vous etes invites!

We went to dinner chez amis the other night. My belle famille is visiting, and as they have friends all over the world, they have friends in Dubai who quick quick! organized a dinner party in their honour. Mme. P is a delightful, beautiful, charming woman whose poise, style and grace has me a bit in awe. She is a woman who includes you in her beauty, taste, and generous spirit, rather than putting you in awe of her talents. This, in itself, is a rare gift.

Mme. P's guests are always lively and intelligent, worldly and well-read. Last dinner we enjoyed there spiralled off into the conversational stratosphere of Iranian culture and pre-history, with interwoven threads of Sumeria and Ur, Innana and the complicated political tapestry that is UAE history...

As is usually the case at these gatherings, ladies outnumbered men. So many husbands are always travelling, we often have to abandon the traditional man/woman seating expected at European dinner parties. I found myself seated between a woman acquaintance from my home town and an extraordinary lady whose company I have quite enjoyed at these gatherings on other occasions. She had just come from London and was on her way to Iran, visiting a son in Dubai on the way through. She was so still, so ponderous was her manner of speaking... in direct, thrilling contradiction to the passion with which she spoke of Iran, the beauty of the country, the richness of its culture. I alternated between listening and looking, at her deep brown eyes, at her skin that glowed and danced and offered itself as an ornament of finest nacre while the rest of us wander around in our ordinary flesh...

and interestingly enough, she was hoping to begin a study of an archeological project in Iran, but reluctant, considering the country's uncertain future. She wondered aloud whether it was worth beginning something she might not be permitted to finish...

so much of our rich past is being destroyed in the name of what... Progress? Superiority? We live in shifting times, the world's boundaries unstable beneath our feet. When there is so much to occupy us, so much to capture our imaginations and fire our passions, why must we waste so much time fighting over a difference of opinion? Why do we need greater weapons of mass destruction when we do so well with hammer and gun and hateful words? I really would like the chance to grow up and become one of these women I so admire: my mother, my mother in law, Mme. P, this delightful dinner partner. I want to be that woman for some younger mother to enjoy.