The Vanishing

Lake Tranquility

Heard this somewhere :

صفا و صلح و يكرنگی در اِین دنیا قدیمی شد
توقع از رفیق و مونس و همدم قدیمی شد
میاور بر زبان نام وفا از خیر آن بگذر
وفا تنها نه اینجا بلکه در عالم قدیمی شد
بخند تا میتوانی زانکه میترسم
پس از چندی به بینی خنده هم دیگر قدیمی شد
بکن تا میتوانی بر ضعیفان ظلم و جور امروز
که رسم دستگیری از ضعیفان هم قدیمی شد
بجای گریه در مرگ عزیزان خیز و شادی کن
که تشریفات ختم ومجلس و ماتم قدیمی شد
بگرد شهر میگردی که تا آدم کنی پیدا
بجان حضرت آدم که آدم هم قدیمی شد

Censorship Sucks!

Imbecility

No matter how many variations of the sign I see, the last encounter is just as infuriating as the first. It enrages me. Censorship breeds reptilian personalities. It forges the sort of creatures one loathes to see breed, even with poodles…in the censors, that is.

It creates nothing. It stops nothing. It only annoys. It simply delays. No one can stop life. No one can stop the process of thinking. It does not succeed. When will they ever learn?

The sign appears at the most unlikely places and times, and very often. It blocks access to an email account sometimes; or to an article on Abu Ghuraib and even some site exhibiting the writings of such famous Islamic thinkers as Al-Biruni and even some language translation engines, among many, many others.

There is no rhyme or reason. The sign is a constant reminder of the sort of imbecility and incompetence arbitrary exercise of power inevitably leads to. Censorship genuinely sucks. How many ways can we think of saying STOP THE CENSORSHIP!

This site helped. If you are reading this, please send a note with the sentence in any other language you are familiar with. I’d like to make a sign with as many languages as possible represented.

What does it take to get through thick skulls?

سانسور موقوف/

Arrêtez la censure /

Halten die Zensur /

Precz z cenzurÄ/

Arresti la censura /

検閲を停止しなさい /

Pare la censura /

أوقف الرّقابة /

Σταματήστε τη λογοκρισία /

Pare a censura /

Houd de censuur tegen /

停止审查 /

Остановите цензуру /

Stans sensuren /



Grateful to Natalia for half the title!

Learning Curve

Fish Market

More pictures. I have tons of them and I am just learning the ropes. From the looks of things, one way or another, there’ll be some shooting in the coming months. (via Antiwar) We‘ll probably come down on all kinds of different sides. So as long as some out there are going to push for bombings, I figure, it is best to provide some pictures to have you see what I see. That way, at least some out there in the increasingly more peaceful and civilized Western Hemisphere might get to see what it is actually that they’re so anxious to bomb.

Scavenger

scavenger

Nature or Convention?

scavenger

Metamorphosis

Where the State becomes the principal butcher, the butchershop naturally morphs into Proteinery!

What do you think? American cultural influence?





The sign in gist: Proteinery Supplier of Meat and Poultry

On Dice

I have been wondering about the relationship between one of our favorite games—yes, you guessed it, backgammon—and our attitude towards life generally. Is there a connection? More broadly, in what sense are we to understand the significance of what various cultures settle on as favorite pastimes and to what extend then can we argue that cultures are affected by those choices?

An average Iranian, I think, plays more backgammon than reads the Koran in any meaningful way. It is both fun, and entertaining. Once you learn the game, there are series of moves that are formulaic. Depending on your mood, and your personality, you either play recklessly and offensive or rather conservatively and defensive.

Then a lot hinges on the roll of the dice. There is no reason to feel you should always get what you hope for in a roll. But again, there is no conceivable reasons why should not. It is pure chance, isn’t it?

And chance is the word we hear a lot around these parts. Your opponent always wins because of his luck. And if you don’t always get what you wish for in a game, or in the game of life, then it is obviously your bad luck as well!

Dice have had an interesting history around these parts. Dice have broken kingdoms, split families, helped punish treasonous eunuchs and even helped save the Jews. I don’t know what it is about the stuff, really. But when you read the ancient accounts, it is a lot easier to stomach consequences than when one has to contend, in real life, with the nauseating chatter of some dice player.

More later. But today I wanted to point out some interesting stories involving dice.

Let’s start with another one of our many intriguing queens, the cunning, ruthless, and “naturally implacable and savage in anger and revenge,” Parysatis. Queen Parysatis, according to Plutarch, is an ingenious woman and an excellent player in dice. Her plot to punish Masabates for cutting off the hand and head of Cyrus involves a nice game of dice against King Artaxerxes.

The Jewish festival of Purim as well has a lot to do with dice. Merdecai and Esther, said to be buried in Hamadan, were in danger along with the rest of the Jewish community as a result of the enmity of Haman. The day of their destruction was chosen by throwing dice. Read the full account of their deliverance here.

And of course, the magnificent Indian Epic of Mahabharata records the events of the battle between two great families which is a consequence of a game of dice that brings much destruction. Some of the more memorable dice-centered episodes here, here, here, here, here, here.

My all time favorite, of course, is the ancient moving hymn Dice in Rig Veda:

1. SPRUNG from tall trees on windy heights, these rollers transport me as they turn upon the table.
Dearer to me the die that never slumbers than the deep draught of Mujavan's own Soma.
2 She never vexed me nor was angry with me, but to my friends and me was ever gracious.
For the die's sake, whose single point is final, mine own devoted wife I alienated.
3 My wife holds me aloof, her mother hates me: the wretched man finds none to give him comfort.
As of a costly horse grown old and feeble, I find not any profit of the gamester.
4 Others caress the wife of him whose riches the die hath coveted, that rapid courser:
Of him speak father, mother, brothers saying, We know him not: bind him and take him with you.
5 When I resolve to play with these no longer, my friends depart from me and leave me lonely.
When the brown dice, thrown on the board, have rattled, like a fond girl I seek the place of meeting.
6 The gamester seeks the gambling-house, and wonders, his body all afire, Shall I be lucky?
Still do the dice extend his eager longing, staking his gains against his adversary.
7 Dice, verily, are armed with goads and driving-hooks, deceiving and tormenting, causing gievous woe.
They give frail gifts and then destroy the man who wins, thickly anointed with the player's fairest good.
8 Merrily sports their troop, the three-and-fifty, like Savitar the God whose ways are faithful.
They bend not even to the mighty's anger: the King himself pays homage and reveres them.
9 Downward they roll, and then spring quickly upward, and, handless, force the man with hands to serve them.
Cast on the board, like lumps of magic charcoal, though cold themselves they burn the heart to ashes.
10 The gambler's wife is left forlorn and wretched: the mother mourns the son who wanders homeless.
In constant fear, in debt, and seeking riches, he goes by night unto the home of others.
11 Sad is the gambler when he sees a matron, another's wife, and his well-ordered dwelling.
He yokes the brown steeds in the early morning, and when the fire is cold sinks down an outcast.
12 To the great captain of your mighty army, who hath become the host's imperial leader,
To him I show my ten extended fingers: I speak the truth. No wealth am I withholding.
13 Play not with dice: no, cultivate thy corn-land. Enjoy the gain, and deem that wealth sufficient.
There are thy cattle there thy wife, O gambler. So this good Savitar himself hath told me.
14 Make me your friend: show us some little mercy. Assail us not with your terrific fierceness.
Appeased be your malignity and anger, and let the brown dice snare some other captive.

Putty’s New Mask 2

What I intend to do in the coming weeks is to come back repeatedly to the short piece of the last post until I get everything off my chest. What hopefully you’ll see me do is articulate, through sustained scrutiny of our putty’s attitudes and claims, all that I find repulsive about us Iranians as well as our dominant cultural tendencies nowadays.

Some might finally get answers to the many questions I have never directly addressed before. Chief among them, the reasons I am so obsessed with Homer’s Iliad. As a bonus, you might also come to appreciate why I think Mr. Bush an Iranian in disguise.

Let’s first get the generalities out of the way. If I know my Iranians, our Putty probably screwed up royally when confronting that most dreadful of questions, “who are you?” He is now scrambling to fill in retroactively the identity blanks. That is the first thing about most Iranians lately, I suppose.

Of all the many people I have encountered over the years, we, Iranians, are the most unique in our tendency to project our own expectations and ideal notions of whom & where we want to be over who and where we actually are.

Who we hope to become mostly substitute for what we truly are.

Putty is right in claiming to be a product of a “rift in time and destiny.” But the rift places him smack in the middle of that detestable space most of us find ourselves struggling to deal with no matter where we live….the LaLa Land.

The rift in time actually locates us somewhere just between the horizon of the ancients and the moderns. Whether we believe with the wise ones that an “unexamined life is not worth living,” or with certain fashionable contemporaries that “an unlived life is not worth examining,” one thing is for certain. Our Putty neither fully lives, nor even partially reflects. That is the tragedy of modern Iran and the paradox of the Iranian Diaspora.

All that he has managed to do in the first half is to reveal that he “is” a recording device, reproducing poetry from various corners of the globe; a map, accurately reorienting in whatever desired direction and a carnivorous, mechanical killing & fruit picking machine.

But a contemplative being?

I find myself wishing that the Algerian pimp he alludes to could have drilled some sense into him. Or that some French person could have just shaken him out of his doldrums by insisting in that beautiful language of theirs and its unique intonation:

-- réfléchis un peu !

Our Putty’s professed choice of a profession doesn’t bother me much. There are countless spies and they do what they must.

Neither does his desire to “betray,” the motherland. A motherland that fails in its responsibilities deserves to be “betrayed.” Although, to be more precise, I wouldn’t want to characterize the act of undermining this Regime as a “betrayal.”

That he so describes his ultimate objectives speak volumes about his predicament.

Yes, Putty’s justifications for what he is trying to accomplish do annoy me immensely. And his expectations of the outcome are certainly irksome in so far as they are so stereotypically Iranian.

Just because he now wears his new mask, he expects to simply “will” the dagger wherever he pleases. The “motherland” is obviously expected to roll over and die. Any other outcome is bad luck, conspiracy, or further proof of the evils of the “terror masters.”(O, I forgot to tell you. I suspect Ledeen to be another highly successful Iranian in disguise!)

Naturally, this problematic nature of the relation between words and deeds in contemporary Iran we will have to explore in detail.

In the next post, I will try to highlight some aspects that I take to be the paralyzing dimensions of our psyche-- a modern plague of the mind, if you will.

I will attempt to show why beneath the façade of the outraged, belligerent victim on a mission of vengeance lurks a pathetically petrified traditional backgammon player directly responsible for his own misery.

Disdain is the principal reaction he has managed to elicit in me.

Putty’s New Mask

I am reproducing in full an anonymously written short piece from iranian.com because I find it culturally significant and I am not convinced many readers actually do follow links. What I‘d like to do is to bring to completion some of the broodings I've never gotten around to fully articulating to my satisfaction about us as a people which I had started here, here, here and here. Talk about mother issues!


Homecoming

As I sit across from an officer of one of the most distinguished intelligence agencies in the world, he asks me the single question I am not prepared to answer at a job interview:

"Who are you?"

Who am I? Interesting question. I'm a product of a rift in time and destiny. I can speak a number of European languages fluently, not because I want to but because I spent my life drifting across the globe.

I can accurately quote Shakespeare, Kant, and Sadegh Hedayat, when the occasion calls for it. I can recite Chaucer's Canterbury Tales, as comfortably as I can recite Ferdowsi. I can read and write in a number of languages.

I am as comfortable at La Tour D'Argent in Paris as I am at Sharaf'ol'Eslamy in Tehran's Bazaar.

I know my way around St Peter's Basilica in Rome as well as I know my way about Meydooneh Toopkhooneh in central Tehran.

I'm as comfortable hunting deer in Arnold's California as I am having Ghelyeh Mahi at a stand by the water in Oman. I can seem at home at a peach orchard in Georgia, or picking pomegranate at an orchard in Saveh.

I can swap insults with any Algerian pimp in Bois-de-Boulogne, as comfortably as discussing Sino-American Corporations with a foreign diplomat at an embassy gathering.

I'm not sure exactly who I am, but I am certain of what I am: I am human silly-putty, able to mold myself into the mask of the moment.

Yet behind the mask there is something constant, immovable, old as the dust on the ruins of Perspolis: the rage thundering inside.

Rage at Mother Iran for preparing me better than any school, better than any camp, better than any agency, for betrayal as an occupation.

Rage at a society where the most educated physicist will go to "Emamzadeh Saleh" and pray to the rotten relics of a man that may have never been, to better insure that he is accepted to the PhD Program at MIT.

Rage at a society whose offspring in the millions are scattered across the globe, each having sworn an oath of allegiance to another country to get a different colored passport, and yet scarce a handful of the millions are willing to really stand by the words they swore to get that passport.

You see, no agency could teach me how to lead a double life better than the society that taught me to mix beer and Quran, music and Azaan.

So here I am wearing the mask of the moment, and behind the mask there is a steely determination to betray the very society that created a monster like me.

I'm coming home Mother Iran, I'm coming home to your arms, to embrace you, and stick the dagger I have carried in my heart, into your back, and lovingly hold you as you draw your last gasps; and sooth the shock in your gaze with the serenity in mine.

Mother, I'm coming home...

Hospitality & Torture!

Many things to do and so behind in obligations. Someday, I’ll do a real post on Persian hospitality—a significant factor, I suspect, in our present discontent. I often wonder how any one of us can manage to get anything done with all this seemingly endless (spontaneous) hustle and bustle.

Any how, I have been thinking about the relation between sacred texts, culturally determined interpretations and the Laws since entertaining some guests a few days ago who showed no inclination to leave.

Here is what got me started: some one was telling me recently about a young man being dragged to jail charged with “standing fornication.” Lest you think the worst, let me clarify. The hapless youngster’s sole indiscretion had been shaking hand with a woman in front of some overzealous enforcer of public morality.

Please do note that quite a few of us shake hand all the time without ending up in jail, and some even go a lot farther!

That said, we do live in an Islamic State. There are laws, you see. There are chapters and verses in the Koran which are explicit about the status of women as well as the sanctioned manners of interaction.

Some of those have been codified in laws. The mechanism is complex and you can probably go do some research to gain a better understanding of the stuff if that’s your thing.

The 33rd Sura of The Koran , “The Confederates” in this Project Gutenburg translation has explicitly outlined various expectations of believers both in dealing with women in general and with (and of) Prophet’s wives in particular, which can be (and have been) extended to all women, I suppose:

O wives of the Prophet! should any of you be guilty of a provenlewdness, doubly shall her chastisement be doubled: and with God this is easy.

But whoever of you shall obey God and His Apostle, and shall do that which is right, twice over will we give her her reward, and we have prepared for her a noble provision.

O wives of the Prophet! ye are not as other women. If ye fear God,be not too complaisant of speech, lest the man of unhealthy heart should lust after you, but speak with discreet speech.

And abide still in your houses, and go not in public decked as inthe days of your former ignorance,15 but observe prayer, and pay the impost, and obey God and the Apostle: for God only desireth toput away filthiness from you 16 as his household, and with cleansing to cleanse you.

In various Islamic societies, men and women, in so far as they are believers, are expected to conform. But here is where I become all disgruntled and confused living in Iran. In this same Sura, there are the following clear instructions:

O Believers! enter not into the houses of the Prophet, 23 save by his leave, for a meal, without waiting his time. When ye are invited then enter, and when ye have eaten then disperse at once.24 And engage not in familiar talk, for this would cause the Prophet trouble, and he would be ashamed to bid you go; but God is not ashamed to say the truth. And when ye would ask any gift of his wives, ask it from behind a veil. Purer will this be for your hearts and for their hearts.


So like all other instructions, I am thinking, if something is good enough for the Prophet, surely it must be good enough for the rest of us sinners, at least in some modified form. This is an Islamic State. A lot of people still think themselves Muslims. They surely must have read the Koran.

So why is it that we as a people drop by without calling first? Stay for as long as we possibly can. Are as gaudy as possible Don’t help with the cleaning. And are most belligerently shameless in expecting gifts on all occasions.

No end to the taraddidle. And no end to the petty gossip either.

Why are there no laws regulating the conduct of the omnipresent bothersome guests? This surely is an Islamic State, isn’t it?

Lost Generation

We have had our “burnt generation,” and now our Iraqi neighbors their lost ones. Read Zaid Al-Ali’s Iraq-the lost generation in Open Democracy. (thanks Mr. R.)

A new facelift for this blog. Some bloggers and a few interesting sites added. See what you make of them.

The Gold Rush

As we wait for further broadcasts of the exciting episodes of the Menagerie staring our community of saviors in Los Angeles, I’d like to tell you about a certain bizarre matter in Iran which would have been rather amusing had it not been so grotesque.

There have been numerous legal actions and popular calls and support for filtering a company website, the Hongkong-based GoldQuest’s(having gained access to Iranian markets via Dubai), with the twist that some authorities are now questioning the wisdom of such censorship long-term just as some of our public is most vociferous in calling for their continued filtering.

The said company has been running a standard pyramid scheme in Iran for some time now. They have promised Iranians quick reward and access to unlimited riches if only we purchased some of their “collector’s items,” to include gold coins with engraving of various famous historical figures, assorted jewelry and numerous watches.

The “cream of the crop” of the Iranian society has been involved in this scheme. Upward of one million and one half Iranians have recently coughed up a minimum of 600,000 Tomans each (average office or factory work earns you 100,000) to participate in this get rich quick scam.

According to Central Bank figures, in a short span of time and overall, Iran has lost around 3 billion dollars in foreign currency.

Doctors and surgeons, educators and students, engineers and lawyers among so many others have been madly trying to persuade their colleagues, friend and relatives to get involved in this (latest) quest which has ultimately proved (yet again) a dud.

I have been following this matter for some time now. I was asked by exacerbated parents to look into the background of this company and have a chat with their ambitious sons who were being persuaded by some professors to milk their parents so they can participate and “invest in their future.”

It was another one of those great secrets that only a select few were fortunate enough to know about and join.

The company itself just asked for 40 dollars to begin with. But our entrepreneurial citizens had even added their own scam.

Now pyramid schemes are nothing new. All societies have them. But the pitch that caught the attention of these young men and women, and in retrospect, most of those other, older Iranians participating was new and rather revealing.

“Tejarate be la vasete va soode kalane shakheie!” Or roughly, “international trade, unmediated, involving branches that yield high rate of return!”

Goodness knows I tried. I tried to explain to the kids the nature of pyramids. I tried to explain that if something is too good to be true, it probably is. But our discussions quickly became an exercise in close reading and interpretation.

I tried to focus on the sentence that appeared to have appealed to their imagination the most. “How can you characterize an activity as unmediated,” I kept asking them “if you strive to establish branches below you and your activity is an integral part of the branches above?”

I asked them to carefully consider the meaning of collector’s items. Only time, I argued, would naturally make something worthy of the name.

I asked them to consider the nature of the products they were trying to sell and the cultural context of our lives. “Do any of us have hobbies?” “Where are all the collectors?” “When was the last time you encountered a picture of any East Asian celebrity in any of our houses?”

I had some success. But my words mostly fell on deaf ear. Yes, just another “idiot” afraid of money and success. They wanted to believe and there was nothing to be done.

The gold coins turned out to be silver with only the shiny appearance of gold.

“Why would anyone,” I kept asking, “in our society obsessed with famous brand names be interested in a watch sold by GoldQuest?”

The watches too are now recognized as obscenely overpriced.

Why would so many smart, educated people fall for this scam? Why so many miss the obvious warning sings? Why do so many not want to grasp some elementary concepts and simple contradictions?

I really don’t have answers. What is obvious, though, is that some of our best and the brightest were willing to risk everything-- their professional lives, familial bonds, trust of peers, social obligations and responsibilities, once they could imagin themselves rich--quickly and rather effortlessly.

Quite a few people lost their taste for life as they knew it in order to get involved in this illusory gold rush.

No words could dissuade them. No existing relations could restrain them. No risk deterred them. And no logic discouraged them.

One question is becoming all the more urgently existential for me: have we, as a nation, become unwilling or unable to imagine ourselves free?