Pedestrian

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?

I ask myself this question every year, right about now, from a month before … maybe up until a month later, maybe two, or three or four … until the days join one another in a constant rotating loop and I can’t really tell which June 12th it is and which one is coming. But every year, around this time, I ask: what does June 12th mean to me? You know, I brainstorm, in the messy, chaotic way our minds all do.

What does it mean? What does it taste like? Smell like? Feel? And if I were to offer a canvas of all the things that rush to me, throw me back in a violent jolt or thud … it might look something like this, give or take those words that transcend language, that only make my heart beat faster or my palms sweat – but for which the dialects and expressions I’ve learned offer no word, phrase or utterance.

Glorious hope

Euphoria

Excitement

Worry

Pain

Blood

Sohrab

Haleh

Hoda Saber

Tears, boundless  unending  forever

Mourning

Life

.

.

.

Not “life” if you take it to be promise or hope or birth. But that June 12th was only a symbol of the life that was to be for an entire generation. It might have been a turning point in many ways for many of us. But in the end, it was only a symbol … to us and strangely, to the outside world. Maybe because what the world heard and saw was just too big to turn away. And for a moment, it was worth turning off American Idol or Grey’s.  It’s the day they chose to turn back and give us a glare, a glimpse a nod. But to us, to those of us living and breathing and walking within the walls of Iran, it was a manifestation of life. As it was. As it will be.

Haleh Sahabi and Sohrab and Ashkan and Mohsen and Behzad Mohajer and … were symbols too. But they were flesh and blood as well. Walking, talking, breathing flesh whose blood was smeared and spread all over the walls, all over the street and stores and parks and restaurants. And we will live our entire lives with the stench of that cold, merciless blood in walking distance, within arms length.

They are a part of the life … death … that surrounds us. That swallows us. From which there is no escape. From which there never was.

Except for one moment maybe, a singular dot out in the horizon. A Mirage. Towards which we all ran, and for which we all cried out loud, so loud that the gods turned away from their merriment for only a split second, and the world stopped.

Listen. That is June 12th.

How does the world go on with such boundless evil?

Ezatollah Sahabi died today, 81. 81 years of uncompromising integrity, sincerity and honor.

It was 81+ years too soon.

We mourn the loss of pop stars, politicians and ayatollahs. Isn’t it weird that the true heroes, the ones whose life makes ours  just a tad better or bearable, bid us farewell in the absence of sound? They bring us peace, in life and in their death.

For a while last week, Iranian Blogistan, facebook, etc was set ablaze with this particular video of a former madam now upgraded to some pretty fancy shmancy position inside foreign policy circles:

Iranian students in the US will finally have multiple entry visas, like the rest of humanity!

Halleluja! The Iranians shouted out with glee. And for all the right reasons. Iranian students, being the kick a** terrorists that we are, are only eligible for single entry visas to the US. If they ever decide to exit the country to visit their homeland (or anywhere else for that matter), they will have to reapply for a student visa. While some take that chance, the majority, knowing that the state of visas for Iranians is highly dependent on a bunch of seven-year-old stormtroopers on steroids, choose not to take that risk.

While not understanding why they even choose the United States in the first place, I have watched my friends’ anguish, sadness and longing as they are virtually trapped away from home. So this piece of news is astounding, and long overdue.

HIP, HIP HORAAAAAAAAAAAAY!

…………………. Before you start the celebrations however, listen to the madam again.

This new law only applies to those in the “nontehnical, nonsensitive” fields.

Say what?

I think I read somewhere that over 70% of Iranian students in the US are in engineering and related fields.

Is that “tehnical” or non? “Sensitive” or none? An “electrical engineer” can be doing “sensitive” research, no? Who is going to determine that?

If you have more information on this, please let me know. But thus far, this seems like the typical Obama approach: pretend or talk about “yes we can”, talk about doing something significant … while not really doing anything significant at all. I could pull out the stats, most Iranian students in the US are in fields that can be considered “technical or sensitive”. Surely the bogus president (or his even more bogus advisers) know the stats better than you or I?

What we’ve been able to understand with my friends, is that first of all, those with a visa in the US already, need to leave the country to reapply. Then, the “sensitivity” or “tehnicality” of their field is left to the mercy of another moron (aka immigration officer). So unless you are going to the US to study mural painting or culinary arts, you’re still up in the air [hint: you could always look north or west on the map!] .

Then again, what if you want to use your cooking skills to feed a bunch of terrorists? Will that be considered “sensitive”? Or paint the harrowing death chambers of an ugly terrorist with a mile long beard?

But hey, as you’re painting his malodorous, repugnant cave that smells of sweat and rose water, sing out “yes we can” … you might actually convince yourself to believe it.

On May 24th, 1982 Khorramshahr was liberated. Here’s a story of the soldiers – and the hens – that brought this “victory” to fruition.

——————————

He always tells the story of entering Abadan only a few days after the start of the war, as a soldier. The city had been bombed to shreds.

It was a ghost town, he says. Doors were left open, furniture and suitcases thrown in the middle of the road. As the inhabitants had struggled to take out whatever they could, bits and pieces were left everywhere. Pots and pans, clothes, toys, … all reminiscent of life that no longer was.

And among all of that, he well remembers the sight (and stench) of dead chickens. Dead white factory chickens everywhere. Near the small chicken farms, he said you could smell the stench of their bodies from a mile away. In yards and front lawns too.

The only remaining whisper that signaled the life that once was, he says, were the golden hens. The factory chickens had died (of trauma perhaps?) but the golden hens had not. They were fidgeting away in the backyards. Running, scared, frustrated (anyone who has ever owned a chicken knows they can get mighty frustrated) but alive.

The soldiers were exhilarated to see them. They could upgrade from canned beans for the day. But they had never thought that catching an angry golden hen was leagues harder than fighting a war.

“They had survived a bomb attack” he said. “They had survived the enemy, I didn’t want them to die at the hand of friends.”

He ate canned beans that day. The soldiers had a feast with the few chickens they were able to catch.

And outside, the war continued for another ~1/10th of a century.

“Game of Thrones” is a new HBO series airing on Sundays (whooooooooooooooaaaaaaaaaaaa, 52 hours to go!!!)  A medieval fantasy drama based on George R. R. Martin’s A Song of Ice & Fire.

The story is set in the Seven Kingdoms of Westeros, where “summers span decades and winters can last a lifetime” and chronicles the violent dynastic struggles among the kingdom’s seven noble families for control of the Iron Throne; as the series opens, additional threats from the snow and ice covered region north of Westeros and from the eastern continent across a narrow sea are simultaneously beginning to rise. [HBO]

Dubbed “the Sopranos of Middle Earth” what sets apart A Song of Ice & Fire from my childhood favorite Lord of the Rings is the vivid, brutal portrayal of characters and relationships beyond time and space. This is not a mythical story, it has social, political and even philosophical threads that are so real (Hobbes and Machiavelli among others, would be proud).

The series has just begun and has only recently (in the 5th episode which aired last week) picked up the complexity and speed of the books. But from the beginning, the hero, Eddard Stark played by the awesomeness of Sean Bean, reminds me of a medieval Mir Hossein Mousavi.

Eddard (Ned) Stark is Lord of Winterfell, and Warden of the North and has now been swayed to King’s Landing to become Hand of the King (top aide to the monarch). He sees the corruption, the evil plaguing the empire, and will go out of his way to bring change – within the system. It is – partly – his loyalty to the establishment that motivates him to rectify its shortcomings and evils … But the “system” is mutilated beyond repair and it is his loyalty to it that will force him to pay the ultimate price.

Beyond that, the “crazy” ruling the empire, talks of white walkers and dragons, isn’t all too unfamiliar to us Iranians either.

In 2009, when the Iranian elections were in national – and international – spotlight, during the TV debate between Mousavi and Ahmaidnejad,which kept us Iranians, all over the globe glued to our TV (or monitor) screens, something funny happened. Mir Hossein Mousavi, the soft spoken, apprehensive opposition candidate said on live TV: “this government is a government of fortunetellers and exorcists.”

Mousavi was to pay a heavy price for these words.

Following the election, when the Supreme Leader openly backed Ahmadinejad in his notorious Friday Prayer speech, he also directly targeted Mousavi’s statement, condemning those who “blatantly attribute magic and wizardry to the government.”

How ironic indeed.

By now, word of Ahmadinejad’s falling out with the leader have made headline news. What has made less of an international headline is the stories of goblins and spirits that have entered OFFICIAL political discourse in Iran.

In fact, it was headline news just today, May 9th 2011: The Exorcists have been detained.

Jinn - supernatural creatures depicted in the Koran as occupying a parallel world to that of mankind, are a part of Iranian folklore. They are goblin like creatures, between a man and a ghost. I grew up with funny stories my grandfather told of “jinns” his grandmother had claimed to see in their basement. In a 800 year old mosque [imamzadeh] in our hometown, jinns are depicted as goblin like creates with big, fat stomachs and two ugly ears. The phrase “eyneh jinn” [just like a jinn] is widely used in our language. When someone pops up out of nowhere, or looks scary, we say “he jumped at me, eyneh jinn.”

But exorcism, séance and mediumship are not everyday Iranian practices. I don’t know how widespread these practices are, compared to other countries? In my lifetime at least, I have heard very little of these pursuits. Twice in high school and once in university, classmate would tell me that they practice séances at home with their parents using a ouija board, I heard occasional tales of some old man in the middle of nowhere who keeps jinns in his basement … but that’s the extent of it.

Esfandiyar Rahim Mashaie, the president’s faithful BFF for whom he has had to pay a heavy price, has long been rumored to practice such voodoo magic, long before the 2009 election.

But a few weeks ago, rumors surfaced about a particular Abbas Ghaffari, the government’s personal “Jinn Gir” – exorcist – who has been practicing his magic on his interrogators after his arrest. It was rumored that his main interrogator had died of a heart attack.

The reason why these stories are not only wild rumors but actual political discourse is because a number of high ranking Iranian politicians (including former parliament speaker Haddad Adel) have come out condemning “exorcists and wizardry practices by some in the government”.

Today, the judiciary spokesman, Mohsen Ejei who served as the Minister of Intelligence in the previous Ahmadinejad cabinet, in a press conference officially announced that the “exorcists have been arrested.”

My question is: why now? Is it an attempt by the Supreme Leader to further weaken Ahmadinejad and make him out to seem like a total nutjob, which he had previously ignored in his zealous approval of him? How much does the Iranian public accept the influence of evil spirits and goblins anyway? Did the SL ‘feel’ the spirits were causing him trouble? Is this just another distraction? The extent of the arrests and discussions makes me guess otherwise.

But really, to have wizards and genies as headline news in your country, spoken of by some of the highest officials in the land, is quite a feat. I have to pinch myself to believe that all this talk of ghosts and goblins and spirits and exorcism, are actual discussions taking place inside the circles of our political elite. Game of Thrones seems to have less fantastical elements than our pragmatic politics.

Wish they were watching Casper instead. He’s cute, cuddly and knows a thing or two about living peacefully with humans.

Blood cupping (Hejamat) and leeching (zaloo andakhtan) – both forms of bloodletting – have been practiced in Iran for hundreds of years. If you traveled the old parts of Tehran and knew where to look, you would still find the medical buildings and offices that were in operation. Some people in older, more traditional parts of towns still insist on going through the procedure at least once a year, during spring time.

The whole method is strongly woven into religious teachings, most evident by the doctor or practitioner asking you to say a salawat before he lets the blood pour. In the event that you’re Jewish, Christian, Zoroastrian, etc he asks you to “say god’s name in whichever way you please”.

What if I’m an atheist?

As he’s making little cuts on your back and letting the blood come out, I guess you just don’t want to argue theological matters.

Such practices have been forgotten for decades now, but they are slowly gaining momentum.

My friends’ mothers, educated, beautiful women who enthusiastically pursue yoga, mountain climbing and Chanel reissue 2.55 have leeches put on their face religiously once ever year, around spring time, and they claim “that nothing in this world makes our skin look as radiant”.

My own grandmother, who would have raised a fit at the slight mention just a few years ago, now has it done on her hands once a year. The terrible hand pain that a dozen surgeons and specialists couldn’t fix, she says, was cured by the black ugly creatures.

The Ministry of Health closely watches these institutions and their practices. As my grandmother jokingly says the leeches they use are “beautifully packaged and sealed” (the leeches must come from the ministry where they are stored in neat, stamped jugs of water). They must be placed in the bottle after use, where salt is poured on them for their demise. Then, the practitioner must return the dead corpses to the ministry, exactly the number he took. This is to make sure that they are not reused. In old days, one told me, they used to let the leeches roam in water, and they would be reused – a surefire way to spread all sorts of unmentionable diseases.

This particular practitioner is a very tall 30 something year old man who lives on Tehran’s Mowlavi street. His family has lived there for generations, and operates a tekkiyeh [tents which are raised for the ten days of Shi'a mourning during Ashura] at the neighborhood mosque. His father has a small stand in the bazaar where he sells socks. He got into this profession by taking classes at the Ministry of Health, and getting his license. He works for a doctor, and if you’ve made a prior appointment, they both visit your house with the lovely leeches. They charge per leech. Around 7000 Tomans [$7] per leech.

As for me? I went to the “Moasseyeh Tahghighateh Hejamateh Iran” [The Iranian Blood Cupping Research Institute] to try it out and see what it was all about. But I went a few days after having survived the worst case of diarrhea I’ve experienced during my adult life (I’m guessing the culprit to be a small, dirty but delicious sandwich I had in Ferdowsi Square). The doctor took one look at me and said: “why did you come? You’re way too weak to do this, I can just tell from under your eyes. Eat some warm foods for ten days and then come back.” (the Ministry of Health also requires licensed MDs to be stationed at these institutions).

This particular office is a beautiful old house with gorgeous Aubretia Purple Cascade, in Tehran’s Forsat street. The flowers are in full bloom, a fusion of purple buds everywhere surrounding the entire area, making you feel like you’re swimming in a purple cup … it is the start of spring after all. Everything is different here, it’s like stepping into a different period all together. It is a feeling I rarely get in Tehran anymore and I travel the city, from place to place to place, trying to find it, if only for a few minutes at a time. Maybe it is 1930s Tehran? Dashmashdi is what I would call it, even the female doctor is, even the jovial caretaker who stands by the door.

I didn’t get to try out hejamat, so I went to the bookstore, a tiny room in the middle of the yard. When I asked the salesman for a book to recommend, he reached out for a book by a “German doctor who has been reseraching Hejamat in the Middle East for 20 years”. I told him that it was a book by an Iranian researcher I preferred, since I wanted to know more about the history of Hejamat in Iran. He looked at me and said: “oh, most people disregard the books by Iranian authors, migan een Iraniha hichi sareshoon nemishe [they believe that the Iranian don't know much about anything] that’s why I recommended the book by the German guy. Dr. Neshat [the head of the institute] himself has written on hejamat extensively. I’ll give you some of his work.”

And so failed my first attempt at hejamat.

But here are some photos from a Hejamat Institution in Mashad, in north eastern Iran.

In the last photo, where the man is getting his shirt, the poster to the left says: “Hejamat is good for the teeth”.

You can also check out this article in the journal of Complementary Therapies in Medicine: “The effectiveness of wet-cupping for nonspecific low back pain in Iran: A randomized controlled trial”.

My first real, vivid memories of this world took shape in a time and place where the universe had no grand villains.

Perhaps Stan Lee & Co. were on a short hiatus.

Adolf Hitler and the evils of WWII were decades and decades past, more like horrid fables than my reality. The end of the cold war had meant an end to the “communist” evil, Muslims had yet to leave their day jobs en masse to become full time terrorists, the Israelis and Palestinians were signing the Oslo accords, and while the land grab and brutalization continued, there was that glimmer of hope. The president of the United States was more notorious for his libido than his war mongering antics. Khomeini had died and I knew very little about his quiet, uncharismatic heir apparent. Rafasanjani, though certainly not as popular as his successor Khatami, was nowhere near as despised as Ahmadinejad. I vividly remember images of Yeltsin, Clinton, Rabin, Arafat, Rafsanjani, etc, etc, on the evening news. But there were no big, internationally acclaimed bogeymen on the world stage. No superstars, no spectacles. At least not that a six year old would recall.

Yes, that was also the age when Iranian and Iraqi corpses were still freshly rotting out on the fields, the blood gargling, ripe, moist. The Rwandan genocide was taking place before our eyes. But somehow so long as the savages are civil enough to remain in their own decrepit, miserable cage, far from view, it just never seems so bad.

Fast forward just a few years, and all that had changed. The world had become a full fledged comic book. The good guys with the fair(er) hair and the shiny, designer superhero capes and armor, the bad guys with the coarse ugly beards, barbaric tongue and no table manners.

And beneath all of that, the crumbling and crushing of bones and flesh.

All of this did not come about overnight of course. I was just too young and naive to predict or understand what was coming.

So today, as this saga continues, I fail to see the significance of yet another corpse. Even though it was a corpse saturated with all the hate and evil that there is in the world, the flesh and bone of fathers, the tears of children, the blood of mothers and sisters and wives.  Even though it is a corpse that is long overdue. Even though it is a corpse that massacred thousands of innocent lives, and annihilated the possibility of many more. But I cringe to witness what he has left in his wake: in his rotting carcass, he has left a world in which there are too many of his clones roaming, killing, watching. In killing us, he has had the power to sliver in and replicate himself.

It was the ripening of this horror story, this endless replication, which allows the senseless slaughter to go on. One death will not change it. Except for those like Osbama, who would have us think that this really is a comic story with good vs. evil, with one grand opening and one majestic finale.

But what finale?

Will American troops be coming home now?

Will Afghans and Iraqis be left to live in peace (or war)?

Will the people who see fundamentalism as their only route to survival, decide to embrace a more tolerant worldview?

Will the hundreds of thousands of lives that were ruthlessly destroyed for this great “success” be  redeemed at the cashier’s register?

Will the US suddenly cease to be a mighty military killing machine?

Will this seneless slaughter stop?

No.

So I fail to see why the absence of one life really carries any weight – except for a certain Osbama’s reelection.

Will this “better world” for which the terrorists – American and Middle Eastern – strive now finally become reality?

I pretty much doubt it. Whoever was writing the comic book has a sick sense of humor, or knows tragedy all too well. Unlike most superhero stories, you can no longer tell the good from the bad; the superhero from the villain; the damsel in distress from the evil sidekick. It all becomes one and the same.

“They’re savages, they celebrate our killing and death” is what I have heard so many times before.

Last night, the streets of Washington must have been an ironic site indeed.

But one thing this will do: it will serve the spectacle well. Journalists, analysts, experts, pundits, etc, etc will write and talk and bark and spew for months. It will be a marvelous addition to the comic book. Along with images of the airplanes crashing into the twin towers, along with the tears and blood of the dying, along with “mission accomplished” and one terrorist’s politician’s pompous victory video speech after another.

Osbama claims that the world is now a “safer” place. Just like that, like switching off a button or waving a magic wand. Who knew it was that easy? But will this “better, safer world” for which we non-terrorists strive go one step closer to becoming reality?

I pretty much doubt that too.

Especially because when we talk about building this “better world”, this vague notion that is the topic of discussion everywhere, this alternative reality with which we all flirt but for which few seem willing to sacrifice, there is a “hint” of a dilemma. The dilemma, of building this alternative world, or glimmers of it, is that we do not get to do so on a clean slate – we will build it on a canvas awash with the blood of children, with the tears and echoless screams of the innocent. “Certainly, the past never does pass in the commonsense meaning we give to the word pass”. Though in life their voices were never heard, in death, the echoes will live on. Their anguish will haunt us always, and they shall be reborn.

But for now, we celebrate. We celebrate, because as a nation, there’s nothing we can’t do.

Two wars, two trillion dollars, hundreds of thousands hurt and killed and brutalized, ten wasted years to get one man and he says you can do anything.

Spiderman would be proud.

Nearly a century ago, a man by the name of Marcel Proust wrote of a particular Madeleine cake dipped in tea. The sweet, nostalgic taste leads the narrator to longingly recall having the treat as a child, and subsequently invokes involuntary memory.

To me, that madeleine will always have to be the sandwich I get at a small, humble hamburger joint on Aghdasiyeh in Tehran.

I’ve discovered the place only recently, and it came via a friend’s recommendation a few years ago, but it’s the only place I know of in Tehran, and the world (though I’ve seen very little of the latter), where the hamburger still tastes the way it should.

You see, no matter how long I live in the West, or even semi-modernized Tehran, I will never, ever understand how we have condemned ourselves to eating plastic day and day out: yogurt, milk, poultry, beef, fruit, produce, bread … all taste like plastic now. Even those whimsically labeled “organic”. “Organic” my a**.

Every once in a while, a mother’s magic turns the plastic into real tasting food, but those times come few and far between.

It’s gotten to a point where the site of real fruit, stacked chaotically on old wooden boxes the way I remember they were as a child … which you may come across occasionally while walking the old parts of Istanbul, Tehran, Athens … makes me cry. The colors, the smells, the tastes … the beauty of the earth coming together in a sweet apricot, a magnificent peach.

The world is never as magnificent and glorious a place until you’ve had your bite of a sweet, sensual peach. And surprisingly, that luscious, syrupy taste comes courtesy of  not a single drop of sugar.

… and all accompanied by that particular brand of grumpy fruit seller, who knows all the neighborhood gossip, who gives you that “look” if he’s seen you walking down the street with the neighbor’s son, who you trust with your house keys if you are getting home late and the kids need to pick up the keys from his store.

… And then there’s that magnificent burger.

You have not lived until you’ve had your first bite into that sweet, sumptuous patty, layered with a most exhilarating sauce and the best pickles, tomatoes and lettuce known to mankind.

It’s so good, it almost makes me cry too (everything does these days). And I would too, if not for sitting in a busy, bustling Tehran hamburger joint where oddly dressed people are coming in and out like flies that land on your half eaten peach on a warm, summer day out in the garden.

And this all comes from a semi-vegetarian who dislikes meat.

Oh great hamburger, oh insanely delicious patty, oh beautiful one … how I miss thee.