Ghazal my Dear,
Two month ago, in September 2012 Israel seemed to be the most relaxed and calm country one could imagine. Except for very rare security checks at the entrances of large shopping malls, concert halls or the Jad Vashem museum, there were hardly any signs of the immanent threat of violent attacks. As travelers we were more concerned about the possible failure of the air-conditioning in our flat, or about the trouble to release our car from the car-park that was suddenly locked on Sabbath.
In an attempt to dissociate myself as far as possible from the tourists (many of whom visit Israel for its christian heir or because they come on a cruise with a one-day break in Haifa) I was lurking around Lev Hamifratz Shopping Mall. There, a memorial plate told that during construction of the mall in 1991 it had been hit by a scud missile launched by the lunatic Saddam Hussein. Some years later an attempted car bombing attack by the Libanese Hisbollah was prevented by police that sapped the vehicle on the car-park outside the building. This suddenly reminded me of an ever-present, albeit latent danger for life or injury in Israel, and this might to a certain degree prompted me to decline to the invitation by the Magen David Adom (the Israeli equivalent to the Red Cross) to donate blood right there at the shopping mall. I never donated blood before, except when it was recommended before a surgery in hospital. When I laid down on this rubber-covered bed I had some time to talk to the doctor and the nurse about the most likely occasion when my blood (of course processed and perhaps mixed with a lot of Israeli blood to dilute out the Goi-factors) was used for transfusion. Anything could happen in Israel like anywhere else: car accidents, surgical operations with sudden complications, caesarian sections. The prospect of a military conflict was rather unlikely, two month ago.

Now, after Israel started its counter-attack to protect its people from the Gaza-launched rockets, it appears that victims of air-strikes, bombs or rockets blowing living-houses will be more likely to be in need of blood-transfusions. If my blood finds a way out of the deep-freeze storage into the circulation system of a patient, it could be a civilian who’s house in Ashkelon or Ofakim or even in the suburbs of Tel Aviv were hit by Hamas rockets. It could be an IDF soldier who is about to enter Gaza in an attempt to neutralize the terrorists of Hamas. But most likely, it will be an innocent person living in Gaza, who has been misused by the terrorists as a living shield, who finally is be the most vulnerable and least cared-for victim. Israels IDF recently circulated a Twitter news promising that it will open the Gaza check points to permit delivery of emergency medical goods, maybe including my blood.

When I donated blood in September in Haifa, I had to fill in the form below, and of course without understand much hebrew I simply followed the suggestions of the Magen David Adom nurse and clicked any field she recommended to me. 

I did not asked her, if any of these fields to fill in were refering to the intended usage of my blood. Did it possibly exluded its use during military operations ?  Or for certain minorities ? Or could it even be that non-kosher blood from a Goi like me would only be used to rescue non-Jewish victims ?   Everything is possible, but I hope in the case of life emergency, people forget about race, nation, faith, and give the blood to those who need it most.

Hi Michael, not sure if I shall recommend you to see that new movie by Lars v. Trier “MELANCHOLIA”.
It started in Sweden already in May, but I did not had time before to go.
It has some very beautiful scenes, in particular at the very beginning. It shows some moments in the life of the main character (Justine, played by Kirsten Dunst) in extreme slow-motion. It is so extrem slow-motion, that a blink of her eyes takes 2 minutes, and when she is doing a step forward on the field, this takes 5 minutes.
It reminded me a bit what you wrote me last week, that my fear that time is passing too fast is a pure illusion. Because it is so subjective how we anticipate time, it is perhaps also possible to manipulate the speed of time.  You might even manage to slow down the speed of time, like in the movie.

Melancholia from Zentropa on Vimeo

But except for these first scenes, the movie becomes sad and tragic. It appears that the earth is going to collide with another planet, and all life will be destroyed. But Justine, who suffers from episodes of depression during her wedding ceremony, suddenly becomes very calm and self-confident when this huge planet approaches the earth slowly. All other person, who were initially the strong and successful ones, start to panic.

In particular her sister Clair changes completely, from a 100% self confident and rational person to an emotional ruin.

Take Care

/ghazal

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Ghazal my Dear,

Melancholia will start next week in Munich. I only saw a trailer, it was amazing to see how the earth is slowly absorbed by this new planet Melancholia. It is a beautiful scene, very aesthetic. It is an extraordinary idea of the film director to show the end of the earth not as a big disaster with noise and explosions and distraction, but with a very calm and almost harmonic “operation”.  By the way, the planet Melancholia was also visible over Munich:

Do you know that Clair, the sister of Justine is played by Charlotte Gainsbourg, daughter of Serge Gainsbourg and Jane Birkin. Do you remember we were listening last year to their song “Je t’aim – moi non plus” . I hope you are calm and self-confident and strong, and you don”t have to worry about nothing at all.

All you need is love (just a citation from a Beatles Song).

Take Care, my Dear   Michael

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Hello Michael,

It is difficult to imagine that the actress who played this emotional fragile Clair could have been the product of this amazing song, and of two very strong parents.

If you want to watch the movie when it starts in Munich, I recommend you to go not alone.  Some scenes might be not just melancholic, but depressing. It is better to go there in companie.

Take Care

/ghazal

And why there was nobody to tell you, Amy, that you were perhaps the greatest voice in music and you simply did not had the right to waste your life at the age of 27 ?

I did not knew before that UV-light is also essential for our body to produce vitamine D. Interesting aspect, I have to include this into my PhD-project. So maybe after UV-exposure my TK60 cells are really better of, cause they finally get some vitamine D after spending weeks in the dark incubator ? And what do you say now: Last year you have been wondering why I prefer to walk home instead of taking the bus. I then told you it is just relaxing for me to let my thoughts float freely. Now it could be that intuitively I knew that it is good to spend some time out in the open to reconstitute my vitamine D reservoir.

I already saw the movie “Darbareye Ely” (what means “all about ely”) about two years ago, after it received the Silver Bear Award at the Berlin film festival. But I watched it again yesterday with Shava.

I liked the movie, although it was no easy entertainment. It had no Happy End, but a Tragic End. The story starts very relaxed, showing three young families (including Ahmad, brother of one of the women, who just came from Germany where he divorced) spending a weekend at a seaside cottage at the Caspian sea. The three families have the silly idea to bring together the lonely Ahmed with the baby-sitter Elly, although they know that she is engaged with another man in Teheran. Whereas all the three couples and Ahmed start to make stupid jokes about this plan, laugh about Ely when she is not around and all appear very superficial to me, Ely herself is much more closed. She is a girl with some mysteries, she keeps secrets and does not like the continuous jokes about the attempted matchmaking a lot. She tries to do the job that she was officially hired for: looking after the little kids of the three families. She frequently calls her mom, who is ill, and after one day she decides that it is better to return to Teheran. The three couples don”t want to let her go, they hide her luggage and her mobile phone. She says that she has to leave and would even walk home. The three couples and Ahmad ignore her and start to play Volleyball and go shopping. Ely helps the kids to fly a kite, but suddenly one of the little boys falls into the water and almost dies. The three man interrupt their game, suddenly get panic and jump into the sea, so finally the boy is rescued. But after some minutes they realize that Ely is missing. And suddenly, the relaxed relationship between the three couples and Ahmed turn into aggression and hate. Everybody accuses the others of being responsible for the disaster.

After one day, indeed Elys dead body is found in the sea: She obviously died while trying to rescue the little boy. The three couples now have to inform some relatives of Ely about the accident, and they can only find Alireza, the man to whom Ely was engaged since three years. They find out his telephone number and ask him to come, claiming that Ely is just ill. When he arrives at the site, finding out that she in fact died, he breaks down. The three couples don”t want to admit that Ely was only invited to this weekend trip to match her to the divorced Ahmad. They try to make Alireza believe that Ely was hired exclusively as a baby-sitter. So they want to get around the conflict by adding more and more lies on top of each other. You can feel how their only concern is to get away with their responsibility.

I think Asghar Farhadi, the movie director, tried to show that this practice of organizing relationships for somebody is bad. It is based on an arrogant belief that relatives know what is good for their son or brother or daughter, and they can easily find a suitable partner. It is obvious that Ely hates this, since she is not sure about her 3 year long engagement with Alireza. But the three stupid couples and Ahmad think, that they have the right to interfere with her emotions. They make impolite jokes about Ely, they lie, and they don””””t respect her privacy. They are to superficial to see, that Ely is full of doubts about her future, and that she does not want to be pushed into a new relationship. She has thoughts that are not for the public, emotions that she does not want to show around. At the end, this stupid idea of pushing two person together leaves behind two victims: a physical one (Ely, who dies) and a mental one (Alireza, who breaks down emotionally). The bad think is that the three couples continue to lie to Alireza although they see how much he suffers from Ellies death: They tell him that Ely knew from the beginning that the weekend-trip with the three families was intended to bring her together with Ahmad. By insisting on this lie, the three couples so cruel leave the mourning Alireza believe, that his girl-friend Ely was searching for an easy adventure with another man. But Ely, in fact, never agreed with this, she said she only joins the company to look after the kids.

I would like to hear what you think about the movie.

take care
/ghazal

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Ghazal my Dear,

Tonight I went to see the movie “Darbareye Ely”. It was shown in one of the very small cinemas here, which are specialized on Arthouse movies.

Although you had told me already a lot about it before, it was nice to see it. After the first 5 minutes of the movie, however I thought that we might talk about two different things, cause it started so nice and relaxed, when they drove through the tunnel and all were just shouting for fun. And then they had this short stop-over at a small river, and I immediately recognised the russian Samovar, because we have exactly the same one (as part of a big collection of even older ones). And in the beach cottage, I recognised the old russain fridge, type “Wolga”, cause we have the same one in our cottage in Bulgaria. So initially I was a bid distracted by pictures, also had problems to follow the subtitles and at the same time understand the relationship between all the characters and their names (you should have provided me with a sort of set-list of all character and who is married to whom and which kid belongs to which couple). Anyhow, after a while I got the impression that all the seven characters are interchangeable, they looked differently but acted similar. The only exception was Ely, who was mysterious. When she disappeared after the accident with the boy I was hoping for about an hour, that she might not have died in the sea, but just left the place to escape the silly jokes and the attempted match-making. When she was eventually identified in the mortuary it was really sad and I was almost ready to leave the cinema.

Ely reminded my a lot of you, Ghazal. She was also calm and the exact opposite of the loud and superfiscial society around her. She had secrets, that she wanted to keep for herself. She had an aura of pride and aristocracy, which stoud in sharp contrast to the other characters who never thought about the right of privacy or secrets. It is a pitty that it was Ely who died in the movie. I so much wished to see her finding a new live, deciding about her own future, to stay strong and nice and get happy.

As usual , I wish you all the best, success with the project, happyness in daily life but also exciting dreams.

Take Care, Ghazal.

Michael

Michael

More information about this case is available in an article of the german newspaper FAZ and in the New York Times.

Don”t want to disturbe you, my Dear, I guess you are busy.
You said on our way to the guesthouse, that you were not satisfied with your results today, and that mine were looking better. This, Ghazal was a sheer chance event. What is important, that on the long run we are doing well together.
You are very self critical. You worked over weeks quietly and absolutely perfect, and now there was only a single day with some sub-optimal results, therefore you should not fall into despair.
It was perhaps a bad idea to do RNA extraction with the “dirty” method so late at night, long after you left the lab. Too bad, that I only gave you the written protocoll. Would be better to demonstrate you “life” how this works. Otherwise you might think that I perform some woo-doo methods.

Ghazal, you don”t have to kill me. I”ll die anyhow if you leave. I mean if you leave for ever. If we stay in contact, I will be o.k.

Do you have already a plan for the weekend ? I understand you have to work on the thesis. But not 24 hours over 2 days. Let me guide you somewhere to have a break, maybe we find a nice movie or just walk around a bit. I wont distract you from scientific writing a lot. But beeing together for one or two hours I think we both will enjoy.

I probably will fall asleep soon, I”m a bit tired.

But I think of you, as every evening,

Have a nice night with colourful dreams.

Michael

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Thanks for the long evening at KFC, my Angel.
I read the text you gave me and send you my comments tomorrow. Mike A. did not came to the lab.
The quantitative PCR did not worked. I have to do another night-shift. Maybe next week.
Till then I keep the odor of your hair and the tendernes of your shoulder in my memory.
Thanks for everything, for keeping me alive.

Michael

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hi michael,

thank you for correcting my thesis. if you want i can send you it on word? maybe its easier?
i think i want to stay home and study tomorrow. i feel better. we can talk about the project during the week.

hope u have had a good day.

/ghazal

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Ghazal, my Dear,

Yes, please send the text as word-doc.
I am very tired, I contact you tomorrow. We went to an air-show today, south of Munich. Something awfully happened there: two airplanes crashed and one of the pilots died. I was shocked. You feel so awful if you have to watch how somebody dies within a couple of seconds, and you can”t do anything to stop it. If you see something like this in a thriller-movie, you know that in fact it all happened in a film-studio, played by stunt-men who at the end stand up and get their money and go home. But if you see how a real person dies in front of your eyes, it shakes up everything you belief and you trust.
Suddenly you realize how precious our life is, and how short it can be.

Ghazal, my dear, don”t work to hard tonight, go to bed, sleep and relax.
Take Care
Michael

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hi michael,

this sounds really bad. and you saw this, must be very sad. sleep well. i send you the word-document. but dont work too hard with it. try to have a relaxing sunday.

take care

/ghazal

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Hi Ghazal my Dear,

I attache some additions to the results part (see attachement, new things in blue). I re-evaluated the genotype-phenotype relation. There was a mistake before. No it seems on D11Mit318 FVB has a dominant effect reducing uptake and on D13Mit78 JF1 has a dominant effect reducing uptake.

It”s a pitty you don”t wanna be disturbed today, not even for a walk to “air and fresh up your feather” a bit. Please write me some words at least, not just “Thanks”.
You know I don”t like this so much, I think that I am much more indept to you, honestly. I gained so much from your presence, you gave me something nobody else can give. In contrast, the scientific help and writing and correcting could have been done by anybody else. O.k., I have to admit I did it with much more passion, because I knew it is for your future. But in theory, any supervisor should have helped you like I did it. Therefor, if you say “Thank you for the text/work/data …” it too much reminds me that we are still bound by this professional relation, and this one will end soon (which is too bad, but what can I do).

My only hope is that you will do what you promised on Friday, and we will stay in contact (what does it mean “staying in contact”: I don”t know). I will see occasional words from you send by e-mail from Sweden, but I wont hear you voice any more or see your eyes or your smile. This will be hard for me.
Do you remember when I wrote you a mail from France “For Ghazal the scientist, and Ghazal the angel”
where I said that we all need something in addition to our scientific projects, that will give us joy and satisfaction when science temporarily is in a crisis. I said that you have your family, persian music and movies, and that I “have you” and books and guitar playing.
Now it appeares to me the other way around, because I will lose you, I have to compensate with my work, I probably will stay in the lab for 16 hours a day, because this blue-eyed, calm, wonderful girl, that during 20 years grew up from a baby on her parents arm to a gifted MSc student is not there any more to go out after work. There will only be this “army” of uniform co-workers, but nobody who “takes my breath away” as she did it.

At least, I will continue to think of you and will try to keep track of your well-beeing and your happiness, as I have done since 20 years.

TAKE CARE

(and in the future, Ghazal my Dear, be aware of elder men, and don”t put a spell on them with your eyes, as you did it on me during the lectures. Once they got caught by you as I got, by your smile and your vitality, your eyes and your hair and your magic walk and all the beauty that is still hidden and that one can only guess, then my Dear, you will have problems getting rid of them ).

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hi michael,

i don´t know what to say. you have been so kind to me from the first day. i will never forget you, your kindness and your passion. i will be your friend forever. i enjoyed our time together too but in my way. You see, we are in different phase of life, you are much more forward and i”m in the beginning, you know what you want in your life but I don´t know, I need to experience a lot of things in my life.

i am deeply sorry if i caused you some sorrow, it wasn”t my intention.
i wish that you understand me a little bit.

One thing is sure that you are my friend and I am going to keep in touch with you, if you want it too of course. Anyway you never know what is going to happen in the future, so chere up and dont lose your joy of life. always be happy as i have seen you always.
I will never forget you as I said before.

Have a very nice late evening. Dream sweet. see you tomorrow