|
| Here's this:--------------------------------------
/ Dear Taiwan, /
/ /
/ Please send me 500,000 /
/ plastic keys. Thanks. /
/ /
/ Love: Khomeini /
/___________________________________________/ | | |
| It was an evening like any other, until...(another continuation)..."I read something in a magazine article by a guy named Kuntzel," I told the aliens. "To paraphrase: In late 1980 Ayatollah Khomeini ordered 500,000 plastic keys from Taiwan for children of the Basiji movement. The Basiji were a volunteer militia that formed in 1979. Most of its members were below the age of 18. At this point in the fight with Iraq (Iran was in a fight with Iraq that was to last 8 years), things weren't looking so good. Khomeini told the generals of his army to tell the officers in charge of the Basiji children to tell the children that the keys opened a special door."
"Khomeini was quite the strategist, it seems," said S41%...BOB. "Did the keys open the door to Iraq's intelligence center?"
"Keep listening, S41%...BOB," I said. "So Khomeini sent these orders down the line and, in effect, when the children now walked out into the minefields and got exploded to death, the key around their neck would open the gate of paradise!"
The aliens kept silent.
"The whole thing still made some officers uneasy, so they had the children wear full-body plastic bags. Now when they rolled out into the minefields their anatomy would stay pretty much in the same 5 square feet.
"In 1999 and 2003 the Basiji were still active, but they didn't wear plastic bags anymore. Instead, they were helping to quell student protests in Iran. Mahmoud Ahmadinejad (Iran's current president) reportedly served as a Basiji officer. The Basiji now form much of his political support. Roughly 100,000 men and boys have been killed in Basiji endeavors."
"Damn that Ahmadinejad!" said S41%...BOB.
"But remember," I said. "Ahmadinejad knew a time when Orthodox Muslims were persecuted by the Shah's police forces. The Shah, incidentally, was installed with the help of the U.S. in a coup d'etat in 1952, which is the same year that the U.S. detonated the world's first ever hydrogen bomb."
"!" said S41%...BOB.
"Yes, it was a busy year for us."
To be continued... | | |
| It was an evening like any other, until...(like, continued)..."One rule about being a human," I tell the aliens, "is that, a) we know that we don't know more than we do know." It's a difficult thing to admit, especially to aliens. The point of my exposition, however, is not to answer questions. Besides, answers are not the only form of good information. Questions make extraordinarily good information. So do the telling of wishes and hopes. And beliefs.
"I'm going to tell you something small about a religious tradition called Islam.
"I have a photograph that depicts a Muslim man and his daughter relaxing to a television show while a large, skinned goat sits on the dining room table. It was probably taken during the four-day observation of Eid ul-Adha. Goats are among the animals sacrificed during Eid. There are also cows and sheep. The sacrifice is called 'qurban.'
"Even though my family did not practice Islam, Eid was an exciting time when I lived in the country of Bangladesh. My friends and I often compared how much sacrificial blood accumulated on our streets and in the gutters. We ran around and looked at skinned animals hanging from walls and trees. It was thrilling. In the United States we rarely kill the animal we plan to eat in the evening. Everything comes in plastic-wrap. Anyway, one family on my street was especially wealthy by Bangladeshi standards. They had two huge cows--I mean gargantuan--that they would decorate before sacrificing. When the time came, a handful of men bound the hooves and held the cows down one by one while somebody took a shiny knife to the throat. The knife was drawn along the neck effortlessly and dark blood would spurt out and spread all over the concrete. It sounds kind of gory and pointless when I talk about it now. But killing a cow is beautiful in a way. And it's at least a million times more beautiful when it's for a sacrifice. I understand that's a somewhat anthropocentric thing to say, since no other earthly animal would kill a cow as a sacrifice to God."
I saw that the aliens suddenly became wicked uncomfortable when I mentioned God. So I decided to talk about something else, but no less controversial: politics...
(to be continued...) | | |
| It was an evening like any other, until...(continued yet again)...I recently read an article by an anthropologist named Sekander Amanolahi. He grew up in Iran but earned his PhD in the US, which obviously makes him a reliable resource (I'm serious). He went to Iran to study nomads and learned something I found extraordinarily interesting...
Amanolahi had, earlier in his life, heard rumors of a nearby village woman coming under sexual assault from a monkey. Others attested to it. The monkey had "appeared out of the bushes and attacked the woman, tearing off her clothes and clearly indicating its intention. The people fought the wild, screaming monkey, and in the end it managed to run away."
Coming back to this town, Amanolahi investigated the report. He visited the same woman who still bore scars from the dreadful ordeal, but discovered it hadn't been a monkey at all. She was attacked by a leopard. Apparently the dialect of the locals communicates terms like "extreme danger" and "injured woman" with language that conjures images of "sexual aggression" and "sub-human males."
This story was epiphinaic (which isn't a word, though it ought to be). Because I'm so clever, I understood immediately why people would connect those sorts of terms. Preserving a community's well-being is tied directly to protecting the sexuality of the female members. A woman being wounded by a leopard may as well be a woman under sexual domination by a brutish male outside the community. If I could understand this event and the logic behind the language used, then it means there is hope for finding common ground between all people. It also means that most postmodern talk about "situatedness" and "relativity" is bull's poop. There may be a human nature after all. But what is it? And what do we do once we've more or less described it? Tough questions, but I just may have the answers the aliens need.
(to be continued...) | | |
| It was an evening like any other, until...(continued again)...Persia's long history of conquering and being occupied reflects the cruciality of its geographical location. It has long served as a cross-roads between Asia and Europe. The "Silk Road" (which really isn't made of silk) runs right through the heart of Persia. Cyrus the Great's dynasty was run over by the Greeks around Bible times, but Arabs came to occupy the region in the seventh century, introducing Islam to a place that had until then primarily practiced Zoroastrianism. Turks invaded in the tenth century and Mongols repeatedly from the thirteenth to fifteenth centuries. Between that time and European colonialization in the nineteenth century, various Muslim sects vied for control. All in all, Iran seems to have trouble figuring out who belongs and who doesn't. The many influences, however, have led to an amazing blend of arts, religious traditions, and sciences. Iranian people can also be divided into ethnic groups, which might be helpful to know, since it is a rule that can be applied to humans most everywhere. Persians make up 51% of Iran's population. Azeri 24%. Gilaki and Mazandarani 8%. Kurds 7%. Baloch 2%. Turkmen 2%. and Other (whatever than means) 1%.
(to be continued...) | | |
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