Weeks Three and Four: small improvements from Weeks One or Two. Again, a reminder of my goals:

• eat more nutritious food with fewer empty calories,
• walk at least 5,000 steps per day,
• spend one day a week reading the backlog of magazines sitting on the end table, and
• write at least 500 words per day for at least five days each week.

My first goal, eating more nutritious food with fewer empty calories, continues on track. I did learn, however, that relying on nuts for nutrition isn’t as simple as pouring them from the giant bag of pecans, almonds, or walnuts I bring home from Costco. They need to be soaked first. And just dipping them into a bowl of water for 20 minutes before eating them isn’t enough of a soak.

My writing teacher pointed out the practice of soaking nuts to me when she assumed I already knew about it because it is commonplace in the parts of the Middle East she knew. I managed to live eight years in Middle Eastern countries without ever realizing the nuts people served had been soaked first. That’s likely because once soaked, the nuts were dried for storage.

Initially, I assumed the soaking was to make the nuts (or beans or other whole grains) more easily digestible, but a woman from my church filled me in on the most important reason nuts and grains should be soaked before eating: nuts are covered in enzyme inhibitors. Their purpose is to prevent premature germination and to store nutrients for plant growth. But when humans eat foods with these chemicals, the enzyme inhibitors reduce the absorption of important minerals and proteins causing nutrient deficiencies. Soaking and sprouting bypass this issue as they activate the seed and neutralize the inhibitors.

For a handy chart of how long to soak nuts, beans, and grains, check out this post from DaNelle of weedemandreap.

I’ve been working on how to soak and then dehydrate nuts and grains one at a time, starting with pecans which require four to six hours of soaking (add salt to the filtered water) followed by dehydrating. The dehydrating instructions DaNelle referred to (Sally Fallon’s Nourishing Traditions) recommend placing the drained nuts on a cookie sheet and then placing it in an oven set no higher than 150 degrees for 12 to 24 hours. My oven won’t go any lower than 170 degrees, and so far I’ve been satisfied with drying the nuts in the oven for two hours. At that point they are crispy, slightly salty, and can be stored in an airtight container in the refrigerator for at least a week.

In Week Two, I met my goal of walking at least 5,000 steps each day only twice (Monday and Tuesday). In Week Three I upped that to three times, and in Week Four, four times. And I increased the number of days I met my writing goal from one in Week Two to four in Week Three, but I fell back to three in Week Four.

I’m still reading other women’s stories about living in (and leaving) Iran. I’ve knocked off four of the eight library books in the reading about Iran series. Well, I finished reading three, and I read enough of one more to decide I probably wouldn’t learn much from it, so I moved it to the bottom of the pile, to be picked up and finished only after I read the two remaining books.

Journey from the Land of No: a girlhood caught in revolutionary Iran, Roya Hakakian. Hakakian’s story touched me more than others because her family is Jewish, as is the Iranian family I spent most of my time in Iran among.

While I lived in Iran, I saw no evidence of anti-Semitism or discrimination against Jews. But I was an outsider, an observer without enough common experience to notice the subtleties in behavior. I didn’t know how well known certain members of the Jewish community were, especially since many of the family names appeared Armenian.

Through Hakakian’s story, I learned I knew only half of the story of Habib Elghanian‘s arrest in 1975 shortly after I arrived in Iran. I knew he founded Plasco, a company that sold anything and everything made of plastic. In 1975, when the Shah’s government imposed a freeze on prices throughout the country in an attempt to stop runaway inflation, Plasco raised its prices anyway. And Elghanian was arrested, an action we Americans understood telegraphed a message to other businessmen that the government meant business. That’s the half of the story I knew. What I didn’t know is that Elghanian was a leader among the Tehran Jewish community. He was released within a few days, but less than four years later, after Khomeini returned to Tehran and established the Islamic Republic of Iran, Elghanian became the first Jew to be executed by the Iranian revolutionary guards, on May 9, 1979.

Hakakian’s story touched me so deeply because the third Jew to be executed by the Iranian revolutionary guards, on July 31, 1980, was my friend, Abraham Beroukhim. After reading Hakakian’s story, I searched for information about Abraham, Abie as I knew him, and I found an interview with his nephew and other related pieces. The research suddenly became very personal.

Camelia: Save Yourself by Telling the Truth—A Memoir of Iran, Camelia Entekhabifard. Entekhabifard’s story is similar to many other tales of how the Iranian government mistrusts journalists, both those from outside the country and those who took on the role as loyal citizens. Imprisonment seems inevitable. Even after being released from prison, the former prisoners are not free. They are expected to spy on others, to report on anything suspicious they see or hear.

Even After All This Time: A Story of Love, Revolution, and Leaving Iran, Afschineh Latifi. The most impressive character in Latifi’s story is her mother. No more than a few years older than I am, she was widowed and left to raise four children when her husband, Col. Latifi, was executed by the Iranian government in the early days of the revolution. Latifi’s mother is not the first strong woman to appear in the series of books I am reading, but her resolve, determination, and devotion to ensuring her children grew up as their father wanted are inspiring. She kept her eyes on the future, never sinking into the pit of remorse or disappointment about the past. When faced by a setback, she dug until she found the gold nugget of joy, an opportunity.

Oh, and I did read a few magazines, too. Making progress.