Difficult

It's all so gorgeous right now, I feel for a friend who is having hard times, while everything around us is bursting into life. Yesterday was spent in the presence of that rare creature, a baby who combines beauty with congeniality. My niece is fabulous, all eyelashes, dimples, and delight at the world. But I suppose there is the possibility of a teeny smidgeon of bias on my part.

Ah but my friend.

I don't know how to be a good friend to her. Things are tough, very tough, but she is beginning to hurt herself with her dedication to worst case scenarios. She reasons that she feels that way because bad luck seems to find her, but I can't help feeling that her assumptions make her ready to translate misfortunes that could happen to anyone into dire curses descending uniquely upon her.

There's been more than a moment's discomfort in our conversations recently. Money is a serious issue. 'If only I had a rich friend who could help me!' She said, and there was something in the tenor of it that felt a bit... I don't know, maybe she was just speaking generally, but I couldn't help wondering if that little wish was aimed at me. When I told R, he seemed pretty sure it was, but then he didn't hear it. Still, it was an odd thing to say, and it certainly felt awkward at the time. She cannot possibly think that I am rich, but her views on many things have been distorted by distress.

I think she is looking at someone else's easy-seeming life, and just hoping for a moment's fairy godmother, a minor miracle. R looked very serious when we discussed it. 'She needs thousands, not hundreds,' He warned, 'I know you want to help, but even if you could, you would have to accept that she's unlikely to be able to pay it back ever. I don't think you can afford it as a loan, never mind a gift.'

And he's right.

But I don't seem to be able to be a good friend to her in any other way. The narrative of bad energy attracted to her is more alluring than some mate saying, 'No, hun, you've just made some questionable choices...' It's not comforting and she shuts down on hearing it.

La migliore fortezza che sia, è non essere odiato da' popoli

The best fortress is not to be hated by the people - Niccolo Macchiavelli

After my father left the RAF, he struck professional gold by running teams on the oil and gas pipelines being created across the Middle East and Russia. There he made money unfeasible by the standards of the time, as the oil began to flow and sheiks became state rulers, princes, kings. The great deserts were still utter wilderness, and he was a tough man who lived in tough places. He would send me beautiful cards, though god knows where he bought them. 'Come into the desert, my friend,' was the poetry written on one card, extolling the beauties of the dunes and the stars and the silent places. I wanted to go, to see Dad and explore the strange lovely lands. He stopped sending me cards after my 13th birthday. 'You wouldn't like it there now,' he explained, but never said why.

I still wished though.

Dad had a very lucrative contract in Iran at the time of the Shah's rule. On one of his breaks he came back looking troubled. 'The Americans are screwing this,' he said. He always shook his head when people spoke of Iran's progressiveness, and on this visit he looked distinctly worried.

'When Iranians invite you to dinner, you will always see a picture of the Shah in the main room of the house,' he said. 'But when they trust you as a friend, they will get up and turn that picture to the wall, and tell you what they really think.' He mentioned the secret police, the torture, the corruption. 'It's going to go badly wrong,' was his analysis. 'They hate the Shah, they hate the regime, and when it blows up...' He never said if, always when. I don't know if his contract was terminated because of the revolution or if it finished just before, but he got out safely.

The benign aspects of the Shah's reign couldn't tip the scales against the hidden terror of his torturers. For all his interest in modernisation, he was a despot whose people first feared, then hated, and they grew to despise his allies as white knights who applauded miniskirts in Tehran while ignoring the horrors occurring in prison cells across the country. This I gleaned from Dad, and who knows how much he really knew? Looking at the Wiki entry on the revolution, it says that most observers were surprised at the overthrow. Dad was an ardent supporter of Western values but he wasn't surprised at all.

Decades later, we have Trump applying his usual delicacy to the situation. Of course, he's the joker in the pack and perhaps they will dismiss him as a blowhard. But presuming they haven't a clue what he'll do next, the question remains, do they hate him more than they fear him? And if so, what then? As Old Nick says Wars begin when you will but they do not end when you please...