I
should be elsewhere
At five in the afternoon
April 8, 2004
iranian.com
: .
In
the name of United
And the BBC
In the name of Georgie Best
And LSD
In the Name of the Father
And His wife the Spirit
You said you didn't,
They said you did it.
I have not yet had the privilege to see Samira Makhmalbaf's
latest direction and production [Five
in he Afternoon], but have
a decent understanding of her sharp talent and beautiful style
as
a filmmaker.
Just now
I listened to her
BBC interview, and for the first time heard her
voice. Her voice, both as that of a great new generation of those
who made it through the revolution all right through blood and
art, but also as far as it relates to her love of a woman president
in the new Afghanistan, spoke volumes. She also spoke about Cannes.
The inner migration has led to so many "I don't know"-s
and "I can't answer"-s that are otherwise visible
from the chessboard of global politics: Nothing left to say, but
to talk about the old dichotomy, love and wisdom. The Hafiz card,
the Molana card, the Erfan card, is pulled out too quickly or perhaps
too late...
Courage with art, in neither rebuttal nor Taa'rof
(itself a byproduct of not ethics but rather an expression of fear)
but
in genuine affirmation of things as they are: this is yet to come
from the land of flowers and Bolbols. We still need to come to
words.
Ms. Makhmalbaf is right, the physical cover is not
the most important thing right now, perhaps more important would
be to more closely
look at the relationship between various ways of exiting the self-guilted
mouthlessness without the help of an other, as it were: on our
own.
The movement you need is on your shoulder as one
says, and in this, questioning the questioner in an interview as
the voice of "the
west" in a ridiculous dichotomy with Iran or some other abstract
thing, while perhaps always a first step, yet remains far from
the core of reaching a certain maturity necessary for getting closer
to the sun of both light and warmth, the love that was given to
Jesus by the kings from the East and Mithra, and the one that was
the god of the age of enlightenment, the one that has given us
the declaration of human rights, and the one that has given us
the atom bomb and systematic production of corpses. What do we
affirm? What do we negate? What is our unique moral stance without
the fear of, or accusations for another?
New York is calling.
A week or so ago, finally, the Persian Parade was
put on, here in New York. I was unable to attend, but I was there
at least
at one of the meetings of its organizers and the public at
large.
As far as I understand it, four doctors and some others have
footed the bill, performed the labor and sacrificed time
this year, hoping
for many happy returns in the future. This is in fact quite
a noble endeavor; I applaud them for it, and wish them success.
I was also in some sort of correspondence with them
regarding primarily two separate things: the democratic element
of the
parade in its
decision-making bodies, and also the matter of the Shirokhorshid
flag. At the meeting I attended, it was made quite clear
that in fact the Iranian tricolor and the golden Shirokhorshid
would
be
flown. In the films that I have seen from the parade (NY1)
this decision appears to have been implemented.
It was made clear to me in various conversations
that the undemocratic element remains as always, to some degree
understandable (as
far as it is tied with the capitalist interests of this
capitalist
undertaking).
The most important outcome, I hope, was that the
fear lurking among and within various Iranians as products of the
reign
of terror
in Iran was overcome, and that, without issuing a political
dictum prematurely, they renewed their connection with
their past. A
good advertising partner would perhaps have been, No
Fear! Even those
who preached the separation of politics from culture
with a straight face let up this time.
So, no matter what iranian.com
posts as
the flag of Iran, when it conducts polls about it,
the flag of Iran,
at least on the 27th of March and in honor of the coming
of spring and Neoruz, in New York New York and in the
Persian Parade, was
the one with the Lion and the Sun. *
*
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