The government of the Islamic Republic of Iran announced today that effective immediately, all citizens of Iran must walk on their hands. The government gave no further explanation about the new law, but warned citizens that any violation or disobedience of the law will result in severe punishment. In order to gauge the public’s reaction to the news we sent our reporter, Soraya Namazi to Tehran. She filed the following report.
I am standing here in Vali Asr Street in central Tehran, where Mr. Gholamhossein Mansouri, a retired oil company worker, is walking home, on his hands, after buying two loafs of bread from a nearby bakery. The plastic bag containing the bread is hanging from his bare toes. I asked Mr. Mansouri about his reaction to the new law. He responded by saying “I’m sure the government has our best interest in mind. Plus, they do bad things you if you don’t obey their orders. This is not that bad anyway. I always wanted to develop my biceps and triceps when I was young. Now, this is my chance. Plus, with the prices being up and all, we can save money now by not buying shoes. We just don’t need them anymore. We can just put some socks on in the winter when it’s cold.” I then asked Mr. Mansouri about his role in the 1979 revolution, and how he would reconcile his violent opposition to the Shah with his fear of opposing the regime now. Standing on his hands and looking up at me, Mr. Mansouri said “well, back in 1978 I did go on strike, and went to the demonstrations. But the beauty of it was that at that time, no one bothered us. In fact, the poor Shah even paid our salaries when we were on strike. But these people, they will take my pension away if I oppose them, and I can’t take my trip to Dubai anymore. Oh, and they will also take us to jail and sodomize us. So, I’m afraid. Plus, I am a religious man. Back in 1979 I saw Imam Khomeini’s image on the moon and found one of his hairs in my Quran. So, I attacked an army barracks, tore Shah’s picture to pieces and then sold the army jackets that I stole from the base.” “But what about your children’s, and your grandchildren’s future,” I asked. His response: “I’m not too worried about them. They all have St. Kitts’ passports. They can travel to other countries and walk on their feet there if they want to.”
In order to gauge the Iranian Diaspora’s reaction, I went on Iranian.com and interviewed several members and former members. I first interviewed “Immortal Guard” and asked him about his thoughts. Mr. Immortal Guard had this to say about Iranian’s walking on their hands: “this is the appropriate way of walking. The whole walking on feet thing is a Jewish conspiracy that happened at the time of Homo erectus. At that time, Jewish Homo erectusians developed a plan to weaken the rest of the world and profit from selling shoes. So, they devised this plan to force the rest of the species to lose their ability to use their hands and drag their knuckles. And Iranian Homo erectusians, who were totally incapable of making any decisions for themselves fell into this trap and started to walk on their feet, and the rest is history.” I then asked the former Iranian.com member “ILoveIran about the matter, and he responded with two words only: “fucking kikes.” Next, I followed up by asking user Mohammad Alireza about the new decree–and his opinion was “Israel occupies the West Bank and is building settlements there everyday, taking Palestinians’ lands. The least that the people of Iran can do is to walk on their hands until Qods is liberated. That, and a nuclear bomb dropped on Israel. That will do the job.” Mr. Alireza then had a leave in a hurry to catch the latest news on the Electronic Intifada Blog. Lastly, I asked user Abarmard about the matter. He stated that “while walking on hands may seem a bit bothersome, change has to come, slowly, from within. The government has passed this law now. We have to obey it. What we should do is to wait, and work on it, bit by bit, for the next fifty years or so, to eventually change the law, and have our grandchildren walk on their feet again. And no foreign involvement. Iranian people are like retarded sea slugs. They have absolutely no control over anything. The minute anyone with a strand blond hair says anything that may sound reasonable and with which Iranians may agree, the blond man takes control of their minds and they become his slaves for a generation or two. We just can’t control it. We have to constantly scream at the blond man, occupy his embassies and threaten him with war. Otherwise, if we agree with him on any issue, we immediately become his bitch, and that is not acceptable.”
My last stop was Columbia University, where I interviewed Professor Hamid Dabashi and his sidekick, a member of the 1970’s disco band, the Village People. Professor Dabashi had this to say about the issue: “the problem is larger than walking on hands. That’s a technicality that we, the Green Movement folks, are satisfied to live with for now. See my green chafiyeh? This says to the world that the struggle for Palestine is ongoing, and that I am trying to stay relevant…I’m sorry, where was I? Oh, yes, the hand walking thing. It’s a small issue. People with get used to it. As long as we, as a nation, stand up to Israel we can change things from within. That is all we should be concerned with.” I was unable to ask the sidekick any questions, as he was preparing for a summer trip to Iran and had to leave for an Apple store to buy a few iPads for family members in Iran.
**Photo: an Iranian citizen complying with the new law in the city of Kermanshah.
