Tales of my mother... and much more

"EVERYONE wants the honey, but they don't think about the bee." Yousef Ahadi, who heads up the Persian Tent teams at St John's for the duration of Just Festival is brimming with wisdom as well as hospitality. 

But beyond the beauty of the tent, the endeavour of the Persian Rug Village in Edinburgh, and the hard work that goes into preparing food and offering hospitality lies a long story and a good deal of history...

Yousef shared some of the story of his mother and a good chunk of the history of central and eastern Europe this afternoon. It began with the Russian revolution, in the year that she was born in Azerbiajan.   What followed was the horror and tragedy of civil war, tearing people's lives about.

Yousef's mother was part of the "new community of the dispossessed" at first. She struggled for almost a century against the authoritarian regimes of Stalin, the Shah of Iran and the international forces of occupation and exploitation in the East.

But the story does not end there. Through many twists and turns eventually she found herself a serene and peaceful resting place beside her children in Turkey...