Saturday, November 05, 2005
Difference
It could almost seem an option to most people in the IRI to get out of life rather than enjoy it! The fact that their lives are minutes that contain specific activities, entertainments, and experiences are rather pushed aside and the more deliberate motions of religion and cultural oppression set in.
Where the mothers and the girls cling to an antiquity of life going back hundreds of years, and the fathers and boys hold onto their vestiges of social dominance it can be presumed that very little creative energy is put into the peace and joy of life.
Many surrounding members of my acquaintance would rather complain of the horrible nature of their circumstances than to take measures to lessen that hurt or bothersome detail of life.
If only words were as loud as actions, because most of what we see here is talk, and the little action there is becomes a speck that disappears into the fray of everyday life. Sometimes, there are complaints about male taxi drivers but when female taxi drivers are brought up in conversations, all the women laugh. Sometimes, there are complaints about the smell in the banks (constitute only an open door for air conditioning) and yet, the same woman smells like armpits…it’s almost like the concept of shaving your armpits in America....not shaving could be illegal, it’s like a firsthand rule of the social life of an American, and yet, deodorant/shaving is like a falsehood here. If you look after your hygiene, you can put deodorant aside in the IRI because it’s almost considered a fancy attempt of westerners to get people to smell good (and, it’s expensive for most of the below-average poor citizens).
Sometimes, the argument for me is that the people that surround me at gatherings are mostly middle-to-upper class, and watching them in their social encounters tells me that some of these people do have a little more international insight into life.
They do have artists and writers and sports stars that they adore. But, especially lower-to-middle class acquaintances have so much less of that exposure, so much less to talk about and find similarities with. The world of “farhang” is almost ideally made only for those who are rich or richer, and that is if they are actually cosmopolitan- many richer Iranians tend to JUST be rich and still have very little else to plunge into.
My expectation of a people who are so self-indulged wasn’t that high, admittedly, because it was obvious that a majority of a community that spend more time making Gossiping an official country hobby couldn’t be bothered to do anything else. In fact, the time most women in the IRI spend on the phone or powdering their noses leaves very little else for productivity.
Sometimes, I like to think that there is a lack of entertainment, sporting, and culture. But it seems like I can out-argue myself and it becomes humiliating after a while.
I can out-argue the entertainment part because after a year spent in IRI, watching a comedy show on TV (trying very hard to understand) after a whole season of television drought makes a world of difference to the people here. It becomes an almost proud screening of a new-born baby even though the comic relief is barely happening and the slow process at which the satirical scenes play out make a visit to the dentist seem almost exciting.
Entertainment in television is about the only thing that you could call entertainment. Everything else I’m probably not aware of, or the numbers are too small. Not everyone can go rent a cart and race around near Azadi Stadium for 4,000 tomans every 3 laps. Or ride horses. Or buy rollerblades, skateboards. Sporting is in the alleys, in the roads, in your front yard.
There are very few people who can sign up for a team and play indoors or out and it isn’t very commonplace to play in an official team. Someone who did attend a league tells me that there are more games they don’t play than they practice, and all for nearly 80,000 tomans a season without any supplies. All I can think of is very little compared to what it should be. The whole point is that all classes of the system should have access to a community of entertainment, sports, etc…that it should be cemented into most youth to get out and do more, to contribute to their own lives.
More often than not, those same elite of Iranians who are capable of caring for their lives tend to patronize those less privileged than them. That and indifference makes it all more juicy.
But again, I go back to that monster of the differences between the modern world and the not-so-modern one. The one that has very transparent lines between men and women, and the one that does not. The one that gives you the option of living life and the one that encourages ignoring it.
Ah well, it’s almost acceptable to become one with the wallpaper here, and I’m beginning to like that. I could be pinned as a fool but there is validity to this socially funked atmosphere that’s described above.
Nov 02, posted today.
