Shall we start again?
House of Words
This is an exhibition of contemporary art which is on show now until August 29th 2009 in Dr. Johnson’s House, in Gough Square, just North of Fleet St. in Central London. It’s a good idea to abandon public transport somewhere around High Holborn so you have time to get involved in the tangle of streets on the north side of Gough Square and transport yourself back to 18th Century London. At least that’s what I did. And then I did it again four days later. Upon reflection, I’m not so sure that it is a good idea because I kept wondering what all these weird bits of ‘modern art’ were doing hanging around. And this is the problem that both the curators and artists have to deal with.
Oh England
What defines England? Well if you were to list five of the most important things, surely the English language would appear somewhere on almost anyone’s list – wouldn’t it? And who has defined the English language? Well, again, many things and many people, but Dr. Johnson’s dictionary must be among the most significant. So producers of contemporary art are either working with or competing against 300 years of the history of the English identity. Foolhardy you might think.
Getting to Grips with 'Modern Art.'
It was an uncomfortable, slightly fractured experience at first. I kept on finding that I was ignoring the art and absorbing myself in the stuff of the house. The second time I went, things fared a little better. I got much more absorbed in the work of the two of the artists, namely Jane Prophet and Caroline Broadhead.
Unspeakable
The brilliantly named Prophet did unspeakable things to unsuspecting dictionaries, which I loved. British literary culture is deeply suspicious of people who do stuff to books. We are nauseatingly precious about the damn things. Ludicrous when you think how many are pulped each year, how much we over-publish, - a very good thing from a literary point of view because it means we have a fighting chance of actually producing and READING some quite good stuff – and how much dross there is in print - also when you think how many books rest politely on people’s shelves unread. So the Prophetess took her laser thingy whatever it is and these dictionaries were lacerated and their pages made to produce shapes of butterflies and umbrellas and trees that turned out to be flames and so on. One included a woman’s profile being sick or breathing fire or with trees coming out of her month. She picked pages with related words which made you realise how many words meaning something similar are constructed from or grow out of the same etymological root and how many words in the English language refer to sex, sexuality or bodily function or are just plain rude. It sounds a bit obvious, but it worked and it was delicate and beautiful and followed an approximately sequential narrative which pleases nerdy people like me. And there was a gorgeous one hanging in a cupboard – reminiscent of the paper artist’s work in ‘Spectacular Craft’ at the V&A.
Repetition
The other work I grew to love was Caroline Broadhead’s chair which was actually the repeated ghostly apparition of Johnson’s chair, or so it was claimed. The chair was a strange shaped thing with a very long seat with a ridge at the edge, so it looked really uncomfortable. It’s reputed to be his chair at the pub, and someone has suggested that it may be that you’re supposed to sit on it backwards, leaning forwards against the back, one leg each side of the chair, which makes sense of its narrowness I suppose. Anyway, this apparition reappeared in several different places, at one time on top of a door in miniature and made of bronze, again behind a wooden window shutter, imprinted into paper and again as a 3-d ‘drawing,’ here it’s constructed out of what looked like piano wires, in many very straight parallel lines – as though it had been ‘drawn’ with a ruler.
I’m advised by the curator’s notes that this alludes to the repeated uses of language and the way it mutates with use. I liked the repetition because I like it aesthetically. I wasn’t overwhelmed by too much stuff. If there is a fault with the exhibition it is perhaps that - too much stuff. I’m not sure it matters though, and I’m damn sure Johnson wouldn’t have minded.
Afterthought:
Come to think of it, houses of that sort like clutter. They respond well to it. It’s contemporary art spaces that don’t. So on second thoughts- bring on the clutter. I might have found those annoying little books and the ‘found text’ stuff irritating, but it doesn’t mean you will.
Afterword:
Pourism: a mixture of English and Iranian words. This is one of the words suggested by a visitor for a new dictionary of English being compiled as an ‘interactive’ exhibit. It had turned up when I went the second time. You write down your word and its meaning on paper and, for no apparent reason, it might appear on a screen built into a cupboard. As a piece of art it’s cumbersome – putting it mildly. As an idea it’s quite cute. If more words like these turn up then the idea will have proved itself even if its articulation as artefact really isn’t convincing. The word, I guess, is a reference to the vagaries of ‘Farlish,’ which means the same kind of thing. I would imagine Pourism is gag at pour old Aryanpour’s expense. Farlish is used by both Iranians and English speakers who use each other’s languages and fiddle about with them but particularly when you try writing Farsi using English / Latin script or English using Farsi script.
Sunday, 7 June 2009
Saturday, 6 June 2009
Job Centre Honey-Plus
OUT OF ORDER announced the job-hunting machine, folding its arms and refusing to budge. OUT OF ORDER added the photocopier, idly staring out of the window. Wood Green Job Centre Plus commands a magnificent view across one of Haringey’s many fine public gardens. This garden boasts a 25 metre pergola draped in abundant pink roses and twirling with Wysteria, glistening lawns and perfectly cropped hedges. The centre was milling with the recently unemployed - all trying their best to look positive - in sharp contrast to the uncooperative equipment that had decided to take Friday off.
I eventually found reception and was told go upstairs to another reception where a nice lady told me I’d come to the wrong place entirely – I should have been at White Heart Lane apparently – but she’d try and persuade ‘an advisor’ to see me. ‘Hmm,’ she muttered, ‘you’re the second doctor I’ve seen this week.’
I waited and filled out a form and waited some more and looked out of the window and did some reading and had a stretch and then another nice lady passed by and offered me strawberries which I refused but felt inspired to do a few shimmies instead. Various rather smart people were congregating on the sofas by now, all eagerly filling out forms and waiting and chatting bravely to each other like one of those mad self-improvement seminars convened by some organisation desperately trying to justify its funding. I was then assigned an advisor.
The divinely pretty woman with glistening white teeth looked out from under her dark fringe, smiled beatifically, puckered her darling, perfectly sculpted, little eyebrows and cooed, very softly, ‘what are you dooo-ing here???’
I warbled on about this and that and being in the studio and so on and so forth and she glazed over with the sheer tedium of it all and then asked if I liked going to ‘foreign places.’ Yes I said, about to launch into a blow by blow account of my adventures in and not in Iran but, before I’d completed the first sentence, she smiled again, ‘that’s good. You could go somewhere else and do your arty-farty stuff.’
Time passed pleasantly enough, we signed this and that and I wrote down a few things and our lady of the strawberries passed by again, this time followed by an angel of biscuits, and then my own advisor-princess, by way of closure, gazes at me closely, then, tilting her head to one side - oh so prettily - and smiling even more, she asks: ‘why are you single?’
Wood Green marriage bureau can be found at 1 Western Rd, London, N22. It has curved walls like a ship and beautiful views. I doubt that Tottenham High Rd, where I now have to sign-on, can compete – but who knows?
I eventually found reception and was told go upstairs to another reception where a nice lady told me I’d come to the wrong place entirely – I should have been at White Heart Lane apparently – but she’d try and persuade ‘an advisor’ to see me. ‘Hmm,’ she muttered, ‘you’re the second doctor I’ve seen this week.’
I waited and filled out a form and waited some more and looked out of the window and did some reading and had a stretch and then another nice lady passed by and offered me strawberries which I refused but felt inspired to do a few shimmies instead. Various rather smart people were congregating on the sofas by now, all eagerly filling out forms and waiting and chatting bravely to each other like one of those mad self-improvement seminars convened by some organisation desperately trying to justify its funding. I was then assigned an advisor.
The divinely pretty woman with glistening white teeth looked out from under her dark fringe, smiled beatifically, puckered her darling, perfectly sculpted, little eyebrows and cooed, very softly, ‘what are you dooo-ing here???’
I warbled on about this and that and being in the studio and so on and so forth and she glazed over with the sheer tedium of it all and then asked if I liked going to ‘foreign places.’ Yes I said, about to launch into a blow by blow account of my adventures in and not in Iran but, before I’d completed the first sentence, she smiled again, ‘that’s good. You could go somewhere else and do your arty-farty stuff.’
Time passed pleasantly enough, we signed this and that and I wrote down a few things and our lady of the strawberries passed by again, this time followed by an angel of biscuits, and then my own advisor-princess, by way of closure, gazes at me closely, then, tilting her head to one side - oh so prettily - and smiling even more, she asks: ‘why are you single?’
Wood Green marriage bureau can be found at 1 Western Rd, London, N22. It has curved walls like a ship and beautiful views. I doubt that Tottenham High Rd, where I now have to sign-on, can compete – but who knows?
Thursday, 21 May 2009
Back To The Shop: More Adventures In Philip Lane
Things are hotting up considerably at the corner shop these days. The marching songs still embellish the police sirens in Philip Lane and the price-war continues, happily for the customers. I’ve more or less abandoned Yasir Halim now, in favour of Euro Stores and Mr. Ocean. I interrupted a tumultuous row the other day, arguments being bellowed from one side of the Ocean to the other, ricocheting off the fennel and back to the beer, then up an aisle to the carefully arranged sheep heads and back to the pasta and round again, taking in the grape-seed molasses on the way. Bewildered, I announced that I agreed with HIM and waved towards the tallest, in gold chain, who grinned from ear to ear. Ah-ha, muttered the lad at the counter, checking the change, so you ARE a communist.
They’d been arguing in Kurdish so I hadn’t understood a word. I clearly wasn’t going to be served unless I demanded attention and that seemed the best way to do it. Gold Chain was clearly delighted at my declaration of partisanship. ‘We just need to bring back communism and everything will be ok,’ he announced, beaming beatifically. I wondered when it was that Philip Lane, or Tottenham, or perhaps it was the whole of Haringey, had been a communist enclave. Had I missed something? Counter lad explained that Gold Chain was ‘going back to the mountains to fight.’ He seemed confident that I was now a fully paid up, card carrying member of Gold Chain Communists Inc and that I would repair at once to my cave and make ready to join the march.
I can barely carry a Kalshnikov, let alone fire one, but I will admit to having once had a go. I shot a collection of beer bottles in the mountains outside Dogubayzit, on the Turkish Iranian border. Mr. Siam Shahin, who runs Murat Camping, a tourist camp-site close to Ishakpasha Palace, had taken me there to show me his eleven, glistening smuggling horses. He was a kind of Kurdish God-Father figure, who smuggled alcohol into Iran on horseback, and brought back electrical goods and people- at vast cost presumably. He told me he ran schools for Kurdish children in the mountains. He’d been proudly displaying his gun collection to me and others staying at the camp-site. I admired the Kalashnikov and foolishly remarked that I’d always wanted to fire one. ‘I’ll teach you,’ he offers. You don’t refuse a man with four guns, so I went into the mountains for my first, (and last), fire-arms lesson. It weighed about 25 kilos and jolted back into my shoulder every time I fired it. I did hit a couple of bottles, but not the ones I was intending to hit. Satisfied I’d be a hopeless freedom fighter of the armed variety, I retired to nurse my bruised shoulder.
I just want to make it absolutely clear this was not a ‘training camp’ of any sort. Shehir enjoys very cordial relations indeed with the Iranian Consulate in Erzerum and I had gone there to see if he could extract a visa for me. To say that he was, and presumably still is, an extremely unsavoury character would be an understatement - the more so, somehow, for being so thoroughly personable. It took me about four days fully to realise and then accept exactly how unsavoury he was. The Kalashnikov story sounds like one those cheerful little travellers tales. On the face of it is, but it involves some of most toxic characters I’ve ever met in my life. The people he was bringing over the border, I subsequently found out, were women that he sold to the hotels in the area to provide sex to Russian traders. I hope Gold Chain’s just shooting his mouth off. If not he’ll find himself involved in one the main trades that funds the PKK. I’d rather he just tried to ‘bring back’ his communist enclave in Philip Lane any day.
They’d been arguing in Kurdish so I hadn’t understood a word. I clearly wasn’t going to be served unless I demanded attention and that seemed the best way to do it. Gold Chain was clearly delighted at my declaration of partisanship. ‘We just need to bring back communism and everything will be ok,’ he announced, beaming beatifically. I wondered when it was that Philip Lane, or Tottenham, or perhaps it was the whole of Haringey, had been a communist enclave. Had I missed something? Counter lad explained that Gold Chain was ‘going back to the mountains to fight.’ He seemed confident that I was now a fully paid up, card carrying member of Gold Chain Communists Inc and that I would repair at once to my cave and make ready to join the march.
I can barely carry a Kalshnikov, let alone fire one, but I will admit to having once had a go. I shot a collection of beer bottles in the mountains outside Dogubayzit, on the Turkish Iranian border. Mr. Siam Shahin, who runs Murat Camping, a tourist camp-site close to Ishakpasha Palace, had taken me there to show me his eleven, glistening smuggling horses. He was a kind of Kurdish God-Father figure, who smuggled alcohol into Iran on horseback, and brought back electrical goods and people- at vast cost presumably. He told me he ran schools for Kurdish children in the mountains. He’d been proudly displaying his gun collection to me and others staying at the camp-site. I admired the Kalashnikov and foolishly remarked that I’d always wanted to fire one. ‘I’ll teach you,’ he offers. You don’t refuse a man with four guns, so I went into the mountains for my first, (and last), fire-arms lesson. It weighed about 25 kilos and jolted back into my shoulder every time I fired it. I did hit a couple of bottles, but not the ones I was intending to hit. Satisfied I’d be a hopeless freedom fighter of the armed variety, I retired to nurse my bruised shoulder.
I just want to make it absolutely clear this was not a ‘training camp’ of any sort. Shehir enjoys very cordial relations indeed with the Iranian Consulate in Erzerum and I had gone there to see if he could extract a visa for me. To say that he was, and presumably still is, an extremely unsavoury character would be an understatement - the more so, somehow, for being so thoroughly personable. It took me about four days fully to realise and then accept exactly how unsavoury he was. The Kalashnikov story sounds like one those cheerful little travellers tales. On the face of it is, but it involves some of most toxic characters I’ve ever met in my life. The people he was bringing over the border, I subsequently found out, were women that he sold to the hotels in the area to provide sex to Russian traders. I hope Gold Chain’s just shooting his mouth off. If not he’ll find himself involved in one the main trades that funds the PKK. I’d rather he just tried to ‘bring back’ his communist enclave in Philip Lane any day.
Friday, 15 May 2009
We Built This City
E Voila – here we have a group of crafts people, we could call them makers, working together - collaborating - on a project in Kensington, London’s fanciful West End: land of tallish stately houses, painted white, land of locked shared gardens in fashionable squares that aren’t square, land of the Temple of the Applied Arts and The Royal Dinosaur Paddock, Land of the most excellent Polish restaurant, Daquise, descended from Polish inward migration round one, (circa 1945). Here, in a swanky, if ever so slightly frumpy, naff part of the metropolis, was, (trumpet blast):
We Work in a Fragile Material!!
A charming group of Swedes with green fingernails had come to build us a new city. Quite unlike those pesky Danes that preceded them a few centuries ago, they built, wove, constructed, plaited and stuck things on and painted them.
Well, imagine my surprise to find, here in Kensington - KENSINGTON of all places - a Greenham bender!! Sisters – we’ve arrived! We are in Kensington. A Bender in SW1!! No, seriously, it gets better – this bender is ‘supported’ by South Kensington Estates. We’re part of a cool urban regeneration project. Whooood a’ thought it? They even had a spider web !!!!!!
Now, for those youngsters who have absolutely no idea what a Greenham bender is, check this out. Those nice people at the Guardian have made us our very own website – here.
So, ‘We Built this City’ was a faultless exercise in marginal refuge/ee migratory construction, combining basket weaving, papier mache, other kinds of weaving, and the careful tearing up of the Metro, London’s esteemed free newspaper.
It resembled a cow’s stomach, it had four chambers, all of which looked like they were chewing cud. The ‘skeleton’ of the structure was - oh, you know, basket weaving material, and there was chicken wire and papier mache stuck on the chicken wire and painted in parts and, I loved this bit, decorated here and there with pistachio nut shells – the makers having first eaten the said nuts presumably. This was a real Greenham touch.
Inside things got really dinky. There was, as I said, a spider’s web woven out of string, cute little papie mache cups and a tea pot and some ‘clay pots’ made of papier mache and light bulbs on long wires – now we didn’t have them at Greenham – and candles – we had tonnes of them.
‘It’s supercraft’ said one of the team. ‘We also make non-material things but we bring our craft minds to it.’
And ‘supercraft’ it was. It was also funny and delightful and cooperative and un-precious. I wrote this the same weekend I saw it. It was the latest offering of the 6pm project space, curated by Marie Torbensdatter Hermann and hosted by her and co-curator Edmund de Waal. For no particular reason, other than having got distracted by something else, I am posting it now, almost three weeks later and, coincidentally, the Crafts Council’s flagship enterprise, Collect, opened last night at the Saatchi Gallery. This is the Craft Council’s annual fit of decorative craft debauchery, an absurd fetishisation of binge-consumption, belching quietly in time to the theme tune of late consumer capitalism. You can almost see those posters, cant you? Labour isn’t working – brilliantly crafted politics at the time, courtesy of the watchmaker’s son, even it did consume itself into oblivion. Shudder. Ah well, I shall repair to a supercraft tent – now, where did I put those bolt cutters?
Monday, 20 April 2009
Dinner With Svetlana
This is the second version of Dinner With Svetlana. The first I did in 2006 and it's featured on my website where you can also find the text in full. Svetlana is also another version of me. She is the Russian trafficked or prostituted woman I am often thought to be, especially when I stay in hotels on my own in Tehran or Shiraz. I couldn't escape this alternative identity so I just accepted her and began to find out who Svetlana was and is. My 'Svetlana' self doesn't exist only in Iran, she was also with me throughout Eastern Europe and in London. This is the version I made for the Esfahan show. I had to change a couple of the words which were not considered 'decent,' although no one seems to mind too much about the trafficking.
Sunday, 19 April 2009
A Tale of Two Ministries
For the foreign visitor, arriving in Esfahan in Spring does make you wonder if you died suddenly and got catapulted into Heaven. However, Esfahan is also a large industrial city. It sprawls and belches gross sulphuric yellow pollution, which hangs in a thick cloud at the periphery, a cloud so dense that even on an otherwise clear day, the city is not visible as you enter it from the South side. It is entirely concealed under the suffocating blanket of smog. This is Esfahan’s ‘other side’. There’s plenty more to add to add to that, but not in this post.
So, what of the exhibition?
Well, it hasn’t been cancelled, exactly, nor postponed, exactly. It has suffered from a bout of bureaucratic incompetence, conniving and malevolent malfunctioning that makes its pollution seem almost harmless. Having laboured day and night for five months on no pay, and produced a body of work that I like to think might hold its own in a gallery, having organised the transport and written the catalogue and done everything I should have done, I was refused a visa. So, just to clarify this: a government institution, namely the Museum of Contemporary Art, Esfahan, invites me to do the show and asks me to sign a contract and the very same government refuses to allow either me or the exhibition to enter the country.
Arcane dealings
The Foreign Ministry, part of central government, doles out the visas. The Museum is under the jurisdiction of provincial government of Esfahan. The process was as follows:
FM to Museum, ‘Send us a copy of the official letter confirming the exhibition.’
Museum to FM. ‘No – bugger off!’
FM to Museum, ‘Send us a copy of the email you sent her inviting her to exhibit.’
Museum to FM. ‘No – I said NO, now bugger off!’
Museum to me, (snarling): ‘The FM is trying to trick us into being your host but we are forbidden to be the host to any foreign artist - VERY VERY forbidden’
Bureaucratic language note: ‘host’ means someone who ‘takes responsibility for you all the time that you are in Iran.’ Meaning: if you do anything ‘wrong’ it becomes the fault of the ‘host’. Tough on an individual, but something you might think an institution could tolerate.
Technically, as far as I can tell and as far as anyone can tell, the museum is indeed the host, but they’re having none of it.
My interpretation: Museum has got very cold feet, possibly because ‘foreign artist,’ in this case, is ‘British artist' and, since A’jad (Ahmedinejad) is preparing to get in the bed with Ooooooooo ba mast, (Obama) a new ‘great satan’ must be found as a matter of urgency and the old ‘great satan’ ie Britain, will do just fine. Bum. That ‘s all I’ve got to say – in this post anyway. Actually I’ve said quite a bit more but it’s all off blog, hence my prolonged silence in this space. Oooooo baa maast, btw, is how Obama's name reads when it's written in Farsi. In effect it divides into three words, which just happen to mean 'he's with us' - ok, strictly it's ooo baa maa, 'he with us,' but what's a 'st' between friends? Back in November 2008, last time I was in Iran, this was considered a thigh slappingly funny joke at the news stands in Tehran. It was pretty funny the first few times.
So what now?
So, in principle, it could all just wait till the election’s over and the dust and pollution settles and ‘they,’ whoever ‘they’ are, get a bit less paranoid about foreigners, especially foreigners who have something called a BBC in their country that does unspeakable things like report on what goes on in Iran - occasionally. And what of the planned triste between Ooooob and A’jad? Will they or won't they? Will Oooooob get Mr. Mousavi instead? What about that poor women (Roxana Saberi) they’ve just stuffed in gaol for god knows how long as a bargaining chip?
October 2003, Tehran, lobby of Naderi hotel, Hassan to me: ‘This really is the most lawless bloody place I’ve every encountered.’ (‘Hassan’ teaches Middle Eastern politics and law at a well-known British University)
October 2004, London, Afsane’s kitchen, watching the rice, Felora to me: ‘Iran would be a great place, Claudia, but the problem is there’s no law.’
The tale of two ministries suggested that even Iranian officials are utterly confused by their own legal bureaucracy, but the Tale of Roxana says that in April 2009, they’ve just declared war on their own legal system. Many would say they did that decades ago, but it hasn’t been quite so fully-paid-up, so shamelessly public for some years has it? Or am I just deluded?
To more important matters
Atefeh comes to mind, but they didn’t expect anyone outside Iran, outside Neka even, to notice– we did and we’re still angry by the way. Come to think of it, this year, August 15th, (?) is the fifth anniversary of her murder…
This is the Wikipeida entry for Atefeh Rajabi Sahaaleh, it’s not bad as these things go. Here is a link to a blog about Atefeh with the youtube links to an American version of a documentary about her. There is also a BBC documentary, 'Execution of a Teenage Girl' available on youtube in five parts. Click here and type 'execution of a teenage girl' into 'search' to find the five pieces. Here’s one in French which is all in one, not in parts.
So, what of the exhibition?
Well, it hasn’t been cancelled, exactly, nor postponed, exactly. It has suffered from a bout of bureaucratic incompetence, conniving and malevolent malfunctioning that makes its pollution seem almost harmless. Having laboured day and night for five months on no pay, and produced a body of work that I like to think might hold its own in a gallery, having organised the transport and written the catalogue and done everything I should have done, I was refused a visa. So, just to clarify this: a government institution, namely the Museum of Contemporary Art, Esfahan, invites me to do the show and asks me to sign a contract and the very same government refuses to allow either me or the exhibition to enter the country.
Arcane dealings
The Foreign Ministry, part of central government, doles out the visas. The Museum is under the jurisdiction of provincial government of Esfahan. The process was as follows:
FM to Museum, ‘Send us a copy of the official letter confirming the exhibition.’
Museum to FM. ‘No – bugger off!’
FM to Museum, ‘Send us a copy of the email you sent her inviting her to exhibit.’
Museum to FM. ‘No – I said NO, now bugger off!’
Museum to me, (snarling): ‘The FM is trying to trick us into being your host but we are forbidden to be the host to any foreign artist - VERY VERY forbidden’
Bureaucratic language note: ‘host’ means someone who ‘takes responsibility for you all the time that you are in Iran.’ Meaning: if you do anything ‘wrong’ it becomes the fault of the ‘host’. Tough on an individual, but something you might think an institution could tolerate.
Technically, as far as I can tell and as far as anyone can tell, the museum is indeed the host, but they’re having none of it.
My interpretation: Museum has got very cold feet, possibly because ‘foreign artist,’ in this case, is ‘British artist' and, since A’jad (Ahmedinejad) is preparing to get in the bed with Ooooooooo ba mast, (Obama) a new ‘great satan’ must be found as a matter of urgency and the old ‘great satan’ ie Britain, will do just fine. Bum. That ‘s all I’ve got to say – in this post anyway. Actually I’ve said quite a bit more but it’s all off blog, hence my prolonged silence in this space. Oooooo baa maast, btw, is how Obama's name reads when it's written in Farsi. In effect it divides into three words, which just happen to mean 'he's with us' - ok, strictly it's ooo baa maa, 'he with us,' but what's a 'st' between friends? Back in November 2008, last time I was in Iran, this was considered a thigh slappingly funny joke at the news stands in Tehran. It was pretty funny the first few times.
So what now?
So, in principle, it could all just wait till the election’s over and the dust and pollution settles and ‘they,’ whoever ‘they’ are, get a bit less paranoid about foreigners, especially foreigners who have something called a BBC in their country that does unspeakable things like report on what goes on in Iran - occasionally. And what of the planned triste between Ooooob and A’jad? Will they or won't they? Will Oooooob get Mr. Mousavi instead? What about that poor women (Roxana Saberi) they’ve just stuffed in gaol for god knows how long as a bargaining chip?
October 2003, Tehran, lobby of Naderi hotel, Hassan to me: ‘This really is the most lawless bloody place I’ve every encountered.’ (‘Hassan’ teaches Middle Eastern politics and law at a well-known British University)
October 2004, London, Afsane’s kitchen, watching the rice, Felora to me: ‘Iran would be a great place, Claudia, but the problem is there’s no law.’
The tale of two ministries suggested that even Iranian officials are utterly confused by their own legal bureaucracy, but the Tale of Roxana says that in April 2009, they’ve just declared war on their own legal system. Many would say they did that decades ago, but it hasn’t been quite so fully-paid-up, so shamelessly public for some years has it? Or am I just deluded?
To more important matters
Atefeh comes to mind, but they didn’t expect anyone outside Iran, outside Neka even, to notice– we did and we’re still angry by the way. Come to think of it, this year, August 15th, (?) is the fifth anniversary of her murder…
This is the Wikipeida entry for Atefeh Rajabi Sahaaleh, it’s not bad as these things go. Here is a link to a blog about Atefeh with the youtube links to an American version of a documentary about her. There is also a BBC documentary, 'Execution of a Teenage Girl' available on youtube in five parts. Click here and type 'execution of a teenage girl' into 'search' to find the five pieces. Here’s one in French which is all in one, not in parts.
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