....
Standing up and speaking out
Recently I participated in a conversation on a topic that I think is of special interest to all of us who live in the US. But I think it would also interest those of us living outside the US. And I would think it would be of great interest to those of us (still) living in Iran. The topic? Can we afford to remain silent?
Looking back, this issue seems to have beset our culture from the very beginning and at no greater time than now, have we been thrust into making our decision on this very pivotal matter. The matter of keeping down and staying silent or the alternative, standing up and speaking out.
The Players;
Yours truly: Half Ghashghai, half German, Part time amateur Iranian.com feature writer, full time internet marketing consultant. US born, and for argument's sake, a Republican.
Cameron Douraghy: Half Iranian, half American, MBA in International Management from TBird. Formerly an International marketing manager for Braun in Germany, currently entrepreneur and partner in Artisan Creative, a marketing communications and design firm in San Francisco, Libertarian and a grade school chum of mine.
Arash Alavi: Thoroughbred Iranian, PhD in computer science, currently working as a software consultant. Co-founder of the Bay Area Iranian-American Voter Association. Independant and a good friend.
Maad Abu-Ghazalah: Software entrepreneur and businessman, Palestinian-born Arab American, former President of the Bay Area chapter of the Arab-American Anti Discrimination Committee, running as a Libertarian for congress in the district of San Mateo against incumbent Democrat Tom Lantos.
A few weeks earlier, Arash who had been skirting my frequent attempts to coerce him into working with me at Society of Iranian Professionals or The Persian Center, had finally come up with a worthy enough cause to get himself into. He was busy gathering up hungry volunteers for the Bay Area Iranian-American Voter Association, when he came across Maad Abu-Ghazalah who was running for congress in his home county of San Mateo. He called me and said, "There's a Libertarian candidate who has been registering minority voters in my neighborhood and I'm going over to talk to him and learn a bit about how they do it to see if we can learn anything for BAIVOTER, you want to come?". I got the number and called Maad for a meeting.
What should have taken a minute to set up a simple time and place to meet, ended an hour and a half later, exploring everything from the war on terrorism, to the state of Tom Lantos' rapidly deteriorating face. I found Maad to be an exceptional person. Qualified, educated, articulate, he seemed infinitely wiser than his age of 40-something, certainly wiser than me.
A week later around 5 o'clock, we all drifted in one by one to the offices of Maad4congress.org. After work, after hours, after the traffic died down, when we could all think clearly for a minute. When I had learned that Maad was running as a Libertarian, I immediately called Cameron up and told him two things. One was that Maad was a Libertarian, and two that Maad was running in his home district. Cameron having had some experience with me, no further info was needed, he would be there.
The Meeting:
The
office looked every part like a candidate's office. Flyers, posters, signage of all
kinds everywhere. Markerboards listing the ethnic breakdown of the district and percentages
of likely votes, a (very) small pile of donor checks and cash mostly 10's and 20's
was visible next to the computer, into which a volunteer was carefully recording
the names and amounts donated by each, according to the campaign rules.
Maad was on the phone in the conference room and from the sound of his conversation, was talking to a reporter, one of many who have been calling him ever since he put his life on hold and declared his candidacy. "Yes, I agree", He said, "That's exactly why I am running", to the voice on the other end.
While
I waited for Maad to get off the phone, I poked around the office took a few shots
and when my batteries ran out, I chatted up the volunteer. A soft spoken kind young
man with a goatee and sparkle."So how's it going?" I chirped. "Pretty
good, the main problem is getting enough volunteers and getting the word out about
Maad" he said. "Are you a Libertarian?" I asked for some reason. "No,
I'm a Democrat" he replied. Strange, I thought. But I realized that this is
kind of the way the Libertarian platform operates, hands off.
The office door opened and Arash walked in flashing the batteries I had asked him to pick up for me just in case. We both waited as Maad wrapped up and he began waving us into the conference room to come on in and sit down. As soon as we did, Cameron arrived breathless as usual, apologizing for being a bit late, even though he wasn't.
We sat around a round table and Maad came up to us, smiled and shook each our hands and sat down casually smiling politely. He had a calm look about his face. He has light brown hair, almost a dark blonde and his eyes are a creamy jade. Not the stereotypical Middle Eastern features look for sure, but this is the whole point isn't it? Profiling doesn't always work. You immediately picked up that this was a nice guy.
"So where are you from?" I asked to kick the ball off.
"I
was born in Palestine." he said, not too proudly or forcefully, but matter of
fact, just like it was any other place in the world, right up the street, 2 blocks
over. "Really," I replied, "Where in Palestine?", I pressed on.
"Nablis" he said. My next question was obvious, and I asked it, "Have
you been back recently?" "Yes I try to go back at least once a year if
I can." he said.
I asked him more about what it was like to live in Palestine and he told me the expected answer, that "live" was not the operative word for it. Survive, stay alive, these were more appropriate words. Maad explained how some of his family there lived under the ongoing siege.
Maad was raised in Saudi Arabia, his father worked for Aramco as a translator and they lived on the American compounds prevalent there. He learned to windsurf on the Persian Gulf, an obsession that eventually drove him to come to the Bay Area. His mother wanted Maad to be born in Palestine, and weeks before he was born, flew to Palestine and fulfilled her wish and his destiny. Then they returned to Saudi.
Cameron and Arash fidgeted as I went down the list of the standard questions.
Maad went to British
high school (although he has no accent) then came to the US and graduated from Notre
Dame, then went on to Virginia for his masters in computers. T
he he went to Texas to work for
Texas Instruments before striking out on his own with a software firm, designing
software for the EPA to use in calibrating instruments. His motto for success was,
"Try to do something simple that helps people". Later when the Silicon
Valley boomed or because of the lack of challenging waves in texas, I am sure it
was one of the two, Maad moved to the Bay Area after visiting numerous times for
conferences. Once here he promptly got his Law degree from Santa Clara and he has
been here ever since, 15 years now.
Maad gave me the international body language signal for "enough about me" and turned to Cameron and Arash who had been listening politely to attend to them next.
Maad had spoken to
Arash before and so he focused on Cameron. Cameron is a tall strong type, intense
and smart, quick and shrewd. This is a man who never gets shortchanged. He opened
to Maad and asked him a few polite questions, softballs really, to break the ice.
"What do you call the Gulf?" Cameron grinned and asked. Maad clarified.
"You mean the Persian Gulf?" Cameron's grin widened. "I think you
just won many Iranian hearts with that comment" he said satisfied. "What
about the executive order banning trade with Iran?", this was a hardball fast
a
nd to the inside.
"Well, I'm basically pro business." Maad started. "so, I'm naturally opposed to any sanctions. They have never worked, not in Iran, not in Iraq, and not even in Palestine for that matter. It never achieves anything to hurt a society economically. That's why I am against going to war with Iraq. Worse, we are [once again] sticking our neck out for questionable reasons."
Like a teenage boy on a first date, I moved in clumsily, "Yeah, but Saddam is a bad man! Why should we not go after a bad man and remove him, by force for the good of his people first off, but for the world as well? What's so bad about a pseudo-Marshall plan for the Mideast, we can use Iraq as an example to teach them how to run their country. Just like we did in WWII for Japan, Germany, and the whole of Western Europe for that matter." I argued, my Republican blood simmering a bit.
"Because
we are acting like Cowboys. What it comes down to is this, how much do we respect
a non-American way of life? In order for our actions to be legitimately accepted
by all, even the conquered, we must let international law decide how to deal with
the culprits in the world. And we should apply this evenly to all who violate international
law. Not just select ones we disapprove of." Maad qualified.
"You mean Israel too?" Cameron qualified. Maad took a swallow from his Calistoga and said, "Yes, even Israel. Why is it that when one Israeli dies in a terrorist attack, which I condemn flat out-nothing justifies terrorism, but when an Israeli dies the media immediately reacts with outrage? But when every day Palestinians are killed in Palestine by an occupying formal military of Israel, nothing is said. No one even blinks. All innocent death is wrong, period. It should make no difference who died."
Settling
in more and feeling the warmth of the conversation sufficient, I lobbed one in for
anyone, "Americans have been told repeatedly that the Arab world very simply,
just plain hates America and our way of life. I mean, do you guys think this is really
true? Does the Arab world or the Mideast, Iran included, hate us? Is it that easy?
Cameron picked up this one and said, "Look, I think the fundamental issue here is a split personality of American foreign objectives. On the one hand we have the idealists who genuinely want to promote universal human values, rights and freedoms throughout the developing world. On the other are self serving special interest groups who wield too much power. All of this push and pull, has shown the US to be clumsy and uncertain, and in fact a dis-honest broker in the Mid-East. Ever since the British threw up their hands and abandoned the Mideast after Balfour, leaving America to inherit the probem. This what has really brought us to where we are today. And we have made it worse with misplaced alliances and bad judgment. Because we are not an honest broker by constantly ignoring resolutions against Israel, but insisiting on resolutions against the rest of the world, we have alienated people and no one trusts us. A poll was taken in Kuwait and 80% of the people did not believe that a Arabs were involved in 9/11 despite the facts in front of them! You can't dismiss this and say it's because they are stupid. It's because they don't trust what we say. And we have given them no reason to trust us.
"So
what do you think America's response should be to 9/11? Is war the answer?"
I threw onto the table for anyone really. Maad answered, "The problem with war
is that it is too easy to get into, and very difficult to get out of, and it never
really changes anything. Going to war will not solve the terrorism problem. We should
absolutely attack the terrorists directly, no doubt, but it is a short sighted foreign
policy that has caused the problem and continues to create more enemies every day.
We need to address the world better, at a minimum make our decisions with the help
of people who understand the region and the issues. This is why I am running. I don't
think my opponent (Tom Lantos D-California) understands the issues in the mideast.
All he seems to vote for is to support a conventional war against the abstract concept
of "terrorism". He doesn't seem to know that you can never win such a war.
If you don't believe me, just ask Israel. How successful have they been fighting
terrorism for 50 years? Maybe policy change is a better alternative."
Parched a bit now, we each took breaks to gulp our own Calistogas, and to ponder what Maad had just said. Looking at the time, I wanted to make sure I kept us on track, except for Maad who is still single, we all had clock-watching-foot-tapping Iranian wives waiting, "So what do you think your chances of winning are?", I said. I almost knew the answer as soon as I asked it.
"Look,"
Maad said leaning in, "What is winning? Is winning getting elected? Or is it
getting the message out to as many people as possible so that real change can take
hold? I am not a politician. I am an activist. This is my first attempt at all of
this and I am learning as I go. If I get 15% of the vote here the shockwaves in washington
will be huge."
"If you lose, this time, will you continue or will you go back to software development." I asked.
"I don't see myself ever leaving this path. I mean I think that this will be the rest of my life. I can still run my company during the day, I have most of my customers in the east coast so I wake up early and am done early, so it's quite ideal for doing this. The main thing is that I feel like I can't go back, I can't sit down any longer and remain silent and as long as I can I will speak out." As he said this you could hear the lump in his throat.
Another
sip of water and he continued, "Recently I was at an event and I had put up
my booth and people walked by in amazement, shocked at what I was doing. A tall large
american with a western hat, boots and a big shiny rodeo buckle stopped in the middle
of the floor, took one look at me, his jaw literally dropped as he looked. You could
tell that he could not believe I was there, an Arab, running for congress, right
now, right here in his face. I tried to engage him, but he shook his head and walked
off. He could not deal with it. Later that day 2 women, both democrats, walked up
to my booth to see what I was doing. "Well, I think all Arabs should be fingerprinted
and sent back home" one of them said immediately. These were Democrats, mind
you. I said I disagreed because what good would sending innocent people back do,
and if you wanted to send them back, then why bother fingerprinting them. And when
I turned to the other woman, to ask her what she thought, she walked off quickly
and over her shoulder said, "Oh! I don't want to be involved." You see,
this is what I fear. With the climate today, if Arabs or Iranians are one day placed
in internment, I believe a majority of Americans will say this, that they don't want
to be involved, and they will let it happen."
"Which
brings us to the issue of racial profiling" I added. "Isn't racial profiling
flawed ultimately because it makes the naive assumption that only one ethnic group
would carry out actions for itself. That Al Qaeda would never use a blonde haired
blue eyed person to carry out it's dirty deeds, so blonde hair and blue eyed people
don't need to be stopped." I then posed the question we have all wanted to know.
"You know when you step to the airport counter and they ask you if your bags
have been with you the whole time and if any unknown person has asked you to carry
anything for them? What's that supposed to mean? Can $12/hr ticket takers somehow
tell when someone is lying?" No one knew.
We continued on for another 2 hours, jeopardizing our marriages further, each of us throwing into the fire, ideas, opinions, and feelings that obviously ran deep. What was clearly evident was our frustration, but deep love for America. Not the politics of it, not the policy, not the cowboy image. But for the very land itself. Home.
But
I'm out of room. And you get the gist. As readers you may find some of this mildly
interesting. I can say that for me and those of us who were there, it was an energizing
conversation.
I wish all of you were there. I wish all of you would have conversations like this. I wish all of you would get involved in your local elections and make sure you elect only those who know what you know about the true nature of Iranians, those who would best serve this new post-9/11-world we now live in. Stand up, speak out, look 'em in the eye and "'splain" it to your non-Iranian neighbors and friends.
Clearly we can never go back to the way things were, the question is whether we can go forward or not.
America, if it does not know it, needs us now more than ever, it needs us to help it understand these new cultures and their true values. America needs us to help her back on her feet, dust off her skirt and guide her towards the future.
Some times in spite of herself.
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Behrouz Bahmani Comment for The Iranian Letters Section Comment for the writer Behrouz Bahmani |
