I know that what I am going to tell you now could fundamentally damage the picture that you have of me. I hope you will forgive me this unrequested confession. But I have to tell this to someone, who might view it from some distance, and who knows me only as a pen friend using e-mails. And I also think that because you don’t live an ordinary life, rather a life full of ups and downs, you might have a better understanding of me. I hope you will forgive me this uninvited confession.
Nine years ago I had a master student in my lab. She came to Munich from Stockholm/Sweden, because we are members of an international graduate school. Although being born in Stockholm, she was Iranian. Her name was Ghazal, and her parents were political emigrants from the 70s. I found her very attractive, physically and also because of a certain secret magic that emanated from her. If a young woman arrives as a stranger to a new place, she naturally inspires a man to offer her assistance and company. And for some reason, despite being about 20 years my junior, Ghazal soon agreed to go out with me not only once, but on a more and more regular base. We spend many afternoons and evenings together, visitting the galeries, the parks, many beautiful places, or just go out walking in the green or sitting on the river-side. I began to badly fall in love, and I seriously wanted to change my entire life, and asked her to marry me. If she would have not repeatedly denied, if she would have say only one time “maybe, lets wait for a while”, my life would have taken a completely different direction. In this year, 2010, I probably was really crazy. I was willing to sacrifice everything for the prospect to spend the rest of our life together. Nothing else seemed of any relevance any more: my family, our house, my friends, my job as scientist, even politics and the whole world suddenly became secondary, as compared to my love for this girl with her blue eyes, her dense eyebrows, her dark curled hair and her guttural voice.
But for Ghazal the relationship with her parents in Sweden was much more important, and she always felt homesick. For her it was simply unthinkable to start a new life far away from home. She was, in a certain sense, provincial and too much focused on continuing a life with a high level of security. And Sweden is of course the prototype of a super-secure society. At the end, when Ghazal finished her master project, she packed her suit-case, and after we said good-bye and exchanged kisses and hugs at the airport, I literally cried a river driving home alone.
In the following 3 years, we occasionally met aside of scientific meetings. We talked, and for me it was always painful to know that it is only for a few hours. Once in 2012, we spend a night walking through the empty Pompeij, what was most magical. But I still don’t know if she felt the same. I am quite sure that in Ghazals whole life, our visit to Pompeij was an experience of the the highest cultural and intellectual level. Probably at this night, she was not aware of this, but I am sure one day she will understand. I had hoped that instead of living together physically, we could at least stay in contact with words. But writing mails was not her biggest strength. She was very secretive regarding her feelings, and neither did she liked to tell lengthy episodes of her life. In fact, too often it was me who told her stories of her life, stories which I invented expromptu starting from just a few keywords that she told me. When she wrote something, it was usually restricted to a few sentences, and only touched superficial things. I always knew that in case I could have seduced her up to point to live together, I would have to educate her a lot in terms of culture and intellectual depth. I knew it would have been a “Eliza Dolittle and Professor Higgins” affair.
It took me about 5 years to get over the sadness that this loss has inflicted. And then suddenly the story seemed to start its 2nd series: I met an Iranian-Armenian girl who did her PhD project in another institute on our University campus. She was married in Germany, but lived virtually separate from a boring German husband. She was extremely lonely, and had some problems also with her colleagues and with her family ( who occasionaly came from Isfahan, but caused stress to each other).
We began to meet more and more often, and we both had our reasons to let things go freely. It did not took very long, when we started to take a hotel room only to sleep together. It became a very regular thing, that we had love at any occasion: in her appartment, in the appartment of her relatives, in the car, in hotel rooms. It was very exciting, and I always recognized that at the moments of ecstasy, Lidas face changed so much, that all the stessful tension went away and I could feel how her eyes were seeing something magical.
For me it was all nice as it was: We would meet once or twice a week for physical pleasure, but outside of the bedrooms we continued our own life.
But for Lida this was not enough. She required more and more that I make a decision in favour of het. I understoud her somehow, she was early thirty, with the science career lagging a bit behind, and a broken mariage behind. She was hoping that me, an 18 year old senior of her with an established position, could give her stabilit, probably by living with het and marrying her.
But what I was desperately wishing just 5 years before with Ghazal did not bear any attraction any more now with Lida. I don’t know, if I had changed so much within 5 years, or if it is a general phenomenon that men lose their interest in sharing their life with girl when they have already consumed love often enough. Maybe my years long heartache after Ghazal left was only, because we never consumed love, but had only a 1 year platonic romance.
So my advice to every girl or young woman from this story would be: dont give a man to quickly what he wants. Let him fight for your love hard. When a man had to fight a long battle to conquer you, he will always value you much higher. You will be like a rare jewel, which will always reminds him of the energy he had to spend on you. Like a miner who had to work a long and hard time to find a precious gem.
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