Iranian Women

            On Thursday I woke up about 45 minutes after midnight when I felt myself very slightly throwing up in my mouth. It was the first time I’d tasted vomit for at least a decade but this was the first time I’d experienced it in this way. When it happened before I woke up with the urge to puke, rushed to the toilet and did so. This time though I didn’t even have an upset stomach. I went to the washroom to rinse out my mouth and then went back to bed, but the foul taste persisted, so I got up again and went to brush my teeth. That helped.

            I suspect that it was probably one of the eggs I’d had for dinner the night before that had caused me to marginally bring up. Some of the food bank eggs have been in my fridge for a while and have hairline cracks, so maybe one of them went bad just enough for my stomach to give it the cold shoulder.

            That evening I finished my two Thursdays pose at Artists 25. When I got to the building where the studio is located I tried to punch in the code to open the front door but one of the numbers didn’t beep and when I tried again right away the system was still waiting for me to punch a fourth number but got a fourth, fifth, sixth and seventh, so it didn’t work. I was thinking that the problem had been that I hadn’t keyed in the right code in the first place so I walked to the front of the building to re-check the address, even though I knew it by heart. As I started walking back to the door, Cy came walking in the driveway. I punched in the code successfully this time to let us both in.

            Inside the studio there was a sign on someone’s easel saying that if people want to use her easel, clean it afterwards. Then she recounted how she’d ended up with wet paint on her clothing last time when she’d come there to draw. Ava arrived shortly after we’d read her notice and we chatted about the situation. She told us she’s not one of those artists that like to wear paint-splattered clothing. Indeed, I saw she was wearing what looked like an expensive mauve coloured blouse from which it would be very difficult to remove paint stains.
            I related how once years ago I’d been posing while lying on my back for a painting class at OCADU when a student flicked his brush and a big glob of aquamarine blue oil paint flew right into my eye. I’ve also had pants, shirts and jackets permanently stained just from trying to walk between easels to or from the modelling stage.

            Cy and I chatted about why Bänoo had to leave Iran. She was involved with the protests against Ahmadinejad’s election victory in 2009 and since she was a teacher she was considered perhaps more dangerous than the average citizen. She had already applied for immigration to Canada and was accepted and so after she was interrogated by the police she decided it might be a good idea to get out of Dodge.

            Cy said that the oppression in Iran is less religious and more political than in places like Saudi Arabia. The restrictions on women are far less severe. While women in Saudi Arabia are not allowed to drive, Bänoo had a car and drove all over Iran. While the career prospects of women in Saudi Arabia are severely limited, there are many successful female academics and artists in Iran. The first woman to win a Nobel Prize in mathematics was Iranian.

Besides Cy and Ava, two others came for the first time to draw. The studio charges $10 for the session and they pay the model $45. Less people come out to draw or paint male models and like this night I recall many times over the last thirty years when they haven’t had enough people to pay my fee and yet they paid it anyway.