Dear Life

Thursday, June 28, 2007

dear life 85

dear life,
ok, this time i am not going to nag to you or blame you or the events of this world, as it happens often when i am down. today i want to confess to you how angry i am with myself.
last night, i shared an interesting dinner with some friends in one of the top-noche restaurants of tehran, a group of friends who have lived abroad and are either back to iran for good or for couple of months for study or work. interesting discussions, interesting views. when we are getting back home, my friend giving me a ride, we find ourselves in an strangely heavy traffic around midnight. an accident, police or islamic guards having a checkpoint, a fire, or just bad luck in choosing the road, we guess. we are considering taking a turn and taking another way back home. but the traffic is limited to a stretch of the street and we decide to pass through it.
"there's something wrong, people are gathering around and in the midst of the street, they have their cell phones in hand taking pictures or movies. cars are stopping, something is wrong ..." i tell my friend.
"but motorists are whisteling, cars are honking their horns, people are shouthing, it should be a football match," she responds.
"no football, there was nothing in the papers. there is the gas station a few meters away. it should be something about the gas and maybe the new rationing system they have been talking about," i tell her.
she disagrees.
we move little by little. the gas station is closed down. cars are standing in line, waiting, a line stretched for i don't know how many kilometers. we just go home and sleep.
we spend time in a restaurant talking, we don't know what is going on around us, and even if we do, we don't take any action, we don't even consider our right to react. i am angry of my own indifference, not indifference, cause i know that i care, i am angry of my own passiveness, of my confusion and not knowing what reaction i should choose, what i can do to show that i care, that i want to do something, not just watch and pass through.
i am angry, i question my job, my dreams, my beliefs. so what? what good you will be to this country that is everyday faced with a new dillema?
today the traffic is strangely low, the weather is cloudy, it is as if a gray powder has been blown in the air, over the streets and highways of the city. everywhere i turn there is talk of the gas and the prices and the ration and last night's disorder and even gas stations being set on fire. i had witnessed it and just passed by it as if nothing was wrong. i am angry and think to myself: was i less concerned than those who stood by and watched? and then answer myself: what difference does it really make?
a woman sitting next to me in the taxi tells her friend, "not bad at all, look how we are rid of the heavy traffic," and i just want to hit her or open the taxi door and get out, right there, in the middle of the highway, and i think to myself, we sure need the nuclear energy now that we have solved our gas problems and don't need to process it in order to prevent importing it.
i am angry for having enjoyed a carefree dinner in a not so cheap restaurant, for listening to great music and tasting great food, when all around me the world seems to start to crack down. i am angry because i will go on with my life as it is, and the only difference is that the bothering feeling is never leaving my side.
A friend once told me, "it is not your fault, it is all just part of being a bourgeois." i am beginning to think that he is right.
i invite my friends to a pool party for Friday. you see what i mean?

Wednesday, June 27, 2007

dear life 84

dear life,
listen to what the Iranian nobel-prize winning lawyer, Shirin Ebadi, has said yesterday in the conference on "The right to peace" held in Tehran (Shargh newspaper, 5 Tir 1386): "peace is one of the basic human rights and without it, other human rights, inlcuding freedom of speech, the right to education, to take part in free elections, will all lose their meaning." what is interesting is the definition she provides of peace: "The question is if a country is not directly involved in a war, is it [necessarily] in peace? if this is a correct definition of peace, it should be said that it is a definition for previous centuries and today with the new conditions of the current society, a new definition is given of peace. Based on international definitions, peace is: the combination of conditions in which people can express their ideas and beliefs, their human integrity is respected, and their needs is satisfied with no fear of punishment." she concludes with the striking question: So what will we understand with just a quick glimpse at our own country? Are we living in peace?
that really makes you think. Are we already involved in a war without ourselves consciouly admitting it?