The enforced boredom of lockdown has been replaced by a feeling of loss. My nephew by marriage, Hansie Schoenburg, died aged 33 from a brain tumour, and then there was the death of my close friend Shahriar Bakhtiar, aged 72.
Hansie was tall, blond, a Yale grad, and extremely handsome. Recently married, he died surrounded by his family. He was very close to both my children. Shahriar was the Persian Boy who, as a slender, bright-eyed six-year-old with not a word of English, was dispatched from Persia to an English school known for its cold rooms and strict rules. The Persian Boy learned early to do without parents.
The bitter irony of their respective deaths was that while Hansie had been willing himself to live these past 15 years, Shahriar had had enough. Unlike many vulgar, newly rich Iranians who ran around London’s clubs back in the 1970s, Shahriar Bakhtiar came from an old and good family that had seen better days when the last Shah’s father grabbed power in the 1920s.
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