Eastward to Doha

The Color Gatorade

It has been around long enough now that we stop seeing the yellow. But when it first went up at the beginning of this academic year, all we could see in every direction was that yellow, the color of lemon-lime gatorade. It is the Qatar Foundation's attempt at an international publicity campaign to promote their goal of making people THINK. Or at least to start thinking, according to one of the signs up in Education City. Whether the 'eye-catching' color was a well thought-out plan, however, is questioned by the aesthetic senses. Big plastic letters on the grass, signs on every light post, gigantic billboards, t-shirts and placards--all yellow.

   

 

 My personal favorite: the THINK campaign in Dulles airport in Washington, DC, next to an ad for a wine bar. It can also be seen in London Heathrow. 

 

Westward from Doha

After a vacuum of silence for most of two years, it occurred to me on the way work today that the final thirty days in Doha might be worth chronicling. There could be a few before and afters, some new landscapes, and more odd stories. There's the gatorade campaign and the potential of melting astro-turf; more construction and destruction; more pictures filled with monochrome landscapes; more facades, visual and otherwise; some meditations on how money can't buy happiness; near-death driving experiences; and some more flying horses. At least the blog is something to do during the commercial breaks while I am servicing my new addiction to various television series re-runs from years ago that are now being broadcast here...

Story #1: This is a plant I bought, growing with the building outside of my window. The plant died when I went away for a week, but the blossoms dried crisp on the plant, making it look alive when its actually dead. Very Doha.

Innagural Commencement

This weekend, over seven hundred people gathered at the Museum of Islamic Art in Doha to celebrate Georgetown's first commencement exercises in Qatar. It was the usual mix of grandeur, absurdity, and that historical feeling.

As all gatherings in Doha, there were round reception tables, flowers flown in, and munchies. The museum view across the water to the growing skyline was impressive, however.



The first order of business was to get dressed. Academic robes can be quite confusing things.


Then there was a lot--a whole lot--of standing around and waiting. Eventually the task of herding cats into alphabetic order began. To the far left in orange is Anthony Lake, former national security adviser to President Clinton, who is a faculty member on the Main campus, visiting Doha for the occasion.
*
(The following with thanks to my friend Mohana for taking my camera during the ceremony)

After getting dressed, lining up, waiting for the Emir to arrive and getting very sore feet, we processed into the atrium of the museum, led by the University Registrar carrying the new Georgetown mace (that thing in his hand) for the Qatar campus. Its a stick with a nob on the end, with a mix of symbols both confusing and contradictory, some Islamic architectural accents, the tree of knowledge, an open book, and some Jesuit medieval things. There is another one back on main campus that's been around for a century, but this one was made new for Qatar. There was a dinner held especially in honor of it.


Students from different nations carried in their flags.


The seniors entered with their hoods ready.


Then came the faculty, with various degrees of amusement and boredom.
 

Then some members of the board of trustees, some sheiks...



Once everybody sat down it was time for speeches. Sitting on the stage behind the podium, we (the faculty) could not hear a word of anything. The students told me later that the president gave a vacuous speech about building bridges between two cultures, and then every time he said bridge the students started laughing, and they would not remember anything else. There was a lot about the Jesuit tradition as well, which seemed out of place.



Then for the hoods, getting properly dressed...



Then diplomas, mace in foreground.



Then every student got his own photo opp. with the Georgetown President. Even when you graduate with a PhD you don't get this! These kids were spoiled...



Then it was time for the guest of honor to speak. Nancy Pelosi's husband is on the Georgetown board, and while she was not on the program, she was asked half way through the ceremony to speak. She gave a student-approved speech (since I didn't hear it, I'll rely on their testament) about compasses, astrolabes, and the contribution of "this part of the world" to the development of the West. Each student had received an engraved compass as a gift from the school the night before at the awards banquet. She had liked this symbolism. Most get blamed for overgeneralization with that phrase "this part of the world," (which I did hear in the garble several times) but she pulled it off remarkably well.



His Highness and Her Highness posing with Jack, Jim, Bob, and Jim-- the Deans, Provost and President.



The students smiling with their new yellow hoods.



The reception on the West terrace, after the ceremony.

 

Posing for happy pictures with the family.


Faculty and friends enjoying the waterside view.


And that round reception table, still with orchids, but no vegtables, as we walked back at sunset to take off those polyester robes and examine the damage to the sweat soaked dress underneath. Then it was off to the president's dinner, where I was too tired to take any pictures, and where he repeated the same speech about bridges. How to let something this abnormal slip into normal, tired cliches--that took some effort!

Beginning of Endings

For Georgetown's first class to graduate from the program in Qatar, tonight was the Senior Convocation at Education City.

From one row behind the VIP section, I could see the Qatar Symphony Orchestra (Doha's newest high culture addition), which provided live music for the occasion.

The opening prayer was translated up on the big screens to the right and left of the stage. There was indeed only one prayer.

The Georgetown students entered after the VCU, Texas A&M, Cornell and Cargnaige Melon students. Their shining faces were up on the big screen. At the end of the ceremony they would each walk through the glass doorway encircled by lights to the left. Their names were inscribed on the glass, and this was a symbol of going out into the world. Or, as the wonderfully cliched program put it: "Doors are a threshold to the home; when we come of age we must step through it to begin life's journey and venture to new horizons. The action of passing through the door emphasizes that the graduates of Education City are about to begin a new chapter in their lives." Maybe it sounds more poetic in Arabic, but the best part was that the door was too small. As they walked through, one after another of them hit their heads, ducked sideways, lost their mortar boards, stumbled, or had some moment of awkwardness, not exactly in time to the live symphony orchestra.

The next fact was perhaps the most amusing: Education City  has an anthem. Written by whom, I don't know, but every school needs a song, right? So after a bit more than a decade of existence, Education City too had aquired an anthem, sung by a student choir at this event. The lyrics sounded a bit like the door refrain, with some love of knowledge thrown in.
Did I mention they overdid the door thing? This is an image of the door projected on the big screen as the students line up to march through the other glass door, off stage.

Her Highness Sheika Mozah is on the screen behind the students, walking on stage to deliver her speech. I think it was about doors.

Here are the Georgetown names inscribed on the glass door. On Saturday, upwards of 700 people will convene at the Musuem of Islamic Art, the biggest architectural attraction in Doha (designed by IM Pei), to honor these 21 students at the Commencement.

This has got to Stop

Arabians in Wales

Three Arabian horses. Two Welsh women raised in Qatar. And an American along--for the riding, the horse shows, and the adventure.

Avril and Anton, official fans of the trip, after spending the day at Qatar Airways cargo trying to get the paperwork through for us.

The three Arabians were inside here, awaiting transfer to the air pallet.

Ibn, a.k.a Herbie, the Sheik's horse, dressed up for the cold weather in the barn in Wales.

Next to the cows, this was our abode for the first week, above, while we cleaned out the apartment-to-be, below.

Lacking a functioning toilet in the apartment, this was our pit stop for the first few weeks.

And it rained a lot, too, with lots of attending mud.

But we had this cool old beater of car we bought, and I learned to drive on the other side.

And the Arabians learned how to do their training exercises among the sheep.

And how to put up with cold water baths from the hose, not to mentioned getting rained on.

And we got to see the new babies each morning on the farm.

And there was time to take naps.

---

Eventually we went off to horse shows with the three Arabians.

It was naturally pouring rain as we set off.

And still raining when we got to the show ground. (Too wet for the camera, even, after we got out of the truck.) It rained most of the night as we slept in the horse trailer. And kept raining when we had to ride. And was still raining when we were coming home. 

Later on, other shows were better.

And we even won a little orange ribbon for all the trouble.

So who knows how we'll look back on it all...the grass was nice.

The Persian side of the Persian Gulf, III

More from Iran on election day...

Decision 1386

A Picture Instead of a Thousand Words

Elections are today and faces have come forward to accept our votes; real candidates finally made their appearance about a week ago.  With so little time granted for actual campaigning, election materials have been hard to come by.  They are found mostly in the hands of itinerant men roaming Tehran's major squares and shopping centers.  Distribution comes with a heavy dose of cynicism.  One kid handed me a flyer and said, "Look, but don't vote..."

A lack of identifiable political parties has made the campaign for parliament little more than a popularity contest.  Successful techniques of persuasion are not much different than those used to become prom king or class body president.  Who has the cooler poster?  Which candidate is wearing the flyest clothes?  Adverts take on the studied earnestness of a Glamour Shot session at the mall.  Turn your head to the left.  Tilt your chin downwards.  Rest your fist underneath.  Yes.  That's it.

How does one choose from the assortment?  How can I possibly know what Candidate X, standing alone for office, really represents?

The practical usefulness of political parties becomes abundantly clear in this environment.  For all of the yearning for post-partisan politics, the mental shortcut that the labels Republican and Democrat provide is what makes voting tolerable and more than an ad hoc exercise in picking the coolest and best looking dude.  My choice of politics may ultimately be an aesthetic choice---who would I rather hang out with, Republicans or Democrats?---it is nonetheless a choice made consistent because of the persistence of my party.  I "know" more or less what the party stands for even if I can't name one plank of its platform...

Political parties remain nascent in Iran, for reasons I do not entirely understand.  They are not formally banned, and in fact several newspapers carry party labels on their mastheads.  Nonetheless, there exists a semi-official antipathy to the practice of party politics.  Ahmadnedijad went so far as to note that of the 4500(!) candidates for the 290 available parliamentary seats, only 900 belonged to a party.  What, he asked rhetorically, is to be done with the approximately 3400 other candidates?  Doesn't that teacher, or that doctor, running as an independent deserve an equal chance to represent their country?

A considerable amount of civic education has gone into explaining to the Iranian population what a democratic election is, about the virtues of peaceful, reasoned competition at the ballot box.  Folks are shown how to vote so that their ballots are not spoiled, we are even tutored in how electoral systems function in other countries.  Almost none of these efforts have been directed towards party building.  Parties are not yet seen as a "normal" and ordinary part of electoral politics.  I couldn't help but compare Iran to the situation in Brazil, where by law political parties are assigned free airtime---during primetime---to present their platforms.

(By the way, for all of you progressive types out there, the Brazilian model is not all that it's cracked up to be.  Really, do you want to have your evening taken up by politicians?  These guys aren't exactly entertaining...Imagine having American Idol interrupted so that Howard Dean can spend an hour telling us about the virtues of the Family Home Leave Act...)

Perhaps formal parties are seen as a threat to state power.  Those in charge seem to expect that in the Iranian version of democracy, the aims of the state will neatly and naturally match the preferences of society (Hegel and the German Romantics are big hits in these parts...).  Institutionalized and socially responsive political parties, by contrast, have a nasty habit of getting uppity, the incentive to win elections spurring them to come up with timely demands on the state.  Neither entirely state nor society, an independent and healthy party system mediates between the government and the people, funneling and filtering popular demands between the two...

Elections are also how parties are held accountable.  If they can't deliver the goods, then parties lose, and maybe even disappear forever (don't hear much about the Whigs anymore, do we?).  Instead of parties, what we get here in Iran are slates, parties in embryonic form.  A group of politicians lump themselves together by disposition, reformist or conservative, rather than a formal label and agenda.  How do I know, after being elected, whether the slate has fulfilled its goals?  How is a disposition, a place on the political spectrum, to be held accountable?

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There is a campaign headquarters across the street, and seeing the lights on late one night, my uncle and I wandered in to learn more about our local aspirant.  The offices are housed in what was once a highly fashionable home, a posh assortment of polygons and rhombuses (rhombi?) stacked together.  Now rented out by the city, the building is an out-of-place reminder of old Tehran.  Those who have traveled to Cairo or Mexico City will recognize the sort of architecture that I'm describing, angular buildings with a late 1950s, new wealth feel to them.  Like those cities two or three generations ago, central Tehran once consisted of classy, upscale neighborhoods.  War, rapid modernization, population shifts, and a change in regime caused the ground to shift and many of these homes gave way to high rises, electronics stores, sandwich shops.

We walked into dinner, a post-rally gathering of stomachs.  Middle-aged men with Bluetooths pinched into their ears were hunched over styrofoam meals of rice and kabob.  The candidate had already left.  The scene was not exactly what I had come to see.   Iranians are extremely hospitable and despite being two complete strangers who had straggled in from the dark, dressed nearly in our pajamas, my uncle and I were immediately offered a portion.  I demurred...A "meshki," literally "black," soda nonetheless found its way into my hand (soft drinks are identified by their color in Iran)...

We stood up to leave, and my uncle made an effort to find out more about our absent host.  He asked a group of old men huddled at the door about their guy.

What is his education?

He has a master's degree and he's now working on his doctorate.

What does he do?

It turned out that this man was already a member of parliament.

An old man in a fedora cornered us.

"He really is without equal!  You will not find a better man!"

The old man pointed to another man, who picked up the banner.

"He stood up and spoke!  He said, 'Don't raise the price of gasoline!'  He spoke!  No one listened, but he spoke!"

The standard gets passed on to a third man.

"I have his CDs, not here with me.  You should listen.  He speaks so beautifully, it's like you've watched 10 movies."  Farsi sayings only become more colorful in translation.

We soon found out that our candidate originally hailed from Hamadan, near Iran's northwest corner.  All around us were the candidate's kinfolk, speaking in the unmistakable inflection of Turkic-speakers.

Farideh Farhi, a professor at the University of Hawaii and one of the best voices on Iran, has described Iranian elections as an "intense and colorful" competition between elite factions, what Thomas Carothers labels "feckless pluralism."  It is a politics that takes place mainly at the top.  What is interesting, however, is that the impossibly short election period forces campaigns to be carried by a candidate's familial network.  There is too little time for strangers to get involved, no real opportunity for outside volunteers to learn and get excited about a candidacy, a la a Ron Paul or Barack Obama.  Politics may occur at the uppermost levels of society but the elections are propelled by a tight network of friends and family who spend most of the rest of their lives living near the grassroots.

We left the campaign to its fate and walked back towards our building across the street.  Outside, in front of the headquarters, boxes of glossy campaign materials were stacked, waiting to be distributed throughout Tehran by the candidates' departing guests.  Looking at all the expenses that went into making this one night happen, I wondered about the populist sensitivities of our candidate...

We returned home, carrying with us a campaign poster as a keepsake.  My aunt was dismissive of our little adventure.  She expressed a not-uncommon sentiment about the candidate, and politicians in general.  "He saw that his bread was in politics..."

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The Supreme Leader continues his nightly appearances on television.  He speaks to a crowd, never directly to the camera.  There are no fireside chats, no televised address delivered from the official residence.  The effect upon the viewer is that of being in the audience, of being one with the rank and file.

His basic message, and perhaps the only message of this election, is to show the rest of the world that the Iranian people have participated.  Do not let the Enemy win ("Great Satan" is soooo 1980s).  Vote.  Show them that ours is a true government of the people, by the people, for the people.

No particular candidate is chosen, no specific slate is ever endorsed.  There seems to be no other issue worth discussing.  It is a campaign waged in abstract and unspecified terms.

There is a painful awareness of and even obsession with what the rest of the world thinks about Iran.  29 years of elections has produced a semi-democratic system wholly focused on process and obsessed with outsiders.

These elections are not for us, the Iranian electorate.  They are very much for you, the United States and the West.


Picture time!

Dinner and a campaign rally at Mrs. Robinson's...The home once belonged to an elderly Armenian gentleman, which probably explains the mural, Pharoh and the pagans bowing down to Christian missionaries?




The signs outside of Reza Talainik's (M.A.) headquarters.  Crossed arms and gentle, upward gestures, are seen as virtues...






The campaign brought with it a proliferation of trash.  The street and sidewalk were the final resting spots of many a candidate...








Examples of slates...





This is from the party organ, "Karagozaran," a reformist group.


More fly guy...


Don't let the Yoko lenses fool you.  Dr. Fatimeh Karobi, wife of former Parliament speaker, is the "female" voice of the reformist slate...


The headline reads, "Economic Equality, Foundation of Human Rights."  Economics---and not nukes---is foremost on people's mind.  Notice the picture with Khatami in the corner.





We are advised to not wait until the last second to vote...those are identification cards in the hands of our cartoon friends.


The guy in the corner couldn't make up his mind as to which pose was the best.


Team Reform!  From the reformist daily, "Aftab e Yazd."


Roughly, "14th of March, one for all and all for one."  "Let us vote well, let us live well."  With Iran under "perpetual threat," unity is a big deal in official Iranian discourse.  Note again the flower, a big ol' sunflower.  There's nothing "girly" about incorporating flowers into political speech.


The Persian side of the Persian Gulf, II

This continues our guest's reports from the streets of Iran...

Obama for Iranian Parliament:  Dare to Hope

(or, TV Teaches Me So)

Elections for Iranian Parliament (Majles) are 12 days away and perhaps the defining feature of the campaign thus far is that the only candidate up for election is the election itself.  The little translucent voting box floating in the corner of all four official networks kindly counts down the days for me. 

The other 400 stations, on the other hand, do different things for me.  Like for instance, presenting all manner of Italian beauties, Turkish transvestites, and the occasional episode of Oprah.  The wonder and release of satellite television...But I digress.

It is democracy by meta-narrative, the prominent message being to vote for voting.  State-run television plays a not inconsiderable part in the campaign.  Marshall McLuhan ("You know nothing of my work.  How you ever got to be a grad student at Georgetown is beyond me.") would be in heaven:  Soft lighting, martial music, montage images of today's Iranian, workers, students, scientists, homemakers..."Only one candidate understands what Iranians need, and is willing to fight(!) for a better Iran.  For our country, for our kids, for our future...Election.  Vote Election in 1386."  "broughttoyoubyiraniansinsupportofElectionandabettertomorrow1386"  "My name is Election, and I approved this message." 

Ok.  I made that last part up.  Sorta.

A get-out-the-vote drive of such magnitude and intensity in the context of today's Iran only raises questions:  Why is it so important?  Why does the leadership care so much?  This sort of mobilization would be wonderful in the United States...here, it invokes anxiety.  Why is the Supreme Leader shown telling the crowds (he's almost never shown speaking to less than a multitude) that "voting is for the power and the greatness of the people?"  How do I understand Ahmadnedijad's claim that these elections are "for the people" and "belong to the nation."  It's been a month of this, and not just on television.  Newspapers, billboards, overpasses, anywhere that the government can stuff the message into the public space, it's done so.  And much like America, circa 9/12/01 to around the day after Christmas 2001, all of the stores and restaurants are in on it too.  Public space messages encroach on private efforts to purchase pants or enjoy a cup of "Mexican" corn (the latest craze...don't ask).

In overlapping layers we get the message to go out and vote.  My favorite technique is the man/woman-on-the-street interview.  These are featured on the nightly news, and fill every nook and cranny of the rest of the day's programming (One of the benefits of state-run television is that the networks don't have to kowtow to the advertisers; move over Huggies, make room for propaganda.).  The questions are asked with faux-innocence:  "Why should we vote?  Why is voting important?  Will you be voting on March ?"  Here come the answers, cherry-picked to predictability:

To show that we love our revolution.

To ensure the destiny and future of the country and of ourselves.

To make sure that the promises that have been made are fulfilled.

Yes.  I will be voting.

"We have to participate," an old man tells us.  "It is the duty of the people."  The reporter asks a young guy sporting a bouffant, "If the decision to participate in the election is a tie, 50% to 50%, yes versus no, will you vote?"  The answer that comes back would make the greatest of ass-kissers blush.  "Even if 99% of the people decide not to vote, I will vote."  One of the more intriguing replies came from a middle-aged man, who shares with us the story of his German friend and co-worker who one day picked up and returned to his country to participate in the elections that were being held there.  If that German chose to travel all the way back to Europe, just to vote!, then shouldn't we follow his example...?
Street questions are good for their unpredictability.  Reporters prowling for recitations of the official line are apt to find out that local interpretations tend to diverge from dogma.  Occasionally, Truth comes along in the form of some reckless and loose-lipped passerby, enabled by a hapless reporter and careless editing back at the station:  "Are you going to vote...?"  Without hesitation, "No."  "Alright, then..."  The softball gets whiffed and our reporter hurriedly moves on...

Man-on-the-street interviews are great fun and provide the home audience endless fodder for trash-talking, the answers are so unbelievable.  One can't help but wonder if the government is in on it as well, this all being some sort of perverse form of comic relief produced to lessen the pressures of daily life, a conspiratorial wink and nod by our tormentors.

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I recall being at a conference and listening to a professor argue that the defining feature of today's Islamic Republic of Iran is one of "perpetual crisis."  By this, he explained, the Iranian leadership does its very best to keep the country mobilized and leaning full tilt against enemies and windmills, foreign, domestic, real and imagined. 

Perpetual crisis seems be a pretty accurate description, except I would add the modifier "organized."  There is intent behind the critical junctures that tumble towards us, propelled by at least a month's worth of buildup to the final hysterics.  It gets to be pretty formulaic, even predictable---which it makes it all the more amazing that the mobilizations seem to have some effect. 

It really is one damn thing after another.  Every few weeks brings us The Most Important Issue to Face the Iranian Nation, Ever.  When I got here in December it was the steady march towards Ashura and the mourning rites surrounding the martyrdom of Imam Hussein at Karbala.  Ashura is easily the most important religious holiday for Shiites and obviously an important event for a regime founded on Shiite principles, or a version of them, in any case.  On Ashura's heels came the anniversary of the revolution.  Now we have the elections.  In between there was Arb'ein, or the passing of 40 days after Ashura, and through a quirk in the calendar, we also had what turned out to be the Shiite version of Presidents Day, in which believers commemorated on more or less the same day the death of the Prophet, and the martyrdoms of two of Shiism's 12 Imams, Imam Hassan, Imam Hussein's older brother (I know, it's confusing), and the eighth Imam, Imam Reza.  And, to top it off, it's the end of the Persian calendar year and the approach of Eid e Now Ruz (literally, New Day).  Eid, which pleasantly arrives on the first day of spring, is the one holiday---perhaps the one thing---that Iranians can agree on and the most important day of the year for Iranians everywhere.  A sort of Iranian Christmas/spring cleaning, the frenetics of the Eid holiday bring their own set of demands to bear...

In the past few weeks, with the end of the year and the backing up of Really Important Events, it's become a circus.  There's just no way to avoid the state's endless and alternating messages, no amount of channel-clicking or satellite watching (really, have you seen Big Brother Italia?) will protect you.   The sheer volume of print and televised messages, the accumulation of noise and the cluttering of daily life is simply inescapable.  Normalcy is in short supply.

Seriously, I'm a total political junkie, but there's something to be said for taking a break from participation and the giving-of-a-darn every now and then.  Two months of this and I'm ready to go back to a low-expectation, low-voter-turnout environment, the sort of social and political torpor found in off-season, mid-summer special elections for Gregg County, Texas school board.  Who needs this level of citizenship?

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It's not all negative.  The season of chaos does have its charms, and Iran continues to provide insights.

For example:  Authoritarian regimes, I've learned, do have one redeeming characteristic and that is that they tend to foster a healthy skepticism in the population.  Let me put that in more elegant terms:  Folks assume that pretty much all of what they read and hear is bullsh&*.  Even before the Great Leader opens his mouth, we KNOW that it's all a big lie.

In this regard, I think Iranians have it easier than Americans.  Certainly, I find that the practice and qualities of citizenship required of a healthy democracy are much more readily practiced here than in the United States.  Beliefs "received passively", writes John Stuart Mill, soon take on a "dull and torpid assent."  A healthy skepticism---a sniff test, if you will---is critical for renewing the vitality of any system.  Above all, there must be a complete rejection of trust-me-government, embodied in recent years by that bugaboo, the "authentic" American politician.  Look at what eight years of having a beer with a "good guy" has wrought; give me John Kerry in his hunting outfit any day.

Again, I digress.

What I mean to say is that it is hard to imagine Khamaeni or Dr. A getting away with going on television and telling us that some neighboring country must be dealt with "using all measures at our disposal," or that we must not wait for the "smoking gun in the shape of a mushroom cloud."  Or, as is currently the case, declare that gas rationing and paying more for the price of chicken is part of standing up to the Enemy.  Even the "nuclear issue" has its limits; there is little public appetite to take the U.S. on directly over this matter.  War, conflict, and the reduction of consumer goods may still occur, but it will be because the leaders are strong and violent and the population is weak, not because there is a complicit society supporting its government...

Skepticism, of course, can also mean the absence of social capital and trust.  And it is true that these "social lubricants," to use Robert Putnam's infelicitous phrase, are woefully limited in Iran.  But we see also that the "trust" that Putnam and other civil society theorists exalt has a dark side as well.  I am certainly not the first person to point this out.  It is the perversity of things that an abiding faith in civic institutions and the rule of law lulls many of us into a state of complacency.  Americans, myself included---I will admit to being confused by the Powell performance at the UN---simply do not want to believe---and therefore cannot believe---that our elected officials could systematically deceive the nation, sending it headlong into folly and ruin.  Pulling fast ones is much easier when the boys in charge (always the boys) know that the audience wants and expects the political system to work...

Many Iranians just want the system to go away, or at least go in for a major facelift.  Perhaps a nose job.  They're cheap here, you know.

The problem, from what I can tell, is not necessarily the absence of trust in Iran, though that is certainly an issue, but rather the lack of OFFICE.  Delivered in the absence of properly functioning and legitimate institutions, what is said here by officials are just the words of individuals who happen to be in power.  Given the fecklessness of Iranian politicians and politics in general, it cannot be assumed that what goes on today will be around tomorrow.  Little faith exists that lasting policy will emerge out of today's discourse, if only because there are no institutional vessels capable of carrying the policy forward after the current crop of tough guys is gone.

Nonetheless, it should be noted that for all of the caveats, legitimate politics does exist in Iran.   The regime does not have total control and indeed must strain and hustle to get this mass of 70 million moving.  As one of my uncles put it, this government is held hostage by the very population it seeks to dominate.  Unable to risk letting go, the state must instead hold tight...

All of the efforts we see to get warm bodies into the voting booths is evidence of weakness, and demonstrates a certain anxiety on the part of those in power.  Sadaam Hussein never had to try so hard to get his 99.9%.

Politics exists, poking its way through cracks in the authoritarian shield.  Here and there can be found the spaces for the proper contestation of ideas.  Much of it has to do with the mundane, such as budgetary outlays and the like.  Ahmadnedijad gave an absolutely incredible interview the other night, on par with some of Ws finest (really, the similarities between the two men are astounding), in which he spent nearly 20 minutes describing the advantages of light rail and bus transportation over the extension of the underground metro line ("In my country we have problem.  And that problem is transport"  Bonus points if you get the reference.).  The president's proposed budget favors aboveground development, the legislature is asking for an extension in the metro.  This is just one issue of many disagreements.  There are major differences in policy choices where money is concerned, and these, more often than not, must be settled through traditional politics, i.e., the melioration of disagreements through non-violent means.

Indirectly, the debate over budgetary outlays for buses and teachers is informed by the electoral choices of ordinary citizens, limited though they may be.  In this sense, the upcoming election for the 8th Majles does matter.  The question is whether it matters enough to participate.  It is the perpetual question raised by Iran's peculiar version of democracy, answerable only by those forced to live in it...

As for my own participation in the selection of the 8th Majlis:

My uncle and I have decided to settle our political differences in 12 days.  Days of back and forth, recriminations and counter-recriminations have led to this.  Together we will march down to the local masjid (mosque), present our documents, and step into separate voting booths.  Intrigued and somewhat smitten by the Senator from New York (don't even get me started on Benezir Bhutto and Iranian males), my uncle will cast his ballot for Hillary Clinton, after Texas and Ohio, but ahead of the Keystone State.

I'll be damned if I let her win the Iranian vote.  Don't tell mama, but I'm votin' for Obama.  It's ok to vote for Obama in Iran, right?  He's Muslim after all, isn't he?  As far as I know...

Ours is an unsanctioned Democratic primary, though I do not doubt that Sen. Clinton will seek to seat the Iranian delegates at the party convention this summer.

What a year 2008 is turning out to be.

The pictures:

Khomeini in the corner is telling us that, roughly, "Elections do not belong to one person but to all of us."  Khamaeni, seeking to bottle the magic, proclaims "Law is the distance between good and bad."  Not quite sure what this has to do with the elections, but there you have it.

yikes

"Great people participate in great elections" is the gist here.  The top part says directly that "Participating in the election is a duty."  Sound familiar?

From a newspaper insert.  Note the rose on the ballot.  Flowers are big in Iran.  The headline reads, again roughly, "Declaration of the Election's Values."

 

Yes, that's Denzel Washington.  "John Q" standing up for a just health care system, and the importance of voting...

Twenty-two days to go at the point that this picture was taken.  I wasn't kidding about the buildup...

Grande Fratello!

The Persian side of the Persian Gulf

No posts in six months. What does that mean? I did the six things there were to do in Doha, created six more, bought an Arabian stallion, and stopped blogging. A former colleague, however, crossed the Straits of Hormuz (in a jet, not a speed boat...) to do research--real research--the kind that requires more than opening books, (unlike mine) on the politics of education in Iran. To him, who will remain anonymous so he doesn't get imprisoned trying to leave the country, I cede this blog for a few entries. These posts were pulled out of a group email, the only thing edited out were the Doha and Georgetown inside jokes.
*****

Condi!

Editor's note:  I made a promise myself to not peddle in clichés or conventional wisdom during my time in Iran, but these images were just to kitschy to pass up.  In any case, you guys are in the good, and know better than to take these photos as being reflective of some sort of intransitive "Truth"...Though they are, in a certain sense, very representative of a type of social performance that goes on here, one that was prominently on display now several Mondays ago, February 22, the official day of celebration of the 1979 Revolution (22nd of Bahman). 

Known as the "10 Days of Fajr," or 10 Days of Dawn, Fajr marks the fateful series of days that began with Khomeini's return from exile (February 12, 1979), to the day in which the Shah-installed Bakhtiari government fell (February 22, 1979).  Wags like to refer to it as the "10 Days of Zajr," literally, the 10 Days of Suffering.  Every year it's the same, with slight variations made for historical contingency (i.e., this year's featured performer was the nuclear issue, "ours is a revolution of light; we didn't make this revolution so that the Enemy can take away our right to energy," etc.).

The 2008 version of the Revolutionary Triumph was a time of intense schooling, aimed primarily at simpletons, layabouts, 6-year old children, and newcomers like me.  Government sponsored media and the usual gang of idiots provided us with instruction, at least a month's worth in the run up to the official ten-day celebration.  I quickly realized that I was learning a whole new iconography, to go alongside the Pearl Harbors, Iwo Jimas, and Apollo lunar landings already in my possession.  A liturgy of suffering and inevitable triumph, the 10 stations of the revolution, as it were, were repeated in sequence, matched to the same day as it took place 29 years ago.  Regular broadcasting was separated by lengthy clips of what took place in the streets in 1979, visual storytelling played without commentary, other than the purposeful editing in of Khomeini fandom.  If you didn't know any better, you would believe that Islam and only Islam, was the driving force behind the overthrow of the Pahlavi regime...You would also think that revolutions are generally carried out by folks sporting the fashions and hairstyles found at the declining end of the 70s.

The days begin with Khomeini descending, quite literally, from the sky.  He arrives in Tehran like all self-respecting revolutionaries:  on an Air France flight.  Behold!  Here now comes our savior.  Witness!  He arrives flying economy class.  The imam descends from the plane, providing us right there at the beginning with what is now the iconic image of the entire revolution:  Khomeini slowly but deliberatively climbing down the stairs, his black robes draped left to right across his body, flanked prominently by his son (imagine Khomeini with brown hair and a smile) and by the plane's captain, a Frenchman sporting oversized aviator glasses.  The latter holds onto the guardrail with one hand, and Khomeini's arm with the other hand.  Blond, of military bearing and ramrod straight, the pilot is clearly relishing his moment (what Frenchman doesn't yearn to be in a revolution?). 

The pilot. (see picture below)  I am fascinated by him most of all.  Who was he?  What happened to that guy, I wonder.  Does he know that he's the cool guy at least once a year in Iran? 

Apparently not.  When I ask around, the answer comes back as a real downer:  "Ooh.  They killed him.  He got whacked."  Who the "they" is that did the killing, or why anyone would want to kill the pilot, remains unknown.  I know better than to ask how folks know this story to even be true...anything goes when it comes to conspiracy theories in these parts.

Now comes Lenin at the Finland Station.  Khomeini's first public speech that first day is delivered at Behest e Zahra, the vast cemetery in which martyrs from the revolution, and later, the Iran-Iraq war, are buried (participants in Prof. X's class will remember the classic line, "We will slap the mouth of this government!").  It is a dramatic touch, deft and perfectly in line with the themes that the future regime would take up:  self-sacrifice, devotion to a holy cause, the promise and fulfillment of justice.  Khomeini's arrival at the cemetery was a carnival, matched only be his departure from his earth (fittingly enough, set in the same cemetery).  The crowds jostling his escort from the airport to Behest e Zahra were mighty, and in the end they had to use a military helicopter.  Before replaying Khomeini's arrival at the graveyard (again descending from the heavens!) by helicopter, the news ran a feature on the three cars that carried Khomeini to the gravesite (including a Mercedes and, somewhat incongruously, a Bronco).  Three, because each and every one of the cars, according to revolutionary lore, failed at some point along the trip, their engines burned out by the revving of the driver, pushing against the crowd...

Jack Miles, in his wonderful book, "God:  A Biography," observes that God/Yahweh of the Hebrew Bible goes from leading actor (taking a stroll in the Garden of Eden, chatting it up with Moses) to supporting character.  Miles' thesis is that the Old Testament becomes less a story about God, and more the tale of how the Jews became a people and a nation.  Read as a chronological story, by the end of the Five Books of Moses, God is practically absent from the narration.

At the risk of sounding blasphemous, it seemed to me that Khomeini takes on a similar role in the official retelling of the 1979 Revolution.  Where at first he was everywhere, the focus and spark of the social movement that would eventually end 2500 years of imperial rule, by the last days of the revolution he had left the scene, now found only in the placards held up here and there by the crowd, or, in a bit of fancy editing, as the wizened leader, shown years after the revolution, reminiscing about how things were during those fateful days...

Khomeini gone, the crowds come out emboldened, a mass force of people ducking and crouching in the face of gunfire, then inching forward towards certain but necessary doom...We see, over and over again, bloodied hands held up, what I took to be a clear and obvious reference to Abulfaz, a Shia hero killed with Imam Hossein at the defining Battle of Karbala, his hand chopped off before his ultimate martyrdom...

Then it's all over.  The caretaker government is doomed by the capitulation of the armed forces.  Instead of blood and guns we are now shown newspapers held aloft, visual markers of the end of the ancien regime.  Time to build the new one.

The 10 days of celebration culminate in the Big March (rawpaymani), annually held in every major city in Iran on the 11th of February.  This parade was, to say the least, a cathartic experience and a genuine emotional release, even for the likes of me... (see pictures below)

I should know better than to think I had things figured out.  After two months in-country, I was quite convinced that no one would show up for the parade.  Certainly, no one from my side of gene pool was going to go, and in fact, all of my eager-beaver interest in seeing and photographing the regime at work had earned me the monikor of "hezbollai."  Uncles and cousins have taken to asking me to calling me into the room whenever a cleric was speaking on television ("Your friend is on..."); more than once I've been asked to translate a sermon, the joke being that all of these mullah friends of mine are really Arabs.  The wooly winter beard does not help. 

In any case, turnout would be disappointing, I was quite sure.  I remember holding a similar thought in 1994 in Moscow, on the anniversary of the October Revolution and three years after the ostensible demise of communism.  No one would show up, I thought to myself, just before the legions and rows of red flags and really upset communists crowded around the Kremlin...

When I began the march (it's a 3-6 kilometer in distance from all directions, converging on the Azadi, or Freedom, Square) the turnout did indeed promise to be disappointing.  I soon found out that I was quite wrong, and well ahead of the crowd...I soon had to seek refuge, scrambling up onto a pedestrian footbridge...

The question now became whether I had been wasting my time here, that my observations of Iran are limited to the point of being irrelevant.   It's quite clear that many folks in Iran are unhappy with the state of things, above all that perennial regime-killer, rampant inflation.  It doesn't take much effort to get a public space discussion going on how lousy this regime is, how the revolution had been hijacked by a bunch of backwards fanatics.  So what was this that I saw, the bellowing and fury?  Did the exhortations and manifestations of the crowd ("Down with America!" etc.) reflect a sincere hostility to the U.S., much less a defense of the regime?  Was this a display of nationalism, tied to the defense of Iran's right to nuclear energy, cleverly appropriated by the march's organizers?  A brainwashed minority, parroting whatever they had read or heard from the regime?  I frankly did not recognize this Iran...this was not my world.

What explained the turnout?  Who were these people?  I beleaguer near-random strangers and acquaintances with my questions.  Friends and family have been generous, offering a number of theories to get me through the confusion.  Many of the answers are practiced, no doubt tooled and refined over nearly three decades of frustration.  A sampling:  I am told that people have to participate in mass demonstrations, otherwise their boss or neighborhood mullah, who is certain to be in attendance, will wonder the next day, in typical Persian kill-by-kindness, "We missed you at the march...I was worried...were you not feeling well?"  Alternatively, one friend observed that because of the general absence of sanctioned public space events, and given the social proclivities of Iranians (show an Iranian a crowd, and he will rush over to see what's going on), it should not be surprising to see such a turnout.  Eager to reassure me, this friend tells me to not take the hundreds of thousands too seriously.  It's the festival theory:  these sorts of demonstrations are a rare opportunity to have fun, to get out with family and friends.  The politics of it all is secondary, at best...

A well-dressed old man sitting next to me on a bus offered the power of population as an explanation.  If you consider that 1% of the entire population of Tehran shows up for such things, and taking into account that Tehran is nearly 20 million people, well, there you have it:  a large crowd constituted by an overwhelming minority.  Then, apropos of nothing, he declared that this government was filled with a bunch of atheists (bi-dini), and everyone knew it.  This set up the final point, and the kicker to the entire conversation:  these guys in charge were really all former communists (Tudeh party members) who had "changed their colors." 

Finally, there is the old standby explanation, and the one that I have the hardest time accepting but that I constantly hear, that the people I saw in the crowd were simple, and above all, poor, folks, taken in by the regime.  Subjected to a month's worth of propaganda, lacking "culture," and treated to an endless supply of food on the day of the march, they were little more than sheep, baa-baaing their support for a violent and merciless regime.

What's missing, of course, from all of this are the voices in the march itself.  Aside from the pictures I've attached below, it did not occur to me ask, "Why are you here?"  It's all speculation at this point, by me, by my friends and family, a rather dubious inquest into inner states.  No doubt my interest in CMA (covering my...) played a part; in fairness to me, this reticence was not entirely unfounded.  At one point, a group of young basijis, decked out in camoflauge, jogged by in formation, each one eyeing me sidelong.  I was leaning up against a guardrail, taking notes in my Moleskine (J. Peterman voice:  The classic notebook of Chatwin and Hemmingway).  I heard one of the little punks shout out, "He's taking notes...in foreign!"

I never quite understood what the notion of "discourse" would look like in action, whether it was worth anything as an analytic lens, but here you have it.  Multiple and contending accounts of reality, offered in definitive and authoritative terms to the novice researcher.  Let me tell you about Iranians.  "These people marched because..."  The filled-in-blank, X, y, or z, take your pick, it's all true.  Which is to say, it doesn't matter so much what is True but how rather how people understand and talk about that "truth."  Too po-mo to get a proper job, I'm sure, but this is the analytic lens I intend to use as I move into the months of March, April, and May.

A final observation:  It has been said that in Iran the concept of "justice" has historically carried greater weight than notions of "freedom" (for a really cheesy and simplified version of this argument, see Sandra MacKey's "The Iranians").  Certainly notions of justice---the idea that there is some sort of righteous balance to the universe---played an important part in the mass mobilizations that pushed the former regime out of power.  Although I have grown greatly skeptical of the usefulness of revolutions, particularly this one, I hold no love for the Shah, and do not in any way defend the monarchy.  Yet, 29 years on, the constant pounding, the ceaseless demonization, the multiple slurs against the Shah, his ministers, and anyone remotely associated with that regime, comes off at the very least as being highly distasteful.  What is the purpose of this ceaseless punishment?

The official rhetoric, at least, and the painful detailing of the Pahlavi's crimes, real or imagined, left me wondering about the matter of taste.  One month of demonizing the Shah...the man is dead.  It all seemed overwrought, and was personally dispiriting...I wanted to turn the state's rhetoric back on it, and ask, when is it just to finally STOP?  I can't help but think of South America and the story of how emergent (or re-emergent) democracies deal with former with the former military rulers after the end of authoritarianism.  There is a great book by Lawrence Weschler, "A Miracle a Universe:  Settling Accounts with Torturers," that deals with just this issue, the question of justice, impunity, "el olvido," or oblivion.  Weschler asks, Can a democracy be built on what are essentially lies, i.e., that the past is the past, that each side had committed its share of atrocities.?  Must all democracies, even a nascent one under constant threat by its former military rulers, first attend to the injustices of the previous regime, come what may?  Weschler suggests that ignoring justice, and granting amnesty to killers, is too high a price to pay...

But is there a limit to what justice can do?  As those of you familiar with my dealings with the DC Tenant/Landlord/Small Claims Courts know, I happen to believe strongly in the administration of justice, even if it comes at great cost.  Perhaps there is something to be said for genetic memory, or at least my complete obliviousness to tact and proportionality.  But that's precisely the issue...when does decorum, good taste, demand that I or anyone else seeking justice let up?  When is enough enough?  Iran is not Uruguay or Brazil, the subjects of Weschler's book, but a lot of the same issues apply, at least to the previous regime (holding the current regime to account will have to wait).  Again, I am convinced that the chants and fulminations that I hear against the Shah, America, Israel, the Brits, and nowadays, the French (way to go, Sarkozy!), are the acts of a committed, and powerful, few.  Most of the country doesn't go in for such antics anymore.  There are simply too many other needs to tend to, and in any case, the point was made some time around 1986 or 88.  We get it.  The U.S. did bad things.  The Shah did bad things.  Let it go. 

When does a revolution end?  Technology and media no doubt play a part in answering this question.  I wonder, how long we Americans (sorry) would have dragged out the spirit of 1776 if there had been a television crew roaming the colonies?  I've seen the old statues in Concord and Lexington, paens to the Minutemen, those brave men who stood up to the "dastertedly and heartless British," ravagers of our fair republic, etc.  It's pretty shocking to read the texts on these monuments now...The slurs against the British now seem outdated (uh-oh, does that make me a blame-America-firster?  am I raising the white flag of surrender to the British?  it may be time to scurry up to Canada)  How long did Americans ring the bloody flag after the triumph at Yorktown, and would it have lasted longer than it did if it were televised? 

On to the pictures.

Allow me to translate the sign behind Condi-Coconut Head:

Celebration (or Awards) Site for the Puppets of Arrogance (Arrogant Puppets?) Competition. 

By the way, seen on the banner and hidden behind Condi's ear, is a hunched-over old man carrying the skeletal Yank.  Perhaps a past winner?

The sign on the second, much cruder Condi puppet reads:  Condi, Donkey of the Middle East.  In a display of competing discourse, I overheard a group of people reading that sign out loud, then quite pointedly declaring it to be rude, crude, and basically inappropriate...

A House of Foam production?

And a special bonus:  Running Imperialist American Mule!

 

That mule, donkey, whatever, almost ran my butt over.

Scenes from the day...

...and commentary on selected pictures below.

Political marches are also a chance to make some money.  These sour-sweets are, by the way, yum-yum GOOD...

Pedestrian foot bridges are great spots for taking photos...

Note the baked beans seller in the corner, trailing his friend the candy seller...

This lady asked that I take a picture of her mom...

George Bush paid a visit to the crowd...

...quite hazardous for the guy inside of the costume.  He took some abuse, I must say, true devotion to his art.

The design for this  "arrogant puppet" was lifted directly off of a magazine cover, found in kiosks that week.  The sign reads, "Expired, 1357/11/22 (February 11, 1979)."

Note the corrected spelling...That was an "O" before it was an "A," giving the sign quite a different meaning:

Shah-built , the Tower of Remembrance of the Shah (loose translation), now known as Freedom Square and Tower...

The Frenchie...

Balcony, 8pm, 1403 West Tower