The boy kept quiet and accepted what his mother told him that God created him – bore with the scriptures of freedom. He was patient – he knew his father was unfaithful to his mother but kept it secret – he remembered his father repeatedly beating his mother and stealing her dowry and how his mother tried hard to please her mother-in-law.
Yes, nearly everything was forbidden even drinking water at his parent´s dining table. His mother used to tell him: if you now drink water because you are not allowed to drink alcohol then when you grow up and are in charge of house and wine, you will despise water but the habit of drinking will go on.
This is how his mother tried to bring him up and teach him the codes of behavior. This is how he developed an interest in alcohol. Whenever his father sent him to get some from the shop round the corner - he, as usual, carried a bottle under his arm to fill it from what looked like a wine barrel. He placed the bottle under the tap tasting the drops that fell on the bottle neck. He could not drink more because the alcohol tasted horrible. But the drops increased gradually and as his mother would put it: Those who do not value the little fall into the habit of drinking cups filled to the brim without adding water to it. This is how I learned greed.
On the day my mother passed away we were standing in the room in front of the open window looking on the garden. She fixed her eyes on the free patches of the overcast sky while breathing deeply the fresh air. The window and the door looked like holes in a prison to escape from.
We were talking when my mother suddenly stopped to say: Son, freedom is more important than love and marriage for a girl. Do not forget, women are not shirts to change every day. Our conversation was one of unconditional trust but showed my mother´s deep faith in God. I saw it in her eyes as she looked up in the sky with a burning longing and desire to escape this world. She went on: Did you notice how the prison fell asleep. I think she meant how the Earth fell asleep but before I could ask her she carried me up as if she was pregnant again with me.
My mother was my guide: do you see these sky layers? This layer is the physical layer where the sun shines during the day and the stars and moon appear at night. Our journey continued until we were thrown back on the Earth. I thought, may be the Earth woke up and noticed our escape and hastened to pull us down by the power of its gravity. When I got up I found mother lying dead on the floor.
Jamshid
Bremen, 4 October 2015