Ari Siletz

The Fish Fall In Love

Ari Siletz — Tue, 10 Jun 2008 18:54:00 +0000

Directed by Ali Rafii

The main theme of The Fish Fall In Love is so familiar to the Iranian viewer that few of them may complain about its plot making no sense. Or if the viewer is not Iranian, he/she may adopt a post-modern disregard for plot logic and concentrate on the clearest message of the film: suspicion destroys our best hopes.

Newly freed political prisoner Aziz (Reza Kianian) sneaks back to his Caspian hometown to find his fiancée, Atieh, has been married off. Philosophical about life, he sneaks back out to roam the planet doing we know not what. These events happen years before the movie begins. In the opening scene Aziz drifts back into his hometown again, seeking nothing in particular. But a purpose finds him when he discovers he is in a position to help his ex-fiancée’s beautiful daughter, Touka (Gholshifteh Farahani). In a parallel between the generations, Touka’s fiancée has also been jailed, and she too has been misled to think her man has frivolously abandoned her.

The reasons for the deceptions are different. Touka is misinformed by her fiancee’s best friend because he wants her for himself. Atieh on the other hand took the word of Aziz's father who lied to save face. Her own father probably accepted this lie “for her own good.” He wouldn’t want her wasting her youth waiting for Aziz. How they got away with this lie in a tiny town where Aziz has close friends, we are not to question.

The characters, however, are free to indulge in outrageous skepticism. Touka’s jailed fiancée for instance, thinks Aziz has hired him a lawyer just to botch the criminal case against him. He suspects the middle-aged Aziz has fallen in love with young Touka and wants to eliminate rivals. Aziz in turn frustrates us with his stoic silence against this accusation.

The most frustrating moment of Aziz’s stoicism, however, happens on the occasions when Aziz and Atieh (Roya Nonahali) meet. He says nothing to clarify why he disappeared from her life. In fact he says nothing at all, because Atieh yells at him to shut up and listen while she guilt trips him about showing up after all these years to ruin her restaurant business. After her husband’s death, she has moved into the property abandoned by Aziz’s family, and set up a restaurant. Now, she thinks, Aziz is there to reclaim the property and evict her. The presence of a lawyer in the picture convinces her of this.

Atieh’s suspicion is unfounded. Aziz had no idea anyone was squatting in his property, or even seemed to care, but he is in no hurry to make this clear, or to explain about the lawyer. Nor does he ask Atieh what went on with her during all these years. Instead he asks a friend who tells him Atieh’s husband beat her senseless one night then took a rowboat out to sea never to return.

The domestic quarrel and the suicide are not explained, but this revelation along with subtle line deliveries by Reza Kianian invites us to guess what directions the plot may have taken if censors hadn’t been watching. Aziz and Atieh had premarital sex. Touka may be Aziz’s daughter. This is why Atieh’s husband went nuts, and this is why Aziz and Touka hold each other in such deep affection.

Now that the characters’ behaviors have found a sensible basis, we see that Atieh’s father had no choice but to quickly find a husband for his pregnant daughter. Atieh’s moving into Aziz’s house with her child, and the issue over property rights suddenly picks up considerably more logical as well as social and dramatic substance.

Reza Kianian’s artistry helps cut through some of the fog. In the scene where he and Touka first meet, he is multifaceted with his line delivery. “Are you Touka?” he says, and we can't be sure if he's responding to Touka's flirtatiousness or enjoying getting to know her after all these years. At a later dinner table scene, his line delivery of “Now that we are all together,”has a strong flavor of paternity. The sense of this alternate plot is strongest when Aziz confides in a friend, “Atieh acts as though we never…”

But director Ali Rafii (Fined by IRI in 2002 for "promoting immoral conduct" in a play ) knows such a film would never see the light of the projector. Instead censorship has left him with a confusing movie vulnerable to banal panderings to the male-bashing market. This has resulted in inaccurate film descriptions such as:

“Atieh’s singular passion is food, and her small but popular restaurant on the sleepy Caspian coast is her pride and joy. But when Aziz, a former lover, appears after a twenty-year absence with the intention of closing the restaurant, Atieh prepares his favorite dishes, one after the other, in a desperate effort to convince him otherwise. Loosely based on the Persian fable of Shahrazad and the Thousand Myths (A Thousand and One Nights), director Ali Raffi uses the language of food to paint a richly textured portrait of life and love on the Southern coast of Iran [sic].”

Never mind that the above description has a Google sense of geography [see note 1] ; it also gives no clue that the Shahrzad theme and the pretty food is just the marketing candy. Yet, despite the silent compromises Rafii has has made to censorship and international marketing, his message about the destructiveness of groundless suspicion comes through, and makes a powerful emotional impact.

Reza Kianian’s interpretative skill as an actor encourages us to be patient with the film’s frustratingly stoic compromises, and view it as a visually delightful post-modern work. After one thousand and one such films, the censors may relent.

Note 1: The Caspian is to the north of Iran, not on her southern shores. Many Iranians are miffed with Google Earth for calling the Persian Gulf "Arabian Gulf."

Note 2: For a historical snapshot of the politics of pious film censorship in the US, see this absorbing 1965 essay by Judy Stone, 'The Legion of Decency: What's Nude?'

Persepolis

Ari Siletz — Mon, 03 Dec 2007 22:26:00 +0000

Directed by Vincent Paronnaud and Marjane Satrapi

A handful of ordinary lives caught in the storms of civilization inspired Charles Dickens’ Tale of Two Cities, and Boris Pasternak’s Dr. Zhivago. Recently Marjane Satrapi’s Persepolis has rendered the Iranian revolution in intimate terms, approaching what Dickens accomplished for the French revolution and Pasternak achieved for the Russian revolution. While History is a satellite photo of a forest, this autobiographical narrative is a single leaf which you can rub between your fingers and bring to your nose.

The graphic novels, Persepolis and Persepolis 2, now combined into a movie, do not look back to the classics. Satrapi’s self mocking style is ultra-modern. It combines a Disneyesque cuteness with the author’s Hedayat-like anguish. At first the work appears to lack subtlety, protesting the Islamic Regime’s repressions too directly. Later we realize this straight shooting is just another manifestation of the no-nonsense way in which the artist conducts her life. Satrapi’s uninhibited tendency to speak her primal mind has been the driving force in the events of her life.

After she slugged her school principal in Iran and trashed the Islamic Regime in the classroom, Satrapi’s parents hurriedly dispatched their fourteen-year-old daughter to a Catholic school in Europe. There she got herself expelled by calling the nuns whores. Later she made herself homeless by telling her Austrian landlady to go fuck herself. The nuns had dared suggest Iranians had no manners, and the crypto-racist landlady had accused Satrapi of theft.

In the humorous movie, some of the laughter comes from the character’s obliviousness to authority, and some from her breaking personal taboos such as showing us her hairy legs. One of the best moments happens in a scene where she combines the two techniques. Her Jedi master of a grandmother passes on to her granddaughter the secret of having firm breasts in old age. I won’t reveal the trick here, enough to say Yoda himself would shrink from the mind control it demands.

The humor sweetens the profound bitterness of the events. As in Sound of Music and Cabaret, where sugary melodies simultaneously mask and highlight the creep of fascism in Europe, Satrapis’ self-deprecating jokes expose the modern dissonance between individual concerns and social forces. Ominously, Satrapi’s Europe is as purposeless as Iran was in its pre-revolutionary times.

European youth, drugged, disappointed and mistrustful of their leaders, shout their aimless rage out-screaming electric guitars. In a scene stunningly effective for its graphics and sound, a club musician swears incomprehensibly at air while giving the finger to the emptiness of existence. The scene is also quite funny, which is why--for me--it best captures the bi-polar psychology of Persepolis.

Meanwhile, back in Satrapi’s Iran the youth have become focused by the war. With their existential angst soothed by arbitrary ideas of righteousness, they have become brutal enforcers of correct Islamic behavior. Much as Charles Dickens warned and criticized English society by dangling the French revolution in front of English eyes, Persepolis drags our attention to the possibility that the upheaval in Iran is just one expression of the global rationality crisis: the rising suspicion that Western Enlightenment has lost its appeal.

In Persepolis we find warmth and satisfaction only in the love between family members. In a departure from Disney charm, even the pure love between a dog and its European master is lampooned as a sign of loneliness and alienation. Family love is something Iranians have had in abundance for as long as we have been mammals. What does modernity offer that is worth the price of giving up family for a mutt?

A frame of mind which extends our caring for immediate family to include all of society was an implicit promise of modern humanism, to replace the explicit promise of the religions we outgrew. In Satrapi’s Europe, socialism cures her pneumonic, cigarette damaged lungs, but it is also why this smart, educated youth spent days homeless in the cold seeking cigarette butts on the sidewalk.

Satrapi constantly reminds us that she comes from a family of progressive liberals. Her uncle, who wrote his thesis on Marxist-Leninism, a program to reverse alienation, was jailed and eventually executed for his efforts. Yet there’s a scene in which an innocent conversation between Satrapi’s parents brings a heartbreaking disappointment.

The well-to-do parents discuss moving away from Iran--to America perhaps. Satrapi’s father tells her mother, “Why, so I can become a taxi driver and you a maid?” After years of risking their lives preaching that everyone’s function in society merits dignity, these “somebodies” still can’t shake their traditional disdain for “nobodies.”

Purposefully or not, Satrapi’s work goes to the heart of why our liberals and leftists were so roundly trounced by the Islamists. The intellectuals saw themselves as an aristocracy by virtue of their Western education and professional expertise. Like a piece of breakfast stuck to the lips, their internalized colonialism was seen by everyone but the intellectuals themselves.

Tellingly, numerous times in the graphic novel and in the movie, God appears to the young Satrapi as the Christian father figure, a leap Westward from the eerily abstract Semitic entity, Allah, who according to the Koran is “lam yalad va lam yoolad”: begets not, nor is begotten. In the book, this child raised among Marx fans self-critically reminds us of how Karl Marx looks so much like God to her--except with curlier hair. The mostly Muslim Iranian nation could not have overlooked what was obvious even to a child.

Meanwhile the movie shows us that the Islamic Republic has put a window washer in charge of administering a hospital. An asinine expression of Islamic affirmative action, but a gesture nevertheless, not unlike the ugly punk musician, this time giving the finger to the old order.

But social insightfulness aside, Persepolis is above all a living account of a young woman who has courageously invited us into her personal life, to share how she was affected by a pivotal period in world history. Our hostess is a punk version of Anastasia, the last surviving princess from a sophisticated class, executed, exiled and suppressed into oblivion by the boorish crowds. She is strong, but also prone to bouts of depression and self doubt. Unlike the fictional Dr. Zhivago or Sydney Carton of The Tale of Two Cities, Marjane Satrapi is real and lives among us today. So her story is not over, and we continue to worry for this character as her sudden celebrity status brings new adventure to her life.

Precisely because Persepolis is world-class art, it has set off political bickering, and triggered ideological opportunism. This is nothing new. Boris Pasternak’s Nobel prize in literature was helped along by the CIA in order to embarrass the Soviets (Pasternak knew nothing of this). The Iranian government has already protested Persepolis’ winning of the Prize of the Jury at the Cannes film festival:

"This year the Cannes Film Festival, in an unconventional and unsuitable act, has chosen a movie about Iran that has presented an unrealistic face of the achievements and results of the glorious Islamic Revolution…"

Since the US quarrel with Iran intensified, many Iranian women activists, writers and artists have received significant attention in Western media, Shirin Ebadi, Azar Nafisi, Firoozeh Dumas, Nahid Rachlin, Shahrnush Parsipour, Shirin Neshat, Azadeh Moaveni... To varying degrees, these Iranian women condemn the abuse of their heartfelt protests to justify Western aggression against Iran. But among them, the foul mouthed Princess Satrapi may have the most eloquent advice for both sides of the propaganda war. As she once instructed her dog-loving landlady, Frau Doctor Heller, “Go fuck yourself!”

A Kiarostami Day

Ari Siletz — Tue, 17 Jul 2007 15:18:00 +0000

At the Berkeley Art Museum a fan blew at one Kiarostami photograph. The rest of his works remained still--like the audience in a theater-- while this projected video of branches and leaves apparently swayed in the turbulence created by the fan. The famed film director had broadened me forever with awareness of the very air between the projector and the screen. Beware, those who would walk blithely into Abbas Kiarostami’s mind, the door you entered through will be too small to let you back out.

I was late for a rendez-vous with friends to see some of Kiarostami’s early films being shown across the street, so I hurried past his photographs of trees in the snow, promising to return while their winter still hung on the walls.

“I have a ticket waiting for me,” I announced at the will-call booth.

“Excuse me, sir,” came an irked voice from behind me, “but there’s a line here?”

How did I miss seeing all the people in the queue, when my eyes could now see invisible air? "Sorry ma’m,” I said to her. And almost confided, “I thought I was ignoring a row of trees planted in the snow.” Beware!

Kiarostami looked on with amusement as I trudged to the back of line. Not Abbas, but his son Ahmad, who had labored to make the event happen. He welcomed us, then sat one row behind us with a couple of his artist friends. We chatted each other up with such good natured Iranian cinema banter that I nostalgically wished I had brought some pistachios and tohkmeh to share. It would not have been out of place. Abbas Kiarostami’s signature is never to let go of his earthy humor, even when his protagonist is on a mountain talking to God--on a cell phone. Even when she is losing her son to patriarchal insensitivity, while the kid wonders if the cream puffs she bought are for the guests.

Kiarostami uses comedy to constantly slap awake the upper layers of consciousness fatigued by the tragedies he frames before us. A sense of humor is a big part of what enables this artist to create aesthetics out of misery.

For example, So Can I, released when Abbas was in his mid thirties, already predicts the future authority of his signature seal of humor. In this cartoon short, a child realizes he can ludicrously jump like a kangaroo, laughably crawl like a worm, and passably swim like a fish. But when he ponders whether he can fly like a bird, he is stumped. As adults we laugh at the child’s charming dilemma, but how many times have we been confronted with the tragedy of human limitations? How many times have we wept helplessly as death took away a loved one? The film ends with a magnificent shot of a jet plane taking off, engines screaming louder than thirty simorghs.

Decades later, in The Wind Will Carry Us, Abbas’ formidable flight of humorous intellect challenged the tragic limitations of Iran’s censorship laws. Juxtaposing the simple milking of a cow with a sensuous Farrokhzaad love poem, he dared the pious censors to make the dirty-minded connection to ejaculation, putting them in a damned-if-you do, damned-if-you-don’t checkmate.

It is unwise, however, to be too confident of having discovered the elements of Kiarostami’s craft. Bread and Alley (1970) another short film insightfully included in the day’s lineup, shows that the genius director is often steps ahead of his critics. In this ten minute directorial debut, a vicious guard dog blocks passage in an alley leading to a boy’s home. The solution to the quandary seems obvious at the outset. The boy is on his way home from buying bread for his family, all he has to do is make friends with the animal by giving it a scrap of the bread. We Iranian adults, versed in the poet Sa’di’s didactic morality watch the boy arrive at the classically proper solution. But Kiarorstami has a surprise for us that transcends the 13th century poet by centuries. After the boy buys his passage with that scrap of bread, the dog begins to guard the alley the boy lives in, making us understand what the hungry animal was protecting in the first place. All along, the deeper subject of the story had been the human animal and our post-Darwinian-psychology, not the boy and his medieval predicament. Checkmate!

Therefore, I feel wary of the grandmaster as I critique the last work in that day’s Kiarostami lineup, a filmmaking masterpiece called The Traveler.

Released five years before Iran’s Islamic Republic came to power, The Traveler has turned out to be an oracular study of fanatic passion. The plot revolves around Ghassem, a poor teenager from the small town of Malayer. He worships the seventies’ national soccer hero, Ghelichkhani. In his resolve to make a pilgrimage to Tehran’s Amjadieh soccer stadium he balks at nothing, however unethical, to come up with his ticket and travel money.

Kiarostami makes us laugh when the resourceful boy goes around with a filmless camera conning his vain but destitute classmates into paying for portraits. Later, we watch more soberly as Ghassem secretly sells his own soccer team’s equipment to the rival team. We discovered the boy’s frightening zeal earlier when he endures torture at the hands of his headmaster rather than give up the few Tomans stolen from his own mother. For Ghassem, the soccer match in Tehran is not just a teenage dream, it is the heartless stuff of religious fanaticism. It is not just an ambition of admirable intensity, it is a quest for fulfillment of spiritual lust. The aesthetic allure of his purpose transcends friendship, compassion, love, all the gentle elements of human morality.

There are scenes in which the mother blames the father, and the headmaster blames the mother for not intervening early enough. But their powerless mannerisms show clearly that no one is a match for Ghassem’s innate single-mindedness.

Yet, like a nature film on the Discovery channel, Kiarostami makes us root for this beautiful natural predator. We adore scruffy little Ghassem for his precocious determination. We sigh at his disappointments and cheer as he emerges triumphant after each crisis. From the film’s view, Ghassem’s opponent is not the society he victimizes, but the Universe that gave him desire without the means. Posed in this way, it is impossible not to give heart and soul to the boy who commands into the Void, “let there be justice for me.” The rest of humanity, queued up to receive their rights, might as well be a row of trees planted in the snow.

Relentlessly raising the stakes, Kiarostami now embarrasses us in our willingness to be led astray. In an ironic scene, Ghassem is victimized by his future self. The stadium ticket office runs out just before our hero’s turn to finally buy his passage to the game. A scalper--who is responsible for the shortage--makes the desperate boy pay four times as much for that ticket. Just what Ghassem will do when he grows up. We thought we were thick as thieves with Abbas, giving our approving wink to Ghassem’s machinations. It turns out the director was putting us to the test all along. Beware!

Kiarostami’s devastating critique of our sense of fairness falters, however, in the scenes just before the final shot. He knows something important is still left unsaid. Redemption is the piece of the jigsaw puzzle that an artist from a Christian culture may have snapped into place. But for Kiarostami redemption is not a jigsaw piece, it is a chess piece. The black and white squares of morality are just the background to vastly more complex subtleties.

Sidestepping a naive resolution in salvation, the young Kiarostami clumsily twists the plot towards retribution. Ghassem inexplicably falls asleep just before the soccer match begins, missing union with his divine. A dream sequence suggesting the weight of subconscious guilt felled our hero is uncharacteristically heavy handed. The sudden transmutation of Ghassem’s mettle seems beneath Kiarostami’s savvy. Is the director still taunting us towards a better understanding of ourselves? Or was this just a blunder by a young director with a small budget for editing and rewrites?

Fortunately, The Traveler is a still portrait of Ghassem, it is not his story. As in some other Kiarostami photographs presented in motion picture format, what evolves is the viewer, not the image. The story is in the frustrations he leaves behind that continue to add reels in our minds. What will happen to the heartbroken Ghassem now that he is marooned penniless in a metropolis? Will he fall prey to his own kind? If he outsmarts them, will he grow up to be an unscrupulous leader who would lie to mire his nation in unjust wars? Or by some rare transcendence, will he become a great director with sharper insight into right and wrong than those who have never grappled with passion and its dishonest ways?

After the show, we stepped out to happier frustrations. The restaurant we like gets booked up at night. Chopin’s #20 nocturne, was left unfinished on a friend’s piano from earlier in the day when we had to hurry for the theatre.

In between the sun and the night, Kiarostami’s still frames, and air.

Dr. Homayoun at Berkeley

Ari Siletz — Mon, 11 Jun 2007 21:01:00 +0000

“We all made mistakes,” confessed one member of an audience of fifty or so that had gathered at UC Berkeley to see Dr. Daryoosh Homayoun. The former Pahlavi era minister was there to talk about Iran’s historic struggles with modernity, but many had showed up hoping to confront the intellectual with his Pahlavi past and to dispute his controversial call for a constitutional monarchy in Iran.

The highlight of the energetic and sometimes noisy exchange was the moment following that sadly introspective, “We all made mistakes.” The room went quiet, like a daycare center where children fighting over a rag doll had torn off a limb, and now stood in shocked remorse, each holding a piece.

If Shiism hadn’t won the day, we wondered, and our Leninist/Maoist/Stalinist naiveté had inherited Iran’s revolution, would the country be any better off today? And Homayouni, perhaps remembering the cruel tactics of the Pahlavi dynasty nodded in apparent acknowledgment. Was he admitting the moral errors, or did he simply regret the political miscalculations of the regime he was part of? His praise for Reza Shah and Ataturk, who tried to secularize by force, suggests the latter.

“The Turks worship Ataturk,” he pointed out authoritatively. When confronted with the human cost of this reform, the strikingly tall 78 year old statesman displayed the pain of wisdom on his still charismatic face, as though to say, “if only you understood the responsibilities of power.” Having once walked the corridors of power, Homayoun’s lanky stride still echoes marbled floors. The slight bend of his shoulders appears less a sign of aging than the burden of his critics’ adolescent idealism.

Watching Homayoun’s composure, I would have guessed--incorrectly--an aristocratic military background. He declined to drink his lecturer’s bottled water without a glass. Looking around, he spotted some plastic cups near the coffee pot, then directed the organizers to bring him one. There was no “thank you,” just in case this breach in hospitality was not simply American informality but an Iranian sign of disrespect.

During his lecture Homayoun seemed to talk down to his audience. Too many of his statements appeared as asides for tutoring rather than information supporting his case. This misunderstanding occurs because his presentation lacks modern linear structure. Like passengers on a Tehran bus, some of his points dangle off the sides of the discourse waiting for a proper seat. At one point he asked the audience to let him know when to stop talking.

Homayoun was quite succinct, however, when it came to clarifying the difference between modernity and modernization. The straight forward argument boils down to this: handing a scalpel to a butcher doesn’t transform him into a surgeon. Modernity is not the same as industrialization or better financial institutions. It is a mindset of humanism, secularism and rationalism. The Iranian culture does not have this mindset, therefore Iran is not a modern nation.

His solution: toss the culture. A nation’s identity, he believes, is in her history, not in her culture. As to how any Iranian would submit to this cultural lobotomy, leaving only memories of facts, Homayoun offered no guidance. Nor did he develop a theory as to what is really meant by culture. Having correctly handed the scalpel to the surgeon, we now wonder if the doctor plans to kill the patient. Was the butcher safer after all?

There were indications in Homayoun’s discourse that he isn’t really suggesting a lobotomy but an Islamectomy. Yet even there we find that Dr. Homayoun misunderstands the function of the organ he is planning to remove. This is apparent in a partial autobiography where he remembers spending time in jail with an Iranian Muslim during the chaos of the revolution. The man was studying one of the many Islamic advice books titled, Explanation of Problems (towzih-ol-masaael). Here is what Homayoun says:

“A couple of times we asked him to read parts of the book for us. He stopped reading for us when he saw our uncontrolled laughter. After that, every evening we would force him to give us the book and entertained ourselves by reading it. Never before did we have time to make the acquaintance of such things [bold typeface emphasis mine]. We could not believe that these were the people who had defeated us, and how was it possible for our nation, under the leadership of their intelligentsia, to long for the government of such characters in preference to us.”

What Homayoun found funny was likely the books straight faced Dr. Phil responses to questions like, If I have sex with my goat, is the meat still halaal? The answer: The meat is haraam to you but halaal to others. What we may observe-- after we’re done laughing--is that this well-reasoned answer provides a disincentive for romancing ones livestock, and at the same time makes sure the meat is not wasted. It is also mindful of the economy as it averts a possible panic in the community for certified virgin meat. Note the adeptness of the ayatollah in tackling the problems of sexuality and poverty in a rural environment. While Homayoun et al. ridiculed the simple peasant as being beneath their sympathy, the religious scholar took the time to understand the man as a sexual being. In this autobiographical passage Homayoun has answered his own question as to why his accidental cellmate chose “the government of such characters in preference to us.”

Homoayoun goes on to say that he spent the dull waiting times during his prison escape reading Moby Dick and the works of Saul Bellow. Fully devoting their minds to understanding the West, the Iranian elite found themselves intellectually unprepared to take on the Mullahs.

And perhaps the ayatollahs better understand even the West. Does modernity give us a ladder to climb out of the vulgar irrationality of human sexuality? Sure, but marketing experts, film directors and the artistic elite of the West more often use the ladder to go farther down, not up. There is research to inidcate that pornography played a central role in the the development of Western civilization. Ertoic imagery was one of the earliest uses of the printing press, advancing its development. Today it is a common belief among mass media professionals that the course of technologies such as the internet and DVDs are often determined by the porn industry. The obscene amount of energy generated around the Hejab issue both by its Muslim supporters and its Western detractors is as clearly explained by the ayatollahs' comedic obsession with genitalia than by Captain Ahab’s tragic obsession with his Moby Dick.

Ironically, Homayoun’s most controversial idea, his support for a constitutional monarchy is a well calculated concession of intellect to lowly instinct. Our herd instinct in particular. Common people love royalty, and will rally around the symbol. Getting past my gag reflex, I nibbled a little on his monarchy idea and found it actually palatable. In a crisis of divisiveness a throne is a handier piece of furniture than seats in the parliament. In harmonizing our ethnic diversity chanting “Jaavid Shah” compares well with chanting “death to America." Unified under a crown, perhaps we won't need unification under dangerous slogans. In the alphabet of our daily concerns Zionism can go back where it belongs with Zulbia and Zereshk polo.

Taking his cue from Homayoun’s political philosophy, Iran’s handsome new king would distance Iran from the filth and fury of the third world, allying us instead with the cream of civilization, the West. I would quite enjoy living in the happy kingdom of Iran.

But when I step out of Disneyland, I see a world where the disparity between rich and poor nations has created an empty niche of power. This particular niche has been exploited ever since Jesus Christ found he could get a following by saying “blessed are the poor.” The only trouble with Iran preaching rebellion to destitute nations is that the Islamic regime itself has only a primitive concept of human rights, democracy, and non-violence. Otherwise it is well within the mandate of the Iranian revolution to confront injustice in world affairs, and once again have our philosophies, culture, and management style affect the course of History. The limits of our national ambitions are farther out than Homayoun would allow. During audience exchanges we spent much time arguing about the limits of scope of the 1906 revolution and had only unspoken despair for the vastly larger, global scope of our 1979 revolution. Yet in its degree of activism--though not in methods--Iran's revolution is not only alive but thriving in the Islamic Republic.

Despite the many instances when I thought Homayoun was wrong, there was a moment when he touched my soul. With a sense of plea that his proud voice could not hide, he reminded us that he was at the helm of affairs for only one year in Iran, but for sixty other years his service to the country was unquestionable. He mentioned being the publisher of the popular paperback series Ketaab Jeebee. I remember as a youth delighting at every new release, saving money for the next one. The fatherly figure adeptly defending himself from our reproach had helped give us the very tools of the intellect we were using to disagree with him. As he had destroyed, so had he built, and along the way he had made mistakes. We all made mistakes.

300

Ari Siletz — Thu, 15 Mar 2007 19:41:00 +0000

Directed by Zach Snyder
Based on a graphic novel by Frank Miller

In one scene of this movie two women can be seen openly kissing each other in the court of Xerxes, the Persian monarch. A few cuts later, a man with a disability is welcomed into the Persian court by the great king himself. Even though Persians are a Caucasian race, they have chosen a king who appears to be of African descent. In the movie 300 the Persian Empire seems overrun by American liberal ideology. I half wondered if the bloody battles weren't really over universal health care and gay marriage.

The neo-cons in this allegory are the Spartans. Their king, Leonidas, has taken his troops to war despite opposition from virtually every wise counsel in his land. Like his modern counterpart Leonidas says he is going to battle in the cause of freedom and reason. But 300 shows us that Leonidas is not a reasonable man. In a fit of rage the Spartan king executes Xerxes’ messengers--a deed the reasonable Xerxes seems to have forgiven when Leonidas himself stands vulnerable before the Persian king. And anyone who has read even a little about Spartan society would know that Leonidas couldn’t possibly be fighting for freedom. The slaves in Sparta outnumbered free citizens by seven to one. A common initiation rite for a young Spartan male was to sneak up on local slaves and massacre them. No wonder Leonidas and his 300 braves would rather have died than become part of the Persian Empire: ever since the time of the Persian king Cyrus the Great, such human rights abuses had been against the law of the empire.

On a clay cuneiform cylinder made 25 centuries ago Cyrus declares, “I will never let anyone take possession of movable and landed properties of others by force or without compensation. As long as I live I prohibit unpaid, forced labor. Today I announce that everyone is free to choose a religion. People are free to live in all regions and take up a job provided that they never violate others’ rights… I prohibit slavery and my governors and subordinates are obliged to prohibit exchanging men and women as slaves within their own ruling domains. Such a tradition should be exterminated the world over.” The return to Israel of the Jews held in Babylonian slavery was a consequence of this legislation. Historically, King Leonidas and his 300 Spartans died to prevent freedom, not to preserve it.

So how does director Zack Snyder take these obvious facts in favor of ancient Persia to deliver a pro-Spartan message? The trick is infuriating in its simplicity, and perhaps not an undeserved insult to the members of the audience who carelessly empathize with the 300. Snyder presents the Spartans as a good-looking bunch with chiseled faces, bulging pectorals, and abs that even a computer graphics body would need megahertz crunches to accomplish. None of the Spartan's adversaries on the other hand look like they have seen the inside of a health club except Xerxes himself--and even this character has disfigured himself with unsightly piercings. Persians and other nay-sayers to the war have ugly skin, whereas the hawkish Spartans have manly sex appeal. Also, using swaggering language such as “come and get us,” and “We’ll fight in the shade,” the Spartans establish a locker room camaraderie between themselves and among susceptible members of the audience. The Persians on the other hand have obviously never drank beer in front of the TV on a Monday night.

300 is worth studying because it reflects the cognitive dissonance of American society under the Bush administration. Like the Nazi propaganda footage sometimes aired on the History Channel, one wonders just how much it will take for a human to think black is white and white is black. 300 reiterates the frightening lesson we learned during the heyday of fascism: it takes very little to manipulate the human mind. The simple ingredients are smart uniforms, and pats on the back for enjoying violence. And of course talented film directors with no scruples.

Cafe Transit

Ari Siletz — Thu, 11 Jan 2007 12:38:00 +0000

Director/Screenwriter Cambuzia Partovi

Having already won best screenplay at Iran’s Fajr Film Festival, Café Transit is now that country’s official entry for the Oscars. How did director/screenwriter Kambuzia Partovi go from having his works banned in Iran to becoming the artistic pride of his country? The answer is that Café Transit is cleverly written so that its domestic message says one thing while its foreign message says the opposite. The Western audience sees a romance between a sensuously forthright European truck driver and an enterprising Iranian widow. We are heartbroken as their love is made impossible by a nightmarish, apparently Islamic custom. Native Iranian audience, on the other hand, know that the practice of widows having to marry their dead husband’s brother isn’t particularly Islamic or Iranian. In their view, the lovers are battling against the absurd anachronisms of a backward Turkic speaking village. Western critics tend to applaud movies that authenticate the “clash of civilizations,” while Iranian cultural authorities reward movies that favorably compare their nation’s regressive gender policies against even lower—possibly fictitious--standards. Café Transit is a well crafted piece of international filmmaking that makes Iran appear developmentally stunted to the Western viewer at the same time that it makes the country’s mainstream values look culturally superior in the eyes of its domestic audience.

Catering to diverse political agendas assures wider acceptance, but a film does not become a contender for Fajr and the Oscars unless its point of view is expressed with artistic merit. Café Transit is a strong candidate for international filmmaking prizes mostly because the protagonist, Reyhan, is a refreshing twist to the standard determined-woman-struggling-against-tradition persona.

Even before we meet the charismatic heroine, the plot reveals that her real name is not Reyhaneh, but Reyhan (basil)--the same name with the feminine suffix deleted. Thus Kambuzia Partovi prepares us for a story about a woman who will transgress gender barriers. The film fulfills this expectation when Reyhan refuses to close down her late husband’s truck stop, choosing instead to use her extraordinary cooking skills to grow the business. Soon truck drivers from all over Europe and Asia are eating at her café on the border of Iran and Turkey. Reyhan’s brother in law, Nasser-- to whom truck drivers queuing up for a home cooked meal look no different than men waiting in line at a bordello--urges the widow not to dishonor the family. She should close the café, follow local custom and marry him so that he can provide for her and her two children. Reyhan, who is not a local, refuses to bend to this bizarre custom. She does not love Nasser, moreover he already has a wife. The jilted brother in law’s campaign to close down Reyhan’s business creates much of the suspense and indignation in Café Transit, particularly since Reyhan’s attraction to a Greek truck driver has made her vulnerable to gossip.

For the Iranian viewer, Reyhan’s breach of local custom is not a rebellion against the country’s mainstream Islamic values. Even though she manages a busy truck stop, she tries to avoid scandal by staying in the kitchen at all times, letting a trusted old male employee deal with her hungry customers. To the Western viewer the need for such precaution is a symptom of life in an intrusively misogynistic society. It creates sympathy for Reyhan. To the traditional Iranian, however, this is proof of the heroine’s sense of decorum. It generates respect for her and convinces the audience that the brother in law’s concern for the honor of the family has no justification.

Despite her conflict with her brother in law, Reyhan remains as respectful to him as possible. Is this because her patriarchal society punishes protest, or is Reyhan’s forbearance a sign of Iranian culture’s wisdom and humility? Fereshteh Sadr Orafaiy, who plays Reyhan, does a superb job of disallowing a straightforward answer. Instead, the Reyhan she portrays seems to understand people by way of their needs, not their threat level. The character’s natural mastery of the universal language of need is why her café has become home away from home for so many travelers from so many distant cultures.

Though Café Transit is unmistakably feminist, it subscribes to the brand of feminism that presupposes a female intuition for nurturing, specifically homemaking. Reyhan’s ability to use flavors, colors, and aromas to create an atmosphere of caring and rootedness is her main ally throughout the movie. This strength gives her success in business, a sense of independence, and a feeling of accomplishment. It also helps her in love. She flirts with Zacharias--the Greek truck driver with whom she falls in love--by sending out plates of food to him, watching him secretly from the kitchen window as he eats. Orafaiy fashions a potent feminine allure out of Reyhan’s passivity. When Zacharias finally tells Reyhan he loves her, she can only walk away without a word, but after a while her widow’s black mourning headscarf is gone, replaced with colorful ones. The heroines actions are as quietly forceful as the colors that affect our moods. Art director Hassan Farsi highlights this “feminine touch” very effectively, not only in the sets and costumes but in the amazing food presentations.

As a strong female character, Reyhan also has the power to protect. Besides enhancing the film’s feminist credentials in the West, this protectiveness serves a domestic function. The parallel between the outdated customs of this village and the reactionary gender policies of the Islamic Republic, is obvious even to the Iranian viewer, so Partovi mitigates this subversive allegory with a moralizing subplot about a young Russian woman whose Western values have led to a life of vagrancy and sex for favors. In a proselytizing gesture, Partovi’s screenplay has some unscrupulous men dump the homeless Russian woman in front of the café where her dignity is nursed back to health under Reyhan’s virtuous and motherly sheltering. There is an emotional scene where both women—neither of whom understand one another’s language—cry upon each other’s shoulders. In this touching invocation of international sisterhood, the sisters are actually grieving over the devastations of war, not the unfairness of patriarchal systems.

Crediting a female role model with special instincts for nest building, passive influence, and motherliness seems a hackneyed consolation for lack of gender equality, but that is what Café Transit offers its domestic audience. Mindful of Islamic cultural biases, Partovi never argues against a woman’s place being in the home; his feminism lies in his expanding the traditional concept of home, not in expanding the traditional concept of woman. Feminists in Iran can only hope the audience will see that the vector of progress from managing a home to managing a café may eventually point to managing a country. Beyond that Partovi knows he cannot go, unless he wants his work banned yet again.

This self censorship is not without artistic penalty. In a scene where Reyhan’s Greek admirer dances in front of her, we are not permitted to see the desire in her face. The resulting absence of information is as annoying as a hole in the canvas or a harsh skip on a music CD. A Global Film Initiative discussion guide diplomatically explains away one such scene claiming that the character is being given her privacy. One wonders why in a feminist movie it is not left up to the actress to decide how much privacy she wants to claim in displaying the inner feelings of her character.

The busy truck traffic of goods flowing north and south in front of Reyhan’s café constantly reminds us that Iran cannot isolate itself from outside influence. The Oscar committee will be flattered to see an Iranian film’s respectful nod to Western feminism, perhaps unaware that Partovi has given Iran’s traditional culture the last word in the movie. In the final sequence, the Russian girl which Reyhan rescued, is somewhere outside of Iran preparing a dish for her male friends.

“What is this? It’s great,” the men ask.

“Mirza Ghasemi*,” she replies.

When it comes to culture or ideology, there’s no such thing as one-way traffic.

*An Iranian dish.

Borat

Ari Siletz — Mon, 20 Nov 2006 23:22:00 +0000

Screenplay by Sacha Baron Cohen.

I heard Sasha Baron Cohen’s mother was of Jewish Persian origin, so I went to see his movie to find out what this "son of Persia" has accomplished. I was instantly struck by how familiar the main character seemed. The disarmingly innocent ignoramus lost in a civilization with a superior attitude took me back to all the Tork jokes I grew up with.

Tork jokes are a form of bragging, an insecure boasting of the Persian cultural dominance. During the centuries that Turkic speaking people held military and executive power in Persia, the Persian speakers consoled themselves with the notion that they were the dominant wit. Here’s a common recipe for a Tork joke: One savvy Persian observer, one illiterate village Tork, throw in a situation, gloat until funny. Borat replaces the savvy Persian observer with the American movie audience--who seem to enjoy laughing at Khazakhs even more than Persians like to make fun of Torks. But what consolation is the American audience seeking? Why did they pay 68 million dollars at the box office to be disgusted into laughter by Borat’s exotic toilet habits, guiltless sexuality, and overly libidinous courtship behavior?

The answer is partly in the cake Cohen has, and partly in the cake Cohen eats. In a commercially brilliant sleight of hand this artist panders shamelessly to America’s post 9-11 xenophobic arrogance, and at the same time delivers a scathing commentary on the nation’s imbecilic state of mind. While we lounge in our theatre seats complacently laughing at the loose morals and crude anti-Semitism of a clueless semi-Islamic character, we are also led to ask whether that last superior laugh isn’t really on us. In one scene Cohen --who does not let his film subjects know he is really an actor--returns to the dining room holding his excrement in a plastic bag, asking what he should do with it. The victim of this Candid Camera joke is a polite Southern hostess who recovers gracefully, and to my great admiration, shows Borat how civilized people use the toilet. So far this is America the beautiful. But later during the party when Borat’s after-dinner guest turns out to be an African-American call girl, Borat is thrown out of the house, along with his guest. Tolerance has limits.

Based on audience response, if I were to divide Borat’s 68 million dollar early box office take between distinct camps of Borat aficionados, this would be my guess,
Brilliant commentary on American hypocrisy : $10 million
I live in the greatest country in the world; supersize my sex and scatology jokes: $58million

As a member of the smaller group, the funniest scene for me was when thousands of rodeo fans held their right hands over their hearts while Borat performed Khazakhstan’s “national anthem” to the tune of “The Star Spangled Banner.” All the time Borat bleated the fake words to this petty and childishly belligerent “national anthem,” the camera panned the proud faces of American patriots who still cheer as their president continues to shred their constitution, desecrate their bill of rights, and disgrace their country in the eyes of the world. This gag made me chuckle more cathartically than any bad Persian joke about how dumb Torks can get

Children of Heaven

Ari Siletz — Sun, 05 Nov 2006 12:49:00 +0000

Directed by Majid Majidi

This movie was produced by Iran’s Institute for the Intellectual Development of Children and Young Adults, an important fact for the Western viewer to keep in mind. Children of Heaven is a charming fable that teaches us how to be good Iranians. Paradoxically, its simple plot also reveals the tragedies that befall those who learn their lesson too well. The gentleness, compassion, honesty and courage that the narrative so ably demonstrates give rise to the protagonists' questionable act of forbearance: their noble resolve not to burden authority figures with their problem.

Through no fault of his, nine-year-old Ali loses his little sister’s shoes while on an errand to have them mended. He worries less about punishment than the reason for it. His family is in terrible financial straits, rent is five months overdue, and his mother is sick. Ali is concerned that another piece of bad news could break his father. The only person who needs to know about the shoes is his little sister. Those were, after all, her only shoes. How is she supposed to go to school?

Ali’s father likes to yell a lot, but we soon realize that he is a gentle and impeccably honest soul who truly loves his family. Most of his blustering is directed at his sick wife for not taking it easy; he saves the rest of his voice for Ali for not helping his mother enough. In his quieter moments he likes to dream about what jobs he could do to make life better for his family. The father is so honest that he drinks his tea without lump sugar—which he can’t afford-- even as he is chopping up a mountain of lump sugar belonging to the mosque.

The mother of the family is an angel of forbearance and charity. Though she has been ordered not to work, we learn she tried to wash the family rug--an exhausting task even for a healthy person. The tiny living room, which also serves as the family bedroom, TV room, children’s study, tool shed, and kitchen, is orderly and spotless. Despite her poverty she feels she has enough to send a bowl of soup now and then to an elderly neighbor.

Ali and his sister Zahra cannot bear to saddle their hard working parents with yet one more burden. So they scheme to share Ali’s dilapidated sneakers until a solution presents itself. Since they go to school in different shifts, little Zahra wears the sneakers to school first, then runs out in a flopping rush to pass them on to her anxiously waiting brother.

Director Majid Majidi does not paint a picture of poverty, he depicts need and healthy struggle. Poverty is lonely and despairing, while need encourages cooperation and innovation. To solve the problem of having only one pair of shoes, brother and sister team up in a beautifully coordinated relay. It is only later--when the camera takes us to an affluent neighborhood where Ali’s father has found a job--that we encounter loneliness in the midst of plenty. There, a young boy living in a mansion with his grandfather begs Ali to play with him. As father and son enter the mansion, reeking of struggle and eager sweat, we feel sorry for the isolated residents of these marbled mausoleums.

Ali’s neighborhood, on the other hand, is teeming with activity. In the sun baked, clay and brick alleys, the vegetable seller separates his potatoes into fat ones that he can sell to his credit worthy customers, and scrawny ones for which he may not get paid for a long time. The cobbler is busy with shoes he has mended over and over again. A mother unravels the yarn from an old sweater to knit a new one for her newborn. The daughter of the blind knick-knack seller plays hide and seek with her father, while another door-to-door junk trader swaps a used plastic colander for a pair of worn shoes. Kids play soccer in alleys much narrower than the distance between goal posts, and grown men cry over their tea while the mullah recites a passion play in the mosque.

Yet, despite being surrounded by a spiritually prosperous community, Ali and Zahra refrain from sharing their problem. This bit of martyrdom, likely lauded by Iran’s Institute for the Intellectual Development of Children and Young Adults, fits the overly considerate spirit of Iran’s ideal culture. These children, like the other denizens of these alleys, wish to lighten the collective load, not add to it. They are children of heaven, after all. Why should their parents have to suffer for the loss of the shoes? Here we start to see the tragic contradictions in the commendable principles of Iranian social interactions.

Saying that his mother is ill, Ali declines his teammates’ invitation to play in an upcoming soccer match. As he is the best runner in the neighborhood, this is a huge let down for the team. If he had let his teammates know of his shoe problem, the plot could have taken the direction where the team cooperates in getting the family a new pair of shoes. A win-win situation. As it is, they were not given the opportunity. If Ali had let his school master know why he was late to school every day, the school could have devised a solution. Instead, the school master was put in a position of almost expelling a desperate child. The toll on his conscience would have been great.

Zahra’s secretiveness is even more frustrating. She finds out that one of her schoolmates is wearing her lost shoes. She does not accuse the schoolmate of theft, a praiseworthy postponing of judgment. On the other hand, Zahra keeps this schoolmate completely in the dark about a situation the girl has a right to know about. The tragedy here is that the friendship that could have formed between these two as a result of the mix-up would have been much stronger if Zahra had shared her thoughts. As it was, this schoolgirl remains a charity case, no more. Majdi does not present this as a loss. The audience admires Zahra for keeping quiet, reinforcing the dubious notion that compassion trumps sorting things out.

After numerous episodes of annoying non-communication, Ali discovers that third prize in a long distance running event is a pair of shoes. With the help of a kindly gym teacher—in whom he does not confide—Ali sets out to win third place in the contest.

Children of Heaven was nominated for an Oscar in 1999—Life is Beautiful, another movie in praise of well intentioned subterfuge, won that year. Children has captured high honors across the globe from Singapore to Finland to Canada. In Iran, the film won best film, best director, best screenplay (and oddly, best makeup artist!). These awards and numerous rave reviews are swept away by the display of friendship, persistence, love and trust as brother and sister get their arms around a problem apparently too big for them. The characters and their problems certainly have universal appeal, but I found most of the value of this movie in what it illuminates about the peculiarities of the Iranian psyche. The Iranian respect for uncomplaining forbearance derives from the high value placed on the nation’s unique flavors of humility. Children must ask permission to speak to their teacher, even in answer to a direct question. Yet despite this ritual acknowledgment of the disparity in the student-teacher power relationship, the teacher uses words like “befarmayeed” [command me] on the student. Much of this verbal shadow play is understandably lost in the subtitling. “Befarmayeed,” a word used almost unconsciously by Iranians when they invite a guest inside, is translated as “go [on in].” For the Persian speaking viewer it is difficult not to lament the loss of irony when a principal who has just expelled a student invites him back in with a “befarmayeed.” This odd hybrid of sarcasm and humbleness is one of Persian culture’s favorite assortments humility.

Another example of highly illuminating self-lowering word usage is the word “Bandeh Khoda,” literally Slave of God, used in this movie to refer to a blind person. Iranians so often refer to themselves as “Bandeh,” slave, that the word has almost become synonymous with the pronoun “I.” “Bandeh Khoda” however is a term reserved for those less fortunate than the speaker. In this centuries-old politically correct speech, Iranians acknowledge their own good fortune by disowning their personal pride in it. All slaves are, after all, equal. Every scene in Children seems to feast on Iran’s highly developed art of self depractaion, loosely known as ta’arof. Not surprisingly, humility has been the preoccupation of many of Iran’s most beloved contributors to her civilization, the Sufi poets, Rumi, Hafez, Khayyam, Saadi and so on.

Keeping in mind the Iranian obsession with self lowering, it is not surprising that the movie’s climax has to do with whether the protagonist will succeed in finishing third in the race. The audience has seen enough heart and determination in this little boy to know he could outrun a herd of wildebeest, but will he stay true to his humble quest? Director Majid Majidi has personal experience with this dilemma. He told his family he was studying engineering, a high paying respectable job, when in fact he was studying drama, a much less desirable pursuit because of its low prospects of employment and Iranian society's lack of respect for the performing arts. We are very fortunate that Majidi lied to his family and humbly decided not to finish ‘”first.” It is hard to imagine any kind of engineering work this unassuming and socially aware director may have done to match his contributions to the world of art.

Iran's highly regarded Institute for the Intellectual Development of Children and Young Adults (website in Persian) is also in part a government propaganda organization. Its sponsorship of Children should alert the viewer to possible bias in the movie’s contents. However, Majidi hides a powerful message in this movie that grows more and more subversive as Iran’s global confrontations intensify. Ali does not succeed in finishing third. To his great chagrin he accidentally comes in first. The disappointed face of Zahra, when she realizes her brother has not come home with the shoes, is the face of the people of Iran in the not too distant future. As Iran’s ever advancing military technology continues to drain her resourses , Iranians will say to their government, “We didn’t want first place, we didn’t want glory or fame. We are a people who take pride only in our humility. All we asked of our revolution was bread, education, jobs, medicine.” All we asked for was a pair of shoes.

Love Iranian-American Style

Ari Siletz — Mon, 24 Jul 2006 15:52:00 +0000

Directed by Tanaz Eshaghian.

It’s been a long time since American documentaries haven't been reality shows. These days even the respected PBS science series NOVA occasionally airs like an unscripted drama. To create the documentary film Love Iranian-American Style director Tanaz Eshaghian recorded over the years her family’s quixotic quest to find her a suitable husband. The result has the charming humor of My Big Fat Greek Wedding layered over the educational substance of a college course in sociology.

Early in the filmmaker's interviews with the politely distraught Eshaghian clan, we find out that Tanaz, unlike other women in her Jewish-Iranian family, has no use for the strictures of traditional matrimony. She won't marry this doctor or that businessman and have children in her early twenties. She was raised in America and she wants to marry for love.

Realistic about Iranian men's fondness for marrying younger women, the family is worried that if their Tanaz delays much longer her suitors will disappear. In one scene a matchmaker offers to find Eshaghian an excellent Jewish-Iranian husband for $10,000. The director retorts that if she can't find a husband on her own in the next five years then maybe they could do business. “By then it would cost you $100,000,” sighs the matchmaker to roaring laughter from the theater audience.

Eshaghian’s comedy is dark. Throughout we are laughing at pain. The pain of guilt and embarrassment for disappointing her clan, and the pain of a traditional family seeing how Western individualism has contaminated their daughter’s psyche with dissatisfaction. She can no longer look at a rich, handsome suitor from her own social class and think “I could grow to like him.” Having breathed American egalitarianism most of her life, she can only see him as a loser too sissy to ask, “who am I, and what do I really want?”

In answering that question about herself Eshaghian scores her artistic victory in this film. To our surprize we find out that she has also documented her failures in finding love outside of tradition. In a moving display of honesty, she interviews ex-lovers about why the relationship didn't go anywhere. Ironically, her previous boyfriends were turned off by her push for commitment and her mental checklist of qualifications they felt they had to meet. One of them even thought he wasn't rich enough for her. All this time she thought she was running away from the traditions of her clan, she was really just circling back to familiar territory.

In a work of fiction this realization would resolve the plot, setting off the events towards a happy ending. But this is real life. New understanding takes a long time to catch up with who we have become. In Eshaghian’s childhood pictures we see a stubborn looking, rebellious little girl whose wide eyes are brimming with inquisitiveness. She has grown up to be a tall beauty with the same inquisitive eyes. But years of saying “Not good enough for me,” have left on her face--like a watermark—a subtle expression of haughty disapproval, as though the Universe is a cheap sale item she is about to throw back in the bin.

After the screening of her movie, I was introduced to Eshaghian and I told her I would be writing about her movie. “Oh,” she said, “Who do you write for?” That expression on her face made me feel embarrassed I couldn't say, "The New York Times.”

Ceasefire

Ari Siletz — Mon, 17 Jul 2006 16:26:00 +0000

Directed by Tahmineh Milani

The Iranian box office comedy hit, Ceasefire, shows a man and woman in bed together, but the movie still nominally obeys the Iranian film decency code. The feuding husband and wife have sawed the bed in half. Similarly, a bed sheet always magically wraps itself around the actress’s head like a chador. Male and female actors touch each other but only in fight scenes, shoving each other around. These ploys outline an unspoken rapprochement between internationally-acclaimed filmmaker Tahmineh Milani and Iranian cultural authorities. In return for some liberties, Milani moderates her criticism of Iranian society. No more despotic fathers-in-law as in The Fifth Reaction, no more thugs throwing acid at women’s faces as in Two Women. In previous films Milani attacked relentlessly. In Ceasefire… well, it’s an honest title.

Milani aficionados will long for the foreboding air of menace that was her trademark. They will miss that unbearable fury she used to summon against the unjust. What remains, however, is her signature shrillness and over-the-top dramatization. Scene after scene we watch the quarrelling couple play childish pranks on each other. They smash each other’s favorite glassware, dump dirt on each other’s heads, destroy clothing, sabotage dinner parties, all juvenile antics akin to tying shoelaces together. Originality or suggestiveness--such as grapefruit in the face--would have broken the tedium, but innovation has also declared a ceasefire.

Milani has never engaged in the poetic explorations that make Iranian film a worldwide phenomenon. She does not pretend to be a Makhmalbaaf or a Kiarostami. Her plots demand little of the audience, her characters are readily fathomable. She makes no apologies for this earthiness. Usually she makes up for it by extracting unforgettable performances from her actors. This time she has not been as careful with her casting. Ceasefire has no actors on a par with Gohar Kheirandish, whose lion-hearted Zir Madineh stole the show in The Fifth Reaction.

One wonders why Milani has softened her militancy. Some Iranian women artists are catching on to the way the West uses their work as a propaganda tool against Iran, their fame a pact with the Devil. But an earlier Milani film, Two Women, offers a more introverted motivation. In one of her most moving scenes Niki Karimi’s character pleads with her tyrannical husband to become her friend. Ceasefire looks like an olive branch held out in desperation by a woman artist towards her patriarchal society. In this comedy we glimpse the director’s sad spark of hope that the subjugation of women in Iran can be analyzed rationally and resolved to the satisfaction of both men and women.

To start fresh Milani airs out the stench of misogyny from her sets, and perfumes with comedy what odor remains. The sets are colorful and well lit. The successful husband and wife drive expensive European cars and live in a house with modern furniture and a state-of-the-art home entertainment center. The in-laws are supportive, the neighbors are friendly. The couple don’t seem to have any needs other than the need to grow up. This is the most serious problem with the movie. Aside from their good looks there is nothing there to make us like this ever squabbling couple. In Star Wars, the bickering Han Solo and Princess Leia were endearing because the lovers were in deep trouble with the Evil Empire. Their trivial banter stood in ironic contrast to their noble purpose. In Ceasefire, however, the Evil Empire has been cut out of the plot altogether, leaving us with nothing but pettiness.

A curious gay character stiffens the soggy plot with some physical comedy. Judging by audience laughter this character’s dandified manner is a big hit with Iranians. Americans have little room for indignation here--Eddie Murphy, Robin Williams and Will Ferrell also draw laughs with this stereotype. In an Iranian movie, however, the appearance of a gay man may telegraph a loosening of Iran’s rigid codes of public conduct. Here Milani as an artist is participating in social reform. Cultures that disengage their sexuality from their morality tend to replace the old taboos with more humane ones, such as eliminating the death penalty.

Unfortunately, Milani gets so caught up in improving her society that she neglects her primary role as director and screenwriter. As a result she does too much preaching and not enough story telling. The intriguing plot-character interactions that enlightened us with their irony, have been replaced by a tiresome therapist character, lecturing about our inner child, telling us what to think and feel.

The fact that Ceasefire has shattered box office records in Iran is understandable. The movie is comic relief in a nation starved for optimism and lightheartedness. Also, the social messages in the movie offer safe and entertaining activism, a luxury previously available mostly in the West. Having lightened her load, Milani now operates as a reformer, patiently taking small, practical steps. As a filmmaker, however, she has fallen out of the saddle. It may take tough competition and demanding critics to put this director back on her high horse.

United 93

Ari Siletz — Wed, 17 May 2006 16:52:00 +0000

Directed by Paul Greengrass

Along with the strong documentary feel--the hand held camera, the annoying passersby that block the view--there is an eerie absence of editorializing in this movie. The film plays like a security video of a 7-11 murder, with the effect that the viewer doesn’t have the comfort of knowing this is someone else’s point of view. Director Paul Greengrass knows that messages and morals would only dilute the brutal realism of his work. Through the innovative use of detachment, Greengrass has solved the problem of keeping the events of 9-11 perpetually fresh in the American psyche. Grandstanders and warmongers can now continue with their work, their zeal undiminished, their material replenished.

The information in the plane’s flight data recorder has not been made available to the public, so we don’t know why this passenger plane, hijacked by terrorists on 9-11, crashed before it reached its target. The film’s storyline follows the popular theory that the passengers mutinied against their captors and brought the plane down. But in keeping with its policy of objective reporting, the film makes no attempt to create heroes out of the passengers. Even the famous line, “Let’s roll,” which I had imagined as a heroic battle cry just before the passengers stormed the cockpit, was delivered in a huddled hush by one of the mutineers. The line was whispered so softly, I wondered how Greengrass expects us to believe that a telephone was able to accidentally pick it up.

There is also no attempt to make villains out of the terrorists beyond the obvious destructiveness of their act. They are guerrillas on a mission, improvising as the field conditions dictate. Not making villains out of the terrorists has the effect of closing the door to rebuttal. An apologist can’t argue that the terrorists are just doing what we would do under similar circumstances. The movie doesn't allow the debate to go there. “Of course they are like us,” the film seems to declare,” but things have gone beyond negotiation, understanding, or figuring out who is right and who is wrong. What we must do to protect ourselves has nothing to do with who’s the bad guy here.” This frightneningly pragmatic point of view should alarm even our friends. Once the world finds out we have disengaged from the moral debate, once it knows we would fumigate or vaporize other people out of existence while fully recognizing their humanity, it will look upon us as a global Macbeth in need of curtailment.

The movie's suspense begins when the terrorists make a mistake by failing to monitor passengers on telephones. Once everyone learns over the air-phones that the plane is on a suicide mission, the four terrorists lose control of the crowd. The passengers conspire against their captors and even begin to improvise weapons out of heavy luggage and boiling water.

Here, the greatest irony of United 93 comes out. The airplane itself is an improvised weapon. Despite all Greengrass' efforts towards gut-level rawness, the astute viewer will pause for introspection and wonder what desperate thoughts prompted the terrorists to improvise this weapon. Did they believe they were passengers in a world that was being piloted on a suicide mission by Western excess? Was the World Trade Center a metaphorical cockpit being stormed by desperate global passengers?

I would guess that this irony was unintentional, but intention is not the substance of art. Like an embarrassing child, art speaks her own mind, heedless of what her red-faced parents told her not to say. On a less artistic level there is an allegory which probably is intended. Since in this version of the story the passengers of flight 93 crashed the plane before it could destroy the Capitol building, their action may be considered pre-emptive. The invasion of Iraq was said to be pre-emptive, and now the possible invasion of Iran is also being touted as pre-emptive. United 93 suggests that in the long run such an attack would be worth the sacrifice of a few American lives.

Besides unintended irony, this work of art also has unintended lessons. The most important lesson questions why Islamic and Western civilizations have to clash in the first place. For example, the movie opens with the most moving recitation of the Koran I have ever heard. This is because the calming and yet deeply emotional quality of the words were enhanced by a soothing sustenato of strings in the background. Musical instruments are forbidden in Koran recitations, and if someone wanted to make a fuss about it, this fusion of violins and Koran could fuel street demonstrations. There was no protest because the innovation was not intended to offend, but to convey to a Western audience the sense of calm that a Koran recitation can bring. Yet even to a Muslim this fusion of cultures was astonishingly artful.

United 93 deviates from the Hollywood airport-movie genre in that the audience knows the story will end in tragedy. But there are those of us who still believe in a happy ending to the Islam vs. West conflict. To help this ship land safely we will create and support art and literature that intermingles the sublime aspects of these two cultures, rather than catalogue and memorialize the atrocities we have each committed. We happy-ending fans recommend the audience walk out on United 93 after enjoying the first scene with the amazing aria 'sung' in Koranic lilt.

V for Vendetta

Ari Siletz — Thu, 13 Apr 2006 22:22:00 +0000

I liked this movie because it expresses my political frustrations. All its fighting, exploding, and Shakespearean repartee build up to a grand, convulsive, left-wing orgasm. For those of us who have had it up to our frontal lobes with the Right, no sex scene would have substituted.

The masked freedom fighter, V, exists in a future where America has collapsed under its own arrogance. The center of power for the English speaking world has shifted to London, where the action takes place. The I-told-you-so catharsis in this premise alone makes this movie very attractive to the liberal viewer.

Rather than learn from America’s demise and avoid the dangers of propaganda-reinforced authoritarianism, the England of the future has forfeited her power to a tyrannical clique led by a man named Adam Sutler. John Hurt, the actor who plays Sutler, borrows his bark from Hitler, but he gets his bite from Cheney’s cold, threatening postures and Rumsfeld’s malicious intransigence. Sadly, George Bush has contributed little to Sutler’s character. Perhaps this is because Hurt trained in the British dramatic tradition where the words of the script appear to originate from the actor’s own brain. George Bush’s amiable cluelessness, vacant searching eyes, and teleprompter-induced phrasing are not in Hurt’s repertoire.

The hero, V, insightfully recognizes that the public cannot be moved to rebel against this despotic lot as long as their junta appears invincible. To expose the soft belly of the system, V vows to destroy a public building on a specific date. That date is not September 11, but merely associating an act of terrorism with a specific date is more than enough for the viewer to make the connection.

Tense action follows as the calendar flips towards the deadline. We expect V to outsmart his opponents. But he is only one man against the system. Everyone else is waiting to see if V can really blow up the British Houses of Parliament as he promised. A very clever and sympathetic Irish detective with basset hound eyes is close on V’s heels. Spies, thugs and troopers are everywhere. The child molesting Bishop and the Sean Hannity type TV personality that we wish V would assassinate are not easy targets. To add to this already crowded schedule of violence, V has fallen in love with a woman, Evey, and feels compelled to release the inner radical in this uncooperative beauty.

When I say “V has fallen in love with a woman,” I am not being redundant. It is becoming more and more negligent to assume that the object of a hero’s love is the opposite sex. The plot of V for Vendetta devotes a lot of time telling us that a society that persecutes gays and lesbians cannot be considered free. It is the sad story of a lesbian love that finally jolts some courage into Evey. There is also an eclectic gay TV producer, Dietrich, who comes to a bad end partly because he is gay and partly because he owns a copy of the Koran. To an American Muslim, this brief extension of an olive branch from a gay direction is pleasantly puzzling.

To me, Dietrich’s story is the most politically relevant part of this comic book plot. Dietrich is carried off to be tortured after he lampoons the junta’s leader in one of his TV shows. The Wachowski brothers, who wrote and produced V for Vendetta, have not been arrested for making their movie. This reminds us that thankfully we are not living in V’s universe. Stepping out of Dietrich’s story for a while, we see the good news and the bad news. The bad news is that V is a fictitious character. There never was and never will be a liberator. The good news is, there is still time for democratic action so that we won’t need to make heroes out of terrorists like V.

The Incredibles

Ari Siletz — Wed, 05 Apr 2006 19:12:00 +0000

Directed by Brad Bird

Many chuckles into Disney’s amusing assault on political correctness, a line in this superhero cartoon yanks the viewer out of his suspension of disbelief. In the heat of battle with the forces of evil, the flexible Elastigirl scares her already frightened children by telling them, “Remember the bad guys on those shows you used to watch Saturday mornings? Well, these guys are not like those guys. They won’t exercise restraint because you are children. They will kill you if they get a chance.” Since this is a cartoon show, Elastimom’s sobering out-of-bounds statement spoils the sense of immersion in this otherwise totally Disney plot. How did this blooper get past the director? In the light of the post 9-11 effort to align public opinion with the Bush administration policy, and the morally dubious invasion of Iraq, this intrusion into the viewer’s reality no longer looks like a slip. It is an artistic sacrifice in order to hit the viewer on the head with the movie’s message: As a superpower America has a moral obligation to destroy evil in the world.

After this revelation, the movie’s lampooning of political correctness seems like a cover for its war rallying. But it is a humorous and witty camouflage with strong metaphorical connections with the movie’s deeper anger-rousing purpose. The super tough Mr. Incredible, his wife Elastigirl and other super heroes fighting for justice have been forced into retirement by a litigious public. The very people whose lives were saved by Mr. Incredible file suit against him for the minor injuries they suffered during their rescue. Despite hurt feelings, the gentle giant still has room in his heart for patience and forgiveness. But to the viewer there is frustration in seeing someone as powerful as Mr. Incredible subjecting himself to the laws of ungrateful mortals. He must find a way to break loose.

To our delight the world hasn't quite succeeded in shackling Mr. Incredible. On “bowling nights” he and a friend from the superhero days sneak away on incognito rescue missions. The CIA’s overthrow of Iran’s democracy, the agency’s actions in Chile, Southeast Asia and Afghanistan are real-life examples of covert actions reflecting America’s desire to flex its underutilized muscle. Unfortunately, sneak rescues don’t quite satisfy. Heroes must fight evil in the open

Mr. Incredible’s moral destiny is fulfilled by his defeat of the villain, Syndrome. This annoying and immature character is merely a superhero wannabe. Unlike Mr. Incredible and family, the evil Syndrome was not born with superpowers. He is a threat by virtue of his obsession with gadgets, not because Fate has privileged him with any special capacities. Destiny has made him a loser. In contrast, our hero’s God given powers, his moral rectitude and emotional maturity, symbolically assert the American Empire's divine right to supremacy. The understated humility of this astonishing claim delivered through the gentle Mr. Incredible is far more effective than any grandstanding proclamations. Projecting power through humility is a uniquely American contribution to political craftsmanship. Nations that boast openly against America are made to look like fools in comparison.

Encouraging America's return to action on a World War II scale, The Incredibles enumerates the rewards: youth, beauty, wealth, and a sense of being special, the core incentives of any advertising campaign. Before he got sued out of his superhero career, Mr. Incredible was a dapper youth who drove a stylish James Bond quality car. After his fall, he grew a beer belly and drove an economy car he couldn’t fit in. Once he resolved that his talents were too valuable to waste, he pumped iron and reclaimed his handsome and youthful figure. The scenes with the pathetic car are replaced with action scenes where the hero's wife and kids fly to his rescue in a private jet. To the viewer who is slowly losing the advantages of his American Dollar, the Incredibles promises a better life in the New Empire.

And for those of us who still shrink from our manifest destiny there is Violet Incredible’s testimonial. She is the shy, shrinking super-daughter with confidence issues that keep her from flowering. Violet’s journey of self discovery opens to a new vista when during a crucial battle she unwittingly activates her amazing force field, protecting her family. If there are still Violets in the audience who don’t like war, director Brad Bird lets them know that the least they can do is support and protect those who do.

The Deserted Station

Ari Siletz — Thu, 30 Mar 2006 19:55:00 +0000

Directed by Alireza Raisian
from a story by Abbas Kiarostami

Like many Iranian films, The Deserted Station is vulnerable to absurd interpretations by Western reviewers because of its metaphoric nature. Writing for the BBC, Jamie Russell begins his analysis of this spiritually transcendent film with, “The sexual politics of the veil make for haunting viewing in Deserted Station.” This film, signposted with clear religious references for the Iranian viewer, is no more about sexual politics than Casablanca is about nightclub ownership. The film is actually a statement about the connection between social consciousness and worship.

The film begins with a well-to-do couple driving to the famous shrine city of Mashhad to supplicate for a child. The husband is a nonbeliever in such superstitions. He has agreed to the journey because he loves his beautiful wife and wishes to make her happy. As they debate the reality of miracles, suddenly the wife sees a deer jump across the road. She screams and the startled husband swerves the car into a ditch. As Iranians know, the deer is the symbol of Imam Reza, the saint that is buried at Mashhad, the couple’s destination. On seeing the deer the Iranian viewer is reminded of the following story:

A hunter has trapped a deer and is about to slay it when Imam Reza shows up to intercede. The deer whispers something in Imam Reza’s ear and he interprets for the hunter. “This deer is a mother,” says Imam Reza to the skeptical hunter. “Its fawns will starve if you kill her. She promises that if you release her she will return after she feeds her young and submit to be slaughtered.” The hunter is hesitant, but Imam Reza vouches for the deer and the hunter dubiously lets her go. But when the deer returns with fawns in tow, the hunter is so amazed that he forfeits his claim to her life. This is why Imam Reza is known as Imam-e-Zamen—the saint who vouches for the weak.

The viewer has been previously prepared for this pivotal metaphor with a humorous man-and-wife argument over how dense men can be when it comes to subtlety, or seen from his point of view, how paranoid women appear when they see hidden meaning in everything. Again, this is interpreted by Western reviewers as sexual politics because they are unaware of the context. Similarly these reviewers misinterpret the opening scene of the movie where it does not become apparent until later that the wife is also in the car. They see this invisibility as an allegory for a woman’s lack of importance in Iranian society. But to the Iranian viewer, the hidden presence and surprising appearance is a brilliant telegraphing of the miracle that is about to occur.

Having seen Imam Reza’s sign, we are now ready to meet him—or his avatar—in person. He comes to the rescue of the stranded couple in the form of a jack-of-all-trades mobile mechanic. His name is Faizollah (God’s generosity) and he is also the only barber, farmer, politician, vet, and school teacher in this patch of desert land. Seeing that the damaged car part needs to be taken to a town for straightening, Faizollah asks the wife to substitute at his makeshift village school.

While the men are away, the wife becomes acquainted with the inhabitants of this strange village, located in an abandoned rock-and-mud fortress built eons ago. The only connection with the outside world is the train that passes on its way to the shrine city. With one or two exceptions, the denizens are old women and children. The men go away for long periods to work, and the young women move away as soon as they are married. The children are effectively orphans. Here we encounter every form of human suffering—poverty, abandonment, illiteracy, sickness--all the ills against which an Imam is supplicated. We learn that Faizollah comes every day to teach school, farm the land, attend to the kids’ sanitation, keep the itinerant vendors from taking advantage of them, whatever he can.

Soon the wife and the children become emotionally entangled. As she and the viewer feel the depth of their sorrow, we begin to dread the inevitable disappointment when it comes time for her to leave.

The more we learn about each child, the more exhausting the tension becomes. This is not plot tension, but the much more difficult to achieve character tension. For example, among the children there’s one who has unsuccessfully tried to hop the train to see where the end of the line is. Once her car is fixed, the heroine can easily take him to the shrine city and show him, but the enormous burden of the child’s needs works against such happy resolutions. On a metaphorical level we identify with this child because we too want to know where the train goes. A nightmarish sequence in the film shows us a deserted boneyard of trains that no longer go to the shrine city. Time is a one way trip to death and dust for those of us who no longer strive for spiritual attainment.

Here, sitting in a dead train watching a live one whiz towards its destination, the heroine experiences a moment of revelation. The revelation is not played out until it is time for her and her husband to drive away. The children want her to stay, so she makes a food offering to appease them. When that doesn’t work, she offers gifts. When that also fails, she is confronted with the task of accepting her revelation or abandoning it. As a child puts his hands on her car the way a supplicant puts his hands on the shrine of Imam Reza, the message of the movie comes rushing through this single still image. Nearly 90 minutes of film have prepared us for its impact.

To be sure, among the many injustices this film supplicates the Iranian viewer to remedy, the treatment of women is not forgotten. For instance, in one scene Imam Reza’s avatar, Faizollah, cannot see a truckload of women being transported by insidious looking men. It is as though this benefactor of humanity has a blind spot. But this criticism of the Islamic regime, reproaching it in its own language of piety, is a far more relevant rebuke than the obligatory Western censure of solemn Islamic clothing. The heroine, played by the beautiful Leila Hatami, wears her outfit with all the dignity of a Supreme Court justice. Her poise and beauty absolutely stun, even though we see only her face.

Writer Abbas Kiarostami and director Alireza Raisian are not renegade artists as Western movie reviewers like to tell us. In a world that is being flattened by uniformity, they are geniuses with the imagination to create masterpieces within the framework of their own unique culture and religion.

Shirin and Salt Man.

Ari Siletz — Mon, 07 Apr 2008 00:41:00 +0000

By Nilofar Shidmehr.
Oolichan books 2008

No man has died more nobly for love than Farhad the stonecutter. And no man should be loathed more than the heartless news bearer who told him the lie that his Shirin had died.

The poet Nezami tells us that Princess Shirin of fable built a mausoleum for Farhad who shredded mountains to deserve her. 1700 years later, author Nilofar Shidmehr found out that mummified remains of a man were discovered near the mountains where Farhad had thrown himself to his death. There was no mausoleum. Fickle Shirin, undreamable as the morning sun, if love cannot rage then what curse burdens your daughters today?

In Shidmehr’s vastly imaginative novella, Shirin and Salt Man, a modern day Iranian woman named Shirin plans to elope with the mummy of an ancient salt miner preserved in brine and discovered in 1993 in Iran. She is not as fortunate as Nezami’s Farhad. Her insanity is not from love, but from neglect. She married the abusive Khosro, and now remorse has driven her to adultery with the pile of salted bones she imagines to be Farhad.

Shidmehr’s Khosro is not a king like Nezami’s Khosro. Though the romantically obsessed heroine married him for his kingly name, he really just works at the ministry of Islamic Guidance. As Shirin says,

“His job was to censor foreign actresses
who spoke their love out loud.
He was good at chopping images
and changing story lines.
My husband turned prostitutes into virgins
all the time”

The modern Khosro would likely censor Shidmehr. Her imagery mixes anger and sex like mud and blood. Here’s how the author describes the virgin Shirin being raped:

“There was Shapoor
shaking and gnashing his teeth
as though my shame were his.
You showed me your legs.
You stole away my virtue;
cover your body, woman.
Pebbles jabbed into my back,
like a mess of my own dislocated vertebrae.
and when he got up my voice ran silent
as the river through me. Darkness covered
my body, the mud was mixed with blood.”

Shirin had tried to get a ride with the man, who accidentally glimpsed her legs through a split chador. Shidmehr perhaps knows that the Nezami fan would compare this to Farhad’s equally pathological but harmless behavior at his first glimpse of Shirin. He faints!

Even in her humorous moments Shidmeh’s imagery is wet. She says,

“Shir has three meanings, as you know: milk, or the animal,
the lion. Never mind the third meaning.”

It was the meaning between the first and the second that got Abbas Kiarostami’s “The Wind Will Carry Us” in trouble with Iranian Khosros. You see, the director had “no idea” women aren’t supposed to milk cows while men read love poems to them.

Yet Nezami has ducked Islamic censors for centuries. Shidmehr constantly borrows from his sensuality in her free translations of him:

“Call me whenever you drink
from that milky brook
I brought you. Every day
when you sweeten your mouth
please say my name aloud,
for I am bitter here without you”

At one point in the novella the repeated milk imagery suggests an odd possibility to the reader.
“As a newborn
to a mother’s breast,
Farhad spoke to Shirin,
I am drawn to you.”
Does Shirin intend to put the stolen mummy to her breast and nurse him back to flesh? Is the second meaning of shir not lion but lioness taking responsibility for suckling a new pride?

Struck by Shidmehr’s display of literary brilliance, I kept wondering why Shirin and Salt Man is a novella and not a full-length novel. A more culturally aware publisher would not have let her stop at women vs. Islam. Like a lover who can’t get enough, the editor would have begged the author to go places where Nezami’s imagination could only point the way.

For example, she could tell us why Farhad had to die. In Nezami’s time, and doubly so in the Sassanian period when Khosro va Shirin takes place, a princess could never marry a stone cutter, regardless of his merits. Nezami is coerced into feeding Farhad and his pure love to the maws of his social order. The hero was condemned to execution by the tragedy of rigid hierarchical societies.

But modernity changes class paradigms in upheavals that dwarf the political revolutions it inspires. The new consciousness of female oppression rides the seismic waves of a historyquake where dynamic landmasses of meritocracy rub against the stolid ways of autocracy. This is how a modern novel about Shirin and Farhad story can have a happy ending.

Sadly, the Western publishing industry (includes distribution, reviews and other publicity) takes only what it is conditioned to want from Iranian women writers, allowing the rest of their talent to lie dormant. It has frustrated the desirous volcano inside Shidmehr to groan threateningly but not erupt.

Yet love compensates for small dissatisfactions. Shidmeh’r mature romance with our own literature cleans up after many of the carefree Lolitas seduced by the lustful Humberts of Western autocracy. While these writers’ crush on the splendid American Khosro makes them oblivious to our culture’s humble handsomeness, Shidmehr’s devotion to our legacy showcases just what treasures there are to lose if we neglect our heritage. Despite the taste of salt in her lament, Shidmehr’s protectiveness of Nezami forbids the foreigner Alexander to think his sword could defeat a Gordian knot as skillfully tied as Persian culture.

It is fair to acknowledge the complaint of star struck Lolitas, but we need no urging to suffer Shidmehr’s anguish because this writer has made it clear she is of the same body as the rest of us. Or as Farhad said of Shirin, “I cannot say we are of one body because self-worship is idolatry.”

Reading Shidmehr’s resurrection of Nezami in English, I wondered if it is it even possible for the thirty-year-old IRI weed to choke a three thousand years old tree? Shidmehr’s prognosis is not the hope of a mad lover when she says,

“No story is written unchangeably
in stone—not mine
nor Nezami’s Shirin’s,
Shah Khosro’s or Farhad’s:
“Reconfiguring Mount Bisotun.”
I could call Farhad back
to life, be a Jesus
and make Farhad rise
from the dead. He will lift
his head off the stones,
his breath lend its color
to the world I create
around him. He will intuit
that Shirin lives, that the news-bearer
was deadly and dead
wrong. He will raise”

When I see an Iranian writer unraveling our old myths to weave new meaning into familiar smelling wool, I am inspired to wish that for every copy of Reading Lolita In Tehran there would be two copies of Shirin and Saltman, Because inside the pages there
is nourishment , there is power, there is hope.

There is love.

Notes:
1. See Nazy Kaviani’s prose telling of the Shirin and Farhad story, here.
2. See Nezami in the original, here.

The Real Story

Ari Siletz — Fri, 05 Oct 2007 18:37:00 +0000

The Iran Agenda The real story of U.S. Policy and the Middle East Crisis.
By Reese Erlich
2007 PoliPointPress

Journalist Reese Erlich grew up in Los Angeles just south of UCLA. As a child he used to walk up Westwood Boulevard toward Westwood village, past a stockbroker’s office and the Crest movie theater. At the time there was no Tehrangeles. The Westwood legal offices I visited last year to fix my Iranian passport mess used to house the ultra-right-wing John Birch Society. As an aborigine of sorts, Erlich has no grievances against the Iranians who have colonized the Westwood of his childhood. On the contrary, he seems to delight in the cultural upgrade. His latest book, The Iran Agenda: the real story of U.S. policy and the Middle East crisis, should however give the American reader a nostalgic lump in the throat. Not because of old memories of a neighborhood now transformed; but because this seasoned journalist writes in a tradition now mostly abandoned by the US media. Trustworthiness.

Erlich identifies his sources by name, and gives references which independently corroborate his statements. By contrast the average American’s perception of Iran has been largely defined by “unidentified sources.” The Iran Agenda begins in the real Tehran bazaar where Erlich--along with actor Sean Penn and columnist Norman Solomon--had put their journalistic “boots on the ground” to report on the Iran situation. Erlich mentions other American reporters in Iran, but he observes, “Most American reporters I met saw Iran as an evil society and a danger to the United States. While many expressed disagreement with President Bush’s policies, they believed Iran was developing nuclear weapons that threatened America. In short, their views tracked the political consensus emanating from Washington. Rather than proceeding from reality, they filtered their reporting through a Washington lens. When a Washington official makes a statement, even a false one, the major media dutifully report it with few opposing sources.”

Of course this is not news to we Iranians. The value of The Iran Agenda is its usefulness as a tool of argument in discussions with curious Americans who ask us to be their tour guides on the Iran subject. Most educated Iranians carry an overall knowledge of the Iran-US quarrel, from Mossadegh’s overthow, to the hostage crisis, to the US Navy’s shooting down an Iran Air passenger jet. The Iran-Iraq war, NPT, human rights violations, student protests, worker’s union discontent, Ganji, Ebadi, Ossanlou, are all swimming somewhere in our data base. But it takes a professional like Erlich to organize these floating facts into an engaging story with a strong moral. To undo years of skilful propaganda, equal skill is needed. And Erlich is certainly a talented story teller.

While he informs us that the Kurdish PJAK guerrillas are supplied by the US and Israel, Erlich simultaneously evokes a feeling of action and travel reminiscent of the colorful adventures of Tintin:

“The PJAK camps are located in inhospitable terrain. During winter months, the snowy roads are accessible only on foot or by tractor. Luckily the snow hadn’t yet blanketed the area, and we drove up easily—if slowly—over winding dirt roads. Suddenly, young women in green pants in the distinctive Kurdish head scarf were walking along the road. They were female guerrillas. PJAK claims its troops are almost 50 percent women.”

Erlich’s very brief history of the Kurds updated me on some interesting statistics. For example, I was under the impression that Kurds were mostly Sunnis. This is true in general, but in Iran 50% of this minority is Shiite. This figure makes a difference in my thinking on the Kurdish issue.

Erlich goes on to remind his readers of other ethnic minorities, the Azeri, Baluchi and Arab Iranians, who could destabilize the Iranian regime. Little of this is intelligently discussed in the US media. For obvious reasons even the Iranian media tend to keep the lid on news of ethnic unrest.

Not all of Erlich’s criticism targets mainstream media. He has harsh words of advice for Iran’s exile media in his native Westwood backyard. He mentions Amir Taheri’s infamous false report about a Majils law requiring Iranian Jews to wear a yellow stripe on their clothing. “With each phony or exaggerated story,” Erlich warns, “the LA newscasters and commentators [who continued to play the story long after it was falsified] think they are helping the popular struggle against the Iranian government. But repeated over time, the distortions discredit the exile media and, by extension, all exile opposition.” Erlich describes another, bitterly funny incident--the Hakha affair-- as being “something right out of the Keystone Kops.” I can't find a web link that explains this fiasco nearly as well as Erlich's narrative.

Clarifying his own agenda in writing The Iran Agenda, Erlich says, “…I personally don’t trust mainstream politicians, lobbyists, and think tank gurus to resolve anything soon. Nor do I trust the clerics in Tehran to stop their belligerence. A pro-peace, pro-democracy movement exists within Iran. I think people in the United States need to build one as well.” It seems Westwood had earthy, smart people long before Iranians arrived.

Going to Bat for Mossadegh, a books review.

Ari Siletz — Fri, 24 Aug 2007 18:33:00 +0000

Iranian History and Politics: The dialectics of state and society.
RoutledgeCurzon 2003.

Mussadiq and the Struggle for Power in Iran.
I.B. Tauris 1990.

In moments of statistical introspection, I wonder if LA Dodgers fans are generally Pahlavi supporters. The occasional Shah picture posted on huge Westwood billboards, and the handful of TV stations time capsuling pre-revolution Tehran are tempting bits of data. San Francisco Giants fans, on the other hand, are generally pro-Mossadegh, though I lack the evidence of billboards. Needless to say, Giants rule and Dodgers suck, but it is nice occasionally to debate with facts and reason. Two meticulously researched books by Oxford scholar Homa Katouzian hit the ball right out of the ballpark for the Giants.

The first book, Iranian History and Politics: The Dialectics of State and Society, develops the author’s theory of “arbitrary rule,” and establishes a foundation for understanding Mossadegh’s uniqueness in Iranian history. The second book, Mussadiq and the Struggle for Power in Iran, specifically analyzes the events of the Mossadegh period, demonstrating how he personified a new paradigm in Iran’s civilization.

Arbitrary rule should not be confused with dictatorship, Katouzian says. “The distinctive characteristic of the Iranian state [has been] that it monopolized not just power, but arbitrary power--not the absolute power in laying down the law, but the absolute power of exercising lawlessness.” I believe the umpire is a good example of a dictator. You can’t argue with his decision, but neither can he change the rules of baseball. Katouzian cites the example, Henry VIII of England as a dictator who was not an arbitrary ruler. This dictator had the most unfettered power of any English king, yet he had to use threats, coercion, bribery, and at least one execution to become head of the Church of England, so that he could lawfully divorce his wife (Katouzian does not discuss motivation or methods, just that Henry VIII got the approval of Parliament).

Looking for examples of arbitrary lawlessness, on the other hand, I found this recollection by Farhad Diba of an encounter with Mohammad Reza Pahlavi:

“The Shah asked me what I was doing and I, very proudly, told him about how well NCR [National Cash Register Company] was progressing in Iran. When I reported that to my father the next day, he said "You are a fool. Sure enough, within the year, NCR (which my father had introduced into Iran and, over 25 years, it had grown into a large business) was taken from us and given over to the Pahlavi Foundation.”

In Iranian History and Politics..Katouzian mentions a few of the countless examples of arbitrary usurpation of property by various Shahs. The suspicion that the wealth may have been acquired by unjust means in the first place gives Shahs a certain Robin Hood appeal. But Katouzian’s scholarship exposes the practice as a tragic reason for Iran’s economic backwardness: capital does not accumulate over the generations, making it impossible for any large industrial or financial enterprise to take root.

Under the arbitrary rule of its monarchs, Iran was a “short term society,” as Katouzian terms it, where few social structures were allowed to stand long enough to evolve the sophisticated architecture of modern institutions. In Europe, lords, barons, counts and dukes had the brutal right of ownership to their land, making a feudal system possible. Iran’s khans had no ownership rights, only privileges that could be taken away at the whim of the arbitrary ruler. In such a system even feudalism has no incentive to grow, much less its Western progressions: a powerful merchant class, large scale capitalism, and socialism.

Applying Katouzian’s arbitrary rule theory, I figured out that the spike in the price of oil in the seventies only created the illusion of a modern economy in Iran. This period was in reality little more than a shopping spree by the country’s sole owner, the Shah. In the historic pattern of economic insecurity of the wealthy, nothing had changed.

Applying the simple yet powerful theory again, I realized that freedoms enjoyed by Iranian women and religious minorities during the Shah should not be misunderstood as a modern appreciation of human rights and dignity. True to Iran’s historic pattern, all such freedoms were privileges granted by the monarch, to be taken away at his convenience. The Shah may have been a benevolent soul, but benevolence is no substitute for guaranteed rights under a long term tradition of law. Niceness is a character trait, not a social institution.

The arbitrary rule concept is developed into a solid theory in the book Iranian History and Politics the Dialectic of State and Society. Now the reader is ready for Mussadiq and the struggle for Power in Iran, fully prepared to appreciate this leader’s uniqueness in Iranian history.

The 1906 constitutional revolution was an attempt to put an end to arbitrary rule. At the time Mossadegh was in his early twenties, and for forty-five years he watched as the revolution was torn apart by foreign interference in domestic politics. By the time he became prime minister, Mossadegh knew what to do to piece Iran’s constitution back together. His nationalization of Iranian oil had far less to do with revenue than with eliminating foreign intrusion into Iranian affairs. His recalcitrance in coming to terms with the British should be assessed as serving his grand project—protecting Iran’s newly discovered paradigm of lawful leadership.

Mossadegh himself has been criticized for breaking the law when he temporarily dissolved the majles. “How is that different from the dictatorship of the Shah?” his detractors ask. Katouzian admits the mistake, while explaining the complex mitigating circumstances. Yet his arbitrary rule theory makes it unnecessary to decide whether Mossadegh was a dictator. The reader has already learned that the term “dictator” in the Western sense does not describe our Shahs at all. The Pahlavis were not dictators, but arbitrary rulers. Mossadegh, dictator or not, acted in the modern paradigm of the struggle between various interests of society. For him, the primitive mellat [society]vs. dowlat [state] dialectic was an extinct theme.

As Katouzian explains in Iranian History and Politics..., our numerous rebellions had always been about the mellat overthrowing the dowlat. Everybody vs. the “institution” of the arbitrary ruler. The upheavals led to a period of chaos [fetneh/ahsoub] until a new arbitrary ruler enforced order and began the cycle all over again. In Mussadiq and the Struggle for Power in Iran it can be seen that the battles of the Mossdegh era were of a fresh variety. We were fighting over which interests in our society were going to dictate the rules. This gave a totally new texture to the power game, which for the first time could be termed “politics.” Katouzian emphasizes that there was no Persian word for “politics”; the modern connotation of “siaasat” was first adopted during the constitutional revolution.

Though the Shah appeared to win the day after the 1953 coup, he could not hold back Iran’s new paradigm, best archetyped in the Mossadegh drama. In an unmistakable occurrence of Katouzian’s mellat vs. dowlat phenomenon, everyone rose against the Shah in 1979. Not a single major element of Iran’s society defended him. Not the merchants he had made wealthy, not the workers he had created jobs for, not even the women and the minorities he had treated so kindly. This puzzling ingratitude is completely explained by Iranian society’s resolve to put an end to arbitrary rule. An evolutionary force overwhelmed sectarian interests.

Some argue that we should stop dwelling on Shah and Mossadegh. After reading Katouzian, I believe we can safely drop the Shah from conversations, as his species is unlikely to be part of Iran’s political ecology again. The Pahlavis were the last dinosaurs. But Mossadegh was the first mammal. His political genes are alive, evolving and relevant. Iran’s stubborn struggle against foreign dependence, even in the face of sanctions, is straight out of Mossadegh’s book. Western analysts flummoxed by The Islamic Republic’s resilience to regime change should acknowledge the unprecedented symbiosis that now exists between the dowlat and parts of the mellat. The Islamic establishment in turn should consider to what extent the concept of a Supreme Leader contradicts the program that the Iranian nation has set for its long term development. The regime’s leaders should also beware: their power is imperiled whenever they arbitrarily suspend constitutional rights.

The Shahs are dead, but Mossadegh’s legacy remains a colossal factor in Iran’s future. This is why Giants still rule. And the Dodgers? Well, who cares anymore?

Not Quite a Memoir

Ari Siletz — Wed, 26 Jul 2006 15:01:00 +0000

By Judy Stone
Silman-James Press

In the year 2000 I went to see Abbas Kiarostami receive the Akira Kurosawa award at the San Francisco International Film Festival. The famed director thanked the organizers, then surprised everyone by giving away his prize to veteran Iranian actor Behrooz vossoghi. Six years later while reading Judy Stones new book Not Quite a Memoir I was thrilled to see this small yet extraordinary event preserved in writing. For over four decades it seems whenever there has been a quality International film, Judy Stone has been there to create portraits of the artists that created those works of art.

In her treasury of interviews with the world’s leading writers and filmmakers, Stone devotes a dozen or so chapters to Iranian artists. Though the pieces are independent and have been written at different times, the chapters read like the different scenes in a single movie, each contributing to an overall picture of the state of the arts in Iran. One theme in this “movie” dominates all others: censorship.

For instance, among Stone’s stories we find that Bahman Farmanara, director of Smell of Camphor, Fragrance of Jasmine suffered a massive depression after censors turned down his tenth script.

Director Tahmineh Milani was thrown in prison after her political drama, Hidden Half, offended some fundamentalists. Her case as described in Stone’s exclusive interview with the director and her husband, sheds light on the odd complexities of Iranian factional politics. For instance, Hidden Half continued to be screened even after Milani was jailed. President Khatami expressed surprise at the arrest, and when a judge realized Milani had not broken any laws she was released immediately. So who ordered her arrest? And if Milani was cleared of charges, why was her home invaded and her property confiscated after her release?

Dariush Mehrjui, director of Cow, has his own tragicomic experience with censorship . In his interview with the author he mentions that the only movie of his that Khomeini ever saw was Cow, and the late Ayatollah liked it very much. So despite the fact that Mehrjui is a strong critic of the condition of women in Iran, the censors have called him in only once or twice, treating him politely.

Abbas Kiarostami on the other hand has developed a more subtle relationship with the Islamic regime’s censorship. He incorporates the reality of censorship right into his art. Stone quotes him, “We can’t hide ourselves and say, ‘I would have made a fabulous masterpiece if I didn’t have all the limitations.’ We have to accept responsibility for what we create and not make it sound as if it would have been very different had it not been for outside elements such as censorship. I strongly believe that choice is what we have.”

In the chapter on Kiarostami we learn that a cow-milking scene has kept the artist’s The Wind Will Carry Us from receiving theatrical distribution in Iran. This scene is perhaps Kiarostami’s brilliant joke on the clerical regime. By goading the authorities into making an erotic connection between milking a cow and ejaculation, these guardians of public morality have effectively admitted to having dirty minds. Thus the director makes a harsh artistic statement through the very process of banishment.

Besides censorship there are also many intriguing sub-themes in Not Quite a Memoir . There is passion, perseverance and humor. Majid Majidi, director of Children of Heaven and The Color of Paradise told his father he was going to engineering school when in fact he was studying drama. Rakhshan Bani-Etemad, director of The May Lady experienced the death of her father when she was only nine years old. Bahman Ghobadi director of A Time for Drunken Horses attributes his love for movies to the sandwich and a Coca-Cola shack that sat next to the ramshackle theater in his hometown.

And there is heartbreak . Kiarostamis’ wife left him for another man. “I’m not sure if a good marriage is when you break it and let the other person have freedom or if it’s when you try to stay together,” the genius wonders from behind his ever-present dark glasses.

Not Quite a Memoir flies around the world to Spain’s Carlos Saura, Chile’s Isabel Allende, India’s Satyajit Ray. At every landing Stone creates a portrait of the artist as a force for social change. Intriguingly, the author backs up her portrait in words by capturing--with unassuming genius—astonishingly insightful photographs of her interview subjects.

No one at the San Francisco International Film Festival in the year 2000 saw Abbas Kiarostami’s eyes when he gave away his Akira Kurosawa award to Behrooz Vosooghi. For medical reasons Kiarostami never takes off those enigmatic sunglasses. Yet in Not Quite a Memoir Judy Stone’s camera flash cleverly shines right through the artist’s dark glasses to give us the first glimpse of eyes that revolutionized filmmaking with how they saw the world. Her short interviews, like that brief camera flash, are just as clever and penetrating.

Let Me Tell You Where I Have Been

Ari Siletz — Mon, 03 Jul 2006 13:07:00 +0000

Let Me Tell You Where I Have Been:
New Writing by Women of the Iranian Diaspora
Edited by Persis Karim

“Ey khoda een vasl raa hejraan makon,“ says Rumi. God, do not let this union become a hejraan. The Persian word hejraan begins with a sigh and breaks like a sob. It cannot be translated into English. Yet in her poem “Separation,” Iranian-American poet Farnaz Fatemi hints at the meaning:

“…I have learned too much
about movement, not enough about
how the heart can translate
the language of separation into words.”

Let Me Tell You Where I Have Been translates the language of hejraan into English. The result is deep literature sometimes surpassing what could have been said in Persian. Perhaps circumstance has led the writers in this collection to appreciate an extra dimension in the opening verses of Rumi’s Mathnavi:

"Listen to the reed for it tells a story,
complaining of separations"

Rumi too was writing in a land far from his ancestral home. His mystical desire to return to the Beloved is rooted in the earth of his birthplace. Like some of the contributors in Let Me Tell You, Rumi’s exile began when he was just a child. His family was driven away by the Mongol invasion. This thirteenth century social upheaval decimated Iran’s population and gouged deep wounds in the Iranian psyche.

The trauma of Iran’s 1979 revolution has now added another scar. Many of the modern day Rumis in Let Me Tell You have been driven away by the revolution and Iran’s subsequent war with Iraq. How the pain is expressed in writing reflects individual personalities. Gelareh Asayesh is mystical. She says, “With that first trip back [to Iran], I began the long, slow road toward resurrecting a buried self. And vowed I would never suffer that inner shriveling of an isolated core, the immigrant’s small death, again.”

Niloofar Kalaam’s “The Sun Is a Dying Star” seems a rambling Jane Austen dilemma of love and money in marriage, but suddenly snaps into harsh focus as a powerful tale of imprisonment and rape.

Parinaz Eleish makes her lament this way:

"And my brother’s off to war.
How thoughtlessly beautiful the persimmons
Feel in the bloody dusk.
I long to hang from a tree
Watch my grandmother pray in the shade.
For even one more day."

Refusing to board the back of a bus in Tehran, Mitra Parineh’s American-born female character explains to her aunt, “We did this with black people in our country, a long time ago. How can you be serious? I will not ride that fucking bus.”

To which the aunt replies, “Stop it. This is not your country. This is not your people.”

Yet a few pages into the story the ache of hejran begs for reunion:

"Ay Khaleh, she says to me and sighs big. I am listening carefully, hoping she'll say something
and it occurs to me for the first time: why do we do this in Farsi? I call her Khaleh, Auntie, and
she calls me Khaleh back. I think of my father. Baba, Daddy. Baba Joon, he calls me, Daddy
Dear. They reverse the casual term of endearment and it becomes that-- endearing,
affectionate."

Yes “they” do speak with the voice of their beloved, and the effect is more than endearment, it is oneness. It is “they” being “us.”

Michelle Koukhab’s hejraan manifests in her yearning for the tender touch of tradition in the postpartum ritual of the public bath, where

"Sisters wrap my mother’s waist with egg yolk
and chick-peas paste…

[In America] I can have children, but no healing ceremony.
In my healing of parts below the navel, I can only spread

Glue with tongue depressors. This gap opens sometimes
Between the places we are born and the places that we live."

Hejraan in English.

Yet with poetic irony some of the writers protest that their Western refuge is not far enough from tradition. Sheila Shirazi, perhaps after a bitter breakup:

"…The hands of the cultural clock
are closed ‘round my throat…
Are you happy now, Maman, Baba?
No more fucking."

Some have concluded that their Western refuge is no refuge at all. In an excerpt from Funny in Farsi, her best selling panegyric on America, even Firoozeh Dumas manages a suppressed ouch. “My relatives did not think Americans were very kind,” she complains timidly. But the Iranian American writer PAZ is more colorfully outspoken:

"[Before the 1979 revolution] one of my favorite memories is of the time when Becky
showed me how to use a red plastic Barbie golf club to get myself off, and then subsequently
to get her off as well. After we were done playing in the lazy, sun-strewn desert
afternoons we would slip away to Becky’s apartment to eat an early American supper....

[After the 1979 revolution] Becky’s family stopped inviting me over for pork
dinners.TheWright sisters, who were my favorite orange tree pals, were no longer allowed to
come over in the afternoons to play. Their father who was a minister at the Presbyterian
church around the corner, stopped dropping by to have enlightened religious conversations
with my father. And someone—to this day I don’t know who—blew the cover on my sexual
adventures....

It was 1979 and I realized that my whole world has shifted. I was going to have to reinvent
myself so I could belong in America, belong to my Muslim Iranian family, belong to a world
which didn’t like me as I was. I had a long, hard road ahead of me."

For PAZ politics was a slap in the face to wake up to the realities of tribalism, while for Poet Sanaz Banu Nikaein the awakening moment comes every time she looks in the social mirror, "I am an Iranian with terrorist tattooed on my forehead…."

The brilliant Azadeh Moaveni needs no awakening to politics. Her book Lipstick Jihad sometimes dazzles with insight. The excerpt in Let Me Tell You is one of her dimmer moments, but it does reveal an interesting phenomenon—how Iranian-Americans import Western values into Iran. When an Iranian girlfriend seeks advice about a romantic partner, Moaveni offers this bit of naïve American feminism:

"So I tried to explain that like many men, her boyfriend was intimidated by how much he
wanted sex and that it was easier for him to vulgarize intimacy than admit that she (a mere
girl/woman) controlled the supply of the most powerful physical experience of his existence.”

Supply?? Capitalist feminism at its most crass! The politically savvy Moaveni would agree that righting of Iran’s policy towards women is more urgent than any military preparations. Gaining the women’s support is not only a human rights issue, it’s a matter of national survival. Therefore, we look to thoughful people like Moaveni to think out-of-the-box, to discover new, workable solutions that do not trigger Iran's immune reaction to transplantation. Western feminist rancor has proven counter-productive even in the West.

And in return for such Western exports, what have these Iranian-American women writers imported from Iranian culture? Its most valuable treasure—Iran’s literary tradition. Mimi Khalvati’s poem in the ghazal style of Hafez is such an astonishingly beautiful love poem I am tempted to reproduce it here in its entirety. But it feels like sacrilege to put such gentleness through computer hardware. Read it in the book.

Some Muslim Iranian-Americans don’t place the Koran on their Haftsin table anymore. The excesses of the Islamic Republic have inclined them to decorate the traditional spread with a book of Hafez instead. Perhaps Diaspora Iranians should start a new custom. Each year place the new book that has most clearly expressed our hejraan. I nominate Let Me Tell You Where I Have Been as the Haftsin book of the year.

No god but God

Ari Siletz — Fri, 07 Apr 2006 17:37:00 +0000

By Reza Aslan, Random House

When I discuss Islam with American friends, they often say, “Someday when I have time, I’ll have to read the Koran.” I usually discourage them. It’s not because, as they like to joke, “it isn’t the kind of book a Muslim wants to find in a friend’s bathroom.” It’s because I don’t think it will help them understand Islam. Unlike the Bible, the Koran is not a self explanatory collection of stories in chronological order. The organizing principle of the Koran is not the order of revelation, but the length of the chapter, the shortest ones appearing at the end of the book. Even within one chapter the subject can skip from analysis of a battle to moral injunctions against usury. Without the context, the content is mostly opaque. For example, when the Koran says “When two parties from among you thought of showing cowardice, and Allah was the Guardian of them both,” It helps to know which battle and which two parties are being discussed. The Koran is a book that you learn, not a book you can just read. So to the Islam enthusiasts in the West, I recommend they save the Koran for later, and read instead Reza Aslan’s No god but God: The Origins, Evolution and Future of Islam.

This book has received enough praise from virtually all major reviews and all relevant academic institutions, so here I will just emphasize that its organizing principle is the antithesis of the Koran. It is highly linear and readily understandable to the Western mind. In keeping with its clarity I will list what you will learn by reading this book:

1. An overview of the politics, economy, and sociology of Arabia just before the appearance of Islam.

2. A functional but not excessively detailed biography of Mohammad.

3. A familiarity with the basic story of early Islam and its first battles under Mohammad’s leadership. You will know the major players, whether they were friend or foe, and how they were dealt with.

4. The early post-Mohammad era and the emerging politics, including how Shiites broke away from the Sunnis.

5. The story of the rise of Islamic civilization, including the origins and evolution of Islamic law. Here you will meet some major Islamic scholars and gain insight into Sufis like Rumi and Omar Khayyam.

6. A beginners skill in how to make sense of the attitudes and behavior of modern Islamic nations like Iran, Afghanistan, and Pakistan.

Reza Aslan is a not only a scholar, he is a writer who is easy to read. All his meticulously researched and documented statements are framed inside stories, anecdotes, and personal experiences. The pages of No God but God go by so quickly and painlessly you will wish your dentist was that good. There’s even a love story.

Funny in Farsi

Ari Siletz — Sun, 26 Mar 2006 15:53:00 +0000

Funny in Farsi:
By Firoozeh Dumas, Random House.

In this bright and humorous thank-you note to America, Iranian émigrée Firoozeh Dumas demonstrates mastery of a traditional Persian art form, flattery. Highly developed by Iranian court poets, this skillful expression of praise, humility and gratitude is known as madh. Loosely translated as ‘panegyric,’ these flowery words came in handy when an enraged and egomaniacal sultan was about to do something rash. Dumas renders her madh of America in memoir form instead of in verse, but her techniques of appeasement are akin to those used by court poets whose wit sometimes decided between prosperity or ruin for the nation.

To make the sultan America feel warm inside, Dumas begins her tale in the upscale town of Whittier, California, where her family settled in the seventies. Tension builds when soon after their arrival she and her mother get lost in this opulent suburban setting. The tension is relieved when a resident generously invites them in to use the telephone and later drives them home. Dumas tells us, “After spending an entire day in America, surrounded by Americans I realized….the people were very, very kind.” What follows are peanut butter cookies, summer camp, Thanksgiving, Bob Hope, Disneyland, Halloween, and The Brady Bunch.

In her carefully crafted effort not to offend, Dumas recreates the cotton candy America that existed only in Hollywood in the fifties. She resurrects the uncomplicated America of The Andy Griffith Show and Father Knows Best. One can almost hear the knowing laugh track when Dumas replaces the word “hell” with the euphemism “a very bad place.” Eyeballs would roll if such material came from a contemporary American writer, but Dumas insightfully recognizes that, channeled through fresh immigrant eyes, this hackneyed treatment of America still has plenty of play.

Another technique of madh is paying homage to mundane attributes taken for granted by the sultan, revealing their deeper significance. Dumas reminds us of American affluence during a romp through Price Club. Her father and uncle ate enough free samples to feel like they had a full lunch. “In Iran people who taste something before they buy it are called shoplifters,” says Dumas. “Here a person can taste something, not buy it and still have the clerk wish him a nice day." In a wealthy consumer society where advertising budgets are huge, the giving away of food to un-needy strangers is indeed a remarkable consequence, something to boast about.

Pressing her ego boosting charm on the reader, Dumas stuffs America with opportunities. She mentions that her father was a Fulbright scholar. He even got to meet Albert Einstein and was consulted on the subject of Persian cats by the great genius. Her own education at UC Berkeley was financed through scholarships. In a very funny chapter, reminiscent of fifties era sitcoms, her father botches the opportunity to win a fortune in Bowling for Dollars. He comes home with only a pittance, the wiser for his ordeal.

Dumas is an Iranian-American Norman Rockwell. Death and tragedy are not on her palette. Everyone is wonderful--the exception being her intolerant French mother-in-law, which I assume was allowed in the book to please the freedom fries crowd.

Though politics is unwelcome in polite company, when it comes to Iran even Dumas can’t sidestep it. However, she keeps pouring on the syrup until the reader can’t tell a stack of pancakes from a cow pie. Here’s how she describes the abusive British oil policy towards Iran: “In a perfect world, the kindergarten teacher would have stood up before any documents were signed and said, ‘time out for Britain. We’ll renegotiate after a nap.’” When it comes time to confront the CIA engineered demolition of Iran’s home-made democracy, she is too genteel to use the word “America,” opting for “foreign powers” instead. The reader will have to guess for himself who this ‘foreign powers’ was that so bereaved Iranians that they are still shouting “Death to America” in the streets.

In return for her courteous flattery, Dumas invites America to see the positive side of Iranians. For instance, her memoir is soaked in paternal love, obliterating the notion that Iranian fathers do not value their daughters. As a moving example, her father’s inept swimming lessons are hilarious, particularly in the light of his irritation at the girl’s abysmal progress.

Funny in Farsi delivers exactly what the title promises, but there’s also an unfunny side to this memoir. The author’s eagerness to please and be accepted causes her to slip on a crucial point. Too often she takes the opportunity to distance herself from her ruder, more politically outspoken compatriots. This creates the impression that Iranians come in two varieties, gentle America lovers and violent America haters. Her partitioning strategy relieves the stigma on most Iranian-Americans--a great service to the community--but frankly they are not the ones who need her help. It is the other group--those living in Iran—who are threatened with a U.S. invasion. It is this other group whose essential infrastructure and national heritage are menaced by this enraged and egomaniacal sultan, America. Those Iranians are now perhaps in even greater danger because Funny in Farsi is telling Americans their country can do no wrong.

The Three Iranian Sopranos

Ari Siletz — Fri, 02 Oct 2009 09:44:00 +0000

In the movie Moonstruck Nicolas Cage tells Cher, “I love two things, I love you and I love the opera. If I can have the two things I love together for just one night I will be satisfied to give up, oh God, the rest of my life.” Iranians reach spiritual climax with poetry: Hafez, Khayyaam,Rumi; for Italians the national source of rapture is opera: Verdi, Puccini, Rossini. A few nights ago at the Iranian.com music festival I heard three Iranian opera singers, each lovelier than Cher, who left me… starstruck.

Since they were children in Iran, the sisters Shirin and Nasrin Asgari dreamt of becoming opera singers. They spent their playtime pretending be Julie Andrews in The Sound of Music. Later they made friends with Kamelia Dara, who had also been training to sing since early childhood. They practiced together. Yet hard work and ambition could only take the aspiring artists so far. They quickly realized they needed better training than they could find in Iran. Opera is rooted in Europe; you can’t perfect it in Tehran any more than you can perfect the Persian radif of music in Vienna. So the three came to Austria on tourist visas, hoping they could pass the auditions to be admitted as students. The judges were skeptical. Why put these young women through the punishment of opera training when their reward back home would be cultural disapproval? Could anyone love opera so much that she would stick it out through the torment of the discipline even if the outcome were shame and not fame? Being nice people, the judges gave the would-be students six months to find out for themselves that the pain isn’t worth the trouble.

An opera singer trains her voice so that it can hold its own, un-amplified, against a full orchestra. To find out how difficult this is, try screaming as loudly as you can--on a hilltop perhaps--and see if you can keep up the same volume while controlling your voice to the tune of “The hills are alive with the sound of music.” Likely, the wildlife will run away, leaving the trees wishing they could do the same. Yet a good opera singer can voice profound emotions in clear melodic phrases easily breaking beyond the last row in the opera house. You really have to hear it to believe it, so here is the Swedish soprano Nina Stemme in front of an 80+ piece orchestra. Start at the 4:20 mark where the orchestra begins a spectacular crescendo--drums and all—and hear Stemme’s voice absolutely dominate Wagner’s orchestral behemoth by the 4:40 mark.

I talked a little with Nasrin Asgari about technique. Her dramatic beauty and delicate features makes it easy to think of her as a fine musical instrument, which is what she is as an opera singer. Sometimes a good singer is said to have a “golden throat,” but in opera the throat must, as much as possible, stay out of the way of the flow of breath. The performer’s throat is almost in a yawning position. It was fascinating to watch Nasrin slide her hands down her ears across the jaw line towards her lips to show how different parts of the face participate in the shaping of the sound. This is why opera singers appear to be making faces. They are actually manipulating the sound texture, for example filtering the “breathiness” out of it to leave purer tones.

When we talked about breath control, Nasrin’s hands began their ascent just above the hipbones. To gather enough air for a long phrase, an opera singer does not blimp as though she’s about to dunk her head under water, rather she gathers a large volume of air calmly with a motion that originates in the diaphragm. Rationing the air outwards along the same path, she can create powerful vibrations throughout her entire torso that she can nuance according to the emotional content of the music. That’s how Snow White gets the creatures of the forest to flock to her rather than flee the kingdom in a zoological diaspora.

Nasrin’s sister, Shirin is a force of nature in herself. She is a rare coloratura soprano. If voices were animals, a coloratura’s voice would be the agile deer or the swift sparrow. Shirin is in high demand with opera productions partly because she can flawlessly nail the impossible F6 note in the midst of a famously rapid passage in Mozart’s Magic Flute. Her role as the wrathful Queen Of The Night in this opera is arguably the most difficult singing in the standard opera repertoire. In this video of Shirin performing part of the song it’s easy to hear why it’s not every soprano who can sing this aria (listen for the first F6 note around the 0:55 second mark).

While Shirin Asgari dazzles with her vocal agility, the third member of the Iranian soprano trio, Kamelia Dara, carries heavier emotional artillery. As with any other musical instrument, the timbre or texture of the voice matters. Some timbres are better suited for the more complex roles. These singers are traditionally called “dramatic sopranos.” Dara is a good example. As a dramatic soprano her voice is like expensive chocolate: there’s something bitter and dangerous beneath all the sweetness and perfume. Yet you can’t resist it.

Someday I hope to hear Dara wrap her voice and persona around a complicated character like Kundry in Wagner’s Parcifal. Cursed more than a thousand years ago, Kundry cannot help but stay beautiful to seduce brave men to their deaths. When she meets Parcifal, she turns into a frighteningly alluring Freud as she magically sings to arouse the hero to sex, all the time desperately hoping he will reject her so that she could finally die. Parcifal must have been tone-deaf! No other explanation for how he survived such beautiful singing.

The Italians Verdi, Puccini, Rossini, have less time for Wagner’s Germanic heavy-mindedness. The most popular Italian opera plots are contrived with unlikely coincidences, tragic errors, and mistaken identities. As we saw with Cher in Moonstruck, these operas shamelessly assault the defenseless tear duct. Silly misunderstandings, senseless suicides, and dumb sacrifices are thrown onto the dramatic pizza like anchovies upon pineapple chunks. This isn’t a matter of bad taste, however. Italian opera uses exaggerated plot as a ladder to emotional acrophobia, the same way our classical poets use hyperbole. The more recklessly the plot dares, the higher our view of the musical vistas laid out before us. This brings us to Iranian opera singers attempting Shekar e Ahoo or Gol e Gandom or whatnot. In the absence of any emotional context but nostalgia, the songs feel affected. Not grand as in good opera, just grandiose.

Often, my operatic sensibilities couldn’t care less if Leili joon ever finds that hunting rifle, or what dire fate awaits poor Bambi/aahoo. Or so I thought until I heard Hooman Khalatbari, the sopranos’ composer and musical director, accompanying the trio on the piano. For example, Khalatbari’s transcriptions of Dokhtar Shirazi and Rashid Khaan for piano and opera voices actually work. This may have to do with Khalatbari seeing himself as a conductor first and a composer second. He brings to his own arrangements a conductor’s critical sense of the right balance between art and showmanship. His piano is not a carpet of chords laid out for the singers to trample over; the singing and the playing hold proper dialog. When the singer is wistful about being naughty or coy with her missing lover, Rashid Khaan, the piano seems to respond with the right melodic giggle. Listening to Khalatbari’s well-assembled quartet (piano + 3 sopranos) for once I didn’t ache for the singers to break out into a hearty Dashtestani where I thought our folk melodies belonged.

In the light of Khalatbari raising the bar on Iranian folk song “arias,” I asked Shirin Asgari if she had considered also raising the Iranian singer’s stakes on technical brilliance. She seemed receptive to the idea of demanding Iranian folk arrangements that take full advantage of her astonishing reach and nimbleness. Hopefully Khalatbari will oblige her—and us.

Based on a misconception of Iranian culture, the Austrian music judges had hoped to gently dissuade Nasrin, Shirin, and Kamelia from wasting time on opera training. But six months later, even before the sopranos’ university classes officially began, the young women had already taught an ethnographic lesson to these judges: the typical émigré to Europe from many Muslim countries settle in the West to lift themselves off the economic floors of their homelands; the Iranian diaspora, on the other hand, has uprooted from home to break through Iran’s artistic and academic ceilings.

Merchant of Chaarmahaal

Ari Siletz — Fri, 13 Mar 2009 22:07:00 +0000

A Jew lends someone money, the borrower can’t pay it back so the Jew demands a chunk of flesh in payment. This isn’t Shakespeare’s Merchant of Venice; it is a story from Iran’s Chaahaarmahaal and Bakhtiaari province. The subtleties of this anti-Semitic characterization are explored reasonably well in Shakespeare’s work, so we’ll move on to the legal adventures of the protagonist: the idiot who borrowed the money.

He was simple man who at an old age resolved to improve his lot in life. The Jew was a neighbor who according to the story had amassed his wealth in “many different ways.” At first he was reluctant to lend money to an old man with no collateral whatsoever. But the old man wouldn’t hear ‘no’ for an answer. Fleshing out this bare bones story, the Jew must have been impressed by the old man’s insistence. Surely if this borrower started a business with the money, his determination and perseverance would help him succeed. So the Jew struck a deal with the old man. For every coin loaned the old man must put up a mesghaal (about 5 grams) of flesh for collateral. Never mind the motive for this macabre contract, for that I recommend renting Al Pacino’s The Merchant of Venice. Meanwhile let’s find out how the old man lost his shirt.

He bought merchandize from one place to sell somewhere else. On the road, highway robbers attacked him and stole his wares. Here’s where our Iranian Jew faced a different predicament than Shylock, the Jewish moneylender in Shakespeare’s play. The old man’s Venetian counterpart, Antonio, lost his fortune at sea, whereas the Iranian Antonio (we’ll call him Hassanio) could have taken precautions against highway robbers. Did Hassanio hire security guards, or did he risk his neighbor’s money by skimping on preparations? This detail is important in the court battle that is about to ensue.

Needless to say, Hassanio wouldn’t let Shylockpour cut him up, so they set off to see the judge. Part way to the city, they ran into a fellow whose donkey was stuck in the mud. Hassnio wanted to help, but Shylockpour said, “If you feel so sorry for him, you lend a hand. I’m staying out of this.” Was Shylockpour an unhelpful man? Don’t jump to conclusions until you see what happens next.

Hassanio got into mud, grabbed the donkey’s tail and pulled as hard as he could. Now anyone who has ever helped a donkey out of the mud knows you don’t pull the animal by the tail. It’s not a tow cable. The donkey’s tail broke off, and the very upset owner joined the march to the city to demand compensation from Hassanio. Did the donkey owner say, “Good Hassanio, this was but noble intent fouled by misfortune, so thou art off the hook?” Nothing of the sort, and this wariness of human ingratitude may have been why Shylockpour didn’t want to get involved. We’ll knock a few points off him because if he had helped, the donkey may still have had a tail. But Shylockpour gets fewer demerits now that we’re on to his Shakespearean complexity.

With two plaintiffs on his case, Hassanio was so distraught that at the next town he climbed to the top of a minaret and threw himself from it. He didn’t bother to look where he would fall, and soft-landed on top of a beggar who was instantly killed. So the beggar’s son joined the procession of Hassanio’s accusers. Any judge has to consider that Hassanio’s negligence lost another person's gold, his stupidity seriously injured an animal, and his carelessness cost someone his life. By all accounts Hassanio was a menace to the kingdoms of man and beast. Yet somehow we still root for him. Anyone this unlucky must have a powerful horde of demons conspiring against him. To have a happy ending, the story must give Hassanio a break. And so it does, in a way that reveals how the Chaahaarmahaal and Bakhtiaari folks viewed their society.

When they arrived at the judge’s house, Hassanio noticed that His Honor was hobnobbing with the very highway robbers that had stolen his wares. Did the simple and honest Hassanio cry out to the world that the judge is in the pay of thieves? No, instead of helping his fellow citizens rid themselves of a corrupt official, he and the judge went into a whispering huddle and made a deal. So the judge ignored the case we have been meticulously building against Hassanio. The verdict handed down was that Shylockpour could cut off Hassanio’s flesh, but if he removed even a smidgeon over the amount, Hassanio would be allowed to carve him up in retaliation. Filling in again for Shylockpour’s thinking, he knew that scales in such a town are likely to measure a one mesghaal weight as two mesghaals. So he wisely withdrew his claim, perhaps happy to have fought and relieved to have lost.

The judge told the beggar’s son he is welcome to climb a minaret and throw himself at Hassanio’s head if he wished. That was the end of that claim. Finally it came to the guy holding the detached tail of a donkey as exhibit A. Seeing the state of affairs in this town, he too gave up on justice. But he withdrew his claim with a biting remark that is now as quotably famous as any line of Shakespeare's: “Your Honor,” he said, “khareh maa az korregi dom nadaasht.” (My donkey didn't have a tail to begin with).

Note:
Orignial folk tale from the collection Afsaanehaaye chaahaarmahal va Bakhtiaari
Edited byAli Asmand and Hossein Khosravi.
1998 Eel publications
Printed in Shar-e-Kord, Iran

A Girl’s War

Ari Siletz — Mon, 23 Feb 2009 19:39:00 +0000

A play by Joyce Van Dyke
Directed by Torange Yeghiazarian

Any play with Iranian-born Bella (Ramezan-nia) Warda in the cast necessarily draws special attention to the acting. A well behaved play does not depend on brilliant acting to convey its ideas, and playwright Joyce Van Dyke has created such a work in A Girl’s War. Nevertheless, powerful actors like Warda dig their spurs deep into the work, making it bolt like a trained animal shocked back into its wild nature. It is noticeable how much the other actors enjoy sharing their scenes with Warda as Arashaluis, the fiercely patriotic Armenian mother. To survive the intensity that this actress brings to the stage, the other actors courageously counter with their own show of force.

Actess Ana Bayat who plays the lead role as the beautiful fashion model Anna, is on the frontlines in Warda’s assault. At two different levels, as it turns out: acting style as well as character conflict. Anna is Arshaluis’ politically indifferent daughter pressured by her mother to take up arms against their enemy, the Azerbaijani Turks. Here’s a scene where Warda and Bayat lock horns. Arsahaluis is ladling yogurt into Anna’s mouth, and with each spoonful the mother feeds a bit of Armenian history into her daughter, barely letting Bayat finish her line before Warda’s next spoonful arrives. “Keep up, step to it, more passion,” Warda seems to demand. “Let me be; I want composure, I want control,” Bayat seems to say. Which is exactly the dynamic between the characters in the play. Anna has turned her back on her country’s fight for land and identity. Moving to the United States, she has embraced a naive political individualism. Arshaluis on the other hand is driven by nationalistic passion, to the point of sacrificing logic. To paraphrase the lines, Arshaluis says “This is not yogurt; it is madzoon. Yogurt is Turkish, madzoon is Armenian.” “But it’s made exactly the same way,” Anna protests in between spoonfuls.” “No,” Arshaluis insists. “madzoon!”

Another character whose acting goes into high gear in Warda’s presense is the Afghan born Zarif Kabier Sadiqi as the Azerbaijani deserter Ilyas Alizadeh. To be fair, Arshaluis holding an automatic weapon at him does give Sadiqi an excuse to act larger. But his best scene with Warda is not the gun battle scene; it is scene when Arshaluis remembers him as a child in the village before ethnic wars destroyed the community. She embraces him with nostalgic warmth, bringing out jam and cookies for the reunion. Of course she suspects him. Has he really deserted, or is he a spy? Ilyas in turn is ambivalent, but for the moment both emote as though they lived in the world they asked for, and not in the world they got.

It wouldn’t have worked to write the ferocious Arshaluis into the scene where Anna and Ilyas get naked and have sex, but the scene could have used some of Arshaluis’ explicit passion. When Ilyas shows Anna his penis, I couldn’t read in her face whether she was witness to an erection or something less. Ilyas seems to appraise himself highly, but Anna is clinical, her embarrassment perhaps too well covered up. In the actor's dilemma of catering to audience laziness or remaining true to character, Byat chooses character. Or maybe she didn’t wish to compete with the symbolic content of the scene. Anna does not just sleep with the enemy; she baptizes the Muslim under a Christian cross before she lies with him.

For the playwright Van Dyke and Iranian-born director Yeghiazarian balancing Anna and Arshaluis must have taken some thought. Since the daughter Anna has no convictions, the story is really about the mother Arshaluis. On the other hand, the American audience identifies with Anna, not Arshaluis. So Anna gets the most stage time, and Arshaluis gets the best lines and the stronger actor. Anna/Bayat can advocate peace and a reserved acting style, while Arshaluis/Warda can worry about apathy taking soldiers out of the fight, and whether a generation that refuses passion may also refuse action.

There is another strongly bonded pair of characters in the play: Simon Vance as Stephen, a professionally manipulative photographer and Adrian Cervantes Mejia as Tito, Stephen's loyal sidekick. Vance is a nuanced actor, creating a Stephen whose job demands a cruelty and objectivity that goes against his compassionate inner nature. Mejia matches Vance's strengths with his ability to project Tito's generosity of soul. I don't know if it comes from Tito's affable smile, the happy gait, or the innocenct wide eyes even when he's wearing a bloody bandage on his head.

See the play yourself to tease apart how Stephen and Anna create tension on the stage. Her scenes with Tito do just the opposite; they give the play its light moments . Tito and Ilyas also come together, albeit briefly and violently. But that's all in the play.

This link includes where, when, and more info on the play

Angels of War

Ari Siletz — Mon, 12 Jan 2009 21:34:00 +0000

Tom Cruise’s WWII thriller Valkyrie has had some oddly nonsensical reviews. Scratching his head about this, critic Roger Ebert says, “I am at a loss to explain the blizzard of negative advance buzz [about the film].” The zaniest of such negative reactions was penned by Roger Friedman of Fox News. This reviewer complains, “You knew it would be bad, and it is.” For a professional film review, this is an absurd statement. How could Friedman know the movie was bad before he’d seen it? Smelling a rat, I checked out the film and found it. Ostensibly about German officers plotting to blow up Hitler, Valkyrie makes us think the unthinkable: is the US military justified in overthrowing its own government if the country is being led to certain ruin.

“He [Cruise] doesn’t even attempt a German accent,” Friedman says in his panicked review. “His American accent gets very bad, to the point where he’s dropping the g’s.” As a professional critic, Friedman would know that Cruise’s American accent is likely a deliberate choice by the director to connect Hitler’s war mongering with current US militarism. The film’s opening credits literally spell this out for us by fading the German spelling of the words into their English equivalents. In an attempt to throw the film’s potential audience off the scent, Friedman feigns bewilderment at the choice of Tom Cruise for the lead role. “He’s completely miscast,” the review insists, citing Cruise’s Jerry Maguire. This is a misleading casting reference, as Friedman would know. The correct reference is Cruise’s Born On The Fourth of July. The Oscar nominated role as a severely wounded American soldier, makes Cruise the perfect choice to play the German colonel Claus Von Stauffenberg, who lost a hand and an eye in WW II. Perfect, that is, if the director wants to draw a parallel between the patriotic German soldier sick of Hitler’s lunacies and the patriotic American soldier sick of ass pyramids at Abu Ghraib.

To drive home the current events allegory, Valkyrie even imitates, tongue-in-cheek, Obama’s campaign slogan. The German colonel tells his co-conspirators that Hitler’s assassination is imperative because “a change must be made.” In an allusion to political protest being framed as “pallin’ around with terrorists,” Von Stauffenberg tells a potential recruit, “I am involved in high treason…can I count you in?” Reminding us of the disgrace of former US attorney general Alberto Gonzales, the movie details how in Western societies regulations can be finagled to engineer power grabs. Quickly it becomes obvious why Fox News, the media arm of US militarism, would assault the film.

Friedman makes his clearest argument against the film when he says he didn’t like it “Because in Valkyrie Singer [the director] opens the door to a dangerous new thought: that the Holocaust and all the atrocities could be of secondary important [sic] to the cause of German patriotism.” Never mind that the hero is trying to end the war; Friedman is disappointed that he is doing it for the wrong reason, acting "only" to save his country from annihilation. It would have been meaningless if Von Stauffenberg had succeeded in ending World War II, says Friedman’s logic, because the ensuing cessation of Hitler’s war crimes would have been coincidental!! Just a few months before Von Stauffenberg’s July plot to eliminate Hitler, 400,000 Hungarian Jews were gassed at Auschwitz. I doubt any of the surviving inmates would have minded being rescued unintentionally.

I saw Valkyrie a few hours after I had returned from a Gaza protest rally; so images of civilian massacre were freshly painful on my mind, making one particular symbolism in the film go far with me. Von Stuaffenberg had lost an eye to the enemy, and the film made sure the audience kept that in mind. Despite the cruel wording, the “eye for an eye’ directive in the Torah is meant to limit the retribution one can exact. It is a ban against unbridled vengeance. If someone pokes out your eye, then take his eye if you must. But you are forbidden to go on to kill his wife, burn his kids, tear down his house, take away his livelihood, and devastate his land.

The enemy owed Von Stauffenberg an eye, but with his good eye he could still see that continuing the war would ultimately lead to the annihilation of his own nation. Crazy Hitler couldn’t see that.

Patriarchy, not just for women.

Ari Siletz — Tue, 08 Jul 2008 23:19:00 +0000

For the past few days I’ve had women on my mind. Platonically, of course; the Iranian Women’s Studies Foundation was having its conference at Berkeley this year, and I was there to listen. But then, during the musical program, Raeeka Shehabi-Yaghmai sang for us, and that’s when Plato lost his toga.

The song ‘habanera’ from the Bizet opera Carmen means cruelly to seduce. The teasing rhythm and the pliant way the melody wraps itself around it, sets up the audience for the gypsy woman’s next song, “Seguidille,” which hasn’t been surpassed in the history of the “come on.” Raeeka’s unerring choice of Carmen for the conference addressed an unspoken question about the human rights crimes against Iranian women: Why?

Don Jose, the soldier Carmen seduced, ultimately murders her when he realizes she can’t be possessed. Close to Raeeka’s political interpretation, here is opera singer Maria Callas being frighteningly unpossessable. What’s remarkable about this video clip is that for the first two minutes Callas is not singing; she is projecting presence with posture, and facial expressions—something Raeeka also excels at. Despite the baton waving and the fancy bowing action happening in the background, the camera can’t help but stay fixed on Callas just standing there being Carmen. To appreciate the artistic choice, compare Callas’ interpretation of the character with this sweet but politically vacuous rendition by Katherine Jenkins.

Jenkins’ Carmen is no threat to the likes of the IRI, but Callas’ and Raeeka’s are. Once you peel away IRI’s official justifications for its anti-woman laws--stable family structure, motherhood, disrespectful exploitation of women’s bodies, what would Mohammad do, etc.—you find only the frustrated Don Jose and his pathological urge to possess and dominate.

An intriguing twist to this interpretation had come earlier in the fiery keynote speech of progressive feminist Cherrie Moraga . At Moraga’s level of abstraction, one can see that Don Jose represents more than just the IRI and other misogynous institutions. He is also that part of the West who would impose its ways on vulnerable cultures or else eliminate them. Here, ironically, the Iranian nation is herself a Carmen. Proud, complex , set in her ways, who would rather face death than be possessed.

Mainstream feminists who promote the foreign policies of Western Patriarchy, should understand that there are Iranian women who identify strongly with the second Carmen. Their experience of oppression as the first Carmen works only to amplify their sympathy for the other Carmen. So they will not welcome anyone who regards their culture the way Bizet’s 19th century audience may have viewed his gypsy woman: irresponsible, uncivilized, futureless, and deadly. These women have already peeled away the practical and ideological justifications for the US drive for hegemony—oil and freedom—to find nothing but the mad Don Jose standing over them with a knife.

Some audience members seemed uncomfortable with hints of such an outlook interpreting it as a “sour grapes” reaction to the social successes of the West. One questioner who voiced this criticism of a speaker drew brief applause. To paraphrase the comment, “What’s the point in denying that some superior social solutions originated in the West? We should check our pride and adopt foreign methods that are obviously better.”

Fair comment!The response is in post 9-11 US history, among other places. Immediately after that single trauma, habeas corpus, search and seizure, freedom of the press, congressional oversight, and torture policies quickly degraded. Classroom mythology aside, the workings of Western freedom is a puzzle to everyone including the West. Substituting the word “Democracy” for “love” in Carmen’s song, “Democracy is a rebellious bird that nothing can tame. And it is simply in vain to call it if it is convenient for it to refuse.”

Those who are impressed by enlightened constitutions are confusing the perch for the bird. Freedom is not a Western invention; it’s just their condition, for now. The bird call for world justice, composed of the will of all conscious beings, is still waiting to be discovered, and the search is still wide open to all cultures. This is why Carmen must be protected from Don Jose.

Raeeka’s moving on from opera to Iranian folk songs reinforced the thought artistically--for me. ‘Goleh Sangam,’ ‘Mastom Mastom,’ ‘Shekaareh Ahoo’ can be sung to the accompaniment of the Western piano—particularly as they were so sensitively arranged by composer David Garner. But there are many other Iranian melodies with tonal flavors impossible to render in the Western tempered musical scale.

Ideas are melodies. What flavors of freedom would we oppress if we favored philosophies able to play only a few?

The Essential needs of Iranian Woman today, a conference

Ari Siletz — Thu, 26 Jun 2008 16:23:00 +0000

“Dad, would you rather I were a boy?” The first time my daughter asked me that she was in her teens, arguing for easier curfews and a more liberal attitude towards boyfriends. What she was really asking was, “Why is my worth as a human being disproportionately tied up in my chastity?”

As I browse the program for the 19th international conference of the Iranian Women’s Studies Foundation, I see that some of the lectures and panels pose same question from different angles.

For example, Sharareh Shahrokhi’s lecture topic will be, "The right to choose what to wear: an essential need for an Iranian woman or a superfluous one?"

Though the hejab topic gets top billing in Western media, Iranian women activists who live under IRI laws wonder what priority they should give the hejab relative to, say, unfair divorce laws. Does it make sense to bicker over a piece of cloth while custody of your child is threatened? On the other hand, bowing to the hejab symbol gives up turf even before the battle has begun. Gender segregation works against equitable family law.

Iran’s adultery laws are another place where justice and symbolism are at odds. Stoning cases are few and there is a moratorium on carrying out such sentences. But the very fact that adultery is a capital offense in the law books, means that in principle the IRI assumes the power to end a human life based on her sexual behavior. Moreover it has reserved its most hateful form of punishment for adultery. Stoning in its original intent is execution by collective injury at the hands of one’s own community.

Conference panelist Soheila Vahdati Bana, a leading activist against Iran’s stoning laws, has argued that the punishment affects women disproportionately. Iranian Family Law allows female child marriages, restricts a woman’s right to divorce, handicaps the mother in child custody cases, and is biased in favor of the husband in domestic abuse cases. All these factors tempt the wife to seek affection outside the marriage.

The second time I got the question from my daughter, “Dad, would you rather I were a boy,” she was no longer fighting curfews. She was wondering about gender and the nature of power and leadership as she embarked on a long period of professional training.

I don’t know where in the world she will end up living-- Iran ,US, Europe Africa. But I had assumed the disadvantages of being a woman in Western cultures are fast disappearing. Both senators from my state of California are women, and a powerful California Congresswoman is the Speaker of the US House of Representatives. By comparison women in Iran are virtually deprived of a share of official power. The power and leadership question depends on which country you’re talking about, or so I thought.

Guest speakers, Soraya Fallah and Sakineh Sahebi may disagree. Conference organizer Jamileh Davoodi says these thinkers look beyond national boundaries to the more fundamental issues of Patriarchy. “There is no external or internal Patriarchy. Our borders are not different,” Davoodi paraphrases.

A year ago, I had little idea what she may be talking about. But during the Hillary Clinton campaign there was an unease in American society that told me there is something to “get” that has nothing to do with whether a woman can hold high office, and may even be unrelated to sexism as it is normally defined. I hope to find clarification by listening to these speakers’ discourse on fontierless patriarchy. Right now the feeling is vague; rather like the pause after you unknowingly invite a vegetarian to your barbecue.

While thinking globally, there may be reasons to act locally by seeking solutions in the unique context of each culture’s history and political circumstance There will be representatives from Iraq and Palestine at the conference, and one question that I hope comes up is whether it is good strategy for Iranian women to approach their problem from the global view of Islamic repression. While breaking formation has the advantage of better focus, cooperation and shared strategies have also proven very effective. For example the famous Million Signature Campaign to end gender discrimination in Iran is modelled after a political mobilization program that began in Morocco. Mitra Shodjaie will be there to discuss this groundbreaking campaign.

The conference also includes discussions on the contribution of the Internet to free speech, the new sexual risk taking patterns of urban women, and the specific needs of younger generation of Iranian women.

I’m also rooting for Partow Nooriala’s talk to be a hit. Her topic, “The necessity of shattering traditional images of women in cinema,” reflects the wisdom of the conference organizers in recognizing how art brings about social change. Naturally, there will be music, singing, and this play.

Here is the contact infor for the conference.

San Jose Human Rights Seminar on Iran

Ari Siletz — Mon, 23 Jun 2008 22:10:00 +0000

Everyone who went to the recent San Jose Human Rights Seminar on Iran got a copy of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights (UDHR). During the presentations there was much discussion of religion, and it is possible to review the event by comparing the UDHR to a much older declaration in the Bible.

There are ten commandments in the laws of Moses, and three times as many in the UDHR. The first four laws that came down from the mountain aren't at all about how humans should treat each other; rather they establish the authority of the lawgiver:

1. I'm God.
2. Don't worship any other god.
3. Respect my name.
4. Every seventh day is "God day." [see note 1]

After God uses up almost half the space on the tablet with pictures of his police badge and gun, he finally gets around to saying we shouldn't rob and murder each other.

By comparison, none of the articles of the UDHR claim the power to enforce. The first article, for instance, simply says, "All human beings are born free and equal in dignity and rights. They are endowed with reason and conscience and should act towards one another in a spirit of brotherhood."

There is no reference to authority because the code isn't meant for individuals; it is meant for states. Lawgivers themselves. The only god able to lord over these super beings is History. This is reflected in the preamble to the UDHR, which basically warns:

1. I'm History.
2. Respect human rights and your reward shall be peace and joy.
3. Violate human rights and your punishment will be war and a pissed off population.

The conference itself was a showcasing of restrained but powerfully articulated anger. Smoke and rumbling from Mount History.

Religious minorities:
Bahais are the most severely persecuted religious minority in Iran. Their leaders are jailed or executed. They are denied access to higher education. Employers are pressured to fire Bahai employees, and lawyers are intimidated into refusing Bahai clients.

Christians, Jews and Zoroastrians have nominal freedom under Islamic law to practice their religions. But IRI laws are cleverly designed to whittle away at these rights. One conference speaker, Dr. Jaleh Pirnazar mentioned an IRI law where if one member of a family in a religious minority converts to Islam then all the rights of inheritance go to that person, disinheriting the other family members. These sneaky persecutions slowly institutionalize our culture's traditional mistrust and contempt for members of minority religions.

The audience questioned critically whether defending the right to religion does not go against the secular grain of human rights. After all, which of these God based institutions wouldn't do the same to Muslims if the situation were reversed? The answer seems to be that if the UDHR is powerful enough to liberalize Islam, then it would also restrict intolerance in other faiths.

At one point in the panel discussion Neda Shahidyazdani, speaking for the Bahi, told a story that transcended even the articles of UDHR. A Muslim man broke into tears after handing over the body of an executed Bahai to the victim's mother. He said he wished he were not part of a system that would commit such crimes. Is it not a human right to live in a society where one does not contribute to crimes of conscience? As an American I feel this violation of my human rights every time I remember my taxes are paying the salaries of torturers in Guantanamo prison.

Women's rights:
The Million Signatures Campaign to stop gender discrimination in Iran is currently at the frontlines of the human rights efforts in Iran. IRI laws discriminate against women regarding polygamy, divorce, child custody, inheritance, blood money, court testimony, travel abroad, public appearance, and other issues. Women's rights activist Fariba Davoodi Mohajer made a strong play for leadership of the dissident community by pointing out that the vigor in the women's movement could energize other movements too damp to ignite.

She's right! Current political winds are backing women's movements. The universal upheaval in gender attitudes reminds us of the dramatic days when class wars were reshaping the world. During her "can do" style PowerPoint presentation Davoodi Mohajer outlined the successes of the campaign in reaching, educating, and activating Iranian women, setting an example for organized action against unfair laws.

Daringly, Davoodi Mohajer chastized the traditional leftists for ignoring women's rights in their agendas when the Left held the world's attention. The shoe is on the other foot now, but has the lesson been learned? I wonder how much cooperation exists between the women's movement and, say, the labor movement. Conversely, how many signatures is the labor movement collecting towards the million?

There is tremendous support for the Million Signature Campaign outside Iran, including a recent youth demonstration in Geneva that helped pressure the IRI to free some of the campaign's activists from prison. Other diverse dissident groups in Iran could pitch in with resources, and get profitable returns on their investment by supporting the internationally favored women's movement.

Which brings me to a great new Farsi word Dr. Mansour Farhang used during his talk on cooperation. Faraajenaahi, coined by Iran scholar Ahmad Karimi-Hakkak means "non-partisanship", a desperately needed word and concept for Iranian activists.

Admittedly, cooperation is sometimes unpleasant. For example the Million Signature Campaign does not seek regime change, only changes in the law. This may deter regime change supporters from participating in the effort. Yet another word that is fairly new to our ancient language may be of some help. The word Siaasat used to mean "good administration." But when the concept of citizenship evolved around the 1906 constitutional movement, Siaasat started meaning "politics" [see note 2]. This word democratized negotiating, coalition building, power brokering, and yes, distasteful alliances. So everyone can get in the mud now, not just ministers and kings. In a sense, politics is democracy, and getting dirty is a privilege not a dishonor.

Nevertheless, for the virtuous and the principled, The faraajenaah nature of the Iranian Society For Human Rights makes it an ideal vehicle for coalition building, and the most formidable tool yet for a multi-pronged democratic assault on the IRI. In fact we know the IRI is threatened by the human rights weapon because, it has responded by creating its own center for human rights studies and holds its own conferences on the topic.

Despite the ushaven faces and the retro taste in fashion, IRI supporters are cutting edge politicians, and know how to avail themselves of democratic teamwork when needed. Their common Shiite faith isn't their only instrument of unity. As for the opposition, the moral strength of the Universal Declaration Of Human Rights is a good replacement for faith in God, but the rest has to come from smart politicking. In this God versus Man contest, the winner will be whoever forges the strongest union. May the best man win.

Note 1: This is the Torah grouping of the Ten Commandments. There are other groupings.
Note 2. See State And Society in Iran by Homa Katouzian page 6.

Shahnameh Millennium Concert at the Iranian Studies Biennial

Ari Siletz — Sun, 01 Jun 2008 23:56:00 +0000

Ferdowsi packs so much literature in his verses that storytellers, singers, percussionists, and painters have traditionally helped unpack his work for us. For a thousand years, this collaboration of the letters and the arts in ghahveh khaneh (coffee house) settings has upgraded and refreshed the Iranian national identity. To commemorate the Shahnameh millennium, the Seventh Biennial conference of the International Society for Iranian Studies will include a multi-media concert combining Shahnameh storytelling (naghali), Shahnameh-inspired orchestral music, and visual presentations of scenes from the epic.

To bring the concert to this Toronto gathering of hundreds of Iran scholars, program chair Mohamad Tavakoli-Targhi invited Shahnameh narrator Morshed Torabi to collaborate with the Toronto Symphony Orchestra. He then invited concert pianist Ariana Barkeshli, who is also a music researcher, to be the artistic director for the event. Barkeshli recommended Persian Trilogy (Seganeh e Parsi), a suite of Shahnameh-inspired symphonic poems by Juliard composer Behzad Ranjbaran.

Looking back on a previous musical rendition of the Shahnameh, Iranians were so awed by composer Loris Tjeknavorian's Rostam va Sohrab that, despite its orchestral format, they welcomed the work into Shahnameh's exclusive tonal tradition. So I asked Barkeshli about her choice of Ranjbaran. In reply, she sent me the London Symphony Orchestra's recording of Persian Trilogy. Ranjbaran's work is mature in the way Sohrab would have been if the Shahnameh story had a happier ending. Confident, strong, wise, compassionate, yet youthful and contemporary. I was ready for drums and clashing daggers, but instead was humbled to find musical substance and emotional depth.

On the other hand, the audience for this multi-media presentation will be a lot tougher than I. It will include the world's largest concentration of experts on Iranian literature, history, art, anthropology, sociology, politics, whatever. Imagine playing a recital where seated in the first row are Bach to Bernstein, Rodrigo to Rohani. Add to these luminaries a Liberace or two who would delight in prima donna wisecracks. Nightmare!

Yet Barkeshli has no pre-performance anxiety. She is proud of her choice. Persian Trilogy is up to the challenge. Seemorgh, The Blood of Seyavash, and Seven Passages, simply dazzle. Maestro JoAnn Falletta apparently agrees. An avid promoter of Ranjbaran's talent, the internationally sought -after conductor will be interpreting Persian Trilogy for the large Toronto audience.

To appreciate Ranjbaran, the listeners will keep in mind the modern work that Iran scholars have done on Shahnameh's symbolic content. For example one Ferdowsi authority, Mahmoud Omidsalar, has done much to elevate the image of the epic from an action-adventure story to a thoughtful riddling of the human psyche. Due to Omidsalar's literary analysis, The Seven Trials of Rostam (Haftkhan) can now be seen as a dream sequence rather than an actual experience of the ordeal. Omidsalar points out that before some of the trials Ferdowsi has Rostam fall asleep. In fact Rostam does not fight the first battle at all. His steed, Raksh, kills the lion while his master sleeps. [See note 3]

There are several wispy, dreamlike demarcations in Seven Passages but the composer may or may not be proposing Omidsalar's Jungian take on the trials. Though he does mention in the CD notes, "I was inspired by the symbolism evident in the story." He adds, "The music reflects my general impression of the story rather than following it faithfully. It is one continuous piece organized tightly around a three-note motif (B, A sharp, B) transforming in the heroic finale to its inversion (B, C, B)." He too seems to view the seven trials as symbolic of the upheaval that occurs in our passage from a state of childhood to maturity. Or to take the symbolism a step further, the inversions that occur as lower levels of consciousness blossom into true awareness.

The audience will also be listening for how well Morshed Torabi melds the tenor of his narration into the texture of Ranjbaran's music. The art of naghali is a one-person show, with an occasional drum or bell. Strings, woodwinds and brass are new to this art form. Torabi will be arriving 10 days prior to the performance for rehearsals. I would pay a lot just to watch the Morshed emerge triumphant after he battles his own Seven Trials in this historic transformation of the art of naghali.

What sort of dialog will Torabi hold with the Persian miniature images projected onto the stage as he paints his own images in words? If Torabi is a pardeh khan (scene narrator) as well as a naghal, he may feel more at home surrounded by burly Qajar-style figures than with classical Persian miniatures. Will the sound tech know to capture the clap of the hand or the slap on the thigh? How does an actor who is used to being his own director share the stage?

Like Rostam's vanishing dragon there will be dangers invisible to the hero that others may have no trouble spotting. Shahnameh recitations are seamless with Persian tonal intervals and rhythmic declarations. Will Torabi's authenticity come through in the context of Western sounds? How much of the intimate coffeehouse warmth will this able naghal salvage in a performance hall that seats over 2500? How will he conjure the aroma of tea and the clink of saucers against glass? If you don't think this is a trial, try telling a campfire story without the dark woods and the embers.

Hopefully this multimedia experiment will raise some good debate. In fact the very idea of having cultural events at the once purely academic gathering of Iran scholars is still novel and controversial. But as our academics begin more and more to appreciate the enormous impact of art on human thought, I believe the disagreements will seem absurd in hindsight.

"The Iranian attitude towards art has come a long way though, hasn't it Ariana?" I told Barkeshli knowing it would bring emotion to her voice. As cousins we both remember how her father, Mehdi Barkeshli, kept repeating the lesson that art, literature and science are tonic, mediant and dominant in the strum of a single chord. The Sorbonne-educated physicist and musicologist worked hard constructing a theoretical foundation for the radif (system) of Persian music. Meanwhile he managed to found the Department of Music and Theatre at the University of Tehran-this accomplishment from a man whose traditional Iranian father once threw his son's violin into the fire.

Such outrageous behaviors of intolerance writ large by the IRI continue to make the Iranian diaspora cringe in embarrassment. Shahnameh Millennium Concert's program chair Tavakoli-Targhi says large-scale policies of intolerance are alien to Iran's cosmopolitan psyche. An accomplished Iran scholar, Tavakoli-Targhi points out insightfully that lovers in the Shahnameh--Bijan-Manijeh, Rostam-Tahmineh, Seyavash-Farangis-are mixed couples. This concert's vision in marrying a beautiful symphonic work to a handsome Shahnameh narration is the sort of vision Ferdowsi may have had for us from a millennium ago.

The Shahnameh Millenial Concert is scheduled for August 2 in Toronto's Roy Thompson Hall.

Note 1: The conference also includes a film festival. See details here.

Note 2: Here is a brief interview with "Gordafarid," Iran's first woman naghal. Morshed Torabi mentored her.

Note 3 : Shahnameh versions may vary from one coffee table to the next. This gem of a paper by Omidsalar on the haftkhan of Rostam uses the Khaleghi-Motlagh version.

Lies, damned lies, and statistics

Ari Siletz — Tue, 27 May 2008 12:36:00 +0000

The fastest way to build trust and generosity in someone is to spike her nasal spray with a dose of the hormone oxytocin. But hurry to the point--money, promotion, sex, whatever it is you can't get without cheating; the drug degrades to half its strength in only three minutes. The science article with this info coincidentally comes with a graph that suggests, among 29 nations, Iranians are the fourth least likely people to resort to this sort of deceitfulness. Norwegians stole the gold medal in trustworthiness, Denmark grabbed the silver, and if it hadn't been for the Chinese, Iranians would have come home with the bronze. Intrigued, I went surfing and found data that I liked even better. According to a World Values Survey of no less than 88 nations, the top scores in the trust games were Denmark: 60.1, Sweden: 62.4, Norway: 63.9, Iran: 65.4! Whatever you do though, don't leave your nasal spray unattended in Brazil. They scored dead last in the survey with a score of 4.8. If honesty were soccer, Iran would clobber Brazil 13.6 to one.

But before we start the doodooridooing, it is fair to ask how the integrity score is calculated. Simple; the score is the percentage of the population sample in each country who say other people can be trusted. To make sure a high score doesn't indicate a nation of trusting fools, these numbers are checked against "wallet drop" tests. The two approaches correlate well. This means if you drop your wallet in Iran, there is a 65.4 percent chance it will be returned to you-or maybe it means if you drop a wallet with $100 in it, you'll get back $65.40; take your pick. [see note 2]

Iran's first place result was so astonishing that one study using the World Values Survey threw out the data for Iran altogether, citing some technical equivocation. I checked the authors expecting to find a list of Brazilian sore losers. Instead, there was only Dr. Christian Bjornskov of Danish nationality (fourth place). His paper "The Determinants of Trust" posits that trust in a society is a kind of capital just like any other kind of economic asset. This economist belongs to a school of thought that says high levels of trust in a country bring about social goodies like economic growth, rule of law, democracy, clean government, good education, and low crime. The IRI is sitting on the world's largest reserve of social capital, yet it is still waiting for prices to come down. This is why our glorious score was thrown out as suspect.

Yet Bjornskov objectivity is also suspect. According to his research many Muslims use the phrase "Inch' Allah" (sic) in their daily life. He concludes, "...which means that only contingent on a number of factors do people feel morally obliged to keep their promises. This God given uncertainty naturally could lead to lower trust in fellow citizens."

Most Iranian Muslims I know refrain from saying "Inch' Allah," or dare think it. A similar sounding phrase, often mumbled, advertises the speaker's belief in an entity that would dip him in molten lead if he doesn't return people's wallets. If the above Iranian mumbled things like, "110% absolutely," then I would know he is clueless about the melting point of lead, and would not trust him. Invoking the will of Allah is a trust builder, not a trustbuster.

Bjornskov's reasoning is more at home in analyzing his native Nordic phrases. He notes that the old Viking saying, "a word is a word," is sometimes followed by "and a man is a man". This shows that, "...if a man was to break his word he would no longer qualify to be treated as such." Assuming every Danish male wants to be treated "as such," Bjornskov's predictor guarantees a minimum integrity score of 50% for his country. Presumably, the balance is contributed by Danish women who happen to be virtuous for unexplained reasons.

Before our dispute descends further into mother/sister name-callings, let me say I was actually impressed by Bjornskov's masculine appeal to "a word is a word, and a man is a man." Despite his low opinion of Islamic peoples, he seems familiar in a Viking way with the Iranian concept of looti gari. This makes me phrase my reaction to him in different terms: "Daashteem Pahlevoon? When did it become the rasm of the best and brightest of Vikingdom to spread misunderstandings as social science?"

As for the misunderstanding about Brazilians, no amount of oxytocin is going to make me believe that communities can be different from each other by trust factors as high as 13.6. Here's what I propose to Brazil: we Iranians are often desperate for a good soccer coach, and you folks obviously need world class coaching in how to respond to surveys. Shall we shake hands on the deal, or would you trust a mustache hair as collateral?

Note 1: The survey scores can be found in the appendix at the end of Bjornskov's paper, "The Determinants Of Trust," linked to in the above the article.

Note 2. In the second paragraph, the technical term "correlate" is used with some artistic license. A score of 65.4% in the survey doesn't necessarily mean a score of 65.4% in the "wallet drop" test.

Iranian Scholarship Foundation 2008 gala

Ari Siletz — Wed, 30 Apr 2008 11:33:00 +0000

Comedian Maz Jobarani finagled his complicated schedule so he could accept Iranian Scholarship Foundation’s invitation to speak at their fundraising gala. An alternate choice for the event had been graphic novelist Marjane Satrapi. But Jobrani was more stubbornly persuasive in beating back his schedulers. A stellar cluster of young Iranian scholars needed his support, and no other engagement seemed more important.

Jobrani immediately challenged his audience with a hilariously multi-layered routine about how his mother wanted him to be a lawyer--when he really wanted to be an actor.

Mother: You want to grow up to be a clown?
Maz: Mom, I just want to act.
Mother: Well being a lawyer is a kind of acting. Isn’t it? You act in front of the jury, that’s twelve people right there. Throw in the judge; that makes thirteen. And then there’s the weekends. Why don’t you act on weekends, ghorboonet beram.

Of course none of the scholarship students are attending clown school. Berkeley, Stanford, UCLA, Yale, Harvard, Cornell, Columbia, are all institutions with superb curricula in law and the sciences. But Jobrani’s clever routine seemed to be asking if the Scholarship Committee treated the arts seriously. As though in answer, one of the student speakers gave us the delightful news that his new play was about to be professionally produced. Later I found out another scholarship student majored in fashion design. In the case of Lawyer vs. Clown, the Scholarship Committee had been an impartial jury.

This impartiality is expressed tersely by Selection Committee member Dr. Abbas Milani. He says, "Once I determine a candidate has the four qualifications--grades, need, Iranian ancestors and contribution to promotion of Persian culture--then a composite of all four, along with the quality of statement and recommendations determines a students final rank."

On the emotional level, however, the four qualifications can be better understood in a Wizard of OZ format: brains, courage, heart, and vision.

The brains part of the story is easiest to see. A GPA of 3.5 in this need-based scholarship qualifies to apply for it, but some of the students carry strings of uninterrupted “A”s coupled with near perfect SAT scores.

Courage is the domain of Professor Jaleh Pirnazar, another of the six committee members. Venturing beyond academic achievement, undeterred by imperfect grades, she scours the applicant’s written essay, seeking strengths where a gamble may bring big payoffs. The qualities that impress her are leadership, perseverance against hardships, and a good sense of community responsibility. Tellingly, a recipient is obligated to perform 100 hours of community service each year so that his/her conscientious faculties continue to get a workout. Outside of class, look for ISF students in places like the Big Brother/Sister Program or cancer help centers.

Heart is symbolized by Mehdi Safipour. Ask any of the students who hold him up as their role model for commitment. When I saw Safipour last Sunday, I lied to him about looking less tired than he did during previous galas. He has not stopped to rest since he joined the committee years ago. The force of his dedication supplies even the tiniest administrative capillary of this foundation. In the middle of a busy financial accounting day, he has been known to take the trouble of making reminder calls to students who may be late in their paperwork, or who may need counseling towards a particular course credit.

Azadeh Hariri is the Dorothy archetype, symbolic of the students' vision . Her dream of happier futures drives the ISF narrative. An heiress to pre-revolution textile wealth, Hariri is the financial mill of the foundation. At first encounter she comes across as an unpretentiously rich altruist. Good students shouldn’t have to worry about money while in school.

At a broader level Hariri sees a time when the best Iranian minds are contributing to American culture. As politicians, judges, artists, entrepreneurs, professors, medical scientists, journalists, and economists they will fuse the wisdom of their Iranian heritage with the traditions of American democracy, creating better policies and decisions.

Of course if some of these students were to win Nobel Prizes, Oscars, or Pulitzers—and it's a safe bet—Hariri’s collection of intellectual gems will outshine any ornament she could put behind a glass. But this takes Hariri's philanthropic strategy too lightly. To explain, she pays all the costs of the foundation including the huge annual gala, so that 100% of the donations go to the students. One may ask if she’s got so much money why doesn’t she just pay the tuitions directly? Because the social institution of Iranian-Americans rolling up their sleeves to support each other could use help being built. Give a man a fish and you feed him for a day; teach him to fish and…

Among the farsighted organizations teaching our community to fish, few are able to grant up to a $10,000 yearly scholarship four academic years in a row. Also, the selection committee never considers an applicant’s politics or religion in the award decision. At the gala there is a student who wears an Islamic roosari. This recipient--who scored first place in Iran's national university entrance exams--has bonded with Bahaiis, Jews, Christians and other Iranian youth of undetermined creed.

Packed with donors this year, at each event the numbers at the gala have been growing. Still, more funds are sought to invest beyond obviously “blue chip” students. There is hidden talent out there for historic Iranian-American innovations. With rising support and exposure, ISF hopes to go after matching university funds, potentially doubling its capacity to reach out to our community.

This year’s gala brought in over half a million dollars, including the auction overseen by hostess Rudy Bakhtiar, the journalist who occasionally lights up the CNN newsroom with her Persian charm.

The journalist Bakhtiar hosted us, the actor Jobrani gave us critical perspective, and the Persian Jazz singer, Ziba Shirazi, recorded the event in our emotional memories. Humming a Ziba Shirazi tune during the drive home, I wondered when the scholarship custom began in history. Back in the fifteenth century the wealthy Medici family took in a 13 year old kid who wasn’t much into school, but liked to draw. This is one early instance of the secular scholarship tradition that I could think of. The kid's name was Michelangelo.

Important note:
The May 31 deadline for ISF applications is approaching. Here’s the link if you know a student from anywhere in the US who would like to apply. Check out interviews with some of the ISF students here.

Confessions of a Farsiholic: reviewing a one-letter epic.

Ari Siletz — Mon, 17 Mar 2008 15:33:00 +0000

The first time I was fined for saying “Farsi” instead of “Persian” I didn’t fight the ticket because back then the action was all about French. French fries had become “Freedom” fries, ruining a flavorful shortcut to khoresh-e-gheimeh. Flag wavers claimed fried potatoes sliced lengthwise should never have been called French fries in the first place. There were “chips” to go with fried fish in England as early as 1864. Surely the US adopting fries in the 1930s, should have named this calorie bomb after her freedom-loving ally, and not after folks who would leave Iraqis in peace.

The Francophile in me worried that the logic of Iran experts who said the term “Farsi” broke ties with prestigious Persia, could also apply to French culture. I was nervous that Freedom fries, instead of French fries, would confuse historians as to the location of the Louvre and the nationality of Inspector Clouseau. If this renaming becomes a trend, I fussed, Americans would no longer think of Descartes when they eat French toast, or of Voltaire when they look out of French windows. Cardinal Richelieu would never again leap to mind as soon as anyone stuck a tongue in someone else’s mouth.

In this crisis, I reached out to an abridged history of the potato, which tentatively placed fries in Paris in 1840, almost a quarter of a century before the first chips greased the streets of London. I could go back to enjoying khoresh-e- gheimeh without feeling a party to the looting of Iraq’s civilization. More importantly, American English could begin reversing its Orwellian decline.

Throughout this time, though, I kept falling off the “Persian” wagon. Supportive friends promised that love would eventually come to my arranged marriage with this word. Yet I philandered with “Farsi,” and English cheerily egged me on. She gets a kick out of making her speakers and writers squabble. For example, did I tell you about the black eye I got over Star Trek’s “To boldly go where no man has gone before?” English has been on red alert status since the original sci-fi series first came out in the sixties. Is it correct English to insert the adverb “boldly” between “to” and “go?” I was in the coalition that said even in the 23^rd century Captain Kirk had no right to split his infinitives. He should have said, “To go boldly where no man has gone before.” We thought we had the opposition finally outgunned, when Harvard cognitive scientist Steven Pinker suddenly decloaked in front of us.

In his book, The Language Instinct, Pinker explained the origin of the taboo against split infinitives, making our side look very silly. Showing off your Latin was a sign of good education in England, and in Latin you can’t split the infinitive even if you wanted to. Latin infinitives are like Farsi “raftan.” Where can you put “boldly” in “raftan?” Surely not “raft boldly an!” But natural English does allow us to boldly split infinitives. So for years over-educated English academics had unnecessarily disfigured their beautiful language with the syntax of Cicero.

The Language Instinct, more than histories of the potato, transformed my lust for the word “Farsi” from a sin to a fact of nature. Though Pinker focuses on English grammar rather than word usage and doesn’t mention Farsi, his book exposes the organic, dynamic, and inborn aspects of human language. Pinker’s work made me think that the English language has adopted “Farsi” for natural reasons, not because Iranians have passed on a bad habit to English speakers.

To find out why English speakers feed “Farsi” but shoo away “Persian,” I spoke with American novelist and prolific short story writer Elliot Fintushel. Fintushel’s prose should never be taken with other amphetamines, but this ultra-modern writer has a subconscious so close to his normal awareness that he can explain why he does or doesn’t choose a particular word. By the way, he knew nothing about The Farsibition when I phoned him.

Ari- Hello Elliot, what do you think of when I say, “The Persian language?”

Fintushel- Well, uh…Sanskrit!

This educated and worldly American writer prefers “Farsi” to “Persian” because his image of historic Persia is at odds with his modern interactions with Iranians. He says “Farsi” because his mind can no longer put Iran in a museum. Television, globalization, immigration, Youtube, cheap travel, all conspire to break the “Persian” display glass for him. While the culture of Sohrab allows the old to kill the young, Fintushel ‘s Oedipal culture has no qualms against slipping the dagger of novelty deep into Rostam’s heart. “Persian” withers, “Farsi” flowers. English sighs, remembering her own virgin days when brave men called her “Angelisc.”

As for the Iranian speaker of English, there are also natural reasons why “Persian” sounds like a trademark and “Farsi” the real thing.

First, developmentally. “Farsi” is what our moms said our language was called, and if English wants to imitate us, then she has realized—perhaps by sensing our adamancy—that “Persian” is no longer the right word. Remember, until recently English didn’t have much contact with Iranians except through our classical culture. Never mind that the French don’t use their own word for their language when they speak English. Fintushel’s tongue isn’t allergic to “French” but he does break out in hives with “Persian.” The word “French” doesn’t fight his reality of who the French people are; “Persian” does! Thankfully, the ultimate authority on American English has baptized “Farsi” into the English language and here’s a link that swears to it:

Webster also says that the English word “Persian” primarily refers to ANY of the SEVERAL Iranian languages dominant in Persia. Iranians who tell hapless Webster-toting Americans that they speak Persian are suggesting they may be fluent in several languages including Tajik, Dari and Judeo-Bukharic.

Secondly, there is an organic link between words and voice/body gesturing. Here’s a revealing test for Iranian-American writers and poets: with which concept do you best associate the following sounds? Aakh, oho, evaa, ah’, vaay, digeh, bah’, baabaa. Imperial Persian or Farsi e khodemooni? The interjection I most associate with “Persian” is Maz Jobrani’s famous “meow.

Third, mechanically. Farsi rolls off the tongue better than “Parsi,” or “Persian.” The “P” sound is a sudden plosive consonant; “F” is a smooth fricative, takes less force. In an onomatopoeic sense (the closeness of a sound to its intended meaning), Farsi may reflect our subtler post-Empire maturity better than “Parsi.” Sure, Arabic voice mechanics changed “Parsi “to “Farsi,” but why didn’t it change “Paarsaal” to “Faarsaal?” Yes, we were flattering Arab administrative jargon, but there must have also been a social advantage in the consonant change that somehow served the common speaker. This advantage may not exist today—whatever it was—but it was there. To speculate as to what this utility may have been, poetic ears may notice there is an inclusivity of regional sounds in the lovely name “Khalijeh Fars” that is lost in its unrealistically exclusive—and bumpy-- translation, “Persian Gulf.” When I contemplate why “F” and no longer “P,” I hear songs, not battle cries. I see pens, not swords.

Finally, there are patriotic aspects to using the term “Farsi.” Ironically this has to do with our protective feelings for our classical literature. To an Iranian writing in English, it feels unfair to allow Greece at the height of its splendor to name a language that eventually surpassed Greek in poetic expressiveness. When Herodotus was calling us Persians (Persikos) none of Iran’s classical poets had been born to measure up to Homer, Hesoid and Sappho. But some centuries later, 300 Khayaams kicked ass against a million Greeks. “Persian” reflects Hellenistic cultural supremacy; “Farsi” starts the clock when we had our strongest claim to high culture, documented by our own historians.

In our day-to-day experience “Persian” covers just a small subset of the Farsi that buzzes around our ears. Colloquially we may call it Farsi e Aflaatooni. But this Persian of the distinguished Yarshater, Davis and Nicholson is just one bee in the bustling hive of contemporary Farsi. In fact the other bees are so busy making up new words for modern nuances, they sometimes steal from other languages. Young people occasionally use the English word “money” when they covet a hard-to-afford luxury, and the traditional “pool” when they buy gum. They use the English “number” for digits that dial a date, and the old “shomareh” when they call their parents. Among a different group, the Arabic proper name “Zeid,”--Farsi equivalent of “some dude”-- now also comes with a Russian suffix: “Zeidowfski!

Sometimes there is ethnic influence. Daaf for girl is Kalimi Farsi, so is “Zaakhaar” for “boy,” occasionally meaning, ”mate” in the Australian sense. There are new descriptive verbs like “Yazeed shodan” as in to suddenly explode into anger—from a mean character in Shiite plays—but we also have “love tarakaandan” for public display of affection.

Haveej is used for street cleaners—refers to uniform color, as does kaaktus for police. BBC can be a spy or a cell phone. To this add the journalistic and technical vocabulary factories that coin Farsi expressions daily like the Feds print money, making my Farsi dictionary as useless as a stack of dollars. One Nobel Prize winner throws around words like faraa ravesh (methodology) and shahrvand (citizen). Remind me, which Persian dynasty popularized the word shahrvand? If all this activity makes your head spin, you need a daroon paalaa (exorcist)

In this dynamic linguistic community, I speak a variant that could be termed "Farsi e Dolaari." Yet I am aware that there are Javaads, Ghazanfars, Manijehs and Shahlaas stuck in Tehran traffic in their Jaaroo barghee (vacuum cleaner), jaa saaboni (soap dish), and pejhoo kaarmandi (Dilbert mobile). They watch film e aamoozeshi(over 21 “documentaries”) and spend esken, money, peel, maayeh.

There are narm afzaar (software) geeks kleeking away on their raayaanehs (computers) building taarnamaas (websites). After I explain to Fintushel about the double entendre in daroon gozaasht (input) and beeroon daad (output), you would have to drag him to Egypt and waterboard him before he gives up “Farsi” for a word that conjures up Sanskrit to his readers.

To be sure in academic circles where precision is more important than expressiveness, “Persian” is an indispensable technical term. But should Persian literature academics dictate to English speaking writers, poets, casual speakers, standup comics, or rappers, which English words are allowed? Would they bully little Luke on Valentine’s Day if he’s hard up for something to rhyme with “Marcy?” The attempt reveals a disappointing absence of communication with the social science building next door where they study how communities create and use language. The intrusion of our culture’s dictatorial vices into the common man’s English is ungracious, whereas our tolerant and humble flip side is magnetic.

The marketing approach, promoting “Persian” as a brand name, has been harmful to Iran’ s sincere modern culture. For example, my interview with contemporary Iranian-American playwright Sepideh Khosrowjah rankled a commenter who was frustrated about the article’s use of the term “Farsi.” This commenter obviously has an interest in the arts or he/she wouldn’t have read the piece. In the spirit of this shared love, I propose we redouble our efforts in encouraging our living cultural treasures, even as we struggle to rescue our threatened antiquity. Artists like Khosrowjah wield a formidable language. They contribute to one day making “Farsi” as prestigious as “Persian.”

The commenter asks rhetorically if my use of “Farsi” has a political motive.

You bet!

Some notes:

1.For an informative and entertaining study on Tehrani Farsi vernacular see Farhag va Loghaateh e Zaban Makhfi, by Dr. Seid Mehdi Samaai. info@nashr-e-markaz.com

2.The touching and beautiful Zoroastrian Gathas do compete with, and arguably transcend, ancient Greek poetry, but their number is few in comparison and their subjects limited to devotional concerns.

3.To explore why Greeks had historians and pre-Islamic Iranians possibly had only mytholgy, see anthropologist Donal E. Brown's work on hereditary caste societies.

"In Memory of Kazem Ashtari," backstage

Ari Siletz — Mon, 10 Mar 2008 23:31:00 +0000

Backstage, after seeing “In memory of Kazem Ashtari,” I told actress Bella Warda that I thought her character, the resilient Mahin Ashtari is in very good hands. If you haven’t been backstage after a play, prepare for a jolting experience. There is strong magic in speaking to someone--still in costume and sweating from the ordeal--who has just returned from the story world. This is something film can never do.

As I waited to congratulate actress Sepideh Khosrowjah, she was still the ambitious yet easily dominated character, Shafagh Gooya. The fact that as playwright Khosrowjah created Shafagh and all the other characters in the comedy belonged to the reality she was just coming back to.

Director Hamid Ehya was thoughtful, absently submitting to our praise. What worked, what didn’t work with the audience? I bet he wishes Mahin’s wisecrack to Shafagh were true.

Shafagh- But do you even know how to direct?
Mahin—Directing doesn’t need any knowing how!

Funny line! Ehya’s task was far messier than “simply” interpreting the work. For example, Warda has strong stage tactics. Like a good chess player she goes after the center and holds it, inclining the other characters to speak towards center stage instead of out to the audience. Remedying this without diminishing Warda’s presence takes careful problem solving.

Here’s another example, this time in set design. There is a door-answering phone where Mahin’s daughter, Atefeh, gives us the first “oh shit” moment of the play. Someone’s at the door she did not expect. This event begins the story’s climb; yet its comic impact is threatened by a small stage that forces the phone in an awkward out-of-the-action place. The young actress Shadi Yousefian has funny body and face language when the sky falls down, and stage limitations diminished one of her good moments. But to borrow from Donald Rusmsfeld, you direct with the stage you’ve got. Budget, time, and resource juggling makes the director as much mathematician, as artist. When you see the play, watch for the limitations to appreciate the director.

Putting on his artist hat, Ehya has introduced a clever sideshow that takes place before the curtains open and during scene changes. In this slide show appear the play’s characters in their earlier days. We see film director Kazem Ashtari pretending to be chummy with Iranian film icons Behrooz Vosoghi and Mohammad-ali Fardin. There he was stretching to match heights with the great filmmaker Bahram Beizai, proudly displaying Atefeh when she was a baby, and smiling next to his stunning young wife, Mahin. There are also pictures of his abysmally designed B-movie film posters, graced only by the face of the beautiful actress Shafagh Gooya. These images are intermingled with unintentionally hilarious condolence cards from a film industry that rightly did not take Ashtari seriously while he was still alive.

These preludes add greatly to the emotional and comedic impact of the play; they help especially with act one which is often the thinnest act in any play.

In act two the plot heats up. Mahin Ashtari has published the love letters her husband had sent to Shafagh Gooya. Mahin has prefaced the collection with, “Dedicated to my wife, Mahin, my only love in life.” Shafagh storms into Mahin’s house, pissed about the blatant lie. But Mahin, who over the years has transmuted her pain into wisdom, makes a devious proposition to Shafhagh. A proposition that eventually makes Kazem Ashtari deader than he was before.

After the show I saw Kazem Ashtari sucking up to Hamid Ehya. I wanted to warn Ehya about what a scoundrel Ahstari is, never mind that Ehya was really consulting with Mansour Taeed, the wonderful actor and promoter of Iranian culture. Backstage magic takes a long time to wear off. Try it though!

Playwright Sepideh Khosrowjah

Ari Siletz — Mon, 10 Mar 2008 22:47:00 +0000

When playwright Sepideh Khosrowjah was two years old her parents gave her a doll, which she immediately destroyed. “Toys were boring,” she says. I can understand why dolls would frustrate a future playwright; there’s nothing inside them. Darvag performance company has recently staged Khosrowjah’s Farsi language play, “Dar Soogeh Kazem Ashtari,” and there is plenty inside the characters. Besides humor, love, cunning, ambition, jealously, shame, and frustration, there is also a surprising secret. It was fun reading the play twice, the second time knowing the characters were hiding something from each other..

I asked Khosrowjah, “can you tell when people are acting in real life, and is that necessarily a sign of insincerity?” She replied,

“Everyone acts in real life. We all act all the time. We play different characters under different circumstances; I play a mom with my son, a professional woman at work, a cool person with friends, a good girl with older people, etc. This is not at all a sign of insincerity most of the time; it is a sign of how life is just a constant play. Those insincere people are bad actors both in real life and on stage.”

After 23 years of writing plays, Khosrowjah would know what makes a bad actor. In fact one of her characters in “Dar Soogeh Kazem Ashtari,” is a so-so actress. I look forward to watching this character on stage, as it takes an accomplished performer to play a mediocre actress. Actually I’m doubly curious because Khosrowjah herself will be playing this difficult role.

The playwright revealed something about her approach to acting when I asked her about her favorite character in any work of fiction.

“My favorite character in a play is Jessie in “Night' Mother,” a play by Marsha Norman. She is a woman who has come to the end in life and she wants to commit suicide. The play is about her last night and how she wants to put everything in order for her mother before leaving. She gets to explain why she has decided to end her life or as she puts it to ‘get off the Bus of life.’ When you listen to her you realize the alienation in life and how we lose opportunities to make thing different for each other. It is a very sad play, but it is a masterpiece. I was lucky enough to play Jessie many years ago, but it made me so depressed that I could not think of going back on stage again, like with Jessie dying I was also dead as an actor.”

“How did it come about you auditioned for Jessie's role in ‘Night' Mother,’ and would have ended the play differently?” I asked.

“One of the advantages of having your own theater company is that you don't have to audition. People who have worked with you for years know you and are aware of your abilities. Hamid Ehya translated the play to Persian and directed it. Darvag produced the play and I got to play Jessie and Mojdeh Molavi played the mother. I would have not ended the play differently. It was totally justified for Jessie to end her life. I can't think of any different ending. This was the tragedy of the play and the tragedy of our lives. You understand the character so well that you don't dare give her the usual clichés about thinking positively! “

Yet “Dar Soog…” does dare think positively, though not in clichés. A thoughtless act of insincerity by the deceased, Kazem Ashtari, has created chaos for his wife, his daughter and his mistress. In response, the three women characters defy expectation by making the right decisions! Now we begin to sense these women’s mediocrity in life was perhaps due to Kazem Ashtari’s influence.

“Was there ever a period in your life when a man seemed to dull your talents?” I didn’t really ask that question. If life were so straightforward, we wouldn’t need artists. Khosrowjah does say, though, that when she started acting she realized not many playwrights were telling her story. This is why she began writing her own plays at the age of 25. Her first play aptly named “Aghaz,” began a long career in the dramatic arts, not just as a playwright and actress but also as a theater company founder.

“I was one of the co-founders of Darvag. With a few friends who loved theatre, we established Darvag in August 1985, but after the first production, Darvag became much more than a few of us. I just became part of a group of wonderful people who also loved theatre. Mansour Taeed who is playing in Dar soogeh Kazem Ashtari was also one of the founding members and Bella Warda [also in the play] joined us from the first play, and Hamid Ehya [director] joined us in 1986. It is amazing how we still enjoy working with each other. Of course, we had lots of ups and downs, but we are still together after 23 years. We are so happy and excited that Shadi Yousefian also joined us in this play. Shadi is a young, beautiful, talented, energetic artist who is an amazing addition to our group and I hope she will carry the torch after my generation.”

Here in America, not many performance companies are telling our story either. Darvag is one of the few, and we would certainly like to see more productions. Khosrowjah identifies the challenge in this way,

“I have been writing plays for 23 years and after all these years my book containing three of my plays were published in Iran by Nila publishing house. I really enjoy doing my art and don't like to promote it as much because the time I should take to promote my work I can think about writing another play. I always like to think of the flying because I know the bird will die, "Parvaz ra beh khater bespar, Parandeh mordanist" (remember the flight, the bird is mortal). Creating art is like flying and you want to go higher and higher to be free!”

So that more birds will fly, the sky must invite.

Iman Maleki 's Paintings

Ari Siletz — Wed, 06 Feb 2008 17:24:00 +0000

A criticism often leveled at Iman Maleki’s astonishingly realistic paintings is, “ why not just use a photograph?” To survey the strengths and weaknesses of one of Iran’s most promising artists, we ask the same question of the following work by American painter, Denis Peterson.

“Don’t Shed No Tears” (2006) is, believe it or not, acrylic on canvas! This instance of hyperrealism is a performance art. Viewers are deliberately made to notice the amazing amount of time and painstaking effort that went into portraying this Darfur refugee. Peterson isn't showing off; he is a radical painter, compelling us with his dedication. The astonishing realism is the result of every wrinkle and twist of hair being colored and shadowed in the context of reflected light from every other object in the scene. Whereas the camera does this mindlessly as a matter of optics, the artist has endured whatever it took to make sure human eyes do not respond as mindlessly. We can flip the page on a Newsweek photo, worth a click of the camera, but we can’t as easily turn away from such an extraordinary labor of compassion.

Maleki’s hyperrealism is likewise rooted in obsessive compassion. But he also draws from his gift as a storyteller. In “Omens of Hafez,” one young woman is wearing a ring on her right hand, the other only a watch, both waiting.

Empty sandals is a clever way to suggest each woman is waiting for someONE. The poetry book being opened does Hafez justice with its double entendre, hinting at wedding night sensuality. There’s a subtle contrast in the facial expressions of the two characters. The soft trace of hesitation in the older girl’s face is enigmatic. What is there to fear about becoming a woman?
In the next painting, we see a possible answer.

In this image, the age difference in the characters is more extreme. It is no longer possible to nuance the obvious. The infant is sleep to the world. The young girl looks on, perhaps with envy, at the younger sibling who has displaced her as the baby. She is on her way to the reality that her mother experiences. The angular motif in the background window echoes a similar pattern on the carpet in the first painting, connecting the themes. The sandals in this painting are now full, by the way.

I asked an Iranian woman friend about this painting. This was her comment:
“There is fear, and there is resignation, worry and perhaps even feelings of betrayal among many other feelings, all encapsulated on the face of the young mother holding her newborn. This is an undeniably huge commitment sitting on her lap. The unknowns on the road ahead are even huger. Is the father a war 'martyr'? An absentee dad? Is there a 'havoo' somewhere in the picture? Will she end up having to beg for her and her kids' livelihood? Is she rejected because she has given birth to yet another daughter?”

Maleki is an artist who sees fit to pay a brush stroke for every human suffering, using detail to flagellate himself in sympathy with his subject. He reflects a Shiite culture in shedding visible tears for the suffering of others, and reveals an Iranian mindset in respecting our tradition of detail in visual arts. The best carpets take years to weave; inlay artists sacrifice their eyesight, and tile workers grow old with unfinished mosques. Iran's aesthetic culture is more comfortable with styles where clear references exist by which to judge a work. In showcasing labor and commitment Maleki makes his work immediately accessible to a larger audience, yet in energy and impact, he holds his own against more exclusive abstract styles.

Sometimes, however, the traditions that give strength to Maleki’s art also conspire against him. He is brilliant at drawing attention to suffering, but tends to abandon his subjects to noble resignation. The mother in the above painting has dignity but no power. The child in the painting below is trapped in his environment, just like the beautiful goldfish he can’t sell.

In meter with Iran’s traditional poetry, Maleki occasionally finds more artistic payoff in surrendering to Fate.

Philosophical bickering aside however, the above work is quite successful in what it sets out to do. By Western standards the painting may appear overly sentimental, but that is mostly because something is lost in translating the Iranian emotional vocabulary. It is probably the days before Nowruz, still winter. But for this child there is obviously never a spring. Putting philosophy back into the debate, the Nowruz symbol could have been used beyond irony, to encourage hope.

When Maleki refuses to surrender, his images of adversity are energizing and inspirational. Below is a painting titled, “Composing Music, secretly”—presumably so as not to alert a Baseej gang, as it is unlikely these musicians are practicing in secret for a birthday surprise.

In this image of defiance, the drum is silent, and the singer is brooding, heavy verses sagging his shoulder. Yet there is a rebellious joy in their gathering. We are moved by the almost childlike enthusiasm of these souls, who stubbornly refuse to let go of their right to “boogie.” Touchingly humorous is Maleki's implying that each performer has brought his own chair to the jam session. Also, he shows us it is daylight outside. The darkness is not imposed by nature, but by social circumstance. Note, there are no women in the scene, even though this is a secret gathering. In this regard a progressive reading of the painting is compromised.

Maleki’s treatment of women is sympathetic and respectful, but not empowering in a modern sense. In “Unstable Cover,” the artist shows us the hands from the da Vinci portrait, Mona Lisa. Here, the painting is not what is covered; Mona Lisa herself is draped! We could take this as a visual joke by a master painter, or read a feminist protest in it. Or both.

If Mona Lisa’s hands ripped away those covers though, we would not see the typical Maleki woman. We would see a painting where the Italian artist has given his female subject a great deal more power.

Most strikingly, da Vinci’s Mona Lisa is looking back at the viewer. In Maleki paintings, women are often looking down, usually preoccupied with books, mementos, and other ways of being somewhere else in spirit. Below is an example.

Maleki’s playfulness is apparent in the way he makes us guess how these three young women are related. The clue is in the black and white photo of the three of them as children. Can you tell which is which? Who was Mom’s favorite? Or maybe the sisters in the black and white picture are from the previous generation, and these women are first cousins. This is the kind of painting one can spend hours navigating emotionally. Longer than it takes to watch a movie. Not bad for a single frame! Significantly, Mom is not wearing a roosari in her mug shot. The photos are outdated technology, but Mom’s world was advanced enough she could look into the camera. The “photographer,” Maleki, does quiz himself on issues of female power; he’s just timid about it.

In contrast to his women, the stunning male portrait below projects solid confidence in the charismatic subject staring at us.

Just as self-assured is Maleki’s “Achaemenid Soldier.” The diligent research into Achaemenid weaponry and military uniform is admirable. Architectural grandeur is appropriately understated, yet breathtaking. Hollywood should occasionally hire this artist as a set consultant.

The atypical narrative-starved choice of subject, however, exposes an unsoldierly hesitation in the painter. If Maleki wishes to romanticize this period of Iran’s pre-Islamic history, he certainly knows of more provocative Ahcaemenid legends he could risk. Of course depicting the defeat of the imposter Gautama--who pretended to be Iran’s legitimate ruler—may have Maleki chalking murals on Evin prison walls. Safer, but just as communicative would have been, Cyrus freeing the Jews of Babylon, or Xerxes lashing the sea. After seeing “Achaemeind Soldier” I am curious as to how Maleki would treat historic/legendary themes--pre-Islamic or otherwise--that give a better workout to his talent for hidden commentary.

To illustrate, below is Jacque-Louis David’s propagandistic “Oath of the Horati.,” completed during the years leading up to the French revolution. David is recognized as an influential painter because he used romanticized historical themes to participate in the political debates of his time.

The testosterone on canvas notwithstanding, Horace (center) is making the ultimate sacrifice, offering up his sons in the service of the Roman Republic. It is obvious that David’s mind is not as complex as Maleki’s, yet the French painter is more assertive in making his political statements.

Western artists such as David, da Vinci and Denis Peterson are important in part because of their skill and innovation, but also because they come from cultures that dominate the modern global power scene. Renaissance painters catered to emerging capitalism, the sons in David’s painting above symbolize French colonies, and Peterson’s Darfur painting, “Don’t Shed No Tears” provokes America to intervene with her wealth. Iran too is no longer an “extra” in the global power drama, and has found a “speaking role” in History, so the voice of our best artists has the potential to carry much further into the future, and much wider across societies. Our artists are more important now than they have been ever since the Safavids.

Which brings me to the most urgent aspect of modern art criticism. Financial advice! Sell your belongings to snap up the right Maleki paintings, as they come along.

A chat with Martin Luther King

Ari Siletz — Mon, 21 Jan 2008 22:51:00 +0000

There was still plenty of abgoosht and vodka left when Martin Luther King’s ghost crashed our party a couple of nights ago. His holiday wasn’t until today, but he showed up early because he overheard our debate about US-Iran relations. The subject: does criticism of Guantanamo Bay, Abu Ghraib, Falluja, Blackwater, and the Patriot Act somehow excuse or legitimize human rights violations of the Islamic Republic? After all, if it is legal in America to torture in the name of national security, why pick on Iran for doing the same thing?

Immediately, MLK jumped in with his famous quote, “Never forget that everything Hitler did in Germany was legal.” I took it he was in no mood for letting Iran off the hook, just because America does something. He agreed to be interviewed, and my first question had to do with him being dead.

AS: Dr. King, what can you tell us about the other world?

MLK: The hottest places in hell are reserved for those who in a period of moral crisis maintain their neutrality.

AS: So you think it’s OK for us to protest US human rights violations?

MLK: There comes a time when silence is betrayal.

AS: But the IRI oppresses women. It threatens other countries in the region. Makes a sham of democracy, disqualifying perfectly good political candidates. I can’t tell you how frustrated, desperate, and angry we are about all this. Shouldn’t we hold back our gripes against America until after she has bombed this regime out of power?

MLK: As I have walked among the desperate, rejected and angry young men I have told them that Molotov cocktails and rifles would not solve their problems. I have tried to offer them my deepest compassion while maintaining my conviction that social change comes most meaningfully through nonviolent action. But they asked -- and rightly so -- what about Vietnam? They asked if our own nation wasn't using massive doses of violence to solve its problems, to bring about the changes it wanted. Their questions hit home, and I knew that I could never again raise my voice against the violence of the oppressed in the ghettos without having first spoken clearly to the greatest purveyor of violence in the world today -- my own government. For the sake of those boys, for the sake of this government, for the sake of hundreds of thousands trembling under our violence, I cannot be silent.

AS: Um...sir, the Vietnam war was over years ago; Don’t you mean Afghanistan, Iraq and Iran?

[MLK just stared. Ghosts do that. All the ones I’ve met never use words beyond what they have said when they were still alive.]

AS: OK, so why do you oppose the war in, er… , Vietnam?

MLK: I oppose the war in Vietnam because I love America. I speak out against this war, not in anger, but with anxiety and sorrow in my heart. Above all, with a passionate desire to see our beloved country to stand as a moral example to the world. I speak out against this war because I am disappointed with America. I am disappointed with our failure to deal positively and deal forthrightly with the triple evils of racism, economic exploitation and militarism. We are presently moving down a dead-end road that can lead to national disaster. America has strayed to the far country of racism and militarism. America has strayed away, this unnatural excursion has brought only confusion and bewilderment. It has left hearts aching with guilt and minds distorted with irrationality. It is time for all people of conscience to call upon America to come back home.

AS: Well, I too am deeply disappointed in America. But it is not my “beloved country.” These days people like me are called America haters.

MLK. There can be no deep disappointment where there is not deep love.

AS: Gosh, I suppose I do have a slight crush on America. Hard to admit though. Maybe, its just that I wasn’t born here, like you were.

MLK: We may have all come on different ships, but we're in the same boat now.

AS: We’re agreed on that, Dr. King.

MLK. In a way we were agreeing with Langston Hughes, that black bard of Harlem, who had written earlier:

O, yes,
I say it plain,
America never was America to me,
And yet I swear this oath--
America will be!

Now, it should be incandescently clear that no one who has any concern for the integrity and life of America today can ignore the present war. If America's soul becomes totally poisoned, part of the autopsy must read Vietnam. It can never be saved so long as it destroys the deepest hopes of men the world over. So it is that those of us who are yet determined that America will be are led down the path of protest and dissent, working for the health of our land.

AS: But many Americans don’t agree with our protest. They support a warlike president, Republicans and Democrats alike, and these folks may even elect a new President that will continue this war, even extend it.

MLK: Even when pressed by the demands of inner truth, men do not easily assume the task of opposing their government’s policy, especially in time of war. Nor does the human spirit move without great difficulty against all the apathy of conformist thought within one’s own bosom and in the surrounding world.

AS: Isn’t it the very job of writers and artists in a free society not to be conformists. Why do you think our best and brightest are so afraid to speak up?

MLK. Now of course one of the difficulties in speaking out today grows out of the fact that there are those who are seeking to equate dissent with disloyalty. It is a dark day in our nation when high level authorities will seek to use every method to silence dissent.

AS: Yet we have the noisiest non-dissent I have ever heard. Do you get FOX news in the other world, or the New York Times?

MLK: In the End, we will remember not the words of our enemies, but the silence of our friends.

AS: I hear you man!

MLK: History will have to record that the greatest tragedy of this period of social transition was not the strident clamor of the bad people, but the appalling silence of the good people.

AS: Speaking of strident clamor, how do you stand on the “support our troops,” issue?

MLK: I am as deeply concerned about our troops there as anything else. For it occurs to me that what we are submitting them to in Vietnam is not simply the brutalizing process that goes on in any war where armies face each other and seek to destroy. We are adding cynicism to the process of death, for they must know after a short period there that none of the things we claim to be fighting for are really involved. Before long they must know that their government has sent them into a struggle among Vietnamese, and the more sophisticated surely realize that we are on the side of the wealthy and the secure while we create hell for the poor.

AS: Aren’t the troops defending us against terrorists who hate us?

MLK: Each day the war goes on the hatred increases in the heart of the Vietnamese and in the hearts of those of humanitarian instinct. The Americans are forcing even their friends into becoming their enemies. It is curious that the Americans, who calculate so carefully on the possibilities of military victory, do not realize that in the process they are incurring deep psychological and political defeat. The image of America will never again be the image of revolution, freedom and democracy, but the image of violence and militarism

AS: With so many people hating us, and this War On Terror, you’d expect Hell to be full of fighting men these days.

MLK: [shaking his head] Conscientious objectors!

AS: Hell is full of conscientious objectors?

MLK: Conscientious objectors in the war against poverty.

AS: I see.

MLK: I come by here to say that America too is going to Hell, if we don't use her wealth. If America does not use her vast resources of wealth to end poverty, to make it possible for all of God's children to have the basic necessities of life, she too will go to Hell. I will hear America through her historians years and years to come saying, "We built gigantic buildings to kiss the sky. We build gargantuan bridges to span the seas. Through our spaceships we were able to carve highways through the stratosphere. Through our airplanes we were able to dwarf distance and place time in chains. Through our submarines we were able to penetrate oceanic depths."
But it seems that I can hear the God of the universe saying, "even though you've done all of that, I was hungry and you fed me not. I was naked and ye clothed me not. The children of my sons and daughters were in need of economic security, and you didn't provide for them. So you cannot enter the kingdom of greatness.

AS: Isn’t that condemnation a bit extreme?

MLK: The question is not whether we will be extremists, but what kind of extremists we will be... The nation and the world are in dire need of creative extremists.

[The conversation dangerously drifting towards Homeland Security territory, I moved on to a much lighter subject]

AS: What do you think of George Bush?

MLK: Rarely do we find men who willingly engage in hard, solid thinking. There is an almost universal quest for easy answers and half-baked solutions. Nothing pains some people more than having to think.

AS: And on a slightly more serious topic, what do you think of the abgoosht?

MLK: Divine!

To hear what Dr. King sounded like that ghostly night, check out this youtube link.
Also, here are some great MLK quotes , in case he appears to anyone else who may wish to interview him.

A long chat with Maz Jobrani

Ari Siletz — Thu, 11 Oct 2007 00:05:00 +0000

“I’m Pehrzheean!” actor Maz Jobrani declares in one of his Axis of Evil stand up comedy routines. To find out how “Pehrzheean” Jobrani really is, I sent him an email asking if ever puts raw eggs on his rice.

“What red-blooded Iranian doesn’t?” was his reply.

Later I met Jobrani in person. He’d invited me to watch his performance at Punchline, the illustrious San Francisco comedy club that has also hosted Chris Rock, Ellen Degeneres, Dana Carvey, Margaret Cho, Dave Chapelle, Rosie O’Donnell, and Robin Williams. Afterwards, we met in a nearby pub. Jobrani was in a sprightly mood. He had just stepped down from the stage, leaving Presidents Bush and Ahmadinejad with egg on their faces, and the audience still writhing with laughter.

It turns out, Ahamadinejad and Jobrani go way back:

“My dad was in New York on business in late ’78,” Jobrani explained. “My older sister and I went to an international school. The school was closing down for the winter holidays. Also because of the protests there had been some power outages. My dad sent for me, my sister, and my mom to join him in NYC for two weeks. We really didn’t think we’d be gone for good. I think people thought things might get better. To give you an idea of how much we planned to return, we actually left my baby brother back in Iran.”

“So what happened to your brother?”

Jobrani’s reply, “Today he is known as President Ahmadinejad.”

For the record, Jobrani was just kidding.

Teasing aside, Jobrani adds, “In reality we got the poor kid out 6 months later, and here we are almost thirty years out of Iran. I always say we left for two weeks and stayed for 28 years.”

Years later, each “brother” went on to start his own Axis of Evil comedy group. To see which one has had the most success, I googled both Maz Jobrani and Ahmadinejad. The score: Maz Jobrani 42 google pages, Ahamadinejad 38. Try it!

By this measure, the phenomenal success of Jobrani’s Axis of Evil comedy group ranks him as the most influential Iranian-American today. To show that this is not an exaggeration, one need only point to the millions of dollars of media airtime this artist has single handedly racked up for free, undoing the negative image of Iranians in the American mind. Dr. Jaleh Pirnazar, once Jobrani’s Persian Studies professor at UC Berkeley, astutely notes, “Even if the money was somehow available, who could have organized such an extraordinary task?”

I asked Jobrani how, as a political science major, he came to take Persian Studies at Berkeley.

“Since I came to America at the age of 6, I never really learned how to read and write Farsi. But I always spoke it at home, so I spoke it fluently. Well, when I started at Berkeley I signed up for beginning Farsi, in the hopes of learning the basics—alphabet, reading, writing. On the first day, the teacher went around the class and tested us to see if we spoke Farsi well. There were other Iranians in the class who dumbed down their Farsi in order to stay in the class. I, not knowing that I’d be moved up, spoke fluent Farsi with the teacher. He in turn moved me up to Dr. Pirnazar’s class. It was a challenge because I had to learn how to read and write on my own in order to catch up with the level of her class. I struggled through the semester, but Dr. Pirnazar was very cool and made sure I got through it.”

Having survived a semester of Dr. Pirnazar, Jobrani tested his courage with a language he could learn from scratch: Italian.

“From the moment the teacher came into the class and said, ‘Mi chiamo Francesca. Come ti chiami?’ (my name is Francesca, what’s yours?) I was in love with the language.”

Later, Jobrani went to Italy on a study abroad program. “Italians are very much like Iranians,” he observes. “Food, family, long naps in the middle of the day…It’s now a fantasy of mine to someday own a place out there where I could spend several months at a time sipping wine and conversing in Italian.”

Why Italian? I asked. Besides Jobrani, I know quite a few Iranians with Italian sounding last names—Fooladi, Milani, Kiani—but none has gone so far as to actually study Italian.

“I was…a big fan of the Godfather,” says Jobrani.

I think he’s serious. Francis Coppola’s brilliant filmmaking aside, Jobrani refers to his own father as the “Godfather” type. Not in the outlaw sense, but as someone people can rely on for help. According to his son, Mr. Jobrani Sr. is the kind of Tabrizi Iranian who gets offended if people who could use his help don’t let him know their need. He has been particularly generous to Iranian expatriates who found themselves in a financial bind after the revolution. Hearing Maz speak of his father, I wonder if the archetype he means is not the Godfather, but the Iranian strong protector persona, the pahlevaan.

Mr. Jobrani Sr. started his career at an electric power facility in Iran. He got the job because he was the only applicant who had the bulk and strength to pick up the massive iron-core transformers and fit them into place. Endowed with brains to outrival even his brawn, Mr. Jobrani Sr. quickly moved up the ranks to become one of three partners in the business. Later his two partners dropped out, leaving him as sole owner. When electric power was nationalized in Iran, he became a government contractor providing electricity for the country.

Almost six feet tall and in great physical shape, the son expresses his own pahlevaan sense of community in a modern context. Jobrani uses his considerable artistic ability to defend the image and honor (gheirat) of his countrymen in the West. In a humorous foretelling of a future as an artistic pahlevaan of sorts, teenage Jobrani’s first time on stage was his lead role in a Marin County Redwood High School production of The Batman Musical and Comedy.

I asked Jobrani, “As an experienced Batman, how do you rate the various interpretations by Clooney, Keaton, and West?”

“As a kid I loved the Adam West Batman. It was fun and campy. Always seemed strange that he had a slight belly going. After all, Batman was supposed to have 6 pack abs. West made him seem more like a normal dude who liked to wear Spandex. When the films started I was in my late teens and really enjoyed the Michael Keaton version. I think he did a good job showing a troubled Batman. He’s really a fantastic actor. That was my favorite.”

For a while there was speculation that Batman Begins 2 would star Robin Williams. Had things turned out that way, Williams would have been the second internationally known actor/comedian graduate of Marin County’s Redwood High to be in a Batman production. I neglected to ask if Jobrani and Williams have met, or discussed their high school alma mater. I did ask him though about his work with actor Sean Penn and director Sydney Pollack in the 2005 thriller The Interpreter. Jobrani played a sympathetic character as secret service agent Mo[hammad].

“I was very pleasantly surprised to see the final cuts and find that the Mo character is indeed important throughout… It was great to have a character like that of Middle Eastern descent that meant something [positive] to the film…I wish there were more parts like this in film and TV. I’m pushing for such things every day.”

Jobrani began his professional acting career relatively late. He was 26 years old when he told his parents he was going to drop out of the Ph.D. program at UCLA, to pursue his acting dream. From his comedy routines one gathers Jobrani’s parents would have preferred their son to continue with that Ph.D. program. Doctor, lawyer, dentist, engineer, Jamba Juice franchise owner—anything but the arts. But then how could they know their Maz had the potential to become a world class actor? Today at 35, Jobrani reveals the liberating excitement of this career decision in stories about his work:

“My experience with Penn was a really good one…[he] invited a group of the younger actors out to watch a good friend of his play music one night. That was an amazing night, as he was sitting with some secret service agents who he’d been in touch with for the role. I went over to say ‘hi’ to them and befriended one of the agents, who later took me to lunch in town. Always cool to be in an unmarked car that can turn on its sirens to get through traffic from time to time. As I was saying ‘hi’ to the secret service agents and Penn at this table, I looked up and another friend of Penn’s was walking toward us. It took me a second to register, but it was Al Pacino. He walked right up to the table and introduced himself. I almost lost my mind as I was standing there just looking like one of the guys shaking hands with Al.”

Here’s the actor still getting jazzed about being on the set:

“My first day on the set [of the Interpreter] I was waiting for Sydney]Pollack to go ‘who’s this guy? I wanted]the other bald goateed guy, not this one….’ However, he was very nice and made me feel comfortable—that is, until I had to do one of my first speaking scenes.

“I had a scene where I was supposed to be doing surveillance and looking through some binoculars into someone’s house. Then I was supposed to mumble some lines to myself as I looked at this guy through the binoculars. Well, I did the scene, mumbled the lines, and then heard Pollack’s voice come through a walkie-talkie they’d put in the car with me for him to give me direction. He said something like ‘Give the line less emphasis.’ So I did take 2 with less emphasis. Then his voice came back on the walkie, ‘You need to be more casual.’ I tried more casual. Take 3...take 5…this went on for about 7 or 8 takes.

“We moved on from that day and I felt more and more comfortable with Pollack. A year or so later when I saw the film, that scene was cut…I had a feeling it would be.”

Expecting to see Jobrani in a blockbuster any day now, I asked, If he could play a Star Wars character who it would be?

MJ: R2D2.

AS: Why R2?

MJ: He was always up to some goofy mischief, getting people into trouble and joking around. However, when it came time to save the day he could always be counted on. If It weren’t for him, none of the other characters would ever have prevailed—and yet he had a fun air to him.

AS: Which Star Wars character wouldn’t you play?

MJ: The Emperor. He had really bad skin.

AS: Speaking of bad skin, except for Xerxes, there isn’t a single Persian—out of a million—in the movie 300 who shouldn’t sue his dermatologist. Do I take it that Xerxes is the only Persian you would play in that movie?

MJ: I never saw 300. I saw Sin City and really enjoyed it. Someone told me that Frank Miller made some racist remark in a radio interview about Middle Easterners not having the knowledge to build airplanes and yet they flew those planes into the twin towers on Sept 11. I believe he was responding to the criticism of his film from the Persian community. If he did indeed say these words, then I don’t think I would have wanted to play any one of his characters in 300—good skin or not. However, I do have an idea for a sequel called 600, where a Persian dude buys a 600 series BMW—black—and goes around looking for Spartans to run over. It’s called The Persian Estrikes Back!

AS: Estarring who?

MJ: Estarring who? Estarring me, of course!

Spartans, there’s no need to run and hide. Even during his Batman days the gentle Jobrani drove the family’s hand-me-down Honda. He is a peace-loving, secular Muslim devoted to his secular Christian Indian wife. He has nothing but kind words even for his in-laws. Jobrani does, however, have a childhood bone to pick with the school bully.

6th grader Jim Jevonan used to tease little Maz about being Iranian. Things never got violent, however. “He was a 6th grader and I was a 4th grader,” Jobrani says. “He chose not to beat me up and I didn’t try to fight him since he was bigger than me. Just became material for the future.”

Indeed it did. Jobrani’s crowd-gathering charisma, compelling warmth, and sensuously animated stage presence, is secretly energized by a powerful angst characteristic of the most fearsome comedy. In my memory only Eddie Murphy—in his earlier days—has savaged racism with such glib intelligence. Eddie Murphy spoke in a time when anti-black racism was in retreat. Maz Jobrani takes the stage while anti-Iranianism is on the rise. That takes courage of a rarer sort.

As the evening wrapped up at the pub with Maz Jobrani, his friends and admirers, a friend of Jobrani’s father came up to him for Persian hugs and kisses. “I spoke to your father in Iran,” this friend whispered to the artist. “And he is very, very proud of you.”

As are we all, Maz.

Benedictus, the play

Ari Siletz — Tue, 02 Oct 2007 20:45:00 +0000

The Complete Idiot’s Guide to Screenwriting (chapter 7), says “In the theater, the playwright is God.” In screenwriting, on the other hand, the prevailing theology is that the director is God. The play Benedictus is about a Muslim and a Jew meeting in a Christian monastery, yet ironically God’s meddlesome hand has been slapped away. Displaying artistic chutzpah, the creators proudly declare that Benedictus has been put together by committee. Instead of the expected chaos however, a curious Darwinian order emerges from the multiplicity of perspectives.

Benedictus is a collaboration of Iranian, Israeli and American artists. This composition in itself immediately gives form to what the play will be about: the Iran-US-Israel conflict. I had hoped a less obvious theme would assert itself, but though one can occasionally negotiate with God, there is no arguing with reality. Subtlety takes longer to evolve.

The character Ahser Muthada, an Iranian born Israeli arms dealer, projects the Israeli point of view. Ben Martin, traumatized into alcoholism by his experience as a hostage in the 1979 US embassy crisis, is the American. Ali Kermani, an out-of-power Iranian reformist president, takes on the burden of being the Iranian. The three come together in Rome, each with their own agenda. Muthada is there to beg safe passage out of Iran for his Jewish Iranian sister He has good reason to fear for her safety because the US is only hours away from invading Iran. Kermani is in a position to help her, but won’t do so unless he gets what he wants: a secret meeting with a US official who can help stop the war. That would be the alcoholic Ben Martin, who is now a US ambassador. Kermani believes Muthada can set up such a meeting, and is in a sense holding Muthada’s sister hostage.

But nothing is as it seems, as they say. Plot twists reveal surprising hidden motivations, and in the tradition of sophisticated drama, each character sees the others more clearly than he sees himself. For example Kermani’s plea to save Iranians who would die in the impending war are countered by Muthada’s reminder that Kermani isn’t as concerned with life when it comes to the Islamic regime’s support of terrorism, and the brutal suppression of internal dissent.

Sadly, Kermani does not put up a worthy defense. This is partly because the Islamic regime’s position is difficult to uphold in the first place. Another reason is that the collaborating artistic team is composed of Iranians, Israelis, and Americans who disagree with the regime. The main reason however is artistic: Al Faris who plays Ali Kermani is not in love with his character. His comfort zone in Bendictus is the introverted, opaque type who, in his self righteousness, considers his opponents beneath emotional sharing. Though the Kermani character is certainly an upgrade from the terrorist types Feris has sometimes portrayed in mainstream films, he has to labor to operate outside those familiar unemotional parameters.

Ali Pourtash, on the other hand ingeniously lodges his character, the Israeli-Iranian Asher Muthada, into our hearts and minds. Muthada throws his arms around Kermani when they first meet in the secret negotiations chamber at the Benedictine monastery. They were childhood friends in Iran before the revolution. They played soccer on the same team. They spent time together in the Shah’s prisons. All those memories are embraced in Muthada’s wrap of his arms around his old friend. For Muthada, Kermani has the smell of home, of youth, adventure, idealism. The sight of his old friend takes him back to the time when they both Looked hopefully to the future instead of bitterly into the past. Muthada is reluctant to let go the hug. Kermani, on the other hand, hesitates to embrace Muthada. Something inhuman has occupied his soul, or perhaps the emotionally genuine Muthada had misunderstood Kermani’s calculating friendship all along.

Of course Muthada is not naïve, though he wishes he lived in a world where he could be. Like a loyal traditional wife Muthada even remembers what foods Kermani likes. The wealth Muthada has accumulated as an arms dealer is the result of his shrewd and non-judgmental assessment of human realities. While the young Kermani rose to power by exploiting idealism, Muthada could not pretend to transcend his fellow man; he got rich participating in the genuine savagery of our human nature.

All this and more is reflected in the brilliance of the Muthada characterization both by the writer Motti Lerner and by the actor Ali Pourtash. While Faris performs his actor’s duty and gets some sympathy for his character’s Islamic background, Pourtash, with openhearted humor, lavishes nuances on his Jewish character. Muthada’s unabashed solution to his national vs. religious identity issue is, “Who ordered Kosher?” This he blusters at the Benedictine nun attendant who has respectfully brought him a tray of food.

While the play was being created, there were intense moments of political disagreement between the various factions of the artistic team. It seems Faris wished his character could be portrayed as more trustworthy. Perhaps this is the directorial error that weakened this actor’s commitment to the Muslim character. The biggest mistake however, was made by Iran. Iran’s representative of the ITI (International Theatre Institute) turned down an invitation by the project’s initiator, Roberta Levitow, to participate. It seems Iranian resident artists felt a collaboration “is not possible at this time.” The opportunity for more input from the Iranian Muslim point of view was therefore squandered in mistrust. This was two years ago. Today, as war with the US creeps closer, the seriousness of such negligence in appreciating the communication power of art is more apparent.

Of course, not everyone can benefit from communication; sometimes art is just therapy. The American in the play, Ben Martin, is psychologically devastated by his experience as a hostage. His captors at the US embassy in Tehran used to click empty guns against his temple. Earl Kingston, who portrays Martin, does such an adept job of projecting this trauma that one wonders if the man is psychologically fit to be in any decision making loop regarding Iran. Benedictus is meant to suggest questions, and one question Martin’s experience raises is what share of Israel’s fear of Iran’s hostile posture is due to the trauma of the Nazi Holocaust.

Benedictus succeeds as entertaining and thoughtful theatre; its failures are the failures of our time not of the artists. Therefore its flaws are just as watchable as its strengths. Founding artistic director Torange Yeghiazarian and director Mahmood Karimi Hakak have delivered a work of high artistic quality. This includes attention to details sometimes neglected, such as music and sound design. Mitchell Greenhill starts the mood with melodic Middle Eastern flavored music, but as war nears he greatly enhances the foreboding developments with disturbing cello notes.

Ultimately though my favorite statement in the play is delivered by set designer Daniel Michaelson. Ostensibly to make the small stage appear bigger, he has created a physical perspective by converging the lines of the stage walls towards a vanishing point. At this singularity there is a door where the players enter into the secret negotiations chamber to hammer out deals. Of all the multiple ideological perspectives presented in the play, this singular physical point, the entrance into the negotiating room, represents the unifying principle of Benedictus. Michaelson seems to be saying, “There’s the place where peace begins.”

Iran nukes issue as an intro to "The Moon Landing"

Ari Siletz — Wed, 26 Sep 2007 11:58:00 +0000

These days its easy to find images of the ugly crowd in Iran chanting slogans. But I had to browse the Google image finder for quite a while before I found one that had the right geometric property for a discussion of Iran’s nuclear technology issue.

One placard the crowd is holding says, “Death to America,” as expected. The other two say “nuclear development is Iran’s right,” and “We want our legal rights in NPT (the nuclear non-proliferation treaty).” You’ll notice that I have been able to draw a straight line across the picture separating the two sentiments cleanly. In most other pictures this geometric property is absent. The two issues are mingled in a not-so-easily-drawn demarcation. And if they are separable, the proportion isn’t right. Notice the “Death to America” portion is smaller than the side which says “nuclear development is Iran’s right.”

After I am done painting Iran as a nation of mathematicians, scientists, and philosophers, you will see that even these proportions are unfair. The history of Persian civilization is much more about higher intellect than it is about radicalism, and superstitious religiosity. I will then give an emotional dimension to this point of view by presenting one of my short stories, “The Moon Landing.” An autobiographical account of what went on in my own family the day Neil Armstrong set foot on the moon.

The moon is a good place to start this extremely brief overview of Iran’s scientific history because there is a crater on the far side of the moon named after the tenth century Persian mathematician Al Khawrazmi. Why is he so honored? In small part because his influential book on arithmetic taught Europe how to write numbers and do arithmetic in the efficient way we do now. It was extremely cumbersome to do multiplication, division and fractions and advanced mathematics in Roman numerals, and the absence of the number zero was a huge impediment in the development of European science and mathematics. In his book, Khawrazmi compiled the methods of Indian mathematics which Europe then adopted wholesale. This includes our “Arabic” numeral system which is really the Indian numeral system introduced to Europe through Khawrazmi’s scholarly work.

In larger part Khawrazmi is honored today because he is known as the father of algebra-- which is a shortened version of the title of another of his books Al jabr va moghabelat. Today this first of the “difficult math subjects” is a prerequisite to taking calculus, differential equations and beyond. Why? because it was historically the prerequisite to the development of these mathematical tools of science.

Khawrazmi and other Iranian mathematicians like Al-Karaji (10th century), born in a town a few miles west of where I grew up in Tehran, helped develop the easy way in which engineers and scientists set up equations and go about solving them in the algorithmic way that they do now. In fact our word “algorithm” is probably a Medieval mis-pronunciation of the name of the author Al-khawrazmi.

The emphasis of Persian algebra on the use of algorithms is a leap of the intellect roughly analogous to the invention of the computer, because algebra is a machine that lifts a huge burden of thinking from us by reducing analysis to mindless operations—the way we let software do most of the work these days. Prior to algebra, problems had to be reasoned through every step of the way. Using Algebra as a lever, mathematics could now bite off much bigger problems than it could chew in the past. This machine of the mind began what I privately call “the industrial revolution of mathematics.” Because it triggered the invention of many later mathematical machines such as calculus, without which modern science would be impossible.

But mathematics isn’t the whole of science. Let’s see what the Iranian scholar Tusi was thinking in the 13th century. He says, "Look at the world of animals and birds. They have all that is necessary for defense, protection and daily life, including strengths, courage and appropriate tools [organs].” From these observations Tusi went on to describe a theory of evolution where hereditary variability was the leading force of evolution. In words that sound like Tusi is teaching a biology class on mutation he says, “The organisms that can gain the new features faster are more variable, as a result they gain advantages over other creatures.” 600 years before Darwin Tusi did not spark a Scopes trial, though this Muslim scholar believed that humans are not only related to apes, but that apes are in fact a kind of human. Iran’s 13th century Darwin.

Here’s is another` Persian scientist, Biruni, being a geologist in the 11th century: “But if you see the soil of India with your own eyes and meditate on its nature, if you consider the rounded stones found in the earth however deeply you dig. Stones that are huge near the mountains and where the rivers have a violent current. Stones that are of smaller size at a greater distance from the mountain. And where the streams flow more slowly stones that appear pulverized in the shape of sand. Or Where the streams begin to stagnate near their mouths and near the sea. If you consider all this you can scarcely help thinking that India was once a sea, which by degrees has been filled up by the alluvium of the streams. Iran’s11th century Charles Lyell.

Let’s move on to the astounding genius of the scientist/philosopher Ibn-Sina who lived in Hamedan, the same city my father was born. He proposed that a body stays in the same place or continues moving at the same speed in a straight line unless acted upon by an external force. This law of physics --rediscovered by Galileo 400 years later—is known as Newton’s first law of motion. And Ibn-Sina doesn’t stop with Newton, he says “If every single thing throughout the world was motionless, time would have no meaning.” Iran’s 11th century Einstein.

These scientists aren’t unknowns of history among Iranians. Our affection for these men of science is encoded in the myths and legends I grew up with. In a story reminiscent of some we tell today about the antics of the brilliant American physicist Richard Feynman, Ibn-Sina is said to have been such a wonderous physician that he could no longer stand being mobbed by his patients. Instead he had a rope one end of which was in the waiting room and the other in his office. The patient held on to one end of the rope and ibn-Sina, holding on to the other end, would diagnose him. One day, just to test him, a man brought in his cat and put the cat’s paw on the rope. When he opened his perscription on the way out, it said, “There’s nothing wrong with your cat that a less stingy feeding wouldn’t remedy.”

Ibn-Sina, who did not believe in alchemy, studied and severely criticized the works of another great 10th century Persian scientist, Al Razi who was born in a city just a few miles south of Tehran, where I was born. This alchemist is credited with the discovery of alcohol and its use as an antiseptic in medicine. He is also believed to have discovered sulphuric acid. Razi was a genius of classification. For instance he compiled a description of all the glassware and instruments used in standard chemsitry until recent times. The Hollywood image of the mad scientist cackling over beakers, tubes and alembics goes back to Razi. And whenever you say, “animal vegetable or mineral,” remember Razi, because he was the first to classify objects as such.

Then there’s the great Al-Haytham (11th century) , the father of optics. Persians and Arabs fight over Al-Haytham because he was born in Basra, a town that now sits just inside the border with Iraq not very far from Bushehr where Iran is building a nuclear reactor. Basra went in an out of the Persian empire as the empire expanded and shrank throughout history. When Al-Haytham was born, Basra was in Southern Persia, so Iranians claim him. It is highly likely that the ethnicity of this great physicist was Arabic-- unlike the other scholars I have mentioned, who were ethnically Persian. But the very fact that Persians fight to claim Al-Haytham suggests the zeal with which the Iranian civilization collects and protects scientific heritage.

Putting my nationalist hat back on, the great Persian Empire scientist Al Haytham studied the reflection of light by curved mirrors, and refraction by water and the atmosphere. He investigated the magnifying power of lenses, discussed rainbows, binocular vision and so on. He also corrected Ptolemy and Euclid’s idea that vision results from the eye sending out rays to the object. In a thought experiment very Einsteinian in texture he argued that if the eye sends out rays to the object, then nearer objects should become visible earlier than distant objects. Then using the scientific method he simply did the experiment when he closed his eyes and opened them again to the stars. The distant stars of course became immediately visible, disproving earlier theories of vision.

And on and on and on… to show that Iran’s desire for advanced technologies is much less a quest for political power than a desire to preserve an important chunk her national soul.

I hope at this point I have been able to show that the demarcation in the above photograph is not only qualitatively correct—one side is bigger than the other-- but that it is quantitatively unfair. Iranian's legal rights under the NPT are of hugely greater concern for Iran than her beef with the United States or Israel.

So what happened to the iranians? With this tremendous amount of science and mathematics, why didn’t Iran start the rennaisance instead of Europe. I’m broaching the topic even though it is outside the scope of this discussion because the question is such an obvious one it deserves to be mentioned. Too bad it can’t be explored here. Enough to say that Iranians believe the Mongol invasion in the thirteenth century which decimated Iran’s population had something to do with it. It’s not the whole story by any means—Iran’s social and political structure , and also its geography were major factors--but whatever the reasons, in July of 1969 when the Americans landed on the moon all of this history caught up with us in a very personal way.

My short story “The Moonlanding,” was written against this backdrop of national soul searching

Gilgamesh the play

Ari Siletz — Sat, 18 Aug 2007 22:13:00 +0000

In the thirteenth century A.D. there was Rumi and Shams. In 2700 B.C. there was King Gilgamesh and Enkidu. The heroes, Rumi and Gilgamesh, were civilized masters of their domain, enjoying a small greatness in their time. Shams and Enkidu were untutored outsiders who burst in from the wild to become the heroes’ beloved companions. The same extraordinary spiritual upheaval created by the unlikely friendships launched both Rumi and Gilgamesh out of their time and into legend.

George Charbak’s play, The Epic of Gilgamesh with a long prologue, thankfully ignores the Enkidu-Shams comparison. In fact Enkidu’s god protector is simply referred to as the sun god, sidestepping the god’s real name Shamash, the root for the Arabic word Shams.

The play takes a few moments, however, to update the ancient epic with current events. There are references to the Iraq war—the city of Uruk where the epic begins is in Iraq. Also, in the early scenes, Gilgamesh displays George Bush’s demagoguery in his abuse of the word “terror.” But soon the story’s universality and timelessness overwhelms local concerns.

The most dramatic scene in the play is commanded into being by Bella Warda (Ramazan-Nia) as the goddess Ishtar. Though there is no intermission in the one hundred minute dramatic marathon, Warda’s “hell hath no fury..” rebuke of Gilgamesh effectively splits the play into two acts: the hero’s triumphs before he spurned Ishtar’s sexual advance, and the sorrows he endures after that.

Ishtar’s frustration with Gilgamesh ultimately leads to Enkidu’s death. The loss of his beloved friend transforms the hero from Aristotle’s “speaking animal” to a conscious human being aware of time and mortality. Roham Shaikhani, who plays the handsome Gilgamesh, is all instinct and appetite in the first act. His eyes widen innocently at pleasure. His spry movements full of the confidence of youth. But in the second act Shaikhani’s sensuous bulk is harpooned and bleeding. Gilgamesh no longer adventures for glory, his quest is now for immortality.

Shaikhani and Warda admirably carry the weight of this difficult play. But director Charbak has too heavily burdened Hayedeh Doroudi-Ahi with the role of Enkidu. In the epic, Enkidu is a man-beast of Sasquatchian build, whose roar makes the beasts of the forest cower . Yet Doroudi-Ahi is a slight mezzo soprano with delicate and charming Persian vowels. Why Charbak has Jane playing Tarzan is a question the director must know his audience will explore.

The choice of a woman for the role of Gilgamesh’s male friend creates interesting complications. An absence is felt of a romance between Enkidu and Gilgamesh. If they are so intimate, why don’t they get together? A traditional casting would have brought out the hue of homosexuality sometimes implied in the Rumi-Shams relationship. Is this is what Charbak wished to avoid? Unlikely, because with Enkidu as a woman, her sex scene with a temple prostitute-- played by Samera Esmeir—has now become a lesbian love act.

Some clever comedy by Babak Mokhtari comes to the rescue. Mokhtari plays the messenger sent by Gilgamesh to offer the prostitute to Enkidu in order to tame him/her. In his role as pimp, Mokhtari is so excessively voyeuristic that the audience feels chastised in even thinking about gender affairs that are only the characters’ business. The comic reproach goes a long way; a couple of scenes explicitly call for nudity, yet no one on stage takes their clothes off, and the audience is too intimidated to complain.

Gilgamesh’s quest for immortality ultimately leads him to Utnapishtim, the literary predecessor to Old Testament’s Noah. Michael Green, who plays Utnapishtim, is one of the actors who appears as several characters throughout the play. His demeanor as a biblical patriarch does much to reinforce the sense of ancientness in the narration.

Ancientness brings me to the reason for this review. The Epic of Gilgamesh with a long prologue is an entertaining work that need not suffer analysis to be enjoyed. But when I came home from the show I read a recent article about a 6000 year old archeological site in Qom that has been bulldozed to make room for a construction project. The friend who forwarded me the article prefaced the email with, “There probably was once a Persian Gilgamesh standing on the steppes of this site raging against the gods.”

Here in Berkeley California, Gilgamesh is daily resurrected in a theatre on Ashby street. There in Qom Iran, our ancient rage against the gods is consciously buried along with all the other corpses in that city. Some places it is easier to find immortality.

Cinema Evin, a film review. Really.

Ari Siletz — Sun, 22 Jul 2007 21:22:00 +0000

In his film Salam Cinema, Mohsen Makhmalbaf reveals how artfully a director can manipulate non-professional actors into fake states of mind appropriate to his designs. For example the director may ask his actress how long ago she quit smoking. “Three years ago,” she may say to the camera. The off camera question the audience hears could be, “How long ago did your mother die?” The sense of proud accomplishment in the original answer projects a sinister complexity in the mother-daughter relationship that is likely outside the range of even the best professional actors. The prison interrogator who directed Haleh Esfanidari’s "confession" video—we will call him Evinpour—does not have Makhmalbaf’s skills. His attempts at realism fail at the levels of set design and editing. Evinpour has succeeded, however, in manipulating Esfandiari into believing she is speaking to a friendly listener.

In the video aired on Iranian TV, Esfanidari sits in a couch, comfortable and relaxed, surrounded by the earth tones of the furniture. As our minds cooperate with the director to suspend disbelief, the small refrigerator intruding clumsily into the frame suggests that Evinpour himself has been unable to shake off the prison aura. If this prop is meant as an association with food and therefore good treatment, a basket of fruit on the coffee table would have harmonized much better with the intended scheme. In the context of a detainee however, the glaringly sterile white of the refrigerator and its cubic shape draws the mind not to food but to claustrophobia, and stories of trapped children suffocating in old refrigerators. In Farsi the word “yakhchaal” and “siaahchaal” share an ominous syllable meaning “pit”, and even in English, the word “cooler” is a slang for jail.

Critically, the set lacks windows, or other backgrounds to suggest a sense of the spacious outside. Check out the nighttime cityscape background to the American late night shows. These create a feeling connection with the rest of the world, and a sense of time of day, the absence of which in Evinpour’s film strongly creates a mood of confinement. Here’s a feeble director whose sense of illusion is on a par with a child practicing his first coin trick.

To properly edit a film in the confession genre, it has to be made with as few cuts as possible. The audience must be made to believe they are reading into the mind of an ideologically repentant character, not puzzling over a collage of different clippings like the glued newspaper typefaces in a Hollywood ransom note. Evinpour’s sometimes unnecessary editing cuts work against this purpose. For example Esfandiari talks about a UCLA sponsored conference which regularly invites 150 Middle Easterners. She says the participants are encouraged not to discuss the proceedings with outsiders. Then there is a cut to a different camera, where she continues to say that naturally a communication network establishes itself between the participants. Is she talking about same conference? We can’t be sure because of the cut.

We can’t even be sure of the order of Esfandiari’s statements because there are too many editing cuts. Sequence of questions and answers is hugely important in a fake documentary. I folded with a pair of aces, then I realized my opponent held nothing is sad in a poker game. I realized my opponent had nothing then I folded with a pair of aces is stupid. In his primitive work the director has not created an illusory time sense for us to judge motives and actions in proper order. There is no amber glass of tea slowly yielding to dainty sips, no classic cartoon on TV, making ironic fun of the confessor, no window into the progress of the day. Is Evinpour underestimating the intelligence of his audience, or is his own intelligence below an awareness of insult?

Certainly not the latter. As a film director Evinpour is an Ed Wood but as an interrogator he is a Haans Scharpff.

Allied World War II airmen are still grateful to the affable Luftwaffe interrogator Hanns Scharpff for never even raising his voice, and never letting them know what it was they were revealing to him.

Scharpff: “Your forces must be running low on supplies because we’ve seen that the color of your tracers from plane guns has changed from red to white.”

Detainee:[probably trying to discourage the enemy and humiliate his intelligence gathering] “No, the change in color just means they [the plane guns] are getting to the end of the [ammunition] spool.”

Now German fighter planes knew which allied bombers in the formation are ripe for a kill because they have to reload their guns.

Sharpff, who later became an interrogation consultant to the US Airforce, never let his subjects know what information he was after. He was a brilliantly creative practitioner of modern interrogation techniques--the use of torture in Abu Ghraib and Guantanamo is a manifestation of post 9-11 anti-Muslim vengefulness; it has little to do with information gathering.

The interrogator, Evinpour, is after a way to discredit opponents of the Ahmadinejad faction by showing they are gullible participants in a repeat of the rebellion orchestrated by the United States against Mossadegh. A rebellion now being restaged worldwide, beginning in the Balkans and the former Soviet Union states. The scholar, Esfandiari, on the other hand seems to have been led to believe director Evinpour, like one of her charming young students, is impressed with the “importance” of her position in the Wilson center. He just wants to know how his mentor is defending Iran’s civilization against violent US action.

In a statement that is noticeably left out of the written transcript of the interview (scroll down),
Esfandiari says that efforts to change some elements of Iranian policy making could influence American decision makers.

To a sympathetic ear that sounds like Dr. Esfandiari's motive has been to use her influential academic position in the United States to save Iran from the fate of Iraq.

Why was this crucial statement not edited out of the video? Evinpour is a master interrogator, but when it comes to filmmaking, he is a careless hack.

Dr. Homayoun at Berkeley

Ari Siletz — Tue, 12 Jun 2007 19:22:00 +0000

“We all made mistakes,” confessed one member of an audience of fifty or so that had gathered at UC Berkeley to see Dr. Daryoosh Homayoun. The former Pahlavi era minister was there to talk about Iran’s historic struggles with modernity, but many had showed up hoping to confront the intellectual with his Pahlavi past and to dispute his controversial call for a constitutional monarchy in Iran.

The highlight of the energetic and sometimes noisy exchange was the moment following that sadly introspective, “We all made mistakes.” The room went quiet, like a daycare center where children fighting over a rag doll had torn off a limb, and now stood in shocked remorse, each holding a piece.

If Shiism hadn’t won the day, we wondered, and our Leninist/Maoist/Stalinist naiveté had inherited Iran’s revolution, would the country be any better off today? And Homayoun, perhaps remembering the cruel tactics of the Pahlavi dynasty nodded in apparent acknowledgment. Was he admitting the moral errors, or did he simply regret the political miscalculations of the regime he was part of? His praise for Reza Shah and Ataturk, who tried to secularize by force, suggests the latter.

“The Turks worship Ataturk,” he pointed out authoritatively. When confronted with the human cost of this reform, the strikingly tall 78 year old statesman displayed the pain of wisdom on his still charismatic face, as though to say, “if only you understood the responsibilities of power.” Having once walked the corridors of power, Homayoun’s lanky stride still echoes marbled floors. The slight bend of his shoulders appears less a sign of aging than the burden of his critics’ adolescent idealism.

Watching Homayoun’s composure, I would have guessed--incorrectly--an aristocratic military background. He declined to drink his lecturer’s bottled water without a glass. Looking around, he spotted some plastic cups near the coffee pot, then directed the organizers to bring him one. There was no “thank you,” just in case this breach in hospitality was not simply American informality but an Iranian sign of disrespect.

During his lecture Homayoun seemed to talk down to his audience. Too many of his statements appeared as asides for tutoring rather than information supporting his case. This misunderstanding occurs because his presentation lacks modern linear structure. Like passengers on a Tehran bus, some of his points dangle off the sides of the discourse waiting for a proper seat. At one point he asked the audience to let him know when to stop talking.

Homayoun was quite succinct, however, when it came to clarifying the difference between modernity and modernization. The straight forward argument boils down to this: handing a scalpel to a butcher doesn’t transform him into a surgeon. Modernity is not the same as industrialization or better financial institutions. It is a mindset of humanism, secularism and rationalism. The Iranian culture does not have this mindset, therefore Iran is not a modern nation.

His solution: toss the culture. A nation’s identity, he believes, is in her history, not in her culture. As to how any Iranian would submit to this cultural lobotomy, leaving only memories of facts, Homayoun offered no guidance. Nor did he develop a theory as to what is really meant by culture. Having correctly handed the scalpel to the surgeon, we now wonder if the doctor plans to kill the patient. Was the butcher safer after all?

There were indications in Homayoun’s discourse that he isn’t really suggesting a lobotomy but an Islamectomy. Yet even there we find that Dr. Homayoun misunderstands the function of the organ he is planning to remove. This is apparent in a partial autobiography where he remembers spending time in jail with an Iranian Muslim during the chaos of the revolution. The man was studying one of the many Islamic advice books titled, Explanation of Problems (towzih-ol-masaael). Here is what Homayoun says:

“A couple of times we asked him to read parts of the book for us. He stopped reading for us when he saw our uncontrolled laughter. After that, every evening we would force him to give us the book and entertained ourselves by reading it. Never before did we have time to make the acquaintance of such things [bold typeface emphasis mine]. We could not believe that these were the people who had defeated us, and how was it possible for our nation, under the leadership of their intelligentsia, to long for the government of such characters in preference to us.”

What Homayoun found funny was likely the books straight faced Dr. Phil responses to questions like, If I have sex with my goat, is the meat still halaal? The answer: The meat is haraam to you but halaal to others. What we may observe-- after we’re done laughing--is that this well-reasoned answer provides a disincentive for romancing ones livestock, and at the same time makes sure the meat is not wasted.

It is also mindful of the economy as it averts a possible panic in the community for certified virgin meat. Note the adeptness of the ayatollah in tackling the problems of sexuality and poverty in a rural environment. While Homayoun et al. ridiculed the simple peasant as being beneath their sympathy, the religious scholar took the time to understand the man as a sexual being. In this autobiographical passage Homayoun has answered his own question as to why his accidental cellmate chose “the government of such characters in preference to us.”

Homoayoun goes on to say that he spent the dull waiting times during his prison escape reading Moby Dick and the works of Saul Bellow. Fully devoting their minds to understanding the West, the Iranian elite found themselves intellectually unprepared to take on the Mullahs.

And perhaps the ayatollahs better understand even the West. Does modernity give us a ladder to climb out of the vulgar irrationality of human sexuality? Sure, but marketing experts, film directors and the artistic elite of the West more often use the ladder to go farther down, not up. There is research to inidcate that pornography played a central role in the the development of Western civilization. Ertoic imagery was one of the earliest uses of the printing press, advancing its development. Today it is a common belief among mass media professionals that the course of technologies such as the internet and DVDs are often determined by the porn industry. The obscene amount of energy generated around the Hejab issue both by its Muslim supporters and its Western detractors is as clearly explained by the ayatollahs' comedic obsession with genitalia as with Captain Ahab’s tragic obsession with his Moby Dick.

Ironically, Homayoun’s most controversial idea, his support for a constitutional monarchy is a well calculated concession of intellect to lowly instinct. Our herd instinct in particular. Common people love royalty, and will rally around the symbol. Getting past my gag reflex, I nibbled a little on his monarchy idea and found it actually palatable. In a crisis of divisiveness a throne is a handier piece of furniture than seats in the parliament. In harmonizing our ethnic diversity chanting “Jaavid Shah” compares well with chanting “death to America." Unified under a crown, perhaps we won't need unification under dangerous slogans. In the alphabet of our daily concerns Zionism can go back where it belongs with Zulbia and Zereshk polo.

Taking his cue from Homayoun’s political philosophy, Iran’s handsome new king would distance Iran from the filth and fury of the third world, allying us instead with the cream of civilization, the West. I would quite enjoy living in the happy kingdom of Iran.

But when I step out of Disneyland, I see a world where the disparity between rich and poor nations has created an empty niche of power. This particular niche has been exploited ever since Jesus Christ showed one could get a following by saying “blessed are the poor.” The only trouble with Iran preaching rebellion to destitute nations is that the Islamic regime itself has only a primitive concept of human rights, democracy, and non-violence. Otherwise it is well within the mandate of the Iranian revolution to confront injustice in world affairs, and once again have our philosophies, culture, and management style affect the course of History. The limits of our national ambitions are farther out than Homayoun would allow. During audience exchanges we spent much time arguing about the limits of scope of the 1906 revolution and had only unspoken despair for the vastly larger, global scope of our 1979 revolution. Yet in its degree of activism--though not in methods--Iran's revolution is not only alive but thriving in the Islamic Republic.

Despite the many instances when I thought Homayoun was wrong, there was a moment when he touched my soul. With a sense of plea that his proud voice could not hide, he reminded us that he was at the helm of affairs for only one year in Iran, but for sixty other years his service to the country was unquestionable. He mentioned being the publisher of the popular paperback series Ketaab Jeebee. I remember as a youth delighting at every new release, saving money for the next one. The fatherly figure adeptly defending himself from our reproach had helped give us the very tools of the intellect we were using to disagree with him. As he had destroyed, so had he built, and along the way he had made mistakes. We all made mistakes.

Haleh Esfandiari

Ari Siletz — Fri, 01 Jun 2007 00:32:00 +0000

I’m still scratching my head as to why Iranian officials had to wear masks to confiscate Dr. Haleh Esfandiari’s passport. I’ve never had my passport taken away, but in the movies it’s usually a uniformed civil servant in a booth at the airport. He types your passport info into a computer, there’s a moment of suspense, then he picks up the phone, giving you a dirty look. He never wears a ski mask, and if his government has trusted him with a weapon, it’s usually a sidearm, not a switchblade.

Granted this is just Hollywood, but I’ve seen my share of airports and can testify to the realism of the costume. Even in Reykjavik, where it gets really cold, government officials don’t wear their ski masks on the job. Criminals on the other hand sometimes wear masks so their victims can’t identify them to the authorities. But the men who took away Esfandiari's travel papers were the authorities. If the incident weren’t so tragically real, this would be a perfect setup for an ethnic joke.

And why dispatch no less than three switchblades after the frail woman? Where in her intelligence file does it say that this 67 year old can overpower two grown men, and that it takes at least a third blade to subdue her? I imagine that even as her heart was pounding with the fear of being knifed, the scholar’s brain tallied the two extra assailants as part of Iran’s unemployment problem. And then I wonder if this is why the regime is so afraid of her. Not that she may be a spy, but because she can count the failures.

Arithmetic isn’t something Esfandiari's accusers are good at. Their long list of suspicions published in a Kayhan article don’t add up. The article says that after the revolution Esfandiari fled—goreekht--Iran. I couldn’t find anywhere in the article as to how this fugitive made her subsequent visits to Iran without being arrested. When was she forgiven? Then there are the dates and places that have been quite reasonably challenged. Of course, this case shouldn’t be tried on the web. Esfandiari’s guilt or innocence is for a court of law to decide.

Unfortunately in recent years the Islamic regime has treated its laws as a set of intentions akin to New Year’s eve resolutions, to be discarded when temptation overwhelms character. In this spirit, Esfandiari has been arbitrarily denied access to legal counsel. The Law, that powerful, complex institution standing above all other organizations, individuals, and situations isn’t there to give objective meaning to Esfandiari’s guilt or innocence. The accused is trapped inside Iran’s bizarre legal Eden.

Astonishingly, there’s hope for an expulsion. Consistent international pressure has proven effective in resolving human rights cases, even when the oppressor is not otherwise rewarded or bribed! After trying to riddle why this is true, I gave up and began searching the literature. Turns out social psychologists are also flummoxed by the phenomenon(page 14). It seems there's a moral magic to the collective stare of humanity that awakens the sense of decency in human rights violators.

An erudite member of the Iranian-American community currently sits behind bars instead of behind her desk at the Wilson Center for Scholars. My hopeful stare is on her captors.

Haale

Ari Siletz — Sat, 26 May 2007 22:11:00 +0000

Before Haale Gafori, no singer had made me dig up my collection of Forough Farrokhzad poems to find the one where the poet plants her ink-stained hands in the garden. Yes, Shahram Nazeri, Mohammad Reza Shajarian, Khatereh Parvaneh occasionally send me scampering to the bookshelf for a familiar Masnavi or Ghazal, but flipping through Forough after a concert is new. Finally, after years of putting up with that stubborn staccatoed synthesizer beat in Persian restaurants, a new kind of Iranian-Western theme has arrived that does not trigger a Pavlovian response to order the koobideh*.

Haale, the thirty-something Iranian singing talent is from New York, touring California. Her audience, like her music, is developing fast. These days her mystic compositions are making headway with spiritually curious Americans who delight in Eastern exotica. During Haale’s concert, I watch a young blonde in the front row sway to the lazy throbbing of the music. As the rhythm builds, the woman can no longer bear to remain seated; she stands up and twirls on her toes, palms up, head to one side, like a whirling darvish. Suddenly she skips half a continent and her darvish dance morphs into a reasonably watchable Bollywood routine. Yet this audience member is not being naïve, Haale just gave us a slight suggestion of a raga, accompanied by a hint of a tabla beat. And not just any raga or tabla beat, this texture comes straight out of the familiar John Lennon repertoire. As the saying goes, genius steals! Haale is not merely influenced by the psychedelic sixties, she is resurrecting it. In Haale’s music, the calloused fingers that Jimmy Hendrix planted alongside Farrokhzad’s ink-stained hands have sprouted.

Like Farrokhzad, Haale is overtly sensuous in her artistic mysticism. Stealing a trick from the rock repertoire of stage moves, Haale surrenders her breath to the microphone, letting it rise from her chest into a sexy nasal groan. Rumi’s drunken words first spill out of her mouth then cascade down a length of dark, disheveled hair that only a Hafez could describe. For a moment during the concert I really understood why the Ayatollahs are so intimidated by Iranian women’s hair. As with many superbly talented stage musicians, Haale is difficult to capture in the two dimensions of a photograph. Her beauty is encoded as much in the alluring way she moves and sings as in the aesthetic symmetries of her face.

Unlike many on the music stage, Haaleh doesn’t seem to make a conscious effort to exploit her sex appeal. She goes only so far physically before she turns inwards spiritually. This may or may not limit her marketability depending on whether or not she becomes aware of some of the other ways she may be holding back. She uses the Persian setar mostly as a drone instrument, and it is clear that her acquaintance with the radif of Persian music has only just begun. At times her singing instincts bring her very close to a chah-chah**, which she declines to fully develop.

The Persian chah-chah is a potentially groundbreaking development in rock music. In 1973 a singer named Clare Torry astonished the Western world by giving voice to a musical sensation that many Iranians consider routine in classical Persian music. Torry gave us the famous vocal, “The Great Gig in the Sky” in the Pink Floyd album, Dark Side of the Moon. This wordless lament is arguably the most deeply sensuous rendition of love, yearning and rapture in popular Western music, and yet, according to Pink Floyd, it is about Death and Annihilation. If you asked this most Sufi of popular Western vocals to compare itself to what Persian classical singing has already accomplished, it might say, "Maa hanooz andar khameh yek koocheh eem.***"

As popular Western music turns more and more to the past, recycling idioms from previous decades, Haale has the opportunity to upend the uncreative eclecticism by going full throttle in fusing the soul of Iran’s ancient musical traditions to the kind of profound rock that David Gilmore, Carlos Santana, and Jimi Hendrix began. Then the world can sit back and listen as a new Western musical journey through the haft shahreh eshgh**** begins. Yesterday in San Rafael, California I met a slight, down to earth, musician with enough talent to lead this journey.

*A favorite Iranian kabob dish
** A from of vocalization that sounds like yodeling to the unfamiliar ear.
***Literally "we are still around the bend of the first alley." A humble reference by Rumi comparing Attar's spiritual accomplishments to his own.
****Literally, "The seven cities of love." According to Rumi, the spiritual real estate Attar covered while Rumi was rounding that "bend of the first alley."

An amicus brief to the Iranian Supreme Court

Ari Siletz — Sun, 29 Apr 2007 02:03:00 +0000

Note: An amicus curiae brief is a letter from a party who is not the plaintiff or the defendant in a case, but who would like the court to consider the ramifications of its verdict beyond the particulars of the case.

The Iranian Supreme Court recently overturned the murder convictions of 6 Basij vigilantes who executed a young couple, Reza Nejadmalayeri and Shohreh Nikpour, on grounds that the couple’s behavior was unIslamic. Since a last appeal to undo this decision is still possible, here is a plea to the full membership body of Iran’s Supreme Court to consider the political and economic consequences of its final verdict.

In 1875 the United States Supreme Court decision, United States v. Cruikshank overturned the murder convictions of a band of white vigilantes who had participated in the lynching of several black men. The Cruikshank case and the Nejadmalayeri case are connected in ways that go beyond the de facto sanctioning of lynch mobs.

Many decades after the infamous Cruikshank decision--and many other racist verdicts--the United States was unable to morally defend itself against Soviet anti-American propaganda. During the Cold War competition for global leadership an amicus brief by the US justice department urged the Supreme Court to consider the international ramifications of how it interprets the US constitution. Similarly, in an atmosphere of anti-Iranian sentiment in the West, Nejadmalayeri should be judged in the light of the current threats to Iran’s national security.

War:
The most immediate threat to Iran’s sovereignty is the possibility of a military strike by the United States. Though support for the Iraq war is fast fading, it is a mistake to take this as an indication that post 9-11 America is ready to make its peace with the Islamic world. None of the leading US presidential candidates, Democrat or Republican are willing to take the option of a military—possibly nuclear--strike off the table. In a country where polls guide politicians' public statements it is not hard to guess what the candidates’ internal polls are revealing about the American state of mind relative to Iran. America’s internecine dispute is mainly about how badly the Iraq war was managed. No American leader is seriously considering reversing the policy of military involvement in the Middle East.

Allowing the basij vigilantes to go free gives the impression that the Islamic Regime has abdicated its authority to the mob. If the full membership body of Iran’s Supreme Court upholds Nejadmalayeri, any anti-war argument which cites Iran’s national sovereignty will lack a solid foundation. A government which does not appropriate enough authority to itself to fully administer the laws of the land, does not have a reasonable claim to legitimacy. In the past, the United States has gained support for military action abroad by successfully demonstrating that the country she is about to invade is run by warlords. Somalia, Afghanistan and the Balkans are examples. The Iranian government’s sanctioning of street justice strengthens such a case for war against Iran.

Economy:
Global warming concerns have made nuclear energy an attractive alternative to oil. As a result nuclear power generation is increasing steadily throughout the world. In the near future any country that cannot generate its own nuclear power will be at a serious economic disadvantage.
International fear of Iran’s nuclear technology program is not just about atom bombs. Due to the extremely dangerous nature of nuclear material, even civilian use of nuclear energy requires trustworthy guardianship. Iran’s government must demonstrate a high level of skill and professionalism in administrating the law, so as to foster respect for order among its citizens. Sanctioning vigilantism is a step in the wrong direction. At this point even the most well intentioned defenders of Iran’s right to advanced technologies would be reluctant to recommend scientific cooperation with Iran. Iran’s growing population urgently needs nuclear energy, and the nation’s efforts to obtain it would be hurt if the current Nejadmalayeri verdict is left to stand.

Civil War:
Citizens give their consent to be governed in order to enjoy the benefits of protection from the governing body. Victims of state-sanctioned vigilantism are denied the important protection of due process. So far secular Iranians have weighed the benefits of rebellion versus its costs and have decided that in the balance it is better to shrug off basij interference as annoyances. But once basij vigilantism goes beyond harassment to include physical harm or death, this balance will quickly change and the citizenry will withdraw the legitimacy of the regime. If Nejadmalayeri is left to stand it could become the turning point where Iran’s pacifism towards the current regime will shift to militancy.

The Cold War eventually led The United States Supreme Court away from Cruickshank towards Brown v. Board of Education, the landmark case which ended racial segregation in America. This turned out to be of enormous benefit to the country. Without Brown v. Board of Education The United States would not today be able to project her power across the globe, as she would be internally wracked by civil strife. Likewise Iran could benefit from her own landmark supreme court decisions which interpret Iran’s constitution with an eye towards national unity and international reputation.

Several years ago the Israeli Supreme Court blocked the attempt by the Israel Land Administration to create separate Arab and Jewish housing developments. The president of Israel’s Supreme Court, Aharon Barak was able to protect Israeli Muslims from discrimination by citing a famous legal precedent. The case he cited was from another country's law history: Brown v. Board of Education. In the long run there is barakat in extending the protection of our laws to all humans, even if at first it seems we are doing so out of expedience. Now Iran's Supreme Court has the opportunity to turn Nejadmalayeri into a Brown v. Board of Education. Leaving it as a Cruickshank is harmful to civilization, Iran's in particular.

The trouble with denying the Holocaust

Ari Siletz — Sun, 17 Dec 2006 00:33:00 +0000

As a leader of a predominantly Shiite country, President Ahamadinejad understands the utility of politicizing grief. For over thirteen centuries Shiism has found sustenance in mournful rituals commemorating the death of its Imams. In the mind of a Shiite politician, the Holocaust story is a familiar emotional device for amplifying and channeling political power. However, this interpretation of the Holocaust as an instrument of manipulation is behind the times. In the modern world, the Holocaust lesson serves civilization by helping prevent atrocities that would occur otherwise.

Unfortunately the prevention is not complete. In 1994 Hutus in Rwanda massacred a million Tutsis (and moderate Hutus) in a matter of three months. In the 1990’s Bosnian Serbs attempted to cleanse Bosnia of its non-Serb population; mass graves are still being found. In the mid seventies the Khmer Rouge systematically killed off millions in the ideological cleansing of Cambodia. Our generation does not need to take the word of historians for these events; we witnessed the rising body count daily in the news. Even as I write, the killings in Darfur continue. Genocide it seems is more the historical rule than the exception. Ask any Iranian. Persian culture still displays the scars of the Mongol decimation of Iran’s population eight centuries ago.

Despite our instinct for creating civilizations, the human conscience is a fragile organ of cognition. Our sense of right and wrong is easily overwhelmed by anger, jealousy, greed, or suspicion. This is not all bad news; the unusually rapid evolution of the human brain seems to have been the result of competition against other members of our own species. The down side however--though few of us can face the thought--is that human societies are prone to murdering each other.

The continual refreshing of the horrors of the Holocaust has been the most successful strategy in controlling outbreaks of genocidal behavior in the West. Minorities living in the United States or Europe enjoy the benefits of multiculturalism--arts, music, fashion, food, architecture, cinema, festivals, religion—without worrying about the hazards of being in the minority.

After 9-11, some radio talk show hosts provoked their American listeners by asking “can Muslims be good Americans?” Five million Americans with Muslim backgrounds could have found themselves in concentration camps, or worse. There was no American Bosnia because Holocaust awareness has strengthened the infrastructure of tolerance in America. What kept American Muslims safe during the dangerous times right after 9-11 was Sophie’s Choice, Schindler’s List, The Pianist, Judgment at Nuremberg and a host of other movies, television shows, books and novels about the Holocaust. For years such works have relentlessly shamed and marginalized anyone who would think of putting people in concentration camps.

President Ahmadinejad says European laws against denying the Holocaust are a curtailment of the freedom of speech. He believes these laws are a testament to Jewish power in the West. Here I offer a parallel explanation: these curtailments are a testament to the nearness of another Holocaust in Europe. What European leaders fear more than Jewish power is another Hitler. In the United States we are reminded of the closeness of this peril whenever a Mel Gibson delivers an anti-Semitic rant, or a Michael Richards goes into racist rage, or a policeman brutally tasers an Iranian-American student.

President Ahmadinejad says that guilt created by the Holocaust manipulates Western powers into supporting Israel's harsh behavior towards the Palestinians. Be that as it may, acknowledging the Holocaust has a positive function for civilization which we must not give up even as we condemn its abuses.