April 3, 1991

Abbas Bossfon stepped on a land mine and lost his left foot fighting Iran in the Iraq-Iran war six years ago. Six days ago, he turned to the country he had fought asking for safe haven, and was granted refuge. Terrified by the uprising against Saddam Hussein in Amara, his hometown, Mr. Bossfon loaded his wife and seven children into the tiny orange taxi he owns and fled to the Prairie of the Liberated refugee camp here in southwestern Iran.

Buoyed by recent successes at the Orion Pictures Corporation, including the Oscar-winning film "Dances With Wolves," Orion's controlling shareholder, Metromedia Inc., said today that it was no longer seeking a buyer for its stake in the troubled Hollywood studio. Instead, Metromedia said, Orion would work on a financial restructuring plan to pare its debt load. The two companies also disclosed that Arthur B. Krim, Orion's 80-year-old chairman, was stepping aside, and made several other personnel moves.

Sam Ellison, a globe-trotting geologist, was doing what comes naturally in a romance novel. "He cupped her face in his hands, pressing a butterfly kiss onto her lips." When the heroine reponds by cringing, the dashing hero of Silhouette Special Edition No. 609 is not offended. " 'Breathe in through your nose and exhale through your lips,' Sam instructed, coaching her through the labor pain with the exercises they had learned in the prenatal class." The scene in the Silhouette paperback titled "The Other Mother" is by no means unusual. Nowadays, heroines of contemporary romance novels are no longer content with Mr. Right. He must also be Mr. Mom.

CHRIS CHAPMAN was in her office listening to a middle-aged, somewhat overweight man complain about what he called an embarrassing passion: frozen pastries. Any variety of pastry would do, the man confided, as long they were frozen and his wife did not know that he was pilfering them. (Usually he stood at the freezer door and crammed them into his mouth.)

FOR Liliam Martinez, the impulse to sing is overwhelming as she listens to musicians playing sultry Latin tunes in the darkened lounge of the Big Five Club. She rises from her table near the bar, takes a microphone from one of the professional singers and slips into an old Cuban torch song accompanied by a single guitar player. For 15 minutes, her dusky voice seems to peel away the years and transports her husband and other middle-aged club members back to old Havana. She ends with the mournful ballad "La Gloria Era Tu (You Were Heaven)" and the words flood the interior of the Miami area's most prestigious Cuban-American social club with a powerful longing, not only for lost lovers but also for a homeland abandoned more than three decades ago after Fidel Castro seized power.