Captain Abu Raed

I once asked my grandfather why, after the revolution overthrew a dictator, our country slipped so quickly into the same dehumanizing oppression. Avoiding the complicated historical answer about war, hostage crisis and geopolitics, he told me that even though the Shah had left, there remained a little shah in the heart of every Iranian. We had to confront that demon before we could truly gain our freedom. Thinking back, I realize what he was saying, about the way a people often internalize the worst traits of the systems they are forced to endure.

I watched Captain Abu Raed last night with this idea, and events in our region, fresh in my mind. In the film, Abu Raed, an elderly airport janitor, brings home an abandoned pilots' hat to his poverty stricken neighborhood. Local children, thinking he is really a pilot, ask him to tell stories of his travels and Abu Raed obliges them. Through this process, he becomes slowly involved in the lives of the children and feels an increasing sense of ownership towards the challenges they face. One boy in particular, Murad, lives with an abusive father who spends his day trying in vain to hawk his wares in the market, returning each night in a drunken rage.

I could not help but wonder where Murad's father got all of his frustration, more so where he got the notion he could inflict horrific daily abuse on his wife and children with near impunity. Was he so different from our dictators, with their security services that do with us as they want with no regard for law or justice? Perhaps when we are too afraid to raise our fists against these leaders, we turn them instead towards the people in our lives who are more vulnerable and disempowered than we are. When we cannot raise our voices in the squares and streets, we raise them in our homes. We internalize the dictatorship and tyranny, identify with the men whose images hover constantly on every empty wall and billboard across town, and create a microcosm of our social order. That the opposite is also true gives me a lot of hope.