What can a man say when he has been on the road for 22 months and he finally meets his match. I have come to Tehran, place of my birth. City I knew of only from stories, myths, kitchen talk. Now I come to find that the family I met, the few strings like Dokhi June and Maryam that connected that world to this were part of a huge carpet that goes wall to wall, filling my soul completely and seeming to have been made for me by God's own hand.

My family, that large group of people who are all connected to me somehow, look back on the time they knew my father, my mother. Remember when these characters touched their lives, are still part of their lives but in a far outpost away from Tehran. Looking from this side I come in. I meet them all in one night of Maryam's wedding, like a strong note that built up with slow power and still quivers inside me, creating heat even as the clock nears six AM.

People wrote me and told me that visiting Iran would awake feelings inside me which I did not know I had. Is that what this is? Seeing here, being here, I always wear my glasses and stare out the window of the shared taxis up and down Val e Asr street drinking in the faces, the movements of Iranians, I can't get enough of seeing them. They feed a thirst in me that keeps on burning no matter how much water I gulp down.

Iranian women, beautiful angels. Mysterious, walking behind their head scarves and chadors, eyes flashing, skin glowing gold and crème. All the world imagines that they are weak and kept, silent and dulled, oppressed, homebound. To me I see dancing around their heads halos of concentration and mental light. Flashing sophistication and laughing behind tradition. In this light Iranian men seem soft and bland, my brothers, harassed by the power their women posses. Soul power in earthen jars of inebriation, the wine that makes men mad.

But they love their men, sacrifice is an institution here. They take it all and give and give until they are dizzy from reaching into empty pockets, clawing at the nothing and trying to divide and distribute that nothing with their breath, the saw of sorrow.

What can I say when I feel I have come into a place whose sophistication is so way beyond mine that I cannot be sure where up is and where is down. People dance around me, weaving patterns inside patters, floral tiles and carpet colors. Spoken and unspoken, truths and lies of kindness, my family.

Is it that the culture here is more rich, more multi-layered than another place? Is that why I love it, burn for it, yearn to know mountain and village, Shia and Sufi, family and strangers, tribal music and classical music, the language of my mother? Is it that this pool is deeper than others I floated around in or is it that something shining every time I look towards the bottom that make me want to dive down? Or do I see a clear mirror and am looking for myself?

At the wedding there were artists, poets, ministers, philosophers, musicians, businessmen, architects, doctors singing out loud, waving their arms, wedding actions that seemed the purely ancient sung in today's husky voice. I gave so many people my information hoping they call Dokhy June and ask me out. We will see what happens. I am really too tired now to continue.