Monday, June 26, 2006
an unconventional read; puzzle
that that which is comonly called "being" is a state that is wrought more or less definitely proportionately in the appearance of a positive different between that which is included and that which is excluded.
Friday, June 23, 2006
Notes From A Visit to One of Many Villages
Ten miles to my left and some more to my right lay fields of wheat, golden and still in the hot desert-like province. The sun here rises harsh into the sky while the local townspeople hide away in their homes, the temperature rising to the hundreds, immeasurably suffocating. Every home is made of stone and mud-plaster, held together and built by the same hands that live in them. Outside is a horse and a small white donkey, a dozen chickens, some plants and flowers and buckets for milking the cows. In each home, as in the home that I visit with a friend, are basic chairs; a table, perhaps a bed or rolled up blankets, a small kitchen; and the wives and young children of the family. The men here work in the blistering heat, often wearing straw hats- bent over in the fields- and come home with toughened skin, blackened by the unrelenting sunlight and a silent demeanor passed onto them by their fathers.
Life here moves continually, but slowly, suddenly flashing memories of the Old West in films back home. I can almost see the tumbleweed. The husband talking in a low voice (in monotones) to his wife, asking her to bring some refreshments- cherry sorbet water with ice- seems awfully slow but curt and fresh (as if they are used to guests and we are just another one of many). He asks about America with a curious smile, about the country, what I do there, who I live with (he does not understand how I live by myself and lets it go at that); she asks how old I am, where I stay, what I am doing in the town, who I stay with and then tells me that she has a son, a small shop owner in the city, smiling wide with twinkling blue-green eyes and I smile back.
This is the world that I don’t forget, wherever I go back home, when I type out my essays, buy my coffee, pay my bills. It seems disconnected to the modern reality of life, the economy, the weather in Bangkok and the stocks in NYSE, or the new cars recently imported into the country. They are utterly independent of the world, alone in their sheltered homes with a small Koran, reading the pages every night and early morning, making breakfast, feeding the livestock, herding the cows, tending to the fields, and then a light one course meal at home before an early retirement to bed.
Surprisingly, though, these people vote too, and change the course of a country (in their sluggish habits), lending a powerful tool to those politicians who can manipulate their simplistic sense of society and economy. “I will return morality, religion, and money to our people!” is the barking campaign of a politician whose words are powerful to these poor people, like Manna was to the Israelites. A message from God, a miracle, a true epiphany of goodwill and mercy from above is the message of the politician who reaches the ears of these masses. What matters most is not that these villagers, or farmers who live out in the country vote for these politicians (because they are few), what matters is that they are the ideological and fundamental backbone of many children who grew up in those mud/stone homes and moved to the cities decades ago. The whitewashed backbone of men and women who gave rise to millions of youth in cities like Tehran -that because of state-sanctioned censorship, and those same politicians, have not seen any other world, any other ideology or system. They have been promised youth, money, and education in the messages of people like Khatami, but the system fails them simply because of their ties to the past, to the modern “traditionalism” that like the great hammer of Thor splits the skies but does comparatively little good for that “opportunity, money, and education” promised them.
Now, we can unravel that mystery, little by little. When we understand that the world of traditional values/cultural mores has been transmogrified into a modern cityscape, modernized into the year 2006 and compressed, congealed, confused into obscurity; when we understand, we can respond to its problems.
Understand the culture of the home (and what constructs it), the school (and how it teaches), the relationship of a 25-year-old woman to her mother (who gave birth to her and before the girl could breathe- independence- was given to her husband), the loyalty to a prophet one thousand years dead but who speaks through the mouths of mortal men, and the businessmen that the youth become (with no obligations to the community, no return for the poor, no civic duties). There is not much responsibility for the land, for the natural resources- there is little grassroots, community involvement. A small town does not enforce values and laws that are learned by the children and later reflected by the nation because they have very few. Their cultural upbringing did not teach them to gather their trash and throw it into the trash bins (recyclables in one, trash in the other), but the modern world of 2006 taught them to consume, to buy into the world of money and material goods.
Understand that the year 2006 has books too; it has scholars to teach what is in the books; teachers to help train what the scholars read out; and parents to enforce a sense of responsibility, and education. The year 2006 has very few rules on what type of chips, soda, and ice cream you should eat but it has many rules on how to throw them away once you’re done choosing. What we should understand is that life is demanding, this new generation -nearly half of the population being under the age of 30- holds the future of this country in its hands and we would be fools to believe that they can lead that future. Life is demanding, and it requires that we learn how to appease those demands. These youth should ask how to create a cultural responsibility for throwing trash into separate bins, and how to collect, reuse, and better the environment as well as the community with their policies. If we are examples of our childhood, and the nation is the image of all our children, they had better start now. There’s no more room for mud/stone houses in 2006.
Wednesday, June 14, 2006
Women's Protest
The young girl whose face you can't see is your own staring into one of many Medusa-like creatures who walk and talk like humans but act in aggression and oppression against their fellow Zan.
This woman is a female police officer who has joined rank with thousands of other female officers whose job is to regulate where female regulation is needed. Note that they are not "feminine" in the sense of their being gentle, kind, or compassionate. No. This is only because the men are not allowed holy permission to stroke the back of a women's head as they punch her or rip her clothes from her body, thus, the female officers are used to avoid sending male officers into hell lest they touch the flesh of a living women. But they are as aggressive as the male officers when it came to this protest. In the other photos we become witnesses to a constant struggle between those women who are protesting their second-class status and those (the officers male and female) who believe this is the true path to Utopia.
Photos courtesy of Kosoof- Arash Ashoorinia
Tuesday, June 13, 2006
Iran Vs Mexico
Well, when the game was five minutes to over, we decided that we weren't going to sit around and sulk because the Iranian team has some rule that it has to lose in the World Cup so that the people of Iran will be depressed for all time, so we left the house in her mom's car, music blasting, flags out and screaming and you know the biggest street in Tehran, Valli Asr was empty, everyone that we saw was upset and confused as to why we were having fun and enjoying this moment (so were we) and anyway, I think our car and two other cars totally turned the night around (in twenty minutes people had called other cars and there were hundreds packed in Valli Asr and the people shut down the street a mile north and south and danced and sang and lit firecrackers (it was awesome and I forgot my camera, silly) and anyway, people were chanting "mexico" to make a point that they would take sides with other countries if this was how they were going to play. Everyone was saying "we love mirzapour, and ali daei" meaning they would kick their asses if they saw them- ali daei pretty much owns half the team in terms of financial stakes (shareholder)
anyway. It was fun. and after two hours of dancing and singing and everyone laughing at such a funny night they brought in the antiriot police who tried to kick in people's doors and yelled "berin bebinam, chera vaistadin????????" and they were very violent (against young men's cars, scratching them with their heavy black boots leaving streaks of rubber) and that's when people slowed down because they could not just dance and sing in the face of these guys. so everyone began to leave since there were so many of them in black suits on black motorcylces- almost 20-(they ride motorcycles so that they can get between the cars and scare people) People went home waving flags and singing and laughing, but when we got home and I called around to see what was up in their neighborhoods the next day everyone was shocked that such a thing had occured (karaj, and other areas of Tehran were quiet and deserted)
The whole night in Valli Asr I saw a handful of people working for the government taking pictures and when we stopped one (dressed in casual clothes -as if he were a reporter) and talked to him asking "why are you taking pictures?" he answered "I don't know" and we asked for which newspaper or company he worked and he would not answer nor could he convince any of us what he was up to since he seemed to have constant trouble with his camera, trying to get it to work (obvious that he's not a professional)
Many young men that we talked to (between our car windows) were happy and without a doubt they were enjoying themselves but then girls that rode their cars like my friends and I also smiled and talked to us (which is fairly unusual for girls to do that to each other) and were friendly and encouraging each other to keep driving back and forth, dancing in our cars and although there was an air of anger and spite the people showed that they could not be stopped from enjoying the finer pleasures of life.
Wednesday, June 07, 2006
Summer Long Notes
One of the Afghanis working on the factory for ------ was watching the show where Emil (the Turk) was singing in his 70s and ------ wondered how this old man is looking younger and younger as he gets older and older and yet ------ was very young when Emil was much older and singing in Turkieh. The Afghani said, in the simplest of ways, that if he had that much money and did not have to worry about feeding his young wife and many children he too would start looking like a God.
