International House Berkeley

55 No, no, I didn't do a Ph.D. – I was quite happy to graduate from architecture. I think there were about three hundred students who met for the first registration. We were told from the first day: "You better get yourself another major because only forty of you are going to graduate." So it was quite a rat race. Of course, we were older, more motivated. So, at the end of the whole thing, the forty who made it were all war veterans. When we met – of course we didn't talk about war right afterward, it was too close – on the occasion of the fortieth anniversary of our graduation, we all started asking: "What plane did you fly on?" and so on. So I finally got to know a little more about my classmates. I really enjoyed it – I really am thankful that I chose to study in the United States. How did my time at I-House change me? I got to know people of different cultures and so forth. I remember that over the I-House entryway there was a sign that said, "That Brotherhood May Prevail." And the friendships that we made at the I-House have prevailed to this day. My roommate from India, Jamshed Fozdar, who became one of the leaders of the Baha'i movement, calls me every New Years to wish me a Happy New Year! I also met him a couple of times in Berkeley. He is one of the Parsees – many of the top people in India are originally from Persia. I think most people would remember him because he is quite a lovely character. Apparently, he had a son who studied at Berkeley also. Now he lives in Singapore. You know, he phoned me, and other people have phoned me, after they saw the documentary about the battleship Tirpitz. The documentary has not been shown in Norway, which would have been more appropriate because that is where the drama took place, where it was sunk, five- hundred yards from where I am sitting now, near an island out in the bay here. Where am I right now? I am sitting on top of a hill where my house lies. My closest neighbor is a Catholic nunnery of Carmelites. They are all from Poland, it seems. But across in the bay, lay the Tirpitz, and about one thousand people lost their lives in the sinking. Where am I exactly? Near the biggest town in northern Norway, Tromso. Yes, this time of year it is dark all day long. It makes you so depressed because you only have a little bit of light, but on the twenty-first of December, the darkest day, you have absolutely no daylight. You have some very strange lights, the Northern Lights, the aurora borealis. The Northern Lights can come every day if it is clear. It can be the whole spectrum of the rainbow, but mainly it's green, bright green. It flashes across the sky and changes from one minute to the next. It's quite a spectacular thing to watch. I turn off the lights, and I am watching.... When we were children, we were told that, if you didn't behave, all the lights would come down and get you. So you have some compensation living up here in the North, but I'd rather be in California this time of the year. I'd like to visit in February when the blossoms are out.... What were my impressions of the Americans while I was at I-House? Well, it changed quite a bit. After I had been at I-House two months, I could say, "this and that are definitely American." After I had been there for six years, I couldn't, because there are

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