Russian language was one of the four languages offered at the faculty of the Foreign Languages of Azad University-Tehran North Branch. The other languages were Italian, Spanish, and English which itself was ramified into three majors: English Translation, Literature, and Teaching. Of the students there, the dullest were the English majors, which included me myself. The students of the other three majors were all interesting, each in their own ways. The Italians, for example, were the most outgoing and attention-seeking (and mate seeking) of all. They enjoyed the highest ratio of beautiful girls, and, thus, were the funnest to hang out with; so much so that the other majors, mostly the dull English ones, were often gravitated towards their bashes and thrashes.

The Spanish majors were, likewise, lightheaded, but not as lighthearted. They were pretentious (or perhaps just too clueless) and were generally older than the rest of us for no obvious reason. Yet, that was what made them interesting. There were particularly a hefty man of 40 among them with a nonstop quizzical look who would wear photochromic bifocal eyeglasses, probably to buffer the effect of his wide open eyes, ignorant of the fact that it always backfired. He would always shove himself into a gang of boys about half his age and strained himself to look the happiest and the most welcome member. The other guy I am now reminded of, due to an encounter at a bookstore a couple of days ago, was a guy I hated more than anyone in the campus. He was showing two old ladies around talking to them in Spanish loudly enough to turn other patrons’ heads. The source of my loathing, or let’s say my disgust plus pity, was to be found mainly in his haplessness and the fact that he thought he was the lucky one.

Anyway, I’m not going to rant about my negative feelings here. Instead, I move on to the last of those interesting people: the Russians, my favorite of them all. The very academic path Russian majors (no pun intended) had chosen to pursue, to begin with, was a big enough factor to make them an object of interest. “Why?” was (and still is) the question I would always ask myself whenever I saw one of those peculiar souls. "Are they just dying to read the great Russian authors in original?" Yet, their presence was a lesson. It was a concrete evidence of defying the impossible: impossible not just because Russian is gruelingly difficult to master, but because it is unneeded and farcical to learn. And I saw there how people – serious, intelligent people – rebel at the cost of half a decade of their lives making an attempt to learn it.

So, it might not be surprising that the “valedictorian” of the Russian Translation class of 2006 was the most curious case of all. He was a less-than-chubby man in his late twenties with an oval head and oval eyes behind a pair of oval-framed glasses. His receding hair was buzz cut and always looked clean and spiky. Overall he resembled a pet rodent. He was perhaps the best-known student of the campus who was almost impossible not to catch a sight of in a working day there, something that won him the nickname “Mr. Everyday” from the Teaching majors and had initially misled me into thinking that he was a staff. One Thursday, when I was killing time in the yard till my English Literature class starts, I spotted this gregarious, down to earth, and apparently intelligent oval of a man why he had chosen to study Russian, to which he answered, after an elongated significant stare at me, “Because it needs balls” and then chuckled.

A year after my (and his) graduation, I bumped into him on board of a BRT headed to the east of the city on a chilly night. Both of us were studying our masters and both were on our way back from our new universities. He had just started the second semester at the best university for foreign languages to which he had been admitted with a one-digit rank in the admission exam. Nonetheless, I had never seen him as dejected and outraged before. The man who was one of the best of his kind and who had boasted about his grit to have been studying one of the unlikeliest majors less than twelve months ago was then moaning, “So what? The bigger slice of my youth is gone and I have nothing. I did nothing. At least, I could have ruined it better.”

We were two stops short of the one I had to get off and he was still standing, although, by then, a few seats were emptied, including the one beside me. Looking at the gridlock on the road through the water-condensed window of the bus which made the picture appealingly blur and distorted, I was thinking about his remarks. The cars were mostly yellow cabs, dark-colored sedans. “He is almost right -- socially speaking.” Motorcyclists were zigzagging the maze of the cars. “He might know it himself. What he has been doing is respectable, no matter how silly it might look in the long shot.” I wiped the water off a patch of the window and the first thing to have caught my eyes was a yellow Volvo on the other side of the avenue. It was a high-end sedan of no more than four or five years of age which looked not unlike a made over Samand. I recognized the car’s make immediately from the stupid design of its logo, that awkward diagonal line across a male symbol with the word “VOLVO” in its center. Seeing a new Volvo was surprising. “Who spend so much money to buy and register this Swedish bulk of a car?” Yet the car stood out. It was yellow among a number of yellow cabs and yet it caught eyes for it was stubbornly eccentric.

The stuffy bus was approaching its stop when I noticed that he was poising to get off. I wanted to tell him something sincere, yet consoling. At last, when he extended his hand to shake mine I ventured, “But remember that you are the Volvo.” He was confused, though his face remained unchanged. “People who spend a lot on mid-range luxury cars almost always opt for the accepted makes and the conservative colors.” The air of agreement could be seen on his lips and his satisfied eyes. “But then there are those who choose to buy a yellow Volvo.” The bus was coming to a halt when I said that, which was followed by his disdainful lopsided smile. “You are the yellow Volvo among all the dark-colored cars, and that’s fantastic.” He hesitated and, as he was departing, waved a hand and said affectedly, “But the zigzagging motorcyclist is now home.”

Today, a year and a half after that night, I was reminded of it when I saw another Volvo on the street. It looked smart and masculine with a Nordic frown about its tinted headlights which was accentuated against its white body. The diagonal line crossing its logo was gone (or became just shorter?), but still it was an unpopular Volvo with its Volvoness just slightly mitigated. And that Russian major, I can imagine him a graduate with a master degree in Russian Language. He could also be vividly pictured as a PhD student perusing an academic career, at best, in the same university he is now studying. Or is he working a shitty office job in an irrelevant somewhere? Anyway, Today when I think of my analogy, I think it is reductive. Now, I like to see him as a trombone virtuoso.

I would like to see him once again to tell him not to compromise on his Volvoness, and to thrive remaining Mr. Everyday. And that the motorcyclist's house is not a fun place to live.