Monday, March 13, 2006
In many ways, my first encounter with Denmark was one that I will probably never forget and rarely revisit.
On a very cold midafternoon, after an eleven hour flight on an airplane and another impeccably straightened, stiffened, and exhausted chair I landed in Amsterdam. My first memory of the airport was that it was very big, almost innumerable tunnels going this way and that, sometimes even reaching out beyond the windows where one could see an arm-like extension of the terminals going for what seemed like miles. I landed there, as a kid, and held my duffel bag against my chest, walking as fast as I could to keep up with my flight 'babysitter'. A pack of well concealed playing cards pressed up against my chest and various pencils, notebooks, and loose chocolate candy wrappers crushed themselves in an effort to accomodate my vise-like grip.
As we walked, I noticed her cleanliness, and morbid insistence on looking directly at the space in front of her nose , which I had seen before in my short experiences through life but never tasted when there was a slight air of xenophobia hanging between us.
I was sure that god, or God -had in good humor- left me a very pretty attendant who, being Dutch, would adore my oh so 'Americanness' and consequently ask me all about my adoring set of Barbies, my fascination with horses, and then hug me and send me away into the arms of my loving family; just like the nurse in the Sound of Music.
But, unfortunately, that was not what happened. What happened was me, and my unrelenting mouth, spewing all of my favorite stories and ideas and thoughts hoping to see what she would say. Still, cluthing the duffel bag in case she did turn into some howling, slobbering Medusa I slowly realized that she was more in-tune to the dazzling array of invisibly entertaining molecules in the air than to the small child trying to make friends.
Of course, when I realized that, I huffed, puffed, and tried to blow that little piggie's house down, but ended up in a small metal chair in the children's waiting room until I was picked up.
Later on, when I retold my story to my relatives, they nodded almost knowingly, shaking their heads as if it were something they had seen before or could understand. And they did. The Dutchmen did not like my relatives, for reasons that could be considerably variated but amounted to the nitty gritty fact that they had darker hair and darker eyes and were evidently olive-complexioned.
To me, they were very pretty.
But at that time, I chalked that observation up to a irrelevant experience that I would never repeat again by avoiding snobbyish looking women -and men, for that matter.
Much later, when I was older and revisited the land of the Giants (the Dutch are the tallest humans, as a group, in the world) I came up with other, more reasonable explanations for that woman's reaction to a small child.
I was comitting the crime myself.
Evidently, after living in Iran for quite a while (without my duffel bag in tow) I became my own Medusa. In the land where woman range from all colors underneath the red sun, fair-skinned, golden haired 'morgh's or women ('hen's) are comparatively more beautiful than, say, a 'sabze' or a olive-complexioned girl. Especially in the northern regions of Iran.
Now, as a child, you are born into a society as a stranger. A complete stranger. You grow up to assimilate into the society by imitating those around you, and by adding or detracting from your character those behavioral traits that you, yourself, don't need. And, as a new-born, or someone who was completely alienated by and from the Iranian society, I considered my dislike of olive-complexioned girls to be a direct cause of the socially accepted norms of beauty in the Iranian society. I was taught that a girl should be rosy cheeked, and fair haired. If not, she should try to be. And so, I came face to face with one of my many Medusas. Watching her sprout from in between a childlike garden was scary, but at least I was able to see it. Certainly, it could not be ignored, this new reason behind the mask that the woman wore in Denmark. She was not at fault, for inheriting her society's dislike of the less-than-acceptable. The less-than-human.
I am no less, but more human that I was a few years back. But, the experience of the norms and labels of beauty in Iran gave me the tools to recognize why and how our gardens sometimes spoil from our personal Medusas.
---
On another note. The news is that a Dutch Immigration minister, Rita Verdonk, has denied asylum to gay Iranians because they will not be executed if they are returned to Iran.
She believes that the two young men, who were executed this year in Mash'had, were only executed because they were purportedly witnessed to have raped a minor. The case has no real hard evidence, and the jury was -obviously- out on this one...because there is no jury in Iran.
However, because they 'had' raped a minor, she claims that these gay Iranians have nothing to be afraid of. All they have to be afraid of is gross human rights violations (rape, murder, and systematic abuse), secretive, closed-door cases, and a long, dark, wet prison cell.
She also ordered Iranian Christians -converts- to be returned to Iran. On the same basis that they did not have any threats to their lives based on that fact alone.
The nightmare is that this news groups the Iranian Christian converts with the Gay Iranians. It tackles two entirely different issues and jurisprudential crises with one fell swoop. It lumps homosexuality, with conversion, two of the many socially discriminated-against behaviors in Iran.
Iran is simply too dangerous for them.
On a very cold midafternoon, after an eleven hour flight on an airplane and another impeccably straightened, stiffened, and exhausted chair I landed in Amsterdam. My first memory of the airport was that it was very big, almost innumerable tunnels going this way and that, sometimes even reaching out beyond the windows where one could see an arm-like extension of the terminals going for what seemed like miles. I landed there, as a kid, and held my duffel bag against my chest, walking as fast as I could to keep up with my flight 'babysitter'. A pack of well concealed playing cards pressed up against my chest and various pencils, notebooks, and loose chocolate candy wrappers crushed themselves in an effort to accomodate my vise-like grip.
As we walked, I noticed her cleanliness, and morbid insistence on looking directly at the space in front of her nose , which I had seen before in my short experiences through life but never tasted when there was a slight air of xenophobia hanging between us.
I was sure that god, or God -had in good humor- left me a very pretty attendant who, being Dutch, would adore my oh so 'Americanness' and consequently ask me all about my adoring set of Barbies, my fascination with horses, and then hug me and send me away into the arms of my loving family; just like the nurse in the Sound of Music.
But, unfortunately, that was not what happened. What happened was me, and my unrelenting mouth, spewing all of my favorite stories and ideas and thoughts hoping to see what she would say. Still, cluthing the duffel bag in case she did turn into some howling, slobbering Medusa I slowly realized that she was more in-tune to the dazzling array of invisibly entertaining molecules in the air than to the small child trying to make friends.
Of course, when I realized that, I huffed, puffed, and tried to blow that little piggie's house down, but ended up in a small metal chair in the children's waiting room until I was picked up.
Later on, when I retold my story to my relatives, they nodded almost knowingly, shaking their heads as if it were something they had seen before or could understand. And they did. The Dutchmen did not like my relatives, for reasons that could be considerably variated but amounted to the nitty gritty fact that they had darker hair and darker eyes and were evidently olive-complexioned.
To me, they were very pretty.
But at that time, I chalked that observation up to a irrelevant experience that I would never repeat again by avoiding snobbyish looking women -and men, for that matter.
Much later, when I was older and revisited the land of the Giants (the Dutch are the tallest humans, as a group, in the world) I came up with other, more reasonable explanations for that woman's reaction to a small child.
I was comitting the crime myself.
Evidently, after living in Iran for quite a while (without my duffel bag in tow) I became my own Medusa. In the land where woman range from all colors underneath the red sun, fair-skinned, golden haired 'morgh's or women ('hen's) are comparatively more beautiful than, say, a 'sabze' or a olive-complexioned girl. Especially in the northern regions of Iran.
Now, as a child, you are born into a society as a stranger. A complete stranger. You grow up to assimilate into the society by imitating those around you, and by adding or detracting from your character those behavioral traits that you, yourself, don't need. And, as a new-born, or someone who was completely alienated by and from the Iranian society, I considered my dislike of olive-complexioned girls to be a direct cause of the socially accepted norms of beauty in the Iranian society. I was taught that a girl should be rosy cheeked, and fair haired. If not, she should try to be. And so, I came face to face with one of my many Medusas. Watching her sprout from in between a childlike garden was scary, but at least I was able to see it. Certainly, it could not be ignored, this new reason behind the mask that the woman wore in Denmark. She was not at fault, for inheriting her society's dislike of the less-than-acceptable. The less-than-human.
I am no less, but more human that I was a few years back. But, the experience of the norms and labels of beauty in Iran gave me the tools to recognize why and how our gardens sometimes spoil from our personal Medusas.
---
On another note. The news is that a Dutch Immigration minister, Rita Verdonk, has denied asylum to gay Iranians because they will not be executed if they are returned to Iran.
She believes that the two young men, who were executed this year in Mash'had, were only executed because they were purportedly witnessed to have raped a minor. The case has no real hard evidence, and the jury was -obviously- out on this one...because there is no jury in Iran.
However, because they 'had' raped a minor, she claims that these gay Iranians have nothing to be afraid of. All they have to be afraid of is gross human rights violations (rape, murder, and systematic abuse), secretive, closed-door cases, and a long, dark, wet prison cell.
She also ordered Iranian Christians -converts- to be returned to Iran. On the same basis that they did not have any threats to their lives based on that fact alone.
The nightmare is that this news groups the Iranian Christian converts with the Gay Iranians. It tackles two entirely different issues and jurisprudential crises with one fell swoop. It lumps homosexuality, with conversion, two of the many socially discriminated-against behaviors in Iran.
Iran is simply too dangerous for them.
