My friend left for California 14 years ago: "I will never come back again," he was adamant. He never did. He hated his father. He hated Iran. He was stranded in Switzerland for 6 months and eventually married a 70-year old American to set his foot through the US custom's door. Years later, he called {Babak Ahmadi} to ask him, not for the first time, "I don't understand why you came back to Iran on the flight after [Mr. Khomeini] and why you are still there." He called me too: "I am dying for those Tuesday film nights when we went from SEPAH Sq. to SHEMIRAN Fork, smoking cigarettes along the way and talking about movies and {Ladan Taheri} -- how she goofed on sensor scenes during projection. I miss the half ruined wall of SHARIATI Ave -- how we made fun of the shadow of MELIKA's nose on that wall and how she went for an operation because of it. Have you heard of her recently?" "She’s moved to the States, to Detroit. She works at an architectural firm, getting paid twenty an hour. When her grandmother died she vowed never to come back. And she hasn't." He changed the subject: "Why is everyone so stupid in America? They don't know the difference between Iran and Iraq." "Why don't you come back?" He hated the streets and the people. He had forgotten the people walking those streets, the streets – our streets -- that were different from any other person's streets. I wouldn't be walking these streets 14 years later, inhaling lead and smoke, I wouldn't be listening to {Namjoo} while those alongside me listened to {Benjamin}, and I wouldn't rush home to continue with my script. Had I not walked these streets, I wouldn't have fallen in love with you. The day after, I scanned the preface of Babak Ahmadi's book On Tarkovsky's Cinema and sent it to my friend, "Read this and you will understand why Ahmadi is still in Iran." I should give it to you as well; he speaks of those long, sad, and quiet lines outside ASR-E JADID movie theater, in the gray 80s of war and post-revolution anxiety, when people waited half a day for tickets of a Tarkovsky movie, in a language they did not understand, without Farsi subtitles, but they still sat, watching, without batting an eyelash. These lines lead to many friendships and marriages, which possibly lead to break-ups and divorces, but all of them are remembered -- why, it may not be clear.

and this...

The Iran Iraq War was early labeled "sacred"; after all, it was in “defense of a motherland faced with foreign aggression” that the Iranian soldiers, propped by revolutionary zeal, were fighting the enemy, "Saddam the Heathen." The concept of “martyrdom” found reality in the battlefield, the term “sacred defense” replaced the word “war” in the official literature. When Ayatollah Khomeini announced the acceptance of the ceasefire proposed by the United Nations Security Council, he used the phrase “drinking from a cup of poison,” to highlight his indisposition, adding, "this war was a gateway to heaven, which is now closing."

 

This mentality affected all aspects of the Iranian culture during those years and resulted in the creation of a kind of unique genre called “Sacred Defense Cinema” (perhaps the only genre in post-revolutionary Iranian cinema that was developed and paid attention to). This was a cinema with war narratives, which emphasized how faithful Iranian soldiers loved their leaders, and with no regard to the customary mechanisms of war. It placed the story of the martyrdom of the fourth Shia religious figure, Imam Hossein, and the events of Karbala, where a small army of 72 faithful men confront the evil army of thousands, as its guide, insinuating that soldiers of honor would do anything to defeat the enemy and their sole wish was to die on this path and to go to heaven.

 

The Sacred Defense cinema became the dominion of certain filmmakers and even years after the war no one dared to meddle with its fundamental tenets. That is, until director {Kamal Tabrizi} released Leyli Is with Me, which was a comedy about a cowardly reporter who by mistake ends up at the front. He has no regard for all the ideals and heavenly slogans that he has heard and is scared of death. Later, and by distancing themselves from telling the stories of militias in love with martyrdom, the most famous filmmakers of the genre such as {Ebrahim Hatamikia} or {Rasul Mollaqolipour} tried to pursue their post-war, social concerns by showing how things had changed, sometimes critically analyzing certain aspects of the War.

 

Now, years after the end of the war and while every year the number of Iranian films of the Sacred Defense genre dwindles, to the point that even the Sacred Defense Festival, despite the bounteous official support it receives, didn't convene for two years because it couldn't muster enough entries, {Kazem Massumi} has made The Big Drum Under the Left Foot.

 

All but three soldiers of an Iranian platoon have been killed in an operation and these three are awaiting to be rescued: a middle-aged, dry and strict military Captain (played by {Hossein Mahjub}), a young and nervous soldier called Mehran whose left is infected (played by {Babak Hamidian}) and a head-strong, illiterate basiji militia, who is trying to relieve the tension between the captain and the soldier.

 

Massumi doesn't deal with the mystic aspects of war, the front and martyrdom, the way some of his counterparts did previously, and only presents the trampled humanity in situations of war. Using words like “rotting” and “decaying” about the bodies who “smelled of heaven” in the Sacred Defense cinema and phrases which at one time were considered unforgivable insults and treason like “was it a bug that made you leave the university and come here” or “the kids you killed are waiting for you in heaven” all come from Kazem Massumi's disinterested and critical view of the phenomenon of Sacred Defense.

 

But The Big Drum Under the Left Foot, which really wants to be an independent and influential film, has a major problem: Massumi knows nothing about war, especially the Iran Iraq War.

 

The first film by Ebrahim Hatamikia, The Scout, was made in the final year of the war, and it so happens that it is his most critical film dealing with the war phenomenon. Watching The Scout you will sense what was it that can also be felt in Ayatollah Khomeini's famous letter. This was because Hatamikia, before becoming a movie director, was a cinematographer of documentary and war films and, in simple words, had lived the war. It may be too obvious that this subject matter in particular demands that the filmmaker to be familiar with the battlefield experience and those who soldiered it.

 

The Big Drum Under the Left Foot is supposed to be a minimal film about the Iran Iraq War with only three characters but these three characters have turned out to be very abstract. If we delete the clichéd ablutions and prayers of the Captain, he could have come from a film like Paths of Glory ({Stanley Kubrick}), which is about WWI. And the nervous soldier comes from the same place and is a very far-from-true copy of the real character of Daniel Day-Lewis in {Jim Sheridan}'s My Left Foot (both of them lose their left feet, how interesting!). And {Hamid Farrokhnejad} is no character other than “Hamid Farrokhnejad in another film,” only with a muddy face. (In fact, the more time passes the more obvious it becomes that Farrokhnejad is not at all a good actor; for example, he is the only problem with such an excellent film as Charshanbeh Suri ("Firecracker Wednesday") and it would seem that his presence in Bride of Fire by {Khosrow Sinai} only made that much noise because people had seen Farrokhnejad for the first time.)

 

In the resume of Kazem Massumi, who began filmmaking with The Thief and the Writer (1986), there are only a group of social and comedy films, none of which have found a place in the Iranian cinema. Although there is no reason for someone to not blossom, when you see a film about a war from which 18 years have passed and on the wrist of one of its characters a Swatch can be seen, there is something to be said about the phenomenon of talent and the things which people are made for. Pay attention to these examples:

[::] Farrokhnejad: “We’ll find one of these brain-deads and give his foot to you.” (Explanation: During those days limb transplant surgery did not take place in Iran).

[::] Farrokhnejad consoling the soldier: “They’ll send you abroad. They’ll give you a scholarship…” (Explanation: in those years no war veteran knew or thought that he would get benefits because of his injuries after the war. Further, in order to understand the level, quality and importance of these benefits, you can watch some of Hatamikia’s films such as Glass Agency).

The issue is not very complicated. The final sequence of the film tells us that Kazem Massumi has seen several good and influential war films, has then thought that no one has seen these films but himself, and then has decided to present an Iranian version of these works in his film. The result is a film that is neither an original nor a good copy. The final sequence of the film is a senseless copy of the brilliant film No Man's Land (by {Danis Tanovic}), with this difference that in the later we were faced with an absolutely unavoidable situation via which we felt the bitterness of a human tragedy to the depths of our core whereas in the former we can help but think that had the captain been a bit more careful that grenade would not have exploded and we would not be forced to see a silly vase full of flowers right there in the front lines of the war to appeal to our romantic side.

Translated from Farsi by {Simin Dehghani}

Thursday, Sep. 28, 2006
You've Come Only a Little Way, Baby
Bans on foreign, Kurdish and even some ancient Persian names for newborns have been around since the Islamic Revolution but are now letting up slightly

By AZADEH MOAVENI

When my girlfriends in the U.S. got pregnant and began picking baby names, we discussed whether French names were too pretentious, Indian ones too trendy, and whether originality mattered more than pronounceability. In Tehran, such conversations all lead back to one central question: is the name you like on the banned baby name list? I didn't even know such a list existed until two months into my pregnancy, when I began throwing out suggestions like Priya and Lara, and my husband laughed at me.

Apparently, foreign names are so utterly out of the question that most people don't even bother trying to bribe the guy at the government records office, where you register your child's birth. Like me, not everyone is aware of this in advance. An unsuspecting friend of mine tried to register his newborn daughter as Juliette Farah, and was told this was "impossible." After a frustrating back and forth during which only the word "impossible" was repeated, he finally told the clerk that "Juliette was Imam Reza's mother." This mocking invocation of a Shi`ite religious figure was not appreciated, and my friend was asked to leave the building (his daughter ended up simply as "Farah").

The tradition of banning names dates to the beginning of the Islamic Revolution in the early 1980s, when Iran's fundamentalist leaders sought to purge the country of both Western culture and its own Persian, pre-Islamic past. Religious extremists consider it unfortunate that Iranians used to be Zoroastrians, or that the ancient Persian empire achieved its greatest triumphs before Islam's arrival. To that end, they compiled a long list of forbidden names that included Zoroastrians gods and goddesses, commanders of ancient Persian armies, and other such tainted, best-forgotten figures. You were free to call your eight children (the government was also promoting massive procreation to fuel the Islamic Revolution) by Ali, Hossein, Zahra, and the like. Indeed, Arabic names, except for a handful of Sunni villains, were fine. Persian ones, despite originating from the language actually spoken in Iran, had to be checked against the official list. Along the way, other politically inconvenient realities were fought on the baby name terrain. Wishing to quell an uprising by ethnically Kurdish Iranians in the north, the government banned Kurdish names. A Kurdish couple I know managed one for their baby, but only by showing up at the registry office with a giant box of pastry and a stack of cash for the name clerk.

These days the government has mellowed somewhat when it comes to names. Foreign ones are still out, but in recent years a number of previously banned Persians names have been restored to the official list. Every few years there's a sudden profusion of now antique-sounding names like Aryo and Armiti, as eager parents follow the de-banning closely. After all, what's cooler than a formerly banned name? I don't know yet if the name I've picked is banned or not. There's reason to suggest it is, but similar names are now common and so maybe it will be okay. I could drop by the registry office and check, but I worry if my baby's name is on the banned list they'll remember me two months from now and it will be harder to offer a bribe, which of course requires discretion. The other option is to choose an acceptable back-up name, but somehow this feels like I'm giving in. It seems ironic that my own name, which became wildly popular on the eve of the Islamic Revolution, means freedom. Because that's exactly what I don't have in naming my child.

 

October 2006

Read in English

I have never had an American friend. Now I search in my worn-out memory to discover why and I see that for years my enemy has been America. I was a teenager when the American friends of many were captured in the embassy, and since then the "Death to America" slogan has never left the para-official political discourse. It was at that time, or perhaps a bit later, that the victory cries of the American Rocky (Balboa) were heard in many houses in Tehran. In school, we were forced to repeat death to this or that every day. Could it be that daydreaming about America began at the same time? We dreamt about Green Card, which we thought would open doors to paradise. We saw 1492: Conquest of Paradise (1992), in our AZADI Cinema, and to this day when I hear the soundtrack to that movie on our state-run television and radio, I realize that so many are finding this paradise offensive.

 

I am not suggesting that one shouldn't see Rocky or hear the soundtrack of Conquest of Paradise. I want to distance myself from the enemy-manufacturing factory and see what is going on. We were a rich nation not because of the oil wells. We were rich before filling barrels and selling them, from the time of Mongolian and Arab Invasion. We had a human treasure that (because of our peculiar ability to manufacture, and sometime adulate, enemies) helped and aided the rule of conquerors. We taught the conquistadors diplomacy and statesmanship. We educated them on how to rule us better. We were a talented but coward nation that supplicated and supplicate to the enemy and blame it on fate. All but a minority always cared about this fate. Now, perhaps not even that minority is present. Some blame our ridiculous sense of nationalism for our ills and some find the embrace of a nascent globalism the only solution. And I blame our historical helplessness and misconception. National borders are becoming less and less clearcut, but any dark-head like me who is from the Middle East is considered suspect, not only of terrorism but also of humanity. And, yes, if I am his enemy so is he mine.

 

Being paranoid about enemies and fascinated by them are both sides of the same coin, minted in the decrepit factory of mistrust. The duty of rationality is to explain, and perhaps justify, our failure, which is based on an immature, humbled, and humiliated sense of our self. Infatuation is due to weakness and lack of understanding, and so is manufacturing an enemy. We have a history of humiliating ourselves. We have always been fascinated with appearances, which have done nothing but create ugly, uncomely, and stinking cities. And we have people who are without any motivation and at times high on this or that intoxicant. In our imagination we see ourselves as a modern Christopher Columbus. We can't even become the Count of Monte Cristo. We no longer possess a creative faculty. {Jinoos} argues that we don't have a working model of creativity in our history. We don't find them not because they don't exist but because their popularity has been blemished. We neither have a Christopher nor a Count, but we have an army of princes and lackeys, which have done nothing but violate the country. And those who have cared have blood on their hands. If they didn't outright defraud the country, they made deals with the Almighty. What strange business. {Amir Kabir} ordered the execution of Bahais and Iranian intellectuals spend so much time in the ivory tower, so that they are either forgotten or acknowledged only when their blood has been spilled.

 

So much useless searching is because we are looking for a hero, a savior, and we feel the world owes us. Our share in this is envy and infatuation. The American Dream is not a solely Iranian affliction, but more than others we subscribe to it. Arabs, the majority of whom are deprived of the most basic human rights, munch on {Oprah} and Supernanny with subtitles in their television stations, but our most reasonable opposition seems to be VOA television. It is funny that the realization of the American Dream in Iraq has been nothing but bloodbath; still, some say that it is a worthwhile price to pay. For god's sake, don't accept to pay such prices if you loathe to vote and to participate in the affairs of your country.

Iran Bans High Speed Internet Services and Satellite Channels

19/10/2006

By Ali Nourizadeh

London, Asharq Al-Awsat-

Iran's Internet Service Providers (ISP) received forthright instructions from the Regulatory Organization for Computer Laws, a governmental organization that includes representatives from the Ministry of Intelligence, the Ministry of Culture and Islamic Guidance, and the Iran High Council of the Cultural Revolution (considered the highest authority), to stop providing high-speed broadband and DSL connections and services to new customers. Two days later, (ISP) received instructions to not exceed the low speed of 128K, which would mean that millions of subscribers can no longer access internet websites for satellite channels broadcast from abroad, on their forefront the Voice of America and Channel One [An 24-hour Iranian channel that is broadcast from Los Angeles], which is very popular in Iran. This also results in difficulty accessing audio and visual messages on websites, if not impossible.

Following Iran’s crackdown on those who oppose or criticize the government, both in the independent print media and through radio and television, the latter of which the government has sustained control over their broadcasts, internet presence and activity has swiftly and effectively flourished over the past few years. According to the Human Right’s Watch report in 2004, “the government has imprisoned online journalists, Bloggers, and technical support staff. It has blocked thousands of websites, including – contrary to its claims that it welcomes criticism – sites that criticize government policies or report stories the government does not wish to see published”. The organization also cites the figures, 250,000 as the estimated number of online users in 2001, which soared to an incredible 6.2 million by July 2005. “Iran was home to 683 ISPs” according to the source.

Presently, following the Ministry of Intelligence and the security forces’ brutal campaign against satellite channels in Tehran and other major cities, security men have confiscated over 500,000 satellite dishes and receivers. Hundreds of thousands of Iranians (especially students and youth who regularly watch satellite television programs and tune-in to channels that are broadcast on the internet) know that the Ministry of Information and Communications Technology has imported state-of-the-art jamming, interference and filtering devices from Sweden, the United States, Finland and Taiwan last year to block the transmission of anything that opposes or criticizes the regime, whether audio or visual, including political websites from subscribers.

Notwithstanding, overcoming the filtering process does not seem to pose a challenge for the thousands of Iranian students and youth who have proven over the past year that they can easily outwit internet monitors and watchdogs. The satellite versions of the Voice of America, BBC and Channel One broadcast their headlines on a daily basis on ‘non-filtered’ sites, created by the former, despite the fact that telecommunications experts from the Ministry of Intelligence and Ministry of Information and Communications Technology block these sites a few hours later and impose their own oppositional headlines and programs, blocking subscribers’ transmission.

Banning high-speed internet connections seems to be the easiest solution to stop the spread of banned websites and satellite channels for now. The ISP companies’ objections against this new ban stems from a fear of what the consequences such a decision could have on a global level, especially after a report that was addressed to the European Union in which the Ministry of Culture and Islamic Guidance stated that it reserved the right to cease the publication of the popular newspaper ‘Shargh’ and the magazines ‘Hafez’ and ‘Nama’, all of which criticize Ahmadinejad’s administration and policies.

Based on a report published by the newspaper ‘Technology World’ in Tehran, Engineer Arab Zada, PR president of the Regulatory Organization for Computer Laws has refrained from affirming that the organization has issued these requests to ISP companies, however the newspaper has confirmed that obtaining a connection above 128K has been banned until further notice.

Ironically, according to the Human Rights Watch, the Telecommunication Company in Iran (TCI), a private company established by the government to implement the Ministry of Information and Communications Technology’s policies had estimated 25 million online users by 2009.

These ministries are playing a dangerous game.  What an interesting development in an interesting country in interesting times!

Susan