Pedestrian

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 …