I am in Iran and where I am staying, there is a wall just outside the building on which there is a lot of graffiti, none of which I can actually read except I recognize this:  MUA.  I do not know what the letters actually stand for but I know that together they represent some military group.  Where I am staying, there is a boy of about six or seven, already showing signs of being a larger boy, a football player’s wide build.  He asks me to teach him random words in French.  How do you say school? He asks.  École, I reply.  He is delighted. 

I tell my hosts that I am going to go for a walk but they protest, insisting it is too dangerous for me.  I persist, pulling a scarf up and over my hair so as to hide my “other-ness” when I walk around outside.  Before I even get a few steps away a vehicle pulls up at the other end of the street and a group of armed men jump out of the vehicle.  They are sweeping the street, pulling people aside.  I rush back into the home and the door is slammed shut and locked behind me.  The women in the family pull me away, deeper into the house, hoping to find a safe place for me to hide. 

(Notes:

1. Color me surprised that I not only remembered how to say “school” in French but remembered it correctly.  It was a dream after all and I could have said anything and the rightness of it would be determined more by my subconscious than veracity.
2. MUA doesn’t stand for anything that I know of.  However, even in my dream I seemed to think “Om backwards.”  See this article in wikipedia.)