bahmani

Recently I read yet another Iranian community foundation email. You could see the floundering in the pitch for money, with their mucky mission statement and charitable contribution charter, trying to somehow find a way to walk that tightrope of being "cultural" but not "political".

Really? Today? In this climate of US-Iran relations? You're serious? You aren't political at all?

The Iranian community (and many other activities) foundations sit fat like the rest of us in the US, and watched that famous summer's CNN mini-series, or how Ahmadinejad stole (yet another?) election, watched as students took the beatings, watched as Neda died before our eyes, and still? Still you stick to your non-political bylaws?

The pitfall of this thinking is that when it is obvious to speak out, by shutting up collectively, we almost automatically appear to be on the bad side of the Iran argument.

Just about the entire crop of Iranian community foundations started by a generation of well-thinking well-to-dos, has been overrun by this blight. That one non-partisan non-political clause in their Iranian-cousin-lawyer drawn up statements of useless and toothless incorporation.

Well you can't have your Bijan Bakery Marzipan cake and eat it too.

It's not the fault of the foundations. They never signed up for this. They merely based their plans assuming the status quo of Iran being Iran, would remain quo like it has for the past 30 years.

But that Iran is not this Iran. How now, to digest and explain an Iran which has somehow managed to paint itself as the 4th Reich of our time.

While possibly an extreme metaphor, to be sure, like it or not, for better or worse, fair or unfair, Iran is most definitely on the proverbial shit-end of the evil empire stick. Painted by others to be sure, but Iran itself has become only too happy to gleefully wipe the blood off of it's own mitts in this regard. Iran has become a modern day incarnation of the last worst nightmare of a world that is hoping for just some fucking peace, and for everyone to please shut the fuck up for a minute so we can think!

The fear comes out of a misconstrued and misunderstood religion. Oddly enough Islam is in need of a serious Christian Reformation. And if the West would just get out of its way, is about to happen any minute now. But impatience and intolerance have caused 2 ongoing wars and uncountable and unmentionably cruel sanctions, whose effects are starting to appear in the birthweight of babies born under them.

But what is our job as modern-day Iranians? How do we defend what is often the indefensible? How do we defend Iran?

Let's take a quick inventory and see what we've got:

The good, the real, and the beautiful...

The culture, the people, their sense of humor, their narcissistic love of their own lives, and living it loudly.

The bad, the false, and the irrelevant...

The fauxenophobia, butting into the Israeli-Palestinian problem, that whole piety scam, and the most unnatural and transparent devotion to an imported religion and it's holier than thou contradictory morality trap.

Note: The great morality trap is that of all people, Iranians are far more susceptible to the sins of Temptation and her 2 slutty hot cousins Greed and Gluttony than any other moslem on the planet. I'll just leave it at that, I am sure you will or won't agree, and you can fill in your own blanks better than I could.

You see the problem?

Obviously this dilemma mostly crops up and tangles those who consider themselves lucky enough to be "free-Iranians".

Good old fashioned oppressed Iranians would never be allowed past the title of this piece, before being in-quested by the geese, who would peck "him" to a royalist confession and a consequentially slow murder, and rape "her" to a thankfully fast one, but then, of course, declare the cause of martyrdom of both to be "...a clear case of accidental heart failure".

Hey, just keeping it real.

So how do we un-pecked masses, we free-Iranians, hold our free heads up in that ivy league cocktail party surrounded like Afghanistan by American and Iranian academics, and attempt the un-attemptable. How do we convey the following great Persian Paradigm?

"No my friend, Iran is not the Iran it is, not this Iran you see. The real Iran, is the Iran that it isn't, the Iran you don't see."

Author's note: I apologize for this piece. I don't actually have an answer. I hope you didn't actually think that anyone could, necessarily. Sometimes I just think of shit, and then I say it. It doesn't necessarily have a point. Forgive and allow me my psychotherapy please. Plus that's what the comments are for. Feel free to offer yours.