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.

فراتر

گه ملحد و گه دهری و کافر باشد / گه دشمن خلق و فتنه پرور باشد

باید بچشد عذاب تنهایی را / مردی که ز عصر خود فراتر باشد

محمدرضا شفیعی کدکنی -

Cultures of Resistance

Today I stumbled upon the work of director Iara Lee, a Brazilian of Korean descent who has done amazing work producing films and music that confront militarism and promote peace. What I didn't know, and was very excited to learn, was that she helped produce a music video for Hichkas, pioneers in Persian hiphop featured in Bahman Ghobadi's "No One Knows about Persian Cats". Supporting Capoeira initiatives among Palestinian refugees, skate boarding in Afghanistan, or sustainable farming in Africa, her work is an example of how global perspective has a really important place in facilitating the transfer of peace oriented solutions into new arenas. Check it out!

Nightfall in Tehran

Nightfall in Tehran. The people have gone out onto their rooftops for the first time in a year. Cries of "Allahu Akbar" through the streets, the same cries we heard last year, and again three decades before that. Friends returning from today's demonstrations in Tehran, (and Tabriz, Kermansha, Isfahan and beyond) this time unfazed by the batons and tear gas, said the people were chanting "Khamenei hayaa kon, Mobarako negaah kon"...Khamenei have some shame, see what became of Mubarak. Elsewhere cries of "Mubarak, Ben Ali, now the turn of Seyyed Ali [Khamenei]".

There was something comforting, the first time around, knowing that Mousavi and Karroubi were there in the streets along with the people, in the illusion that their presence served as a kind protective embrace putting a limit on government brutality.   Now, with both figures under house arrest, there is a strange feeling that the people are unhinged, perhaps less safe but certainly more empowered to chart a more confident path. And as upheavals continue unabated in Yemen, Bahrain, Palestine, and Algeria, the poignant slogan of 2009 comes to mind "natarsid, natarsid, ma hame ba ham hastim" (do not be afraid, we are all together here) in the face of official violence. This time, the truth of that powerful idea extends far beyond Iranian borders.

Mubarak Leaves

How eerie and extraordinary that today, the 22nd of Bahman, is the anniversary of the Iranian revolution of 1979. It is also the first day of a new Egypt, may it heed the lessons of our perilous history and avoid it's sanguinary excesses. May she inspire us as Tunisia inspired her, to fight for liberty in Tehran as they have done in Tahrir, Alexandria and beyond. For the first time since 2009, you've given us hope.

Tahrir in Tehran

I visited Tehran's Azadi Square for the first time the winter before the election crisis. As I see images streaming in from Cairo, masses camped in the center of town for what is turning into weeks of public defiance, I often try to imagine how this square would look similarly peopled. I wonder how it must have felt for demonstrators standing here three decades ago and again after the 2009 elections. Opposition leaders have requested, and been denied, permits to demonstrate here on the 25th of Bahman in solidarity with activists across the Arab world. This square, with its iconic monument, stands as a quiet, daily reminder of promises yet to be fulfilled and more struggles to come.

patient, focused.

"Any culture that is patient and focused enough to spend years working on a single carpet is capable of waiting years and even decades to acheive even greater goals."
- Prince bin Zayed of Abu Dhabi on the Persian, Wikileaks

the amazing life of phillipe ferrier

"In 1839, while being prosecuted by his creditors, he developed a feeling for adventure. He was recruited as a military instructor by Ḥosayn Khan Ājudān-bāši (q.v.). After his attempt to conquer Herat, countered by the British (1837-38), Moḥammad Shah (q.v.) had sent Ḥosayn Khan on a diplomatic mission to Europe (1839). While in Paris, he endeavored to persuade France to supplant Britain in Persia. To replace the withdrawn British instructors, he recruited French officers and artisans." Source

"The Persians have been not inaptly called the Frenchmen of the East. Their elegant manners, their wit, their levity, their general scepticism, their taste, their love of display, their hospitality, and their cookery, give them a claim to this title as compared with the surrounding Mohammedan nations. A Persian gentleman is naturally polished and refined. It would be difficult to exceed the grace of his demeanour and his courteous address. He is intimately acquainted with the literature of his country, and will embellish his conversation and his letters with ready and apposite quotations from the poets of his nation. He will be apparently generous and unselfish. His house and its contents are yours. He is your servant and your dearest friend." Source