Pedestrian

Yesterday’s General Assembly Vote can be historic. The US & Canada, the clumsy allies that they are stood by while the world …

What exactly did the world do? Will we remember the vote next year? Do you remember the UNESCO vote the year before?

I hope that this vote gives the Palestanians momentum. I hope that it gives Israel a warning.

But hope is a thing I’ve decided to do without, as much as possible, and so I will simply sit on the sidelines and observe.

What people, and the media, forget to mention however, is the historic position IRAN took on the issue. Granted that an Iranian UN representative’s views can’t be taken for a significant policy shift, given how layered the Iranian leadership structure is. It also comes when the Iranian establishment’s relationship with Hamas is less than rosy. But Fatah had Hamas’s blessing in taking the vote to the General Assembly floor.

However, when Mahmoud Ahmadinejad’s words are MISTRANSLATED regarding Israel, Western media, political establishments, etc EXPLODE. But when in a HISTORIC move, Iran votes for a Fatah led initiative, OPENLY supports the Saudi Peace Plan (which directly acknowledges the state of Israel) … not a word is said. Hardly a sentence is uttered. Not a single fuck is given.

Why the complete and total media blackout surrounding it? They’re not, gulp, biased now, huh?

What would it feel like to be the world’s punching bag?

Come on, give it a try, give it a go, punch all you like, hurt all you want, cut all you wish, punch as hard as ya feel like it … you know why?

Because the world … just won’t give a fucking DAMN!!!!

Just imagine how the world would have responded differently if instead of Gaza, it was … Albuquerque or Bruges that was continuously and routinely slaughtered by a rogue, violent regime. Would innocents be “collateral damage? Would presidents and PMs call restraint on “both sides”?

The extremism inside Iran, the brutality and fascism outside of it have just left me speechless and at a loss for words.

What is there to say? What is there to do?

But rage has an unequivocal way of waking the senses. Screams come from deep INSIDE of you and hit the walls of the universe … with no consequence. For those questions I have NO answers. For my own rage and anger, I seek to find a few.

Today I purchased drugs for a diabetic cousin who no longer has access to her drug in Iran. I was lucky enough to know an Iranian drug store owner who was willing to accept cash for drugs offered to me under the counter, lucky enough to know a person willing to take them to her by the end of the week … luck has a funny way of working sometimes, huh? and a cruel, cruel way of not. For I am sure that there are thousands of cousins out there whose stars weren’t aligned this morning.

Today I read of the 100+th death in Gaza as the world watches in silence, in complete & utter indifference, in total oblivion. Yes, I’m sure the US president  has “regrets for loss of life”. But he can take his regret and stick it up his a** as it is HIS government, HIS artillery, HIS veto power that give the Israelis the go ahead  to kill and destroy EN MASSE with NO consequence.

Today I write with RAGE. Rage that always exists in some form or other, anger and disillusion that I carry with me every minute of every waking day. Anyone who has followed my journeys on this blog would know that in my own small way, it has been an attempt to change this rage into conversation, into words, into poetry … as best as I am able. As badly as I am unable.  I have learned to walk, talk and eat with this anger, to carry it on my shoulder as one does a never growing, disabled limb.

And yet, sometimes, the images in the outside world grow so dark, so evil, so monstrously macabre that the limb simply stops to function.

WHY do we live in a world where victim and victimizer are turned upside down? Where day is presented as night and night as day? When people living in the world’s biggest open air prison are subject to indiscriminate slaughter and NO one stops to wince? When a country is ILLEGALLY forced to endure WAR time conditions, elaborately called “sanctions”?

Call Obama, Harper, the lot of these murdering, monstrous fascists by what they are: KILLERS & murderers dressed in Armani suits. We in the Middle East are too used to these killers and murderers. We can smell them from thousands of miles away. So please, the next time I see you carrying a sign of Khamenei with devil ears, if he’s not sitting beside Obama in the picture, I will fail to take you seriously. Not only will I fail to take you seriously, but you are only a walking symbol of why we endure the pain and suffering that we do: blindness from the ignorant, cruelty from monsters.

The people living in America, Canada, etc today can simply NOT imagine what it is like to go to sleep one night and die under bombing. They can not imagine how it must be to die in a battered hospital after being attacked on the fields with nerve gas. What it must be like to have a sick child whose drugs you can no longer afford or find.  They can not imagine what it is like to have your entire life go up in flames and shadows and death. And so the LOT of us become criminals by our acquiescence, by our silence, by that blind, ugly prejudice that you may not even speak of …

but the rage you do not feel, and the anger you do not express and the tears you do not cry are your green light to let the fascists burn the earth with no consequence.

A hint of fear … sprinkled with some magic fairy dust: I have to admit, that without exception, that is my first gut reaction to entering Iran and nearing passport check.

Obviously, with the thousands and thousands of political prisoners they are torturing already, no one is going to come after a twirpy blogger with a twirpy nickname. My blog is blocked in Iran, but that too by random chance I like to think, than any serious consideration of me as a big bada** revolutionary who poses “threats to the regime”.

Even still, the fear, (or hint of) gripes at me, remotely contemplates being taken away into the dungeons of Evin and laughs at itself for being so gullible like those “other” Iranians.

Alas, it is not meant to be. I politely say hello to the passport agent, hand in my documents, get them back and begin the ride to my least favorite part of the entire trip.

ARGH.

My second reaction upon passing the passport check-in counter after arriving at Imam Khomeini International Airport. Get ready for the zoo …….

No, not Iran, but baggage claim which is surrounded by glass, where relatives stand with flowers, chocolate and tears on the other side. I Always feel uncomfortable knowing that I am being watched as I attend to my baggage, swear under my breath that IKI has no porters (as of 2009), that I will have to carry my two suitcases, my bagpack, my carry-on and my two bags (tobacco purchased at duty free, of course!) I am here to stay a while after all, who knows how many cigarettes that will mean?

As I stand in the long line to the customs, I try not to look the other way, not at the glass, so I do not have to make eye contact. I am filled with too many questions, too much fatigue, too many worries (no, not about Evin, but of the familial sort) to want to make eye contact, to force a grin or a smile.

The great wall of China, the Berlin wall, the Separation Barrier in the West Bank, … I try to remember as many separation barriers as I can, all made for different reasons, some more legitimate than others (and yet some with not a shred)  - it puzzles me how something as thin as glass can create such dichotomy. The waiting parents, grandparents on one side. The tired, groggy traveler on the other. And in between them a world of longing, stories, separation.

I reach the baggage x-ray scanner which I am dreading, I have to lift the suitcases once again, retrieve from the other end … at least it will be the last time.

My suitcases are hard to miss, with the graffiti sprayed all over, making certain I don’t end up with some old sucker’s black Samsonite again – or vice versa. I am about to retrieve my suitcase for the last time, when suddenly, I hear someone calling me. “You, with the colorful suitcase, take your bags to customs.”

WTF?!

In all of my 20 something years, in all of this travelling back and forth, I have never, EVER been called to customs. Could have gotten away with an alligator in my bag, and they would have never known it.

WTF?!

I pick up my suitcase, and for one minute, am compelled to just follow everyone else to the exit. Who’s going to notice? There’s no one around me. I start walking to exit, until I see a man with a badge looking at me. I look back like a dumb kid. “ummmm, sorry Mr. I think that man in the back said something, I’m not sure I heard him.”

“He said for you to go to customs. The other way.” He sincerely believes I am lost – aren’t we all?

And so with my tail bewteen my legs, I head over to the “customs office”, which is basically the end of the long hall, dreading most of all having to pick up my suitcases again to put them on the metal counter.

By habit, I always stuff the top of my suitcase with tampons, pads and underwear, thinking that if someone out there on this journey decides to take a peak, s/he will decide otherwise upon opening the bag. I always over stuff my bags with sanitary pads, fearing some sort of countrywide shortage or tampon famine.

“Khanom, chamadoon ro baz kon.” [lady, open the suitcase] the customs agent politely asks.

I open them, and sure enough, a burst of lady’s unmentionables falls out.

While I am opening my bag, he starts writing a fine for the man beside me. “100,000 Tomans [$100 when I got to Iran, half of that now], go to the Melli Bank counter, pay your fine and come back.”

The man isn’t willing to budge. “I don’t have anything but a $20 bill on me!” he gripes. They start arguing. Then whispering.

My ears are as sharp as a wildcat right about now. They settle on a comprise: the man hands the agent a 50,000 Toman note, and back takes his bag, walks toward exit. The customs agent shoves the bill in his pocket, rips the fine and moves on to his next victim … moi.

Problem solved.

As I listen in on their conversation, I try to think of what I will do: argue with him? pay my fine? bribe him like the other man just did?

I decide on the middle option: pay whatever I have to pay at the bank, and not a single dime for bribes.

He gets to my suitcases. Starts tearing the first one apart. Throwing things everywhere. Of course, 70% of the content is gifts. with tags attached. He shakes his head some more, “you’re only allowed to bring in $80 a year, per traveller, this is clearly more than $80.” Although he’s come to that conclusion already, he goes to the next suitcase. Starts tearing into that one too, like a hungry bear after dinner. What always pisses me off most about customs agents, anywhere in the world, is their complete disregard for how much work goes into packing – so that things don’t break, wrinkle, gift boxes don’t bend. And the hours and hours of work you’ve put into it – gone, just like that, as they impatiently dig through your luggage like the Tasmanian Devil himself, digging unwanted holes, rigging unneeded pits.

“This is clearly more than $80″ for what seems like the 50th time. EIGHTY dollars? When my frigging plane ticket alone costs $1450? I respond: “I never heard of this rule, why don’t you ask airlines to handout leaflets, like other countries do? How am I supposed to know?”

“It says on our website.”

He bends down to get his fines, and asks for my name. I give it to him, completely baffled and disoriented by now. “You pay the fine or your suitcase will be confiscated” he warns. He calls his colleague, to ask for a pen, and as they are conversing, I call out “kafar” more than a few times under my breath. The third time, I say it louder: “you call this the country of Islam? You’re all nothing but Kafars” [infidels] I say again.

At this point, I realize I clearly need a course in anger management. I am completely disoriented. Even though I’ve seen bribes and zirmizi [under the table cash] many times before, I can not believe that this man is writing me a fine, for stuffing my bags with the cheapest gifts bought on a thin student budget.

I even mutter “jakesh” [cock sucker, dick puller, pimp? Possibly the worst swear word I know in the Persian language] at one point, loud enough for them to hear, as the person to my left clearly does. Although if they do hear me, they are polite enough not to take notice.

“What’s the matter?” the other colleague asks.

“I’m a student, here to visit my family, I have gifts for my relatives, and no one ever told me the $80 limit. How was I supposed to know? Why don’t you hand out papers like other countries do? How are we supposed to know this stuff?”

“Go to our website, w-w-w-i-r-i-c-a-g-o-v-i-r he says very slowly. It’s all written there. See that lady over there? She brought a cat into the country, and she has to pay a 300,000 Tomans custom fee. It’s all rules and regulations.”

“But I don’t have a fucking cat!” I cry.

He looks at me, bewildered for a moment. “Let me see what I can do.”

He comes back a minute later, and says: “ok, ok, I know you’re a student, pay only half. Pay 50,000.”

At this point, my sweet mother has entered customs. I give out a sigh of relief that she’s here, and that she wasn’t here earlier, to listen to her sweet, darling girl call a customs agent in the Islamic Republic of Iran a “cock sucker”.

I explain everything and she turns to the customs agent and says: “you’re going to fine a student? for rules you failed to inform them of?”

He repeats the website, looks down, rips the fine and says: “ok, ok, go ahead, I know you’re a student, you don’t need to pay anything.”

Just like that, without any further pomp and flair my welcome home ceremony comes to an end.

The following is a translation of events as described by a “student”, a fellow participant of the UK Embassy raid in Tehran as told to snn.ir, a state media outlet.

What seems clear to me is that the in-fighting between the Iranian fascist uber-elite is a cause of this mess, but I wouldn’t doubt that there were genuine, imbecilic people there angry at the recent round of sanctions imposed on Iran by the British government. Once again, authentic anger at IsraelEUS is being used and abused to take us down a spiral of possible war (and more sanctions, at the least).

Somebody tell this guy: maybe you don’t have that much time to lock doors and windows when you are fleeing?

With Thanks to Naj @ Neo-Resistance for providing the link to the original article.

—————————-

There were notices about a religious ceremony in front of the embassy at our school.

I got there around 3:30, and the ceremony had started an hour before, around 2:30. Already, people were on the walls of the embassy holding Ashura flags [Yesterday marked the beginning of the month of Ashura, a month of mourning in the Shi'a calendar].

It appeared as if some people had entered the embassy beforehand, had brought down the flag of the UK and had replaced it with an Iranian flag.

It appeared that people were quite distraught with the actions of the British [government], and that’s why they had stormed inside. I tried and succeeded to get in with the second round of protesters storming the embassy.

When we entered, not much was going on except for 3 computers that had been thrown to the ground from the windows.

The computer hard drives were missing, someone had taken them before we got inside.

After that, for about half an hour nothing much was going on. We could hear people chanting against the British from outside. About 60 people left the embassy, but 150 to 300 remained inside.

Once the sunset call to prayer [azan] was heard, protesters outside the embassy were more riled up than before, and about 1700 to 2000 people entered. After that, everything became chaotic.

From inside the embassy this is what we saw: a building surrounded by gates, on the right side of the main entrance. A church to the left. There were very elaborate buildings and an exceptional library which held odd objects, like diving gear and … Alcohol was abundant there and in the rooms and in the kitchens … If you want to picture it, try to imagine Sa’dabad Palace [The late Shah's residence which has since been turned into a museum] with more modern equipment. The kitchens were extremely elaborate, there was a room filled with clothes, and refrigerators abundant with all sorts of food, including Haram food, like Haram meat [pork, etc]. There was a small swimming pool at the back of the library building.

Once we exited the private courtyard, we got to the office buildings to our right, filled with clothing and food. It was obvious that that location was the joint administrative work area for the British and Iranian staff. The area was simple but well equipped.

In all the rooms of the office buildings, there were several telephones and walkie-talkies. Even the plumbing and electric sockets were European, and behind these office buildings was a workshop and a repair shop.

The office buildings and residential areas were connected with a wall. The students that had earlier entered had done nothing to the residential area, except for breaking a few bottles of alcohol, but when the chaos started and the masses entered, the destruction began.

[Just today, diplomats from Turkey, Canada, Venezuela, Mexico, etc visited the residential areas and expressed their shock at what they had seen: torn paintings, broken computer equipment everywhere, food splattered all over carpets, writings on the walls, etc]

The students were trying to protect the embassy, but it appeared that there were many people there bent on destroying everything.

We couldn’t tell who these people were or what party they belonged to, but they were obviously not students. Some were just there to throw things and create chaos, I wouldn’t be surprised if the Old Colonial Master [UK] had sent them to create a media spectacle.

What was very surprising was that the doors of all the rooms, houses and cars were left open. In such a tight security environment, this seemed very odd and unnatural.

Finally, around 7:40, Commander Radan [Tehran's deputy police chief] entered the embassy and gave an ultimatum to those inside. Most people left after the ultimatum, but those who refused were dragged out.

The police’s reaction before Radan’s appearance was forceful but polite but afterwards, some [protesters] were beaten and some even had to be taken to the hospital.

The weather in Tehran is arguably pleasant, and all I hear about is how the heck students and families are going to get their UK visas with the embassy being closed in the foreseeable future …

Meanwhile, it’s nice to see that our fellow countrymen are wasting no time in promoting war with Iran, in the event that IsraelEUS decide to forgo one. Well obviously, bombs on our heads are always a lovely, lovely prospect! So thank you! Your voice is a truly valuable addition to the Cain campaign.

And if you haven’t noticed the little left sidebar, I’m now on Twitter!

It’s  mighty hard to use it in Iran, even with the VPN network my sister has set intact. So I don’t know if I can keep it going for long! :-S

Ray the Hermit brought me there. Even though I still have strong reservations about Twitter “leading” the protests in Tehran, and would gladly arm wrestle any idiot who claims this, it is beautiful and haunting how I, an average pedestrian roaming Tehran, and Ray, a self-described Hermit roaming New York, could be so close, almost as if we were on one of our city excursions together.

Hope he is keeping safe … I shall try to do the same.

Iranian State media is using the “student” label to address the hooligans who stormed the UK embassy earlier today. I can’t help but  laugh at the irony of the situation. Ever since the election in Iran, the protesters (many of them REAL students) were labelled “hooligans”, “thugs” and “goons” by state media and now those same outlets are calling the embassy mobsters, “students”.

I sense a bit of linguistic deconstruction going on here …

To give them the benefit of the doubt, I will assume that many of these delinquents have a university card or two in their pocket, but I can still conjure of a dozen other labels to name them with before their “student”ness (or lack of) comes to mind.

But what perplexes me is the enthusiasm with which Western media were quick to follow suit. Following the 2009 selection, Iranian state media was overtly zealous to call demonstrators, protesters, prisoners and activists, “hooligans” and the Western press hardly ever bothered to note this, calling the people out on the street by their rightful name.

What’s up with it this time? Where is the proof that these mobsters are “students”?! And why has the BBC, AP, the Huffington Post, CNN, etc so enthusiastically followed Ahmadinejad’s RAJA NEWS?!

Could it be that labeling these thugs as ordinary Iranians, (a label such as “student” gets that across completely) helps the warmonering imagery that has been building momentum in Western press? (and which the IRI goons are only too happy to reinforce?)

Either way, someone tell CNN et al.:

Iranian “students” have either been expelled, detained, suspended, been forced to flee, disillusioned, are watching satellite TV, conversing indoors, hiking outdoors …. doing pretty much everything and anything but breaking windows and ripping pictures of an old, tired queen and her henchmen. There is as much “student” in these thugs as there is in the Football Hooligans who your own press dubs the British Disease. 

It is times like this that I feel very much alone …

Who will put an end to this madness? Or is that what every generation asks itself before its eventual demise?

In times of protest in Iran, you hear the exuberant cries of rallies behind the protesters, offering them useless, albeit enthusiastic support. It doesn’t matter where you go offline or online: Monarchist rallies, sites with the nuttiest commentators ever, like iranian.com to dinner parties, almost everyone is ready to cheer on “the people”, declare their long distance, internet love “for the people”, send their virtual, hearts and prayers to the “people”. Yes, uselss perhaps, and quite irrelevant to what happens on the ground … but heart warming in a cheesy Hallmark-card sort of way.

For those living outside of Iran, this is perhaps a single moment of unity, where those virtual hearts and prayers allow us to feel a connection to “back home”, that allow us to cheat ourselves into believing that we too “have done our part”.

But in times like this, when Iran is hit by a new round of preposterous sanctions,  that will work to cripple the work of millions of ordinary Iranians, those very “people” we were crying for … those same folks, if they find time to take a breather from their Nachos and Prime Time television, cheer on the warmongering of the West, as if IRI’s perfidy justifies the evil perpetuated by their most powerful counterparts in the Western hemisphere.

We can criticize the IRI for its absurd handling of the nuclear issue in light of Western aggression they KNEW was all too real and ready. But that does not in any way justify this aggression.

More peculiar still that this cheer leading is done in the name of “patriotism”.

I don’t believe in “patriotism” so outrageously today associated with support for governments; where allegiance to a country becomes at one with supporting the perfidies of the political establishment … Nor do I believe any land or its people have my unconditional devotion due to blood lines … I do believe in the power of nostalgia, and the power of memory to draw you to the familiar, to ignite in you passion and longing and love. But I would have felt the same had I been born in Portugal, Japan or Chile. That doesn’t prove the moral “superiority” of one geographical space to the other.

But no matter how you choose to define patriotism, I don’t see how anyone living outside of Iran can bring themselves to support sanctions -  when they themselves will be untouched by them. The moral high ground with which many expats cheer on perfidy and evil makes me vomit. Are they a majority? Are they an overtly active online minority?

At school I’d like to think the latter. Students who have just recently left their homeland to study abroad, rarely forget the hardships their families (and they themselves only a few short years ago) had to endure. When you are in school, speaking to students who understand and remember what it is like to walk the streets of Tehran and Isfahan and Ahvaz … the world doesn’t seem too lonely.

But then I visit a forum filled with self-described Iranian “patriots” cheering on this madness, or I attend a dinner party, and it comes back, all over again. I can’t bring myself to support abuse and brutality imposed on any people … Iranian or not … by any government … Iranian or otherwise. How can they support the continued brutalization of their own people, from both ends? It’s all for the “Greater good” they say. “Some day soon it will help the regime fall and it will all be worth it”.

Go to Iran to experience the greater good, and then we’ll talk you fucking, delusional scum bucket.

And for those of you still confused by the latest IAEA report, please refer to the venerable  Seymour Hersh.

Read Hamid Serri, in Informed Comment, talk about how:

Iran’s UN Inspectors are Repeating the Iraq Mistakes

Though I wouldn’t call them “mistakes” necessarily. The word implies a level of misunderstanding or misconception – whereas this feels more deliberate.

One of the most beautiful things I’ve seen lately. Director Meysam Azarzad spends a day at Tehran’s Bazaar and asks local Bazaar men to enact their favorite film scenes … Everything from The Man who Shot Liberty Valance to Forrest Gump to Taxi Driver to Iranian classics like The Cow. The director can also be seen giving them “subtle” directions

You can view the video here.

It’s stuff like this that makes me miss Tehran. You haven’t lived until you’ve sat down for tea with a witty Bazaar salesman …

I don’t know who Ahmad Rezaie was. Not sure I would have liked him if I did know who he was. I’m going to ignore little bits and snippets I’ve found and read about him (like his alleged anti-IRI statements, etc), and just imagine possible scenarios for a while …

In my school days, I met many a “minister’s” son and daughter: bache vazir (child of the [government] minister) we called them, implying they were offspring of second rate influential people in the political system. Agha Zadeh (son of Seigneur [lord]) was another term reserved for first tier offspring. But since at the end of the day, in the complex, convoluted Iranian political system, we were never sure who was first tier and who second, we just called everyone bache vazir.

There were those of them we liked, and those we didn’t like. Those who were staunchly and proudly pro-IRI and walked around with the basij (very few were like that), and those who meekly spoke out against. But most of the time, they were one of us: they dressed like us and talked like us and were politically like minded. They were just kids … Not freaks of nature. And we would grow good friends with them without even knowing of their notorious biological origins. After all, a last name like “Rezaie” is on par with “Smith”. Your classmates would ever know which Rezaie it was … until the lunch room whispers gave them away.

And then came the demanding stare from their peers, directed with laser precision : “so it’s your fault too?!”

I remember once meeting an offspring of Khomeini’s. It has always struck me at how so called “liberal” and spineless his offspring tend to be. Seeing this nurtured, baby like 20 something year old clad in his designer shoes, suit and sunglasses, my heart felt a sudden thud. “how dare he?” I wondered … “how dare he walk the earth without an apology tattooed on his forehead?”

That thought of mine is devoid of any logic, reason or rationality. We do not get to choose our parents, no more or less than they do get to choose us.

But when angers creeps up my back, reason never comes along for the ride.

As I got to know him better, his gullible manner, his baby eyes or the loud, outlandish giggles, seeing his uncles tepid foray into the political world made all the more sense.

We do not get to choose our parents, no more than they get to choose us. But I’m sure that if we were to roam many a bache vazir‘s household, we’d find that both parent and child would appreciate a baby swap. It was all the more tragic in homes where the father was genuinely ideological, trapped in a time machine that stopped moving post-1982. The children were always the disappointment, the fathers the fanatics. The mothers crushed under the burden of serving as a human shield to both sides.

Is this the father/child tragedy? Cronus & Zeus, Darth Vader and Luke Skywalker  … I don’t think it’s that grand. It’s not matter of the son wanting to overthrow the father, but the son wanting to breath outside his shadow … sometimes escaping, sometimes suffocating in the process.

… And so who knows who Ahmad Rezaie was, or what he was like?

Maybe he was another agha zadeh, driving Tehran’s posh neighborhoods with his Audi convertible, and slick, gel-infused hair (though as high profile as his father is, I doubt he would get away with such shenanigans). Maybe an ultra principalist regime supporter, made more and more obnoxious by the fact that his generation holds no genuine connection to the revolution or war like his father’s. Maybe he was a lost soul, roaming the world for a place that felt a bit less hostile. What was he doing in Dubai? What was the sound of his voice like? What kinds of movies did he like to watch? What did he do for a living? (if anything at all?) Did he have a girlfriend?

Frankly my dear, I don’t give a damn. He was the silent son, now having joined the ranks of the silent dead … All too familiar, all  too tragic, all too soon …

I must have been around 5 the year Khomeini died. And yet, I vividly remember the huge black cloth put up by the mosque in our neighborhood, the look of grief I saw everywhere.

I had grown up watching Khomeini before the afternoon children’s program, before the nightly news my grandfather watched. His image splattered everywhere I walked in our streets, seeing his photo with his grandson in my cousin’s school books … This old, funny looking man who seemed to (me) exude a sort of innocence. You see, he was a part of my family, I saw him more than some uncles and aunts. Contrast that to what I heard of him at dinner parties, and you got yourself one confused looking baby.

At home, my parents were adamant about speaking not a word of politics, but as young as I was, I noticed that my grandfather, who was quick to call Khomeini “the greatest butcher of the 20th century” was silent after the news of his death. Years later I asked him about it, and he said that he wasn’t sure what to make of the death, wasn’t sure what awaited the country after a brutal 10 years of war, revolution, executions and chaos.

In my lifetime, I have seen many a dictators fall … to old age, to escape, to trials and to murder.

I’ve also seen the world grow ever more accustomed to the murder of 16 year old boys without a second thought, nod or gesture.

So accustomed I’ve become to it, that I didn’t even flinch when I saw images of a seemingly dead Muammar Ghadaffi roaming the internet, news channels and newspapers. I think I have ceased to care. As euphoric as some Libyans will be, I doubt that the lives of ordinary Libyans became any less bearable today. Will it be so in 10 years? Maybe, but who really knows? Given the uncertainty surrounding Ghadaffi’s death in the first place, I doubt a bullet or two will determine Libya’s future. The fetishism of revenge on the other hand ….

I’ve become disgruntled with a world who relishes big events: the wedding, the graduation, the execution, the fall, etc, etc … where really, it’s the day after, and the days after that, that make all the difference. The Egyptians seem to understand that better than a whole lot of us right now …

On a warm, sunny day, on a last day of summer, on my 27^th birthday, I got my first tattoo. The warmth, fear and longing of the experience, as well as the stream of blood that poured, will stay with me always.

My grandfather grew amidst the Seville orange blossoms (nawranj), in a house quite similar to the one I grew up visiting in our native province of Khuzestan, give or take a few dozen servants who were long gone by the time I came along. A house I loved, so keenly, so observantly, so voraciously. It seemed only befitting to have that memory of childhood love engraved on my flesh, just as it has, throughout the years, been engraved within.

And when I walked into Dave’s studio with my copy of Siddhartha, pondering the meaning of life and death and promise, when he told me that he had read every last work by Herman Hesse, I knew that I had come to the right guy.

Tattoos are funny things. More often used as fashion statements, they are our way of connecting to and with memory, with love, with the past, with people and places long gone and forgotten. Long forgotten if not for the dark, musty corners of our involuntary memory, a mysterious hallway Proust loved to roam.

As Dave was working his way, as I was watching the masterful strokes of his paintbrush (or needle), as my blood poured out in drops, as I was involuntarily choking up at the thought of those orange blossoms, the smell of them, the way their shiny white petals shone in the hot, burning Khuzestan sun, I felt, in a very odd sort of way, release.

Blood is thicker than water they say. And with my blood, with an artist’s hand, a pledge had been forged. The trees and the house may fall tomorrow. But on my shoulders the flowers would rest, comfortably, for just a while longer. My memories will walk with me, talk with me and fall with me, one blossom at a time …

The most exciting part of being introduced to George R. R. Martin’s A Song of Ice and Fire series (aside from the books being ridiculously engaging and well written) is being able to dwell on politics, religion and governance on such a grand, versatile scale.

Watching the cat fights, dog fights and Russian roulette from inside Iran today raises so many important questions that consume me on a daily basis.

[Disclaimer: these are questions, thoughts, pondering, whatever you want to call them ... not prescriptions.]

What is democracy? Yes, I have read Plato, Aristotle and Rawls … It is not an academic answer I seek, but a practical one. I live in a ‘democratic’ state where the nation’s top builder can block our roads and driveways indefinitely, and the city doesn’t even wink, (despite the residents having tried to take the case to court). Where all funding for Gay Pride is threatened unanimously by the city council if the 15 member strong “Queers against apartheid” participate in the festivities, where most people are so consumed with American Idol and shopping that they fail to notice their country going up in flames (albeit slowly). Where signs, roads and billboards are splashed with the name of the nation’s top communications companies more avidly than you see Khoemini and martyrs in Iran. Where my friends gets assaulted on campus for handing out Israeli Apartheid Week brochures, and the dean asks her to apologize to the violent bastard (hey, at least she’s not being expelled like students @ U of Irvine).

Sure, it shit loads better than theocracy I hear over and over again and I am routinely blasted by Iranians for being “ungrateful”, namak nashnas. Sure I appreciate wearing my cute two piece while frolicking on the beach, I realize that is something Iran would forbid me … But I am hinting at something more … structural here. Granted that democracy, like freedom, is not an absolute, but it is not in absolutist terms that I ponder its meaning and significance.

No kidding. If the modern democratic state can only claim to be so much better than a theocracy, that’s not sayin’ much at all.

When we Iranians say “democracy” we mean very immediate things: release of prisoners, not having our sons and daughters killed by militias out on the streets or their bodies mutilated in prisons or a totalitarian “supreme” leader who can fuck us all with a simple gesture of his hand … things that were more or less summarized by Rafsanjani and Mousavi two years ago, after the selection.

But when we chant and cry and yell “democracy” there is more depth to it than those immediate demands. So what is it? Where do we find it? I don’t live in a democracy, I live in a populist oligarchy, a consumerist authoritarian state, leagues worse than the one Marcuse envisioned. When he wrote One Dimensional Man, he was being too kind, or too optimistic … all that is left, it seems, is .0000000001 dimensions of a man.

So is this what we are striving to become? Is it a consumerist authoritarian state which we seek? Is that an end worth ones life, day or even hour? I’ve watched this nation go from being one of the best countries in the world, one of the best practicing examples of fair and just governance … to a semi-totalitarian state and still going … In fact, it seems to me that the (relative) freedom and equality people enjoyed as I was growing up, worked to make them lazy and pacified, to take things for granted perhaps? To not see when the rug is being pulled from under their Birkenstock and Louboutin clad feet. And herein itself lies one of the biggest quandaries capitalist “democracies” face: to have a real, vibrant, functional one requires daily maintenance, effort and pain.

Iranian admiration for this state of affairs is no indicator either, as for all intents and purposes, the Iranian population that enters the West is highly educated or professional, and so the lower echelons of society they do not see. I’ll hurl if I hear one more Iranian-American croon about how great America is on youtube, unless they’ve spent a day with the millions and millions of Americans living without healthcare, education, clean water or housing, the 12 year olds working 14 hours a day to pick the apples we so “thankfully” shove into our pies for Thanksgiving. Spend a day with the victims of American bombs and bullets in Iraq, Afghanistan, Pakistan, Palestine, etc, etc and then sing “land of the free” while you wolf down a McBurger.

Not that this shit doesn’t go on in Iran. But as I said before: if the modern democratic state can only claim to be so much better than a theocracy, that’s not sayin’ much at all.

Yes, thank goodness for the iPod, and highly advanced medical research. But I am not looking on a local level here. There are 6+ Billion of us and growing. What percentage would give a fuck about the glory of your research institution or the awesomeness of your new app? What percentage are actually working as slaves to bring it to you?

So yeah, how’s that democracy thing working out for ya? I’ve heard folks in Scandinavia enjoy the more authentic kind, but I’ve never been there, so who knows?

Another point of interest to me is the the continuous irrelevance of the expat community, and our continuous insistence on the ‘significant role’ we play. I don’t even understand why citizens living outside countries are allowed to vote. If you don’t live in a place, your opinion ceases to matter. You may like to fall into the Friedmanian “world as global village” bullshit, but that’s just what it is: cow dung. Many Iranians I see are so far removed from daily life in Iran, where at best, their claim to any connection is the family dinner conversations over kabob they have once a year (or decade) whey they fly to the “mother land” for family visits. And don’t get me started on “Iranians are …” or “Eyeranians believe … ” where “Iranian” is cousin Aghdas and Aunt Shirin and Amou Morteza. Yo motherfucker! The world is not your dinner table, so quit yacking!

Most of it sounds like self-righteous banter to me, and quite self-serving too as they claim “revolution” will sweep the country by next week and they can fly back to Shangri-La by the end of September and purchase that penthouse by the Caspian sea.

It’s one thing to care about your homeland, it’s another to make prescriptions for it. I think I realize the role that an academic community can play, in spreading ideas and democratic debate. But to write rubbish and make uneducated assumptions and claims ad nauseum … As an expat, it makes me cringe. As an Iranian inside Iran, it makes me angry. I don’t understand how that is helpful, although it certainly does make a lot of us feel better.

To me, it’s a feast for crows, always. Totalitarian crows inside and outside Iran pecking on the bodies and blood of real people, living real lives. Leaving them the hell alone is the only way I’ve found around this dilemma so far. Thus the silence here.

… And Iran

So by now you’ve heard of the beautiful Lake Oroomiyeh shrinking … The historic SioSeh Pol breaking … Grand Persepolis going under water. Just recently a historic church in the province of Kerman was demolished … and weeks before that another ancient square in Kerman was demolished as well.

Before long, all of Iran will be under rubble, with the golden sticks of Khomeini’s cursed mausoleum the only last standing structure.

The sad part? He will be the one to have the last laugh.

In a taxi, in the southern Iranian province of Khuzestan:

It was a hot, humid day. A typical summer day in Khuzestan, where it gets so hot that you can barely muster enough energy to breathe. When the streets are practically empty, lest for those unfortunate creatures whose errands or jobs or curiosity gets the better of them. The gods had blessed us with no sandstorm that day, and for that, I was grateful. Humidity, heat and sandstorms are never, ever fun.

I was in the taxi with two other passengers. A man in the front, and a man in the back. I was hoping, hoping that no one else would get inside, as three people in the back of a taxi, their arms touching in this heat, would make me sweat a waterfall.

In the distance, we could make out an old, bent man signalling for a cab. As we got nearer we could make out the black turban on his head. It was an old clergyman waving his hand for a taxi, we could make out his silhouette from the distance. His back was crooked, almost bent at 90 degrees. The driver grumbled, as they always do before taking on a clergyman, an akhond, and then stopped.

Rats.

The guy in the front got out, sat in the back and offered his seat to the cleric. The man looked ancient, as if from another time & century. When he got in, probably sensing the animosity through the stench of sweat and humidity, he said: “don’t worry folks, only here for a short ride, these legs won’t do anymore”.

No one replied.

A few minutes later, he asked the driver: “would you mind pulling into that alley? I really can’t walk anymore.”  The driver said quickly: “only if you do me a favor too.” And made a right turn to stop in the alleyway where the cleric had pointed to.

The cleric walked out, paid his fare and said: “so, what can I do for you?”

The driver responded: “Mr, when you folks are finally kicked out of this country for good, will you let me be the one to have your head?”

With a  straight face the cleric responded: “would love to, but I’ve already promised my head to about a dozen other people. They’re all anxiously waiting for it.”

And with that he closed the door and walked away. And we sat there, watching the horizon across his crooked back.

As a likely UN vote on Palestine (and a subsequent US veto) becomes more imminent …

On a recent expedition at Mehrnews, the – once – excellent state news and photo website, I was surprised to find page after page of photos of Palestine-related events in Tehran and the provinces. There is usually one at least. But out of the 20 photo galleries on the main photo page, 9 were focused on Palestine. Some of these pictures follow.

Friends and colleagues often ask me: what is the Islamic Republic’s obsession with Palestine?

Really, what gives?

I am  not an expert on this by any means, but I always try to make a few educated guesses. Iranians I know, have very differing views on this – as would be expected. A vast majority, just don’t give a damn (the photos above may be very telling). While Ahmadinejad and Netanyahu try to portray an Iran that is Israel-obsessed, the picture on the ground could not be far from this. While Iranians are busy trying to get home in one of the world’s’ worse traffic jams, keep track of rising gas prices and attempt to pass the university entrance exam, they don’t have much time to worry about Palestine, the occupation, or Israel’s lunatic politics (after all, they have enough of their own, thank you very much).

Others, are strongly oblivious to the horrific state of affairs in occupied Palestine and its suffering, reminding me of Arafat’s alliance with Saddam Hussein during the Iran-Iraq War and the Arab/Iranian rivalry. This is especially prominent among young people (my fellow classmates to be precise, I can not and do not speak for Iran’s budding young population) who simply do not understand the IRI’s obsession with Israel’s human rights abuses when it so vehemently ignores its own. The obsession has made these Iranians oblivious and exasperated with anything related to Palestine, and often you’ll have to admit: who can blame them? I was in Iran during the onslaught on Gaza and it was so perversely played out on IRIB that even I – someone who claims to be quite concerned with developments in that region and especially the occupation – was sick of it.

Some, while objecting Israeli aggression, believe that we have too much to worry about to invest in the Israel/Palestine issue and it has cost us dearly on the international front. Yet others see Iranian support for Hamas and Hezbollah as a pragmatic geopolitical gesture in a region surrounded by dangers, from American troops in Iraq and Afghanistan to Israeli threats against Iran. They see this as further proof that the Iranian establishment is indeed a rational one, and at least on the international stage, not “unpredictable lunatics or crazies” as often portrayed by the Israeli government.

Journalists like Ahmad Zeydabadi [who has been brutally silenced and imprisoned since 2009 without a single day of leave] attribute the obsession to the Iranian government’s own egregious human rights abuses. So long as the Islamic Republic can point fingers to Israel, it can leave itself unscathed. So long as images of dead Gazan children and brutalized victims can play out on TV, no one will notice the IRI’s own killing spree. This strategy, ironically, greatly parallels that of Israel’s own. As parodied by this hilarious video, the Israeli position regarding its barbaric treatment of Palestinians is:

“The french? the Vichy regime. The Turks? massacred the Armenians and the Kurds. Norway? killed all the salmon. So what do we tell the world? DON’T PREACH US MORALS!”

But that can’t be the entire picture, can it? Even if support for Hezbollah and other groups was driven by geopolitical interests, what drives the fervent pro-Palestinian imagery that is used in the country’s political and state-sponsored cultural discourse on a daily basis?

Listening to a euphoric Ayatollah Khomeini in the early days oft the revolution (as “euphoric” as that bitter old man could sound), seeing himself rise as the “leader of the Islamic world” (at least according to political rhetoric), it is no surprise that he saw utmost support for Palestine as a must in this quest. You could not be lay claim to the leadership of the “Islamic World” (whatever that phrase is supposed to mean) and gain sympathy among its millions of Arab members without proclaiming Palestine as Number 1 on your agenda (even though the question of Palestine is not specifically a religious one). Long term questions that policymakers should deal with, like what a Palestinian state would mean for Iran’s interest in the region, or how that state could actually be achieved wasn’t part of the equation.

Because for all this verbal support, what has Iran actually ever done to pave the way for a Palestinian state?

Speaking to the Palestinian delegation at the United Nations, “nothing” would be far too generous a response. “On good days [when the Iranian government practiced a more dignified foreign policy, as in the days of Khatami] they would respond to a nod or a greeting. On bad days [as in now] they do not even bother” a member of the delegation tells me. Iran has rarely voted for or loosely supported resolutions put forth by the Palestinian delegation at the General Assembly brushing them aside as “pro-American” – even when those resolutions were regarding education and water. Because, according to the Iranians, the Palestinian Authority is a “tool of the West” after all.

Verbal, economic or even military support for Hamas has not proven particularly effective for Palestinians [if you think otherwise, let me know why] and either way, there’s no way to know the extent of it. Supporting other international solidarity efforts like the BDS movement has never been an option, as Iran and Israel share no – open – economic ties in the first place.

The most pragmatic step Iran has ever taken in achieving a Palestinian state can be attributed to the Khatami presidency when all 57 members of the Organization of the Islamic Conference (including Iran) expressed their support for the Arab Peace Initiative that would guarantee Israel normalized relations with its neighbors in return for land occupied post-1967. (Although Ahmadinejad later denied having supported the initiative in talks with the Saudis). It remains to be seen how Iran will vote if a vote on a Palestinian state ever makes its way to the floor of the General Assembly (after all, Iran’s position is that all of historic Palestine is Palestine). A Palestinian state on anything but 100% of historic Palestine is the grand “defeat” that Iranians are trying to avoid … or so they say.

If you pay close attention to the imagery that comes with this support something else becomes evident: the Palestinian quest for independence has been strangely meshed with that of the IRI’s. Look at Iranian textbook that feature young Iranian fighters besides Palestinians, or to the rhetoric of the Iranian Basij forces. At times, you will have difficulty distinguishing the quest for Palestinian statehood with the quest of the Iranian Basij for … what exactly? isn’t the focus ironically.

What goals do Palestinian activists and freedom fighters and the Iranian basij have in common, you could ask? After all, the activists work for no particular government or political system, but rather, for the aspiration of one. The Iranian government on the other hand, is an existing, established ruling institution with very real demands and visions of what its future should be. What are the common aspirations that they share?

Like any great tale or allegory, the details aren’t the focus (why couldn’t Cinderalla ‘t simply stay after 12 to explain her situation? How could Mufasa be such a benevolent Lion King if he had banished the hyenas to die? What exactly does the Iranian establishment and occupied Palestine have in common? etc). Rather, the existence of this common quest is the focus, not what the actual quest is or could be.

And for good reason: the Palestinian effort, a very real tangible, legitimate one, is exploited for the establishment’s own murky, not-so-legitimate quests. The point was never to help them achieve a state anyways.

According to the grade 5 religious studies textbook, this common quest is “the freedom of the Islamic world from bloodthirsty enemies”. Helping fuel this allusion is the Iran-Iraq war when Iran was physically fighting a foreign adversary supported and sponsored by the West. True that the war has been over for over 20 years now … but the political rhetoric of war of course, is a cornerstone of the Iranian establishment and lives on to this very day.

By using this imagery, Iranian hardliners are able to convey the Israeli brutality towards Palestinians as an act of aggression against all the oppressed people of the world or those seeking justice & independence –> the Islamic world –> the Iranian government –> and thus against Iran herself thus “proving” that foreign adversary are behind any opposition to the establishment. Opposing the ruling class becomes at one with opposing the oppressed, the country as a whole, and support for “the enemy”. This was most evident in the post-June 2009 era when Basij forces at schools would often use the Israel example to prove that foreign forces were behind opposition to the election. It’s as if the brutality of Israel towards Palestinians proves their allegations about the perception of onslaught on Iran.

Providing more fuel to the fire is what Stephen Walt calls  “half-truths”. NOT untruths. When lies are based on a segment of reality, but not the entirety of it; when they only tell half the story. This half-truth is Ahmadinejad’s claim to fame and a strong argumentative style utilized by hardliners.

Yes, the occupation is real, Israel’s vehement human rights abuses are real; Israel is an apartheid state or on track to becoming one; the West does, so far as policy making goes, overlook that entirely and does carry out its foreign policy with horrendous double standards; yes, threats against Iran are real … yes, yes and yes …

But how does that tie into criticism of the IRI? Or its own political, religious and social violence?

Back in the day when we had open friendship and discussions with the Basij in our schools, I had many lively discussions with my Basiji friends about Palestine, Israel and Iran.

In there answers to me, I could find a mix of many things. There was always the genuine concern about people living under occupation. But when asked about other atrocities going on in the world and other people under occupation, especially those with which the IRI had quite budding relations, they had few relevant answers to offer.

Because the most ironic reality in all of this is that Palestinian and Iranian lives could not be further and farther removed from one another. While Europeans and Americans can actually visit the region if they so choose and touch the conditions on the ground, no Iranian, from the highest official to the youngest Basij student has been to Palestine or seen the conditions there up close. So when I would press my classmates further about conditions there, about laws, about Israeli and Palestinian society … they really can not offer you much. (No, they’re not into reading Electronic Intafada or Mondoweiss either). Rather, their only attachment to the Palestinian reality is state sponsored outlets which offers very little.

Funnier still is that these Basijis could not believe how I could be critical of the Iranian government … while agreeing with many of their views related to Israel/Palestine or American foreign policy in the region. This is where the half-truth prove quite influential: the hardliners have partly succeeded in projecting a world in which being against the policies of the IRI has become one and the same as accepting and applauding Israeli brutality and the hawkish vision of the world all together. I believe this is the same mindset that allowed some leftist bloggers and intellectuals to viciously attack protesters as “American led Gucci kids” following the June 2009 election in Iran.

My Basiji friends could not believe or fathom how I could believe Palestine to be one of the most important issues of our time, especially as Middle Easterners. How I could know leagues more about the region than they, beyond rhetoric. And even though a viable Palestinian state will not be achieved in our lifetime, I agree with the great Edward Said who said the quest for this state is what will keep generations of people in hope, persistence and agony.

But my question to them always was: how could the Iranian support for Palestine become more pragmatic? That is, in line with Iranian and Palestinian interests? IF such a thing is possible at all? (were it ever to be an actual aim of the Iranian establishment)

That is where the conversation always ended, because they had little to offer and they would so admit. “It will take time” they said. “Israel will not last forever, it will self-destruct, and Palestinians will be free.” This is, I think, the same mindset in which Mahmoud Ahmadinejad made the notorious “vanish from the page of time” statement regarding Israel, which Nazila Fathi of the NYT wrongly and quite unapologetically translated as “wipe off the map.”

While neither statement can be considered wise or courteous, the former is not a proclamation of violence. It is a vision of sugar plum fairies which Ahmadinejad went further to express: “the day [will come] that all refugees return to their homes [and] a democratic government elected by the people comes to power”.

There is no need to vie for the creation of a Palestinian state in only 22% of historic Palestine, because it already exists – it’s just not in the hands of those it should be.

There was this genuine, adamant belief that Israel would “disappear” leaving all of historic Palestine to its pre-1918 inhabitants (though they had never heard of the Theodor Herzl or the Balfour Declaration or where/what exactly “historic Palestine” was). When I pressed them further about how this disappearance would take place, there was no answer. However, not once was there any talk of violence, or use of force. In fact, they were convinced that the “state” would disappear, “as all corrupt regimes eventually do”, and the people living in historic Palestine would “figure it out among themselves.”

Really?

Here’s hoping that all peoples of the world, us Iranians included, will figure it out among ourselves.

Sugar plums anyone?