Kathy to Hilary, January 9, 1972, Tehran, Iran January 9, 1972
Dear Hilary,
It could snow tonight. Lovely!
I can’t remember who owes who a letter so I have begun one when I really should be working on a story to win $300 in a magazine. I did win a 1000 rial ($13.00) second prize in the English language newspaper. (I suspect that the first prize winner is a relative of someone who works on the newspaper.) I thought what I wrote stank, as it was, but that small success has goaded me into entering every contest around. And well I’m desperately poor! There’s a poetry contest at school--no prize but immortal fame (and embarressment) and a few magazine competitions.
Farzad plans to drive through Europe in a 20-year old Citroen he bought for $130. Sometimes, when I ride in it, I doubt it can make it up Roosevelt, which is a very gentle slope. The car is called the French Girlfriend and is a complete mess, built like an MG or Morgan. You can see the street through the floorboards!
The French Girlfriend 
Steve backed Farzad’s Peykan into a stone wall the other day. F was letting him drive in circles, and then he hit a tree, panicked, and somehow hit the wall. Luckily the wall was like most walls around here and crumbled without denting the car. We all went to see “On a Clear Day You Can See Forever” while we waited for mom’s wrath to subside.
Speaking of Morgans, I haven’t been on horseback since my little accident [Thrown from a horse while taking a jump and bruising ribs], mainly because the stable is trading horses with Sanandaj, and there’s been a lot of snow, more than there has been for several years here. Thursday we had a lovely snow that incapacitated the whole city--3-5 inches of it and it has been snowing off and on for several weeks. It makes me like Tehran, if it were like this all year. If we didn’t have a White Christmas, the Armenians did--theirs was Thursday, the 6th. You can tell an Armenian by their last name--if it has an “ian” then they are Armenian--Sahakian, Lazarian, like that.
Back to writing projects: Also, there is the Great American Novel that is like a chain on my mind so that I can write on nothing else--maybe I can dole out the chapters as short stories. And there is a goddamned term paper that must be written before too long--“Bismarck and the Unification of Germany”--a far cry from the paper I wrote on the Devil in the 8th grade--or is it?
6:38:23 AM 
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