 Don't tell
me, "Faster please!"
One man's brooding disquietude
By H. Utanazad
October 17, 2003
The Iranian
In a cool, exceedingly polluted evening in Tehran,
I meander aimlessly searching for the familiar scenes of my youth.
Some
say the eye is a window to the soul. I look for the inquisitive,
dignified, and descent glances of the years past. The glances
tonight betray lascivious frenzy and an insatiate acquisitiveness. The
demons our Manichean ancestors warned us about so many centuries
ago -- Concupiscence and Az -- stir all around. Life
is odd in this heartland of evil!
There are sign of wealth everywhere,
and yet the condition of the poor is heart wrenching. The
jewelers peddle gold, diamonds and rubies, while the streets
are filled with men, women and
children -- the bearded, the hirsute and the unwashed -- peddling
socks, batteries and their bodies to make ends meet. Hundreds
of young coquettish women -- fake blondes among them in force,
with painted toes, tattooed eyebrows, and exaggerated, colorful
makeup -- walk around in their trendy see through gowns while
numerous children, dirty and undernourished, peddle stuff no
one cares
to buy.
The educated, opulent youth organize to pass around
the latest pirated Microsoft software, games, alcohol, drugs,
and
porn flicks -- all
the while bemoaning the lack of freedom essential for self expression. People
appear frightened of the harm government authorities might
inflict upon them, and yet, they almost never hesitate to engage
in a fight over some lousy traffic accident, or a perceived affront
to their person, property or dignity.
The number of drug addicts,
prostitutes, wanderers and vagabonds is astonishing, and yet,
both weddings and funerals are lavish,
with people throwing thousands of tomans, (and frequently a few
Euros and Dollars) on the flirtatious dagger dancers. Some funeral
feasts continue with catered food for seven days and nights. Houses
are luxuriously (over) furnished. Shops are filled with
fruits, vegetables, canned goods, as well as appliances both
foreign and domestic. Poverty is omnipresent
Marital discord
and domestic abuse are social epidemics. An irritating, cavalier
attitude of the supposedly sensitive citizens of this
Republic makes for an infuriating display of callousness manifest
in hospitals, pharmacies, academic institutions and government
buildings. The excruciating agony of the multitude of our political
prisoners must be appalling judged solely by the torment that
masquerades as healing in the state owned hospitals.
It is thus
not difficult to be sympathetic to the acute observations of
the mostly sober-minded, though recklessly
audacious, and
frequently maligned prognosticators of the neoconservative movement. There
is something rotten about the state of affairs in our society;
ours appears on a most advanced stage of decay.
This is a marvelous
time, nevertheless, to be an Iranian, isn't it? There
is simply no shortage of people claiming to have our best interest
in mind. We have it all. The
list includes, though not exhaustively, an infallible Leader,
a President who is a philosopher, a President elect who is a
woman, two Vice Presidents; a Guardian Council, a King, a Queen,
and a Queen Mother; a Constitutionalist Movement, a Green Movement,
Republicans, Monarchists, assorted Islamic Organizations--democratic
and otherwise, and both a Communist Party as well as a Communist
Workers' Party.
Ruled by the self appointed plenipotentiary
Satraps of the Almighty here on earth who, in their infinite
wisdom, have taken upon
themselves the thankless job of guiding us towards perdition
in the absence of our beloved hidden Imam, we are a nation bombarded
by the daily dose of encouragement, advice, and (mostly) threats. Our
foreign guardian angels, much like our domestic ones, are too
numerous to list.
Just why on earth are we not acting? Are we not
developing WMD's? Is our society not a threat to the international
community? Are
we not deprived of our human rights? Do we not deserve better? Why
the inaction? Does our existence not exemplify collective
cowardice?
I look up. The Tehran skyline of my childhood
was filled with stars. I used to count the shooting ones. None
of that is visible tonight. Neither are helicopters and
fighter planes. Gun ships are not engaged in targeted killings
over Tehran tonight. Fighter planes do not bomb my city
blocks. Thousands
of armed troops do not patrol my streets in tanks and there are
no checkpoint shootings. I move in
whatever part of the city I chose to.
The power grids appear
to work -- the city is well lit. Plenty of water is
available for almost everyone. The kids are busy buying books. Schools
have started and millions attend without much fanfare. No, the
efficacy of a society should not be judged by its functioning
schools and utilities. But again, neither does a working
electric circuit or two and a freshly painted bullet ridden school
wall a successful expedition make. I pass by a pharmacy. All sorts of stuff
is on display except for PreparationH. Is it not true that
the amount of money Americans spend annually to preempt that
annoying itch is roughly
the equivalent of what the government here spends on the military. A
menacing threat? I don't know, but certainly a suffocating
presence in our lives.
And the concerned international community? Take
the latest declamation of one Christopher Hitchens, an aspiring
Orwell for
our time. In the name of History, Mr. Hitchens wants us
to consider the positive role a foreign military intervention
can play in unleashing our collective energy. In so doing,
he has finally decided to outdo American Enterprise Institute's
Michael Ledeen, a colorful fellow who played a cruciall role
in the cake
and
the Bible episode of the mid Eighties and the one who seems unable
to resist authoritarian personalities with shinny leather boots
be it Mussolini or Reza Khan--that infamous Nazi sympathizer
who was forced to abdicate by the Allies.
Hitchens forgets that we are used to dealings
with infallible leaders here. We have learned to question motives; to suspect
those who claim privileged knowledge and to be suspicious of
the self appointed champions of Justice. We have grown wary of
the calls to die sheepishly in the name of some abstract, impersonal
concept.
Why should I violently revolt right now, and feel
good about myself, when only a few kilometers away, in a land
intended to
be the "light unto nations" the folks who merely
try to temper the policies of their government by pointing out
that it is not just, or moral, to shoot unarmed children are
vilified as self-hating? Why should I cause a civil war
here and feel heroic when in another continent, the mere criticism
of a highly contested foreign policy is dismissed as Anti-American?
Won't I be self-hating? Won't I be Anti-Iranian?
Why
should I take the declarations of concern for my liberties seriously
when I see thousands incarcerated without charge, hooded,
humiliated, paraded and occasionally tortured? Why should
I want to see thousands of my fellow citizens, no matter how
odious their beliefs to me, incinerated, dismembered, and the
lucky ones tormented without due process, hooded and paraded
on the Fox Channel? How much better would that be from what
exists today?
The chemical and biological weapons? I
still see the unending torment of my fellow citizens, thousands
with blistered
skins and burned lungs gassed in silence when Saddam was a darling
of the West shaking hand smilingly with the likes of Rumsfeld.
Make
no mistakes: one thing's for certain. These
repulsive, gray, and not so gentlemanly turbaned creatures wreaking
havoc on our existence will have to go. But don't tell
me, "Faster please!" Freedom and Democracy
are too precious to toy with. We have waited for way too
long. We will fight for them as we have always. But
the time and the method of my participation in the final putsch:
that will be something upon which I will have to decide on my
own.
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