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On 30 Khordad

(From a friend, from Tehran)

Tehran, 4.30 local time, Enghelab Street

I meet with my students on Saturdays for a private class. We cook and eat together, then talk of philosophy. This time there is no class. We only try to keep up our morale. We are very determined but scared. That is how I can describe most of the people who came out to attend the demonstration today. After the Supreme Leader’s fierce speech at the Friday prayers, we knew that today we would be different. We feel so vulnerable, more than ever, but at the same time are aware of our power. No matter how strong it is collectively, it will do little to protect us today. We could only take our bones and flesh to the streets and expose them to batons and bullets. Two different feelings fight inside me without mixing with one another. To live or to just be alive, that’s the question.

There is another student who would have her lunch with us, but is not coming to the demonstration. She’s too scared and while pretending to be in control bursts into tears. She says she hates to see people suffer. We tell here we have suffered for years. She says she doesn’t want people to die. I tell her tens of thousands die each year on the roads in Iran, at least this time it would be for a good cause. She says we are elites and can save ourselves for better times when we can be more useful. We reply there is no difference between people when we are all in such a condition.

We finish the lunch and sit to read poems of Mirzadeh Eshgi. That’s what I suggest. He was a revolutionary anarchist at the time of Constitutional Revolution 1906-11, killed for speaking out. It fits our situation. Poems play an important role here. Nothing influences Iranians like poetry. And these days, everything is about influence and fear.

The poems we read are bitter, ironical and they make us laugh. When sorrow is more than you can tolerate, you burst into laughter. Then we get going. It’s a quarter to four. But the following hour proves funnier than we expected.

In the bus everybody is going to the same place. All the streets to Enghlab Square are blocked. Guards tell you where to go and where not to go. They show us a small street that leads to Enghlab. I panic: Why have they left it open? Do they want us to go in and surround us? Two demonstrations were taking place, one in Enghelab and the other in Azadi, respectively meaning, ‘revolution’ and ‘freedom’. I tell my students, ‘We’re recycling the names.’

Enghlab is busy, very busy, but there is no demonstration. People show the V sign with their fingers but walk in silence. In front of Tehran University, I see the students inside, clutching the rails of the gates, as if behind bars. They shout. But I can’t hear them. In front of the students on the sidewalk, on the other side of the bars, there are two rows of anti-riot police and a row of Basij militia holding posters insulting the demonstrators of the previous days. One says, ‘The trouble-makers pertain to MI6’. An hour later, when the street is no longer so crowded, I go to the guy holding the poster and ask him, ‘What is MI6?’ ‘Britain’s intelligent service’, he replies. ‘Is it different from Scotland Yard?’ I ask. ‘No, they’re the same thing.’ ‘Oh, I see.’

We walk up and down. We’re a group of four. We find friends, but don’t join them. We don’t want to change the mood by changing our companionship. We’re enjoying ourselves.

Then comes the attraction of the day. Two water-spraying machines. They’re huge, the size of a bus but taller, with fenced windows and two water-guns on top of each. We burst into laughter. They don’t know how to use them. They shoot second floor windows, anti-riot police and the people, including girls in tight manteaus. It’s more Zurich than Tehran. One machine is stuck. They don’t know how to drive it. It’s a hot day, the sun is intolerably shiny and it feels good to become wet. Much of the time, the sprays are not powerful. It’s as if they’re watering grass. And it just does not fit the horror that’s in the air, the aggression with which the people are hit with batons. A beautiful day. It has been beautiful throughout the past week. You wonder whether nature is ironical.

They push the crowd back and forth, from here to there but soon realize people are on all sides. We hear bullets, but people don’t rush away. They’re fake. Nobody’s shot.
Then in a couple of minutes, the street is not crowded as before, the anti-riot police leave, and the students are gone. We don’t understand why. Deprived of communication, you never get the big picture. Maybe they have attacked the university from the back.

We hear in Azadi Square there’s a huge crowd. So we get going. As we pass the fences, a student, his face covered, smiles bitterly, ‘They’ll storm the dormitory tonight.’

We have to walk. We feel awful. There’s a demonstration somewhere and we can’t get there. We wish we were in a crowd. That’s the only way we feel better. We have joked for hours now, but we need to shout. Something is pressing from within.

Then at Towhid Square the scene changes drastically. The streets to Azadi are blocked. But this time, people don’t change their path. They fight for it. There’s a shower of stones. Tear gas. Fire. People jam the sidewalks. The battle scene is huge. We cannot see the limits but it extends to nearby street. My student is keener to go forward than I am. Her mother could persuade her to stay home for two days, but now allows her to go out on the most dangerous day. The people shout, ‘Down with the dictator’. The anti-riot police are also throwing stones. People don’t run back anymore. I grab a broken brick and throw. I’m amazed. I never thought I’d do it. I should practice. It was a very bad shot. I grab another one, the size of a pomegranate and keep it with me, hiding it behind my back. My feeling is a mixture of a university teacher and a hooligan.

If we want to go forward we need to pass through tear gas. So we ask a car to give us a lift. Then there is an attack. They cannot tell enemy from other people although they want to show everything is fine and they’re only after trouble-makers. There is a woman who is being beaten. She’s horrified and hysterical but not as much as the anti-riot police officer facing her. She shrieks, ‘Where can I go? You tell me go down the street and you beat me. Then you come up from the other side and beat me again. Where can I go?’ In sheer desperation, the officer hits his helmet several times hard with his baton. ‘Damn me! Damn me! What the hell do I know!’

I ask myself, ‘how much longer can these officers tolerate stress? How many among them would be willing to give their lives for somebody like Ahmadinejhad?’

The driver tells us that he did not vote but he has come out to the streets to beat the Basijis. At each intersection he is guided by officers in a different direction and after a while we realize we are back where we started. We see officers load people in a van used for carrying frozen meat.

Then a couple of minutes later, a new scene unfolds. We get out. Here’s a true battleground. And this time it’s huge. Columns of smoke rise to the sky. You can hardly see the asphalt. Only bricks and stones. Here people have the upper hand. Three lanes, the middle one separated by opaque fences, under construction for the metro. The workers have climbed up the fences and show the V sign. They start throwing stone and timber to the street to supply the armament. I tell myself, ‘Look at the poor, the ones Ahmadinejhad always speaks of.’ But the president’s name is no longer in fashion. This time the slogans address the leader, something unheard of in the past three decades. It’s a beautiful sunset, with rays of light penetrating evening clouds. We feel safe among people moving back forth with the anti-riot police attacks.

Two Basiji motorcycles are burning. People have learned how to do it fast. They lay the motorcycle on its side, spilling the gasoline and lighting it on fire. We climb up a pedestrian bridge and watch. People shout from the bridge, ‘Down with Khamenei’ and ‘your aura is gone for good’. A Basiji is caught: He soon disappears under the crowd beating him. As if in a roman coliseum those on the bridge shout, ‘Beat him up!’ I shout with them before coming to my senses. What is with me? He staggers away as a group of ten people kick and punch him.

At Gisha, there’s a similar scene. Again the people have the whole crossing in their control and you can hear the uproar and horns. Motorcycles are burning in smoke. But I’m suddenly stunned. I see a red object, which later proves to be a man, about 50, his head covered with blood, crouching, people passing him by as if he was a garbage can. Then comes a guy with a long stick who wants to beat up the already beaten Basiji. People gather and stop him. He’s furious, ‘Why should I not? They beat tiny girls! They beat everyone! Bastard!’

I shout at him, ‘But we’re not beasts! We’re not like them!’ Somebody takes the Basiji away as people curse him. I think, ‘But the bastard deserves it. To come out of your house in the morning, just to beat up people you don’t even know.’ I don’t recognize myself and my feelings anymore.

You can get in any car to go back home. People trust one another now. The woman in the back seat sitting next to me says, ‘It’s no longer about Mousavi or election results. We have suffered for thirty years. We didn’t live a life.’ An old man next to her offers me fresh bread. They tell jokes about the political figures and laugh out loud. They feel victorious. ‘I had waited thirty years for this. Now I feel relieved.’ She writes down my phone number to send me news. ‘Send it to The Guardian!’, she says.

I will. I promise.

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ایران کمانگیرت کجاست؟

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One Story Among Many from the Presidential Campaign

Much is being written on the Iranian presidential campaign, but I was struck by this blog posting originally in Persian here and translated by Radio Free Europe on their Persian Letters page. (By way of explanation, green is the color being worn by supporters of candidate Mir Hossein Mousavi):


"These nights, I also wrap green band on my wrist, my eye shadow is also green. I and 14-15 of my friends have bought two green nail polishes, and paint our nails the color green. These nights, we come from downtown to the posh northern part of the city to arrive with the first crowd of happy people and start dancing with them.

These days and nights, I constantly take out my armband, and again ask a posh boy to wrap a new green band for me and again the scent of his perfume lives on my wrist for two days. These nights are the only nights that we are not clowned because of our poverty.

These nights are the only nights that nobody asks us where "our neighborhood" is. Nobody is concerned with the price of our shoes, it is only important to them to promote the color green.

Why should I lose these nights? Why shouldn't I wrap the green band on my arm and take part in the green chain when the posh boy is next to me and he doesn't remember to ask me what my father's job is. He doesn't look at my hard worker hands and smile to me with humility, but I swear he does not allow himself even to pass my door.

These nights are the last nights of using the golden chance of being the same color; but on Saturday morning (the election is on Friday, June 12), there will be no trace of this unity. It does not matter who will be the president, I will become that poor girl whose father is the laborer and whose mom is a maidservant in their eyes. They will sit again in their expensive cars and feed their dog such foods as I have probably never eaten. Which one of these candidates is going to demolish such class distinctions? My apprehension is not the same is theirs, to vote for their favorite candidate, but I don't want to lose the opportunity of pleasant time with them. I am lost among them, but I will not vote for Musavi; in fact, I will vote for nobody because none of them understands me. But if I want to choose somebody, Ahmati (Ahmadinejad) will be my choice.

These nights are the only nights that I can reach the long desires and dreams that have been in my mind for years in some extent. When somebody smiles at me without aiming to abuse me, without despising in deep in his eyes, without saying "peef" and passing me, without expecting me to accept 20,000 tumans for one night stand to serve him and his friends because I am from poor family.

These nights, the Ghaytariyeh's boys (Editor's note: posh northern Tehran) smiles without prejudice, but from Saturday the story of grief will be repeated. These nights, I shout "Musavi" as loud as I can, because if I shout louder, they will smile at me more and more, this is more honorable than ostentation for seeing the smiles of posh boys. I use the last few days left, and alongside the green tide, I shout, I dance, I touch, I am touched with the slogan of I will not vote. "

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Thoughts on Mowlana (Rumi) after reading 'Reading Mystical Lyric’ by Fatemeh Keshavarz.

“What do you know of the kind of bird that I am? And of what I am whispering under my lips in each breath? How can anyone come to own me? I am at times a treasure, and at times a ruin. The firmament is whirling for my sake. For this reason, I keep turning the firmament.”

In the west Jalal al-Din Rumi (b. 1207, d. 1273) has been swept up in the popular fascination with things exotic and eastern.

Details of Rumi’s personal history only intensify the interest. A teacher well-schooled in orthodox Islamic doctrine, his meeting in 1244 with his ‘soul-brother’, the cranky wanderer Shams-e Tabriz, changed his life. Shams’ mysterious disappearance unleashed in Rumi a torrent of love and lyricism.

Yet, the English speaking world has only third-hand knowledge of Rumi’s work: Fragments of loose interpretations rendered from translations of translations that have found their way onto greeting cards and calendars. Most are taken from the more than 35,000 verses of the Divan-e Shams-e Tabrizi.

The Rumi of the popular English interpretations (most are not really translations) is a comforting New Age presence. Yet the real Rumi challenges us, rattles us, whispers and taunts. He sings to us, enveloping us in a whirlwind, then he is suddenly silent. As Keshavarz points out we are only too eager to submit to someone who speaks to us like a caring friend: “This is a charming person, at times outspoken and harsh but always informal, loving and intimate. Often, we feel we know him well.”

It’s said that Rumi first whirled in the marketplace upon hearing the rhythm of the coppersmith’s hammer. Music helps inform his poetry but unfortunately the melody and cadence are lost in translation. Even without understanding, one can sense the musicality of his verse:

“Khamushid, khamushid, khamushaneh benushid!
Bepushid! Bepushid! Shuma ganj-e nehanid.”

Beyond the music there is his message. He dares us to abandon our preconceptions: “Do not build much, for I intend to have you in ruins.”

From a distance of 8 centuries he exposes the egoism of the popular notion of self-discovery: “You said you destroyed the idol of illusions; The illusion that you destroyed the idol remains.”

The self realization he speaks of is beyond the realization of self “When I am, I am not, and when I am not, I am.”

He challenges us to find unity in paradox: “Life is the harmony of contraries/death is the fact that war arose between them.”

He tells us speech is a poor substitute for understanding: “The tightfisted sea in its willful silence says: ‘I know nothing. I have not seen any pearls.’”

Words are limiting; they only cloud the vision and intoxicate the senses: “Be silent! Remove the thorn of existence from the foot of the heart/So that you may see the gardens within.”

To Rumi, silence is the dark matter in that holds the key to understanding the universe.

Rumi never lectures or hectors. He is happy to show us wonders, but he leaves the heavy lifting of comprehension to us: “By the true men’s soul, I beseech you to complete this poem!”

Keshavarz suggests that Rumi’s unconventional writing style, which to his critics is a sign that he is ignorant of poetic rules and lacks real interest in the art, is actually an expression of freedom and, far from flaunting the rules, he is reinventing them and extending the boundaries of the traditional qhazal genre.

Rumi breaks with the Persian poetic tradition and speaks directly to the reader at turns as the beloved and the lover, the bereft and the fulfilled. He invites the reader into his embrace – at once warm and chilling:

“The world is a moth flying around my candle; Now I give it splendor, not I take away its wings.”

Keshavarz makes much of the playfulness of Rumi’s poetry. He is both profound and lighthearted, full of fun and brimming with meaning: “Creating a playful poetic ambience is one of Rumi’s major achievements…the reader enters a gamelike relationship with the poet. As the walls between fact and fiction or wakefulness and dreaming crumble, we the readers grow more eager to accept the rules of the game in order to penetrate more deeply into this world…Rumi’s view of our childlike position in the game of love is not a poetic accident….after all, what does a creature separated from his origin resemble more than a child in search of a mother?” This approach also has the consequence of leaving us feeling buoyant and hopeful about our existence.

The late British translator Reynolds Nicholson said, “Sufism has few ideas, but a wealth and variety of illustration.” And so it is with Rumi. What is his message, ultimately? He prods us to discard orthodox thinking, but in favor of what? He keeps secrets from us. He offers no rules, no charted course. He opens the door and invites us to step into the void. Is this some terrible omission on his part? It is two things, I believe:

1. The recognition of the limits of language. “The mouth is full of words, but speaking is not possible.”

2. The knowledge that each person’s understanding of God is different and, more importantly that as individuals, as cultures, and as a species our comprehension changes and develops.

Thus, the nature of God remains elusive, ever reshaped by our comprehension. Caught between the pain and the joy of existence we are propelled ever forward like a watermelon seed squeezed between the fingers.

“If anyone asks you about the huris, show your face, say: like this!
If anyone asks you about the moon, climb up on the roof, say: like this!
If anyone seeks a fairy, let them see your countenance,
If anyone talks about the aroma of musk, untie your hair [and] say: like this!I
If anyone asks: “How do the clouds uncover the moon?” untie the front of your robe, knot by knot, say: like this!
If anyone asks: “How did Jesus raise the dead?” kiss me on the lips, say: like this!...”

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این جهان کوه است فعل ماندا

سوی ما آید نداها را صدا مولوی

"The world is a mountain and our actions a call.
To us will return the echo of our calls"

-Mowlana

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Sohrab Sepehri

This morning as I passed by two men talking on the sidewalk, I heard one of them say “life isn’t bad.” Immediately the opening lines of Sohrab Sepehri’s poem “Water’s Footsteps” sprang into my mind:

“I’m from Kashan/My life isn’t bad/I have a bit of bread/a little intelligence/and a pin’s head of talent.”

All morning long I couldn’t get those lines out of my head; until I was in a taxi creeping toward Tajrish. Then the driver played a tape of the song “Hotel California.” I have never been sure about the words of this song, because I am always distracted by the irritating and nasal keening of the singer. But, nonetheless, much to my chagrin and against my will, Sepehri’s words were replaced by the song’s lines looping in my brain:

“Welcome to the Hotel California/Wasn’t I surprised, bring your olive eyes.”

These words stayed in my head most of the afternoon but at some point they began to blend with Sepehri:

“Welcome to the Hotel California/Bring a bit of bread, I’m a pinhead."

I felt guilty mixing the words of a pop song with Sepehri’s sublime poetry. But, then I thought, “so what”. It’s nothing compared to the insulting way this man has been treated by the mullahs in this country.

I visited Kashan once and went in search of his grave, expecting to find a glorious tomb like those of Hafiz or Sa’adi. No such luck. His grave is a little piece of stone in a forgotten corner next to an imamzadeh. I looked down at the scuffed stone surrounded by brown weeds. I looked up at the glittering imamzadeh. Whatever mullah this monstrosity was built for, he is not worth the little finger of Sepehri. I mean, what did this akhund do for Iran? He force-fed us a religion concocted by some tribe of Arabs.

Sepehri, on the other hand, reminded us of our mystical nature, which separates us from the Arabs. See, he has one book called “Sharq Anduh”, “Pining for the East”. When this government wails about ‘Western influence’ – Westoxication – and the Leader warns of the ‘invasion of the miniskirts’, I say what about the invasion from the Arabs of the west?

Yes, we have Hafiz and Rumi, but we cannot live on handouts from the past. We must have our own voice – and that is what Sepehri gave us.

It’s strange that for someone who died less than 30 years ago, we know so little of this man. His mother and his sister nourished and guarded him. It seems he would talk to no one but them.

If you are coming to see me,
pray step gently, softly
Lest the thin shell of my loneliness
Should crack.

There is no interview, no autobiography or biography. Is there even more than one photo? I don’t know. It is as if we took away this man’s poetry and his paintings, he never existed.

But I think this is what made his poetry so beautiful, unsullied by the grime of daily human activity in all its vacuous and petty dullness. How else could someone imagine a garden lane greener than God’s dream?
How else could a man write:

My Ka’ba is at the edge of water
My Ka’ba is under the acacia trees
My Kaaba travels like the breeze,
From one garden to the next,
From one town to another

I feel a kinship with lines like:

I’m from Kashan
My lineage goes back, perhaps,
To a plant in Hindustan
To earthenware from the clay of Sialk
My lineage goes back, perhaps,
To a whore in Bokhara.

I say Better a whore from Bokhara than a princess from Baghdad.
Sepehri wrote only 8 books, he was only 51 when he died. Then they put him in that forgotten spot next to the imamzadeh. Now that I think of it, it’s probably what he would have preferred, rather than something grand. To lie among the weeds.

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The Supreme Leader's Nowruz Speech

The Western coverage of Supreme Leader Sayyad Ali Khamenei’s Nowruz speech in Mashad focused exclusively on his comments about the United States (“Iran’s Supreme Leader Rebuff’s Obama”), but it’s worth noting that there's much more to his remarks. The speech is at turns inspiring and instructive. In fact, Khamenei spends more time admonishing the Iranian people than he does scolding America.

“Let me tell you some of the shocking figures regarding our consumption norms,” he says as he launches into a detailed list of wasteful habits taxing Iran’s resources:

Khamenei cites studies showing that almost 33 percent of the bread made in the country is wasted.

Another study, he say, shows that Iranians waste nearly 22 percent of the country’s water .

He continues: “The amount of energy used in our country is eight times the amount of energy used by developed countries. This is indicative of our wastefulness. We are wasteful in our consumption both as individuals and households.”

The speech isn’t all finger wagging. Khamenei notes Iran’s pre-revolution reliance on outside technology and expertise and expresses pride in the dramatic strides Iran has taken in education and science in the past 30 years.

“There was once a time when no one could imagine that our experts will be able to build dams, silos, highways, airports, and steel factories. We were dependent on foreigners in all these areas. Later, when we cut out the foreigners, we did not enjoy great capacities in those areas. But today, we have great capacities.”

And Khamenei looks ahead to the next decade: “In my opinion, the difference between the next ten years and the previous three decades lies in the fact that there are now great capacities and opportunities in our country for making progress and administering justice.”

It’s worth noting, too, that while the speech was given by Shia Islam’s putative leader at Iran’s most revered religious site, it is no more religious than a speech by an American President. Indeed, was little talk of religion. Conservation was a strong theme, and nationalism; but not religion.

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One day, Sheikh al-Junayd set out on a journey and while traveling was overtaken by a thirst.

He found a well that was too deep to draw water from, so he took off his sash, dangled it into the well until it reached the water and set about raising and lowering it and squeezing it into his mouth.

a dervish appeared and asked him, "Why do it so? Tell the water to rise, and drink with your hands!" and the dervish approached the edge of the well and said to the water, "Rise, with God's permission," and it rose, and the sheikh and the dervish drank.

Afterwards the sheikh turned to the dervish and asked, "Who are you?"

"One of God's creatures," he replied.

"And who is your sheikh?" asked al-Junayd.

"My sheikh is al-Junayd, though I have yet to set eyes on him," replied the man.

"Then how did you attain these powers?" asked the sheikh.

"Through my faith in my sheikh," replied the man.

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Tehran

"For just a moment, just a fleeting second, I have this thought as I stand scrunched on the overcrowded Tehran metro, hanging on with my nose in some guy’s armpit as it lurches into Mirdamad Station. The thought being, “what’s the point of any of this?” Thank God the train stops just then.

I walk along the platform, feeling pretty uninspired until about the fifth person bumps into me, then the juices started flowing and I get in the swing of things, cutting off an old lady right as she’s about to step onto the escalator. The edge of her chador is wet where she grips it between her teeth. Going up the escalator, I stare long and hard at some guy on the down escalator. He stares back. Why the hell do we stare so much, we Iranians? OK, I’m not 100 percent Iranian, but I have the staring gene.

I cross the footbridge over the highway and squeeze into the last seat on the taxi to Vanak. I always kick myself for not getting my money out before I get into a shared cab, but I never do manage to remember. I start digging around in my back pocket for the 2,000 rials I need to pay the driver. It takes a lot of careful squirming, because I’m wedged so damn tight between two other passengers. Even as careful as I am, a woman sitting next to me gets the idea I’m trying to play grab-ass and she somehow manages to retreat an additional fraction of a centimeter by exhaling the last of the oxygen in her body or something, because there sure wasn’t any room to move in that back seat. She gives me an irritated- as-hell glance and I smell onion on her breath.

The traffic is so bad that some of the passengers start to bail out before we get to Vanak Square, figuring they can walk there faster. I stick with it, intent on getting my 2,000 rial’s worth. That’s about 20 cents American. Once I get out of the cab, the next choice is, do I hop in another crowded taxi or do I walk up Valiasr Street? Some nights I take a cab, but tonight it’s not so cold, so I walk.

These strange things have been installed on the sidewalk along Valiasr. I can’t really describe them. They have two narrow yellow treads and a handrail on either side, and they don’t seem to have any purpose, other than to make people walk around them. I stand near one of them and listen to two guys speculate about what they’re for. One guy says, “They’re for people to exercise.” They do have a kind of treadmill look to them, but there are no moving parts. Anyway, who’s going to stop in the middle of a busy city sidewalk and start exercising? And why? Just to make sure you breathe in the maximum amount of polluted air? The other guy doesn’t buy it, either. He has his own theory. “They’re to keep motorcycles off the sidewalk.” For God’s sake, I think, motorcyclists could go right around those things. Maybe they’re for pedestrians to take refuge from motorcycles on the sidewalks. That I could believe. Actually, though, up here in the north of the city motorcycles don’t go on the sidewalks. They only do it down where I live. Where life is cheaper, I suppose. I’ll bet not even the guys who installed these things with the yellow treads and handrails know what they’re for. That would be Tehran. Somebody somewhere knows about them, but that person has long been out of the loop. He got fired or shipped off to Ahvaz. So here they sit and no one knows what to do with them. That’s so Tehran.

I make my way up Valiasr and on the sidewalk right in front of United Colors of Benetton, there’s a young guy selling DVDs of new, first-run movies: One Khomeini (one dollar) each. I’ve bought them from this guy before and they’re the real thing, not something someone shot with a video camera from the back of the theater. I just can’t figure out how it works. How does someone get their hands on a movie that’s still in theaters (not theaters in Iran, mind you, but some faraway place like the Great Satan), make illegal copies, and somehow get them into this country and to the man on the sidewalk? All for one Khomeini! I mean, there must be half a dozen middle men. Is each of them making about a rial a piece in the deal? This is the kind of economics that only makes sense in Iran. Maybe the government subsidizes the price of illegally copied movies, like they subsidize gas and food, just to shut us up and keep us distracted from all the crap happening around here.

So finally I get to the coffeehouse and I know right away there’s something wrong. It looks too quiet. I go around the corner and see two green and white vans. A couple of policemen are there with a couple of women dressed like they’re on the way to the mosque or something. It’s Gasht Ershad and they’ve already ruined everyone’s night, hassling people about the way they’re dressed and about whether the person the opposite sex that they’re sitting with is a relative or (gasp!) a date. It’s mostly girls who get hassled for wearing high heeled boots, slathering on too much makeup, showing too much hair, etc. etc. We guys don’t have a lot to worry about unless we’re trying to look like Kid Rock.

I stand around for a couple of minutes and I’m almost tempted to mouth off to the Gasht Ershad people. I’m that pissed off. But I’m not up for that much excitement. I got myself all the way up here just to sit in a coffeehouse and look at girls. That’s about all you can do around here for thrills. And even that’s been taken away from me tonight.

I start to trudge back down Valiasr toward the cabs that run to Mirdamad Station. On the way I stop at one of the mystery contraptions they’ve installed on the sidewalk. I put my hands on the rails and lift myself off the ground, my feet moving like crazy like I’m running in air. Running fast and going nowhere. That’s so Tehran."

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Davoud

When I first met Davoud five years ago, he smiled little and laughed not at all. He was quite religious. He spoke disparagingly of women who were pushing the limits of Islamic dress and expressed unhesitating support for his government. Since then he finished college with a degree in economics and did his two years of military service.

Eight months ago Davoud moved to Tehran from his small hometown. The traffic in Tehran still makes him so nervous that I had to help him cross the street. We took a long walk the other evening, Davoud with his perfect posture, me slouching alongside. Now he drinks a little alcohol and he’s become somewhat critical of his government. Over dinner he announced that he has a girlfriend. “I think you never would have believed I have a girlfriend,” he told me. To prove it he called her on his cell phone and asked her to speak with me. I could hear her say “Chera!?” (“Why!?”). Afterward he explained that he chose her after assessing several girlfriend candidates using a spreadsheet and a rating system. She scored the most points. “What about what your heart tells you?” I asked him. “Oh yes,” he said,”I awarded points for that, too.”

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Occidentosis, A Plague From the West

“We now resemble an alien people, with unfamiliar customs, a culture with no roots in our land and no chance of blossoming here.“

“Occidentosis; A Plague from the West” (English translation, 1984, Mizan Press) by Jalal al-i Ahmad was written in the early 1960s. The book popularized the term ‘gharbzadagi’ or occidentosis, westoxication or west-struckness.

It still stands up as a riveting piece of writing; an angry and frustrated cry from under the wheel of Western colonialism that grabs the reader from the very first sentence:

“I speak of ‘occidentosis’ as of tuberculosis. But perhaps it more closely resembles an infestation of weevils. Have you seen how they attack wheat? From the inside. The bran remains intact, but it is just a shell…”

Al-i Ahmad rages against the machine – the yoke of Western technology that transformed Iran. In the West, the machine evolved over time. In Iran it appeared overnight. No time for society to consider it or adjust to it. No opportunity to reject it or accept it Iran’s own terms. –The machine is a means of production and a means of destruction.

It’s important to read this book in the context of its time. Iran had never been an occupied country in the strict sense, but for a century and a half western powers – at first Britain and Russia and eventually the United States and the Soviet Union exerted a profound influence over Iran. As military powers they manipulated Iran for their own strategic advantages. As economic powers they treated Iran’s as a market to be exploited and considered its natural and agricultural resources their own.

At first the reader wishes Al-i Ahmad’s book were a machine itself – something that we could reach into to squirt a little oil to smooth out an argument here, tighten a bolt to correct a wobbly fact there, or shift gears to jump beyond a belabored point elsewhere. Eventually we settle in for the ride as Al-i Ahmad rushes on.

He argues that the West rapes a country twice: ravishing it for its raw materials, then returning to the scene of the crime to sell goods made from those raw materials, mass produced and sold cheap enough to idle mills and spinning wheels and ruin indigenous trade and industry. (Al-i Ahmad acknowledges that this work can be dissipating, but argues that if it, instead of foreign goods and technology, were supported by the government, the local trades and workers could thrive).

The result of the invasion of the machine and the values it represents is a culture obliterated:

“We have been unable to preserve our own historicocultural character in the face of the machine and its fateful onslaught. Rather, we have been routed. We have been unable to take a considered stand in the face of this contemporary monster. So long as we do not comprehend the real essence, basis, and philosophy of Western civilization, only aping the West outwardly and formally (by consuming its machines), we shall be like the ass going about in a lion’s skin…so long as we remain consumers, so long as we have not built the machine, we remain occidentotic. Our dilemma is that once we have built the machine, we will have become mechanotic, just like the West, crying out at the way technology and the machine have stampeded out of control.”

The machine’s siren’s song drew villagers to the cities to work a full day for what amounted to an hourly wage in the west:

“A primitive man, having come to the city and been enlisted into the service of the machine, for all his thickheadedness, languor, and fatalism, must respond to and keep pace with the machine. This bibliomancer with his pocketful of lucky gemstones and bellyful of votive soup must now deal with a machine that know nothing of fate and refuses to run smoother or brake faster in response to his monthly sacrifices of sheep. So when these monthly sacrifices prove ineffective and he keeps getting into accidents, he comes to the end of his tether and forgets everything, turning into a criminal, a complete cynic, or an outright opportunist.”

The Iranian Shah’s fascination with Western technology leads him to unquestioningly embrace all things foreign. Al-i Ahmad describes a haphazard educational system where the religious schools are mired in ossified teachings and the government schools mindlessly imitate the west or engage in discussions of ideas covered in the dust of centuries.

The contagion was spread by an army of advisors, consultants and academics conducting seminars and producing 5 year plans all designed to keep the patient alive but tethered to the machine. “We know what is best,” they said. And no one from the Shah to the worker questioned it. The West made a mirror, imprinted it with a Western image and held it up to Iran’s face. Iran’s cultural inferiority complex deepened.

Al-i Ahmad’s presents pre-revolutionary Iran as a place estranged from itself:

“Go flip through our half-dozen so-called heavy literary publications,” he writes. “ What news do you see of our part of the world? Of the east in the broadest terms? Of India, Japan, China? All you see is news of the Nobel Prize, of the new pope…the Cannes Film Festival…If we aren’t to call this occidentosis, what are we to call it?”

On the government’s half-hearted mimicking of the emancipation of women, he writes:

“Do women and men now have equal right in all matters? We have contented ourselves with tearing the veil from their faces and opening a number of schools to them. But then what? Nothing. We believe women cannot be judges, cannot serve as witnesses, and as for voting or serving in the Majlis, the whole idea is idiotic, since even men have no such right, really…so we really have given women only the right to parade themselves in public. We have drawn women, the preservers of tradition, family, and future generations, into vacuity, into the street…What of work, duty, social responsibility and character?...Unless the work of men and women and their services to society are equally valued and paid, unless, alongside men, women assume responsibility for administering a sector of society (other than the home…) unless material and spiritual equality is established between the sexes, we will have succeeded only in swelling an army of consumers of power and lipstick – the product of the West’s industries…”

Jalal al-i Ahmad seems to have ambivalent feelings about religion, but it’s clear he saw the role of the clerics as the guardians against the west and bemoaned their failure to serve as a rallying point and unifying opposing force . For those reasons, his condemnation of their impotence is bitter. They have “drawn into their cocoons of fanaticism and paralysis in the face of the West’s onslaught.”

He reserves special criticism for Iranian men who are educated in the West – concluding that whatever passion they developed for issues like democracy and freedom while overseas, they quickly lose it once they return to Iran.

No detail of Iranian life in the 1950s seems to escape Al-i Ahmad. For example, he writes, “marriage to a European or American is one of the most acute symptoms of occidentosis.” He claims that those who go abroad and return with foreign wives contribute to the crumbling of the family structure. They spend so much time dealing with the internal problems that these families create that they have no energy to contribute to society at large. To cure this problem he suggests only sending students to Japan or India.

Al-i Ahmad is not a luddite – he is not sounding retreat’s trumpet.

In his view, the solution is to replace fear and wonderment of the machine with mastery of it. Don’t be consumers of the machine, he exhorts, be the machine’s builders! Why is what seems so obvious so difficult to grasp, Al-i Ahmad wonders. Why is there such apathy? For this he doesn’t blame tradition or backwardness. Instead, he says, the apathy, “is the outcome of our confidence in the permanence of our oil resources and in the uninterrupted flow of the machines we buy with our oil money and credits.“

The East’s subservience to the West and to the machine has blinded it to its own finer qualities: its arts and spirituality. Ironically the West grew increasingly fascinated with these things even as the East ignored them.

Al-i Ahmad doesn’t spend much time on prescriptions for occidentosis, other than to call for an educational system that will turn out original thinkers. “Please don’t ask me to go into details,” he implores the reader, “this isn’t my line or the function of this book.”

Al-i Ahmad was not a philosopher or social scientist – he was a teacher and novelist. He was politically active in the 1940s and early 1950s – times which permitted such activity in Iran. He died in 1969; ten years before the revolution. Although it was circulated in various forms, “Occidentosis” was not published in full until 1978.

All may not be well in today’s Iran but one accomplishment of the revolution – born partly from the necessity created by sanctions – is the evolving mastery of the machine. The Supreme Leader exhorts Iran’s youth to pursue an education in engineering and other scientific fields. (Indeed, every other college student I meet in Iran is studying engineering. Unfortunately, as things are now in the country they may well end up driving a cab.) Iran purchases outside technology where it can, then improves it. Advances in technology like liquid fueled rockets are clear evidence of this.

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Enough with the Carrots and Sticks

The United States should banish this phrase from its public pronouncements about negotiating with Iran. Over the weekend Obama again described the U.S. approach to Iran as using carrots and sticks and he quickly drew a sharp response from the Islamic Republic.

How would Americans respond to a headline that said: "Mexican president says he will take a 'carrot and stick' approach in talks with America over drug trafficking." The perception it conveys is that the other party is in a weaker position and can easily be enticed with a morsel or threatened with a cudgel.

This is about more than semantics and ruffled feathers. Language and tone are important. It's especially important in this case because of cultural values in Iran where exaggerated displays of deference and respect lubricate the wheels of human interaction.

Iranians are offended by what they perceive as an attitude of superiority from the Americans. Who would feel any differently in their position?

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The Failure of Iran’s Reformists

“The affairs of the country must be administered on the basis of public
opinion expressed by means of election.”

– Constitution of the Islamic Republic of Iran.

“History in Iran is contested,” writes Ali M. Ansari in “Iran, Islam and Democracy, The Politics of Managing Change”(Second Edition 2006, Royal Institute of International Affairs) – a fascinating evaluation of Iranian political development in the post-revolutionary period. His comment is an allusion to the fact that for Iranians, history is a powerful and malleable commodity, a source of ongoing reinterpretation to fit the needs of those doing political battle in today's Islamic Republic.

Ansari’s focus is Iran’s reform movement. He traces its evolution beginning a century ago with the Constitutional Revolution.

One of the most interesting periods is the ‘interregnum’ (1941-1953) after the allied powers sent Reza Shah packing and installed his much weaker son Mohammad Shah. Political parties – up to two dozen of them – sprung up. Newspapers flourished (in spite of a low literacy rate because people gathered together to have them read aloud). In the frenzy of political activity that accompanied Mohammad Mosaddeq’s rise to power and his efforts to wrest control of Iran’s oil from the British, there were 700 newspapers in Tehran alone!

Ansari provides a nuanced analysis of the first post revolutionary period which concluded in 1989 with the death of Ayotollah Khomeini, followed by the so-called ‘Second Republic’ launched by the presidency of Ali Akbar Hashemi Rafsanjani. After Rafsanjani’s term ended came the suprising victory of the little know reformist cleric Mohammad Khatami. His 8 years in office illustrates both the difficulty in bringing about systemic change in Iran’s government and the failings of the reformist movement.

To explain the underpinnings of reformist thinking, Ansari turns to religious scholar Abdulkarim Soroush who contends that Islam and democracy are compatible. His view is rooted in the premise that the only truly religious people are those able to freely choose and observe their religion. The imposition of a particular interpretation of Islam, he says, has actually turned Iranians away from religion. “A rule that is not just is not religious,” writes Soroush, adding, “Those who appreciate the value and sanctity of religion and the glory of investigation will never doubt that a single examined faith is nobler than a thousand imitated, shaky and weak beliefs.”

Soroush makes two more points:

1. A nation of truly Islamic people will naturally freely choose to create an Islamic government.

2. An “Islamic government” does not mean a religious government (a government run by clerics). His argument is that secularism does not stand in opposition to religion, but in fact acknowledges religion’s essential truths and value. Government in a religious society is a secular enterprise that protects religion from the profanity of politics.

To legitimize Soroush’s ideas, Ansari stresses Ayotollah Khomeini’s progressive and populist tendencies. He takes too little notice, I believe, of the authoritarianism and cold doctrinism to which Khomeini hewed, which cost so many Iranians dearly. Ansari argues that much of the time, Khomeini was simply reacting to events, not dictating them.

Khomeini was complex. As a critic of traditional religious thinking, he lashed out at narrow minded mullahs: “You were considered more pious if you walked in a clumsy way", he said of the pre-revolutionary period. "Learning foreign languages was blasphemy, philosophy and mysticism were considered to be a sin and infidelity…had this trend continued, I have no doubt the clergy and seminaries would have trodden the same path as the Christian Church did in the Middle Ages.” Khomeini adds, “When theology meant no interference in politics, stupidity became a virtue.”

Khomeini consistently stated that he saw a role for religious leaders in politics. Here’s what he said in a 1980 interview (not quoted in Ansari’s book): “The religious scholar will have a role in government. He does not want to be the ruler, but he does want to have a role…if the government begins to misbehave, the religious scholar will stand in the way.”

But a religious scholar who has the power to stand in the way of government is a ruler, unless this scholar is elected by the people. (I have had conservative Iranians argue with me that the Supreme Leader is, in fact, elected. They say this because he is chosen by the clerics of the Assembly of Experts whose members are popularly elected. However, to run for a position on the Assembly of Experts, candidates must be vetted by the Guardian’s Council, half of which is appointed by the Supreme Leader!).

Ansari point out that reformists have no wish to repudiate the revolution or Khomeini . In fact during Khatami’s presidency Khomeini was quoted more by reformists than by conservatives – Khatami is, after all, a seyyid.

Rafsanjani’s presidency was seen as a period in which the merchant class consolidated power and enriched itself at the expense of the general population. Voters viewed Khatami as a return to the values of the revolution.

Ansari says Khatami was decisive early in his administration but lost his resolve in the face of the violent tendencies of his conservative opponents who controlled Iran’s security apparatus.

There were two key moments:

The student uprising in 1999, and the attempted assassination of Saeed Hajarian, the mastermind of the reformist sweep in the elections for the 6th Majlis in 2000.

The student demonstrations were the most serious challenge to the government since the revolution, but fearing more bloodshed, Khatami called for their end. In retrospect some see it as a wise decision, others consider it symbolic of Khatami’s weakness in the face of authoritarian forces.

The following year (2000) Khatami, witnessed the attempt on Hajarian’s life. Ansari: “By all accounts Khatami never recovered from the shock of this event…always a cautious and reflective man, he now became increasingly wary, so fearful of provoking confrontation that his enemies grew contemptuous and his friends frustrated.”

The reformist movement faltered because Khatami lost his nerve and the movement failed to capitalize on its popularity even after three successive landslide victories (The presidential election of 1997, the parliamentary election of 2000 and Khatami’s second election in 2001).

After they won control of the Majlis in 2000 the reformist strategy was to bring about change through lawmaking. But the conservative Guardian Council used its power to block many of the bills passed by the parliament. Conservatives also used their control of the security apparatus to harass and arrest Majlis ministers and critics. In Ansari’s words, “The cost of dissent was to be made too high, not through systematic, but through selective repression…Moreover, such arbitrary action, while unpredictable and disconcerting, was to be administered in such a way as to be tolerable to the majority of society and, consequently, not provoke a general reaction.” This is the approach that is still successfully employed today, targeting women, workers, students and journalists.

Reformists also failed to foster institutions of civil society to help them in their work, and eschewed working to develop nationwide grassroots support for their efforts. They also missed opportunities to take advantage of key events to mobilize the public.

In Ansari’s telling Khatami’s favorable image abroad created an opening for improved U.S. - Iran relations, but his government missed (or was prevented from) accepting an olive branch extended during the Clinton Adminstration by Secretary of State Albright in the form of an expression of regret for the American role in the overthrow of Mosaddeq.

Despite Iran’s cooperation with the Bush administration during the invasion of Afghanistan, Bush ideologues with strong anti-Iranian views essentially ruled out any rapprochement. The capture of an Iranian ship carrying a load of arms for the Palestinian National Authority (not an illegal act) was seized upon by Israel and the anti-Iran lobby. Then in January 2002, President Bush made his famous ‘axis of evil’ comment in his State of the Union address.

Ansari writes, “Rarely have three words had such a catastrophic effect on a country and proved so counterproductive. Hardliners (the world over) rejoiced at this latest failure of detente. For Khatami himself, the prospect was far more serious. For his increasingly impatient constituents, his failure at home was no compounded by a definitive failure abroad. If conservatives had painstakingly prepared his coffin, Bush had unwittingly provided them with the final nails.”

Even in the most authoritarian of times there has been debate and civil discourse in Iran and there is certainly more public space for such debate now than there was under the Shah. Ansari says that unlike authoritarian regimes in China, Cuba, Russia, Iran’s revolution has “ostensibly given birth to a vibrant civil society and a process of democratization more dynamic and promising than in any other overtly Islamic society.” This process is, he says, “characterized by a remarkable degree of ideological cohesiveness centered upon a myth of political emancipation which has been gradually and effectively disseminated throughout the population. In short it has facilitated and encouraged the growth of political consciousness which in turn has transformed the political landscape of Iran and thrust an otherwise traditional society headlong into the modern age.”

The question, Ansari points out, is how far civil society on its own can propel the process of democratization while authoritarian rule remains in place.

At the heart of the debate lies the question of whether Islam must be overcome to build a democracy, or whether it can embrace these ideas.

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Kamal-ol-mulk

Once as I walked through Golestan Palace in Tehran, I was attracted to a painting in a palace gallery. It showed a turbaned man sitting with a worn book in his hand, speaking to two veiled women. Although the painting is of a fortune teller, the man reminded me of my grandfather, a village doctor. I imagine him dressed in this way, dispensing medical advice to two women from his village.

The painting was by Kamal-ol-mulk, an Iranian artist born in the mid-1800s. My grandfather was also born in that time, in that place. I have sometimes imagined that my grandfather learned his medical skills at Dar al Funun – Iran’s first modern university, established in Tehran in 1851. Kamal-ol-Mulk studied there.

My grandfather could read and write – and only a small percentage of Iranians at that time possessed those skills.

The name Kamal-ol-mulk is an honorific. The artist’s given name was Mohammad-Khan Ghaffari. One day, the Pivot of the Universe, Nasir ad Din Shah, paid a visit to the school and one of Kamal-ol-mulk’s paintings caught his eye. The Shah installed the painter at his court.

Disillusioned with royalty, Kamal-ol-mulk became an ardent support of Iran’s constitutional revolution in 1906. He died in 1941.

He is considered one of Iran’s most famous painters. His admirers consider his work sublime; his detractors dismiss it as ordinary. In a book of his artwork which I purchased in Shiraz, it says “Although born in times of deceit, flattery, injustice, treachery and despotism, Kamal-ol-mulk was an utterly honest man. He was a patriot, a liberal intellectual and a man of honor who refused to sell his art for gold even in times of need.”

Never at ease with the intrigues of the court, later in life Kamal-ol-mulk retired to a rural estate. He lost one of his eyes in an accident and eventually came to see his desert retreat as a cage, rather than the place of solace he sought.

"Become placeless, for to change this place of water and clay
is but to move from one prison to another."

-Mirza Muhammad Ali Sa'ib of Esfahan

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A Few More Iranian Films

Maysaloon asked in a comment for a few film recommendations in addition to the Willow (written about below). I'm far from an expert on Iranian films, but here are a few I'd recommend:

Offside. A funny and touching film about a group of girls who try to get into a Tehran soccer match (of course they are arrested) and the relationship that develops between them and the soldiers who are guarding them.

Children of Heaven. Another Majid Majidi film. A wonderful portrayal of a family and a secret that two children keep from their parents.

The Wind Will Carry Us. Directed by Abbas Kiarostami. Worth seeing for the scenery. It's a bit of a mystery (to me) what it's about, but I think its intended as a kind of meditation where the viewer is left to find his/her own meaning - the artificiality and pressure of urban life contrasts with the naturalness and peace of village life.

Seven Blind Women Filmmakers. A group of sightless women was given some instruction in operating video cameras. This film is an uneven series of short films - each made by one of the women. Once the viewer gets comfortable with jerky shots of people's feet or faces that are only partially shown, there are some touching and revealing moments.

Before the Burial. This is the first feature film by director Behnam Behzadi. It tells the story of a man who is trying to settle scores and reconcile himself with the past. Ali Reza Aghakhani is powerful and dark in his starring role, but the film would not succeed if it were not for the young actress (whose name I don't know) who illuminates Aghakhani in his darkness. Well worth seeing.

The Birthday. This is a remarkable documentary about transexuals in Iran. Incredibly surprising and moving.

The House is Black. This one is hard to find, I think - and its only less than 30 minutes in length. Made in 1962 by poet Forough Farrokhzad. Its about a leper colony. Forough shocks us at first, then slowly we are shown the humanity of a people who are imprisoned behind the disfigured faces we see.

Grass. Not an Iranian film, as such. It was made, believe it or not, by the people who made the original King Kong. In 1924 they filmed the migration of the Bakhtiari. See this film and you will never complain of physical hardship again.

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The Past is Prologue

Signing of the Treaty of Turkmanchai

He was a man of letters, a celebrated playwright whose involvement in an illegal dual had led to his exile from Moscow. Now he found himself beyond the hinterlands, in the service of the Tsar in Iran, “this gloomy kingdom where one learns nothing and, worse still, loses the very memory of what one knew.”

Alexander Griboyedov first arrived in Tehran in 1818, a few years after the Russo-Persian War ended in the Treaty of Gulistan in which Iran ceded territory to Russia. Russian power was in ascension after Tsar Alexander’s victory over Napoleon and triumphant march into Paris in the War of 1812.

With France subdued, the Russians sought to rival the British, whose global reach encompassed the ultimate prize: India. More than one Tsar had ruminated over how India could be pried from English hands. Iran was strategically vital to the Russians as a possible invasion route and to the British as a buffer against such an attack.

Persian power, meanwhile, had been on the wane since Nadir Shah’s own invasion of India in 1739. Only the glittering Peacock Throne seized in Delhi remained of those days of glory. Qajar rule in Iran was weak and decentralized.

During the Russo-Persian War, the Qajar king, Fath Ali Shah, had appealed for help to the British on the basis of a treaty between the two countries. But the British had been allies with Russia against Napoleon and the Persian request was denied.

Russia’s commander in the region, General Yermolov, reflected his nation’s feeling of superiority when he refused to remove his boots as he stood for an audience on the Shah’s Persian carpets. Where the Treaty of Gulistan was vague and concessions might be made to Persia, Yermolov made none. The man whose place it was to deal with Yermolov was Crown Prince Abbas Mirza – the son of Fath Ali Shah and the Governor of Azerbaijan.

Finally, in July of 1826, the Crown Prince, fed up with Yermolov’s demands, led a Persian attack on southwestern Georgia. The assault was short-lived and before long Russian troops gained the upper hand. Alarmed that he would lose even more of his land to the Russians, Fath Ali Shah again appealed for help to the British on the basis of yet another treaty that had been signed only a year earlier. For the second time in 22 years, they declined to come to Persia’s aid.

Eventually the Persian troops were routed, losing even more territory to the Russians.

Griboyedov was sent to negotiate the terms of a new treaty. When Abbas Mirza tried to reinstate the territorial terms of the Treaty of Gulistan, the Russian made it clear there would be no return to the previous borders. In addition, the Iranians would be forced to pay a substantial amount of money. The Iranians cajoled, pleaded and stalled but eventually were forced to sign the Treaty of Turkmanchai in 1828.

As the Tsar’s representative Griboyodov negotiated the humiliating terms of Persia’s surrender. He returned to Tehran in January of 1829. It was the holy month of Muharram. Emotions were high and the nation’s pride was bruised. Then two sparks were struck which would inflame the people of Tehran.

First, a eunuch of the Shah, an Armenian in charge of the harem’s treasury, asked for and was granted protection at the Russian Embassy. The Russians placed a priority of the repatriation of those they considered subjects of the Tsar. They realized the delicacy of providing a haven for someone in so sensitive position in the Shah’s court, but attempts to convince him to return to his duties failed.

Moreover, two Armenian women who were wives of a Persian military commander were also brought to the embassy. It was claimed they, too, wanted to return to their homeland.

On the 29th of January 1829, the women were seen being escorted to the baths adjacent to the embassy. Under these circumstances, the bathing ritual was viewed by the mullahs as a prelude to the seduction and dishonoring of the women. As word spread, a crowd of several hundred, armed with clubs, swords and firearms, forced its way into the embassy - killing the eunuch and carrying away the women. The Russian soldiers protecting the compound were outnumbered and quickly overwhelmed. Breaking into the ambassador’s apartment, the mob killed Griboyedov. Hours later two bodies, the corpse of the eunuch and a body thought to be Griboyedov’s (it wasn’t), were dragged through the streets and bazaars to shouts of “make way for the Russian ambassador, on his way to visit the Shah.”*

Griboyedov’s body was returned to Russia. Writer Alexander Pushkin wrote of encountering the wagon bearing his old acquaintance's coffin as it returned home. Griboyedov was one of the first casualties of the Great Game.

In addition to territorial losses, the Treaty of Turchmanchai included a bitter pill known as ‘the capitulations’, which put foreign nationals beyond the reach of Persian courts and exempted imported goods from tariffs. It can be argued that the anti-foreign sentiments of the Iranian populace were born at this moment in history, and nurtured by events that followed - most notably the 1872 Reuter Concession and the tobacco concession of 1890.

While the players changed, the dynamics of the Great Game – and the Western powers’ manipulation of Iran - continued into modern times. Only in the last 30 years has Iran enjoyed independence from foreign meddling.

*These details are taken from the book “Diplomacy and Murder in Tehran” by Laurence Kelly.

Peter Hopkirk offers a fascinating history of the great powers in central Asia in “The Great Game, The Struggle for Empire in Central Asia".

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"The Willow Tree"

شدح گل بگذار از بهر خدا

شرح بلبل گو که شد از گل جدا
"Leave the tale of the rose for God's sake
Set forth the tale of the nightgale that is parted from the rose"
-Molana

Majid Majidi's 2005 film, The Willow Tree is suffused with poetry and sadness; as meditative and freighted with symbolism as a poem by Shamlou or Forough.

Youssef, a blind man, asks God for his sight and his wish is granted. But he couldn't anticipate the disorienting world that awaits him. In a moment as poignant as anything on film, he stands at Mehrabad Airport gazing at a welcoming throng, wondering which woman is the one he has been married to for years but never seen.

For Youssef, sight opens a door that leads to the world of the sensual and ultimately leaves him lonelier and more isolated than before.

The film begins with Youssef reading a braille version of Rumi's Masnavi. It ends with him retrieving the book he has damaged in a rage and finding he is no longer able to read it.

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Ahmadinejad's Charm Offensive

Mahmoud Ahmadinejad continues to exhibit great skill as a politician. This is most evident in interviews with western reporters whose arsenal includes two lines of questioning: goading him to make inflammatory remarks about Israel and pestering him about Iran's nuclear program. In the end the reporters come out looking more confrontational than Ahmadinejad.

This week in New York Steve Innskeep of National Public Radio trod a well worn path into Ahmadinejad's trap. It's hard not to admire how the Iranian president manages to isolate those who take issue with Iran's nuclear program, citing support for the Islamic Republic among scores of non-aligned nations. Taken to task about Iran's selection process for vetting candidates for president, Ahmadinejad points out that there are more legitimate presidential contenders on the Iranian ballot than will appear in November on the American ballot.

In his speech before the United Nations, Ahmadinejad pronounced the U.S. 'empire' near collapse. The idea probably doesn't seem far fetched to a world which sees the U.S. as militarily exhausted, morally ambivalent and now economically spent.

One thing the Iranian president isn't given enough credit for is his sense of humor. Ahmadinejad told CNN's Larry King that he'd be happy to meet with the two major party presidential candidates - McCain and Obama - the prospect of which is so unlikely that it can only be meant as a joke.

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ظالم آن قومی که چشمان دوختند
زان سخنها عالمی را سوختند
Cruel are those whose eyes are sewn shut
And with their words incinerate the world
-Mowlana

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