The occasional diary of Ali Ziba
Naughty thoughts before the London march
By
Peyvand Khorsandi
November 19, 2003
The Iranian
'Single Aryan male', I read in the classifieds, 'seeks
similar'. Bet any blond who might respond to so ridiculous
an ad will be surprised to find an Iranian man as his date.
'What happened to you?'
'What you mean?'
'You're dark and you're hairy.'
'Yeah, well according to the Collins dictionary, I'm white.'
'Listen buffalo, you're ad was deceptive.'
'Hey! Iran means land of the Aryans.'
'What?'
'We supported Hitler in World War II – and he understood.'
The date, of course, will be baffled and if they are in a restaurant
will mull escape-via-toilet. Don't you do that sometimes,
when you've been served an unworthy meal, think rather than
confront Rude Spanish Waiter I'll go for a pee?
You might peer through that letterbox of a window before deciding
that even if you did manage to squeeze through, your belt buckle
would jam and you would have to be rescued by the very people
you were trying to avoid.
Can't be dangling out of windows at the age of forty-three,
now -- there are better places to get caught.
With someone's spouse, perhaps: a really sweet guy that you
know, his wife, a beautiful brunette, calls you and one day you
end up drinking in a bar and making passionate love to her in
the lavatory while a rude Spanish bar tender (poor Spaniards, let's
call him Greek) comes in and positions himself for a royal dump
during his cigarette break but notices there must be more than
one person in the cubicle next door because there are two voices
discussing whether anyone can hear us and should we continue?
'Ahh, yes.'
'Uhh, no.'
The barman clean forgets about what book he had intended to flick
through: Streamline English: Destinations: Workbook A: Units
1-40.
No wonder
foreign workers have trouble learning English, they have to listen
to the mid-coital jitters of others while they study.
Well, straight men do not want to get nabbed with their pants
down by another man, especially if he is laughing. Besides, adultery
is for losers but boy does it feel naughty and isn't naughty
ever so sexy.
It's war. Bush is in Buckingham Palace and Blair has wounded
the National Health Service by introducing 'foundation hospitals'.
Soon Brits, like Americans, will no longer be patients in hospitals
but consumers. You know why the British have bad teeth, because
we don't like to pay people to stick needles into our gums.
If it's done gratis, we understand: one is humiliated, reduced
to a gape but it's okay – you know that the state values
the molars of its people. But the prospect of paying a doctor to
inspect one's rectum will make the British think: 'Shouldn't
she be paying me?'
There is a march on, it starts at two. I do not know
if I should go – I am sure enough people will attend but
if everyone was to think that, nobody would turn up. Bush would
be
allowed
to roam freely in the streets of London with his two-hundred-and-fifty
covert-movie-watching-donut-head special forces goons who are not
tough enough to withstand the threat posed by a few thousand hippy
tree-huggers treading on Tarmac, as peace campaigners are so often
portrayed, without half the British police force turning out in
support.
Living with the knowledge that martial law operates miles from
your home to protect the interests of two imperialist states
is, if only for a few days, disempowering. If truth be told, I
think
these two Aryan warmongers are more dangerous than any number
of nuts who might describe themselves as such in order to secure
a
lay.
So this is what I am going to do, my fellow Londoners and citizens
of the world. I, Ali Ziba – professor of linguistics and
out-of-work actor who, between us, far from being jobless is soon
to be the first Middle Eastern male to appear in Hamlet, as Ophelia – am
going to march.
I will march from Malet Street to Trafalgar Square where I will
watch George W. Bush become dethroned. A mock Bush, that is,
who will be tugged to earth just as we saw Saddam tumble in the
phoney
revolution that was staged in Iraq some months ago.
It will be a moment to relish, full of comedy and fantasy, and
if we are their in numbers we can alert the great American people
with whom we have no beef, as they say, so that they can topple
the real Bush next year if, that is, they are Aryan and their
votes count.
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