An Architecture of Connection - PART 5: When I Stopped Observing and Started Weaving
Previously: I caught a glimpse of Gholam Hossein Karbaschi—the mayor of Tehran during those days—through the airplane curtain. A string of improbably aligned events led me to his seat, where I made a request that even I hadn’t expected.
Read the previous post by following the link below.
“What?” she said with a quizzical look.
“Karbaschi is on the plane. I just saw him,” I clarified.
There were only two seats in economy that had a line of sight to Karbaschi as he boarded that night. But my vantage point was probably the only one where his face, half-visible walking up the left side of the plane in the dark, would have been recognizable.
“How do you know?” she asked suspiciously, noticing the closed curtain.
“The flight attendant closed it after she caught me peeking. I’m gonna go talk to him!” I said, surprising even myself—clearly still high on secondhand courage from the champagne incident.
“Wow! What are you gonna say?” Nargess asked with big questioning eyes.
“I just want to go thank him for everything he has done for the country,” I said, but I knew there was something else.
I sat there realizing all the small events that had to align for this moment to have happened. I allowed myself, briefly, to believe I was the main character in my own life–something that’s far from easy for me to do. I’m meant to speak with Karbaschi. I didn’t know why or what I was going to say. But all of this orchestration couldn’t have possibly been accidental. I could see the door. Was I brave enough to step through? It was like standing in the center of a constellation, every star a past decision, finally aligned.
Busy in my thoughts, I hardly noticed the plane taking off. I gave myself two of the four-and-half-hour flight to figure out how to approach this man without sounding like a silly groupie. I would thank him for all he was doing for the country. Check. I wanted to let him know that his efforts have given us all new hope for a more democratic future. Check. But I also wanted to be taken seriously. I felt like if I approached him with a limp thank you, I would end up looking ridiculous and awkward.
I was feeling special—like asking Karbaschi to be part of my story wasn’t such a big ask from the universe. Like making a connection with him felt destined. It took the full two hours to figure out what I was going to say, and this is what I landed on: “Hello, thank you, and can I make a documentary about you?”
In truth, I wasn’t fully sold on making the film. It was more of a pretext—a way to present myself as someone serious. Someone who deserved the improbable logic that seemed to be shaping this meeting.
I never wanted to be a computer programmer—or even study physics. My first love was always political philosophy, driven by one persistent question: What kinds of homegrown political systems could work for our part of the world?
A few months into my NASA job, and after six years of financial struggle as a foreign student, I had finally achieved some level of stability. Feeling more like an adult and less susceptible to the chatter and noise of my parents' fears, I had the space and calm to think about what I actually wanted to do with my life.
One day, I wandered into a bookstore and found myself in front of a wall of what I would later realize were self-help books—filled with words like “zen,” “meaning,” and “life purpose.” I devoured them for a while, not really knowing what I was looking for. Then one day, having wandered into the filmmaking section of the bookstore, it hit me: maybe documentary filmmaking was the path.
A couple of years earlier in college, Rutherford Cravens—the small-time actor and university professor—had suggested I try acting professionally. At the time, I was a couple of semesters away from graduating with a physics degree and urgently in need of a job. Being Middle Eastern and pursuing the arts? Might as well have majored in disappointment. Majoring in the arts while Middle Eastern is like asking to disappoint your parents and Homeland Security. Especially since representation was limited to either passive or conniving hijabis and human time bombs. But maybe more than that, I had decided acting was too frivolous a profession. Documentaries let me merge what I cared about with how I saw the world—part protest, part poetry.
All of this was unfolding in the late 1990s, when Iranian cinema was having a global renaissance. Once I committed to the idea, I started auditing film theory courses with Hamid Naficy—the leading scholar on Iranian cinema who taught at Rice University at the time. I also enrolled in a film production course.
As I sat in the plane racking my brain for ideas with which to engage Karbaschi, it occurred to me that I could make up the excuse of wanting to make a film about him. But you don’t really know how to make a film yet! And then I remembered the Rumi couplet: “Start out on your journey, and don't be afraid—the way will reveal itself to you as you go.”
I wondered whether I should wear the mandatory hijab when approaching him on the plane. As we entered Iranian airspace, the cabin crew would be asking the women to put on the head covering and tunic we were required to carry onto the plane. But this moment also felt like a test—a way to see how democratic these reformists really were. Whatever happened, I didn’t want to start the encounter with a compromise.
I told Narges I had come up with my hook, and she wished me luck.
Without a hijab, dressed in my tight-fitting eggplant Gap pants and a long-sleeved, body-hugging black and grey v-neck knit shirt, I got up, crossed the threshold between economy and business like I belonged.
By this time, the lights were out in both economy and business and most everyone was watching a film. I went all the way to the front of the plane, made a u-turn, crossed over to the left side of the plane and made my way up to his seat.
Business class had monitors that were stored inside the right armrest. But I noticed he didn’t have his out. Instead, he was writing what looked like a letter. I approached his chair slowly and shyly and stood above him, waiting for him to look my way. Sensing my presence, he looked up pleasantly surprised, and broke into a big smile.
“Bah bah, salaam (this is a pleasant surprise, hello there!),” he said.
“Salaam aqa-ye Karbaschi.” I said awkwardly, extending my hand, which he shook. Regime protocol, of course, would have been to place his right hand on his chest apologetically and excuse himself from taking my hand due to religious restrictions on touching unknown women. Even more surprisingly, he seemed unfazed by my lack of hijab.
“My name is Banafsheh Madaninejad. I wanted to come over to introduce myself and thank you for all you’re doing for the country,” I said in Persian and with much admiration.
“Salaam bar shoma (a rather formal “hello to you”). Thank you for coming over to tell me this. I appreciate it,” he continued with a warm smile. “Where do you live, inside Iran or outside?” he asked. He seemed at ease and genuinely delighted.
“In the US,” I responded.
“Where in the US?” he asked, digging deeper.
“Houston, Texas.”
“That’s great, are you a student there?”
“I work and am a student. I work at NASA and am studying film with Dr. Hamid Naficy at Rice University.” I could tell from Karbaschi’s face that the words “NASA,” “Rice University” and “Hamid Naficy,” had delivered the desired effect. In reality, I was just auditing classes with Hamid but Karbaschi didn’t need to know that detail.
“Wonderful!” he said with admiration. “Yes, I know Hamid Naficy. Great man… does important work.”
“What do you do at NASA? Are you an engineer?” Karbaschi asked.
“I’m not an engineer by training, I studied physics, but I write computer code for the International Space Station,” hoping the work was coming across as sexy, without sounding like a showoff. His eyes softened and his smile widened with pride.
“This must be the middle of the semester and work. How come you’re going to Iran right now?” he asked, suddenly curious. I couldn’t believe that the Mayor of Tehran and an architect of the reformist movement was still speaking to me. And that he was genuinely interested.
“My father is ill and I’m visiting him.”
“Khoda shafaashoon bedeh (I hope God restores his health),” he said gravely.
I could tell our ahvalporsi (meet and greet) was nearing an end. The conversation had been amazing, and I had not needed the filmmaking excuse. Although the impetus for talking to Karbaschi had been a need to express my gratitude and shake his hand, I wanted to keep the conversation going. I wanted to throw myself into the adventure, something I had learned from my father. I wanted to honor the strange sequence of events that had brought me there—not with a desire to milk the possibilities, but with a kind of gratitude. A willingness to play along.
As I was thinking up the filmmaking ruse while still seated, I started noticing all the small events that had happened to create this opportunity. My father getting sick when he did; having lost my passport and not being able to leave with my mom for Tehran earlier; having found my passport when and especially how I did; the passport renewal taking exactly as long as it had so that I could catch this particular flight; buying an albeit not so interesting book and then leaving it behind because I had gotten chatty with an interesting travel mate; Nargess’s daring courage infusing me with enough bravery to overcome my shyness; being seated in the first row of economy; being seated next to Nargess so I could use her as a sounding board and be supported by her; again because of Nargess, switching seats with the doctor in order to be closer to her but ending up in the best seat in the house to see Karbaschi board; the curtain between the two sections in the airplane being open during boarding; looking up into the business class exactly when I did in order to catch Karbaschi walking in and all the other events I couldn’t even think of.
At some point, the list of coincidences started to feel like… design. Not in a grand, fate-driven way—but in the quiet, almost invisible logic that life sometimes follows, when you’re paying attention. I wouldn’t have used the word ‘architecture’ then. But something had been built–a quiet geometry of things falling into place. Or maybe being revealed.
I felt more entitlement as I prepared to say the next sentence. I could tell Karbaschi was a helper and had already warmed up to me. I’d only made one extremely mediocre student film up to that point, but that wasn’t going to stop me. This moment felt rare—charged—and I was determined to turn it into something more.
