For a long time I anticipated Iran. I looked at the pictures of striped watermelons in the books, heard my mother say the fruit in Iran is the sweetest, wondered about the mountain village life she said they visited as a child when it became too hot in the city below.

My heart made a pilgrimage in the villages, wondering if they looked like Iran, what the connection, studying the contours of the mud walls and worn shiny wooden handles on farm tools.

The formality of Chitral in north west Pakistan, clothes worn by some of the older generations echoing pictures I had seen of my great grandfather wearing 100 years before.

Now I am here in Tehran, close to the mountains at a beautiful time of year. The trees are just beginning to give forth leaves, the grass on the lawns of the Pahlavi palaces at Niavaran are speckled everywhere with galaxies of white and yellow blossoms. After the rains the skies clear to reveal bright sky out of the moody blue clouds, the mountain peaks hanging overhead wearing their brightest cape of embroidered snow. In the parks the gardeners show their vision as they cut the grass, cutting around the dentist clusters of wild blossoms in circles, squares, Nastaliq calligraphy with a lawnmower. Schoolgirls scurry up and down the stepped hills of the gardens giggling, pushing the black hoods on their school uniforms back to neatly frame their faces as they struggle to squeeze together in front of the camera.

When I first got here I saw a connection with Nepali culture somewhere far back, its deep roots still pulling up water to my eye's level.

As I walked back with my aunt Lili joon from Niavaran palace, the ground fresh after the rain I thought, preparing for the Iran of my mother's childhood over all this Eurasian continent in the last 18 months I found something. I found a village in the world and a world in the village.