First of three parts
[img]2948|right|Dr. Rosemary Cohen||no_popup[/img]Mademoiselle Marika was known for many reasons.
As a young girl, she was beautiful and well educated. She spoke French. Greek was her native language, and Mademoiselle Marika spoke Farsi because she lived with her parents in Tehran.
Later events in her life made her famous.
I learned about her life an long after they occurred.
I was a teenager when the two of us met.
One of my friends found a summer job as the driver for a handicapped woman.
One day as we planned to go to a picnic for the weekend, my friend told us that his boss had asked him to join us.
A much larger surprise was about to engulf us.
We learned that his boss, although handicapped, was eager to join us for the picnic.
We were curious to see her.
Being handicapped could mean she was at any of many widely different stages.
Maybe she was missing a finger, a foot.
Customs were quite different in those days, especially in the land where I grew up.
In Iran, as soon as someone developed even a small health problem, or one would slide into old age, that was the end of her/his social life. Women would cover themselves in a virtually invisible veil and pull themselves out of the public sight.
(To be continued)
Dr. Rosemary Hartounian Cohen, who lives in the Fairfax District, received her Ph.D in sociology from the Sorbonne in Paris. She lived in two other countries before moving, with her husband and four children, to Los Angeles in 1984. She has published four books in America. Since 1985, she has operated Atelier de Paris, an international art business, on Robertson Boulevard. Her email address is Rosemary@atelierdeparis.com.
