," looking off as if gazing at least half the 7500 miles between Phoenix and Tehran, "and the Achaemenids, who cavorted with your wife's Jewish ancestors ushered in a time of providential peace as rare now as it was in antiquity."
And aside, for "this clumsily architected Iraq, this unhistoric present -- the sheer pettiness of it!" Sighed, then assumed the telecom engineer's steady voice (having already assumed the role of minor historian). "AT&T's big plans were my plans, to lay cable everywhere, -- for everyone, not just the wealthy -- but the Iranians. . .Worked side by side, took it upon themselves to instill a proper awe, at least for this place we had through mere circumstance come to. From a young and immature country as ignorant as it was prosperous."
Why did it not come to pass?
Smiled his dimpled smile, gazed out past the the late model Buick he favored, toward invisible orange groves that had once been all around him, that were now just old Phoenix.
"Because things are not as they seem. The Sassanid era brought silks, brocades, damasks dyed in tints of yellow, blue, and green -- bouquets of science and knowledge they revered."
But we have forgotten this era.
"Says so much." Eyes misting over, "All we can remember is Darius and Alexander and President this and Ayatollah that?" Clearing his voice without success, "We left that grand experiment, Betty and I, to return to this desert experiment." A scholarly fermata ensued as he thumbed his keys restlessly just as he had when I was ten.
"Real shame." In a fleeting exchange of glances that acknowledged the old men we he had become, the moment became awkward as a Persian idiom. So he paced. "Omar Khayyám was mathematician and scientist, not just the poet of Edward Fitzgerald's Rubaiyat.
There's more I need to tell you, of what I can remember and how I learned it." Walked toward the wall hangings they had carefully brought across continents, raised a hand as if to touch one, then lowered it. Quietly, "I have these, at least. "
"Yup," he finished, and we spoke no more of it.
Now you are gone, Uncle.
Said, no ceremony. Said, simple plaque.
Only the arc and art of this opus, this
engineer's damask-thread
of uncovered narrative and reign-sized grids
now to be lovingly marked
by another minor historian.
for John I. Underwood
1 April 2009