The Canadian National Newspaper: Drums of War Muffling Iranian Moderates

Squeezing the ancient tunes of traditional Iranian music out of a guitar, Mohsen Namjoo -- called by some the “Iranian Bob Dylan“, performs his one-man show in an underground concert. His music evokes a merry vibration thumping under the coat of solemnity the streets of Tehran are wrapped with. The piece that starts with a typical image in mystic Persian poetry -- the beloved’s flying black locks, with “beloved” connoting the Creator. The poetic cliché breaks into pieces when the register of the language is all of a sudden catapulted into a colloquial Farsi, of frequent chat-up lines and borrowed Western words like “blonde.” The burlesque ends with a sarcastic one-word finale lamentingly trilled in a traditional mode: “hairdryer.” The creaky frame of strict traditionalism caging the range of guitar strings and the naturalism of informal modern Farsi is symbolic of the worn wobbly social and political structures which continue to awkwardly contain the liveliness of a pragmatic people.

The Iranian public seems to be leaps ahead the governing systems. Some influential layers of Iranian society are champing at the bit to break free. The youth, the teachers, the women, the university students, the intelligentsia, the entrepreneurs, a large number of ex-politicians, and even some clergymen yearn for a reform that embraces progressive social change. And what does delay the changes which would be embraced passionately by the Iranian people? Although there are a lot of factors blocking such inevitable democratic changes in today’s Iran, one undoubtedly is the towering tension between Iran and the West.

With the constant political and economic pressure form the West, with the American war machine crawling all around Iran, with the “hawks” shouting at the top of their voices, and with the massive powers of the Western media ghoulishly focusing on blood and resentment, the Iranian masses have been propelled into resorting to unconsciously giving prominence to the extremists. U.S. championed policies of isolating Iran, can dysfunctionally chase Iranians who seek progressive social change into the shadow of the howl of the extremists, they might have hoped, could echo their sense of U.S. Bush administration induced alienation.

Despite the recent clampdown on Iranian women, noisily trumpeted and enforced by the government, to boost the observance of the Islamic dress code, any young girl in the capital. who is demurely wrapped up in the eccentric garments suggested by the government as Islamic fashion, will treasure a collection of cheerful love notes in the inbox of her mobile phone. Such Iranian women might also disappear into the invisible holes of the city and end up in a soundproof flat to receive hip hop dance lessons.

Any sour-faced young man might pour his on-the-other-side-of-the-face laughter at the failures of such a cumbersome central system onto his blog, panning the defects and demerits of the authorities.

Some might be gathering at their favourite haunt to read James Joyce and Henry Miller. Under the security blanket tightly enfolding Tehran University for a deputy minister’s official speech and away from the yawns of the obligatory presence of the audience, a medical student gives a talk on David Hume’s “Of the Rise and Progress of the Arts and Sciences,” in a tiny damp basement classroom. Here is Hume’s first observation: “It is impossible for the arts and sciences to arise, at first, among any people, unless that people enjoy the blessing of a free government.”

The physicians are hardly at ease with the lack of medical knowledge quite visible among their bosses, the appointed (not elected) managers of hospitals. The academics are isolated by governmental scientific mafias ruling educational centres. Credibility a nullity but power plenty.

The students of English literature at Roodehen Azad University, bored with the painfully slow lecture of a teacher whose English is not up to scratch to ever come to the point, keep underlying his grammatical mistakes in the pamphlets distributed by the teacher. A joke about the mistakes and a giggle, and they spice the waste of time they are going through. They take linguistic revenge by nicknaming the teachers. One is called Mr. Longman Dictionary of Common Errors. Their command of English is far better than their educators. They learn English in the thin and pale private sector and pay the government for a degree.

The irrational limitations imposed by a few on the people have made the Iranians bend over backwards to meet their most commonplace needs. The ones who can afford it, shop and go to pop concerts in Dubai, or sunbathe and drink in Turkey. Those who can’t travel like that, simply live an underground life in Iran. They listen to underground music, watch illegal satellite channels, meet their invisible girl friends, and drink moonshine.

The holes in the system, the numerous leaks, the rules shredded by citizens on a regular basis, have reduced the iron fist of the theocracy to a fading caricature, a textbook of ridiculous mistakes which used to be made. But how can such a system keep a nation in-check?

You can make a long list: Iranian conservatism, dyed-in-the-wool Iranian religiosity, the traditional clerical leverage, centuries of dictatorship and blind obedience, disappointment with the experience of a revolution, and economic laziness with the oil revenues pouring into the bank accounts of enough people to keep the situation the way it is. However, the item which will have strengthened all these is the way the West has been treating Iran over the past few years.

The U.S. Bush administration led West, despite the words of its politicians, has, ironically, propped up the decaying skeleton of the regime, it has professed to dislike. With such Middle Eastern manners, it is quite unlikely it can change the regime without another bloody war or even force it to at least behave. Saddam didn’t. Neither did the Taliban.

The Iranian masses are hardly impressed by the “liberation” of Iraq. Nor are they ready to give up their everyday security, running water, central heating, and electricity in return for another Afghan goulash served with a wishy-washy democracy and a puppet government. They do mistrust the ignoble Bush affairs: with Pakistan, the “liberator” and the “military dictator,” and with Saudi Arabia the “democratic crusader” and the “eastern despot.”

The UN sanctions are squeezing their wages out of their pockets, the petrol out of their cars, and the food out of their kids’ bowls. Smelling meat, vultures are hovering around. The Gulf States are savouring the Persian Gulf, the Russians are swigging the Caspian Sea, and the Chinese and their products are swallowing the GDP.

Cornered by these circumstances, the people have tried to break the indignation in their throat into dialogue and diplomacy. However, with the totalitarianism at home which deprives them from choosing their true representatives and with the Western leaders busy baring their teeth and unleashing dogs of war, the Iranian people have opened their eyes only to see they are being led by suicide politicians who claim to be able to weather the storm.

The Western media also have failed to open the channels of dialogue with the Iranian moderates. Extremism is in the spotlight and celebrity culture a faith beyond which any other style of broadcasting is blasphemy. Test yourself if you are a Westerner: Have you ever read a modern short story by an Iranian writer? Name the most photographed baddy in today’s politics. You would be an exception if your answers aren’t “no” and the “Iranian president” since the Western media has become as childishly predictable as Hollywood.

“I’m coming to you. You will explode in a couple of minutes.” Just a couple of weeks ago these dull uncreative English sentences, radioed by an Iranian speedboat to threaten an American naval ship in the Strait of Hormuz, were hypnotically repeated over and over again. The story is definitely newsworthy. But how about the following lines by Mostafa Malekian? He is a weighty philosopher and thinker with a big following among the Iranian youth. In his writings he supports rationality, reason, and a moral spirituality based on intellect. In his The Universal Morality Manifesto, Malekian writes:

“We condemn the abuse of the environment. … We condemn the deaths perversely caused by child abuse. We condemn the propagation of hatred and aggression in the name of religion. … We are the men and women who revere the manners and beliefs of the world. … We declare that we depend on one another, and that our happiness is everybody’s happiness. Thus, we respect every community of living things, humans, animals, plants, and the air, water, and soil on Earth. … All mankind is our family. … No individual may, in practice or words, be regarded as a second-class citizen or be abused in any form. … We won’t resort to violence to settle disputes. … And we invite all the believers and non-believers to commit themselves to this cause.”

Indeed, in such a poisonous air loaded with blood, noise, and resentment all the courage in the poem “Coned in a Black Chador” by Leili Galehdaran, a young female poet will be dusted on bookshelves and buried unread:

I, the charcoal cone,
The second person of conjugations future and past,
Swathed in cloth, crease and silence,
The fate of the street’s fancies and the swollen belly,
Will forever dance to the same old theme,
Me, the future of high walls, and mazes of railings and wards.
I dry my heart up on tarragon trays
And behind the window’s crumpled draperies
Estimate the crescent’s life to the full moon
By menstruation.

It may be weak, but the foetus is there. The aging system is pregnant with an unwanted child and is dreaming of abortion. A desperate system will take any attention as a compliment, even a missile. What better than a war for a clean miscarriage?

These days the Contemporary Museum of Art in Tehran is holding the Biennial Exhibition of Iranian Sculpture. In the corner of one of the halls, there is a sculpture, titled “Shadow,” by a fairly unknown woman sculptor, Farnaz Rabieijah. Coloured by the muffled whispers of the visitors swarming the hall, the work depicts a group of headless mummies plodding in the desert. They seem to lack direction; however, there is still a leader in white, much bigger than the rest in size.

The followers, whose sizes gradually reduce to create the idea of being the shadow of the leader, are smaller black copies of the leader. They are parched fatigued lethargic. Fear and conditioning and self-deception drive them to follow the leader. The leader is a has-been. A used-to-be. He still wears some confidence by habit. But clearly has no plan. As the work shows, he is a couple of steps to the edge. Among the smaller mummies, however, there must be a few with hopes and dreams. Keep quiet and listen to the whispers.

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