Friday, August 28, 2009

Me & Pluto, The journey to Aryenum





These are some random accounts and narratives of events in relation to my youth, revolution, private faith & Iran

The little boy opened the window to the back yard, his was the sign of sagittarius and in harmony with that autumnal night sky , purple dark and crisp,the cold wind driving the clouds ferociously and the stars that were playing the cat & mouse with the little fellow who all awhile was searching for Pluto, that tiny planet far far away, at the edge of the solar system.too tiny & too far to be noticed,,cold,neglected,ignored & unheeded . He was recalling Ms Tehranii class subject earlier that day on solar system and how among them all he felt sad & sorry for the plight of Pluto. It,s hard to say wether he found Pluto or she found him or if she was part of him all along, an avenging cause for the helpless ,ill-fated & ignored .He could never culminate nor alter the shape of heaven ,so eversince, his search for all little Pluto,s took an earthly shape & fashioned to side with souls & icons wrenched in misery,unjustly marginalized,subjugated & the forgotten.



As the boy matured & refined so did his ideals and his subconscious quest to do justice to all little plutos .The years passed by & his search to do right to Pluto continued in all facets of life and so did his yearnings to know more of the truth rather than the status quo reality.By the age twelve he had gone thru his dad's Shahnameh twice & eventhough he couldn,t grasp the meaning of some words he could sympathize with the forgotten ancient icons & the mystical creation of that persecuted lonely old man of Tousse. The random characteres paraded before his eyes,the injustice to Siavash,the burden of Rostam, the ill-fated Sohrab, Justice of Jamshid, the tyranny of Taazi Zahaak , the revolt of Kaveh,the revenge of Fereydoon, the chivalry of Farokhzaad & tragedy of Qadesiyeh ...................there he found it, his forgotten & oppressed Pluto, the legacy of Aryenum.



To rewind, at Seven, against all odds I discovered namaaz & Islam.I say against all odds since I was born into a family of so called patriots, a secular father & grand father who were career military officers ,nationalists and among other things veterans of cessationist wars in Azarbaijaan & Khuzistan and against the backdrop of a huge network of cousins,friends,brother & sisters who like the majority of society under Pahlavi were not keen on the idea of a 7 year old boy reading namaaz five times a day & shouting azaan from the rooftop to an unwilling audience of napping neighbors and their cursing words .



I can name a few culprits for my so called Islamic journey but the death of 2 cousins & a favourite aunt of breast cancer in a short span of time and the near miss suicide of my actress half sister had a lot to do with it which made me frightened & confused about the fate of the loved ones close to me such as my dad,mom,brother & sisters.It wasn,t about Hussein ibn Ali , Jaafar ibn Sadegh , Muhammad ibn abdullah or even Islam but the need for a medium to talk to God,to pray,to complain or repine or simply to find peace and Namaaz was the only viable option to a seven year old kid.I wasn,t seeking an Imam or a prophet but God and thru Islam I found it & refined it,s role in relation to me. One might say that Islam was the space ship I utilized to get to God & once I found it ,I got rid of the ship and the baggage by the age of 16 and said good bye to it and the Iran I once knew .I found true God & true Iran in their totality and worshiped them both via my own way and nightly words of pray.


But then again as I grew older Islam,Namaaz,Roozeh became just a routin arranged to my convenience and yet didn,t change the rascal in me one bit, outta boredom I would still sniper shoot fat bazaari kids & hajis with my tofang sachmeh gun from our rooftop during Imam Hussein Ashura & shaam gharibaan mourning processions while enjoying their baffling looks as they yelled "Zanboore!!,Zanboor"; "Beez , Beez" ,I would still on top of my allowance clean out my older sisters purse outta all the change they had just so I would lend it to them later with an added interest when they went broke, I would still at pre-teens hijack my dad,s car when sleep & take it for a joy ride , I would still utilize my handsome devil looks to rack up more girlfriends that I could handle just to keep the neiborhood & school title of "S** Khoshtiip" and I would still with the company of my five musketeer best pals populate the Italian soft porn shows in cinemas ,teenage parties ,copy Elvis & Travolta, Do Rocky's one hand push ups, play our soccer matches, cheer Persepolis against dastardly & dweeb Tajii,s and incessantly find ourselves in kharrazmi highschool principal's office for mischiefs....etc



Over all, life was good as it should be for all 14 & 15 year olds. Iran, then, was innocent,gullible, stupidly naive and a ripe fruit of prey for the dark forces of Qadesiyeh.In those years Islam was not judged by it,s message but by it,s messengers or earthly advocates to give it that humanist look such as the average old granny,the nice melody of recitation on radio & the happy go lucky youth like me .In short Islam was to an extent a semi private religion that fire of Ommatism turned it into a man eating beast , a dinner table knife sharpened by Ommaties to be used as a sword of war. It,s shortcomings was not yet exposed thru brute face of political Islam or the Ommatie stateless baffoons .



As early as I remember reading history was my favourite past time as was my dad's & his immence collection of books on history of Iran & the world helped me put light on the true concept of my heritage and was a stepping stone that set my path for years to come.So in essence, those early readings saved me from becoming yet another victim of Ommatism wether inside or outside Iran. Later as I grew older I read more,Dashtii,Hedayat,yah & even Samad's and the one which moved me the most were the books by great Kasrawi given to me by my older cousin Ardeshir ,an IIAF fighter pilot who like my other cousin Manouchehr ultimately lost his life during the war over the skies of Iraq in Suleymanieh & whose body was never recovered. You could therefore say that beloved Ferdowsi gave me cause and Kasrawi set my path.

And then came the revolution.To me the fifteen year old addict of discovery it was a novelty & a pretext for adventure yet I knew deep down as it progressed that Khomeini's claime of "there is more to Shariaa that meets the eye" was absolutly & positively fake and "there was absolutly nothing more to it that meets the eye and there is much less" . I knew it because I was the rare outsider in who was in on the game from an early age,semi fluent in Arabic & reciter of countless verses but was still too young & too ignorant to grasp the enormity of thebleak beast that awaited us or listen to my patriot dad who advised me on moderation .After all I was at the center of it all ,kharrazmi high school next door to university of Tehran.Me and all the other young clowns had our own agendas to venture into university grounds every day & play the cat and mouse with the guards.To me , my pals and thousands more it was more of a blind challenge than a case of romantic justice or idealism, we had no beef with Shah and were no lover of Khomeini .For us it was simply a good case for "jiim shodan", disrupting classes & chasing girls(or for girls the other way around ;).




To me the black comedy of revolution was watching my older 19 yr old bewildered & confused conscript cousin Kamraan every other day across the university gate among the guards & his Azari commander . I still remember his words to me "Tokhmeh sageh divaneh boro khooneh vagarnah beh amou migam", poor chap was frustrated and I felt sorry for him as he was no ideological warrior like a Sepahii or Basijii zombii, just a conscript stuck between ignorant bafoons on one side & army rules, on the other side.I would buy him a sandwich and chit chat a bit until commander usualy showed up to kick my ass & chase me away.




The revolution, the blood, the mayham, the loss of few classmates eventhough made me sad at times but overall was a time of joy & self discovery that by the end of it I was in contrast to the young buck who joined it.By the end of that Ommatie carnival I found my real path,my own true God &my true heritage against the backdrop of a majority mesmerized by their new found political Islam , their Imam and their "Islamic" pretence , a true dokaan . It was not me to watch ignorance and stay quiet & almost every week had a beef to grow with some random hezbollahi coming in my face...unbearable...So then just as I was saying good bye to my daily routin of Ash-had an ali an vallih allah it became fashion of the land and was being discovered by the hordes of ignorance and opportune to follow,to practice, to make money on , to take hostage on behalf & to kill for......So finally I made a deal with my God to teach him Parsi so I can stop talking to him in Arabic.



The musketeers all left & scattered all along the globe,
and then I left ,almost 16,alone,one month before the war and never went back but always looked back through out that journey thru triumph or defeat.