Adventures of Mr.Behi

When I was one, we moved to an Island

I was only one when Iran revolted in hope for change. Now I look back and wonder about those who made it happen. I can't put myself in their shoes though as my world is very different from theirs. Chanting "No East, No West" is no longer valid for me. I am neither ready to change my life for an ideology. If they wanted Iran to change the world with revolution, I now want it to embrace the world with open arms.

I was one when my people had a dream and went for it fiercely. They paddled hard in hope for a better place but reached an island of isolation. It was a land after all but they always threw messages in bottles and cried to get out and never to actually live there. It came out to be very different from the dream, yet after thirty years, people still dream about change. Some dream about making this a better Island, some about leaving or even sinking it and no one seem to really know why and how. We are Iranians and we dream. We write poetry, sing sad songs and dream, each in our own individual island.

End of Fall in Tehran

We are still in Iran but finally things are getting more clear and we hopefully be able to return to Libya soon. December is a short working month and this delay is going to be costly for me in closing yearly targets. In the past few weeks while waiting for the passport translation issue to get resolved, I did some reading and listening and did it mostly through my brother's extraordinary collection of thousands of DVD movies and his jaw dropping stack of collected music.

Apart from the delay, things have been good. Tehran is showing autumn in full form...trees have already shed most of the leaves, mountains have snow cap and the wind says it all.

Coming back to Iran gave us a good opportunity to catch up with our friends. A lot is changing in our community of friends and former colleagues. My former boss and his wife left Iran to India for their next work assignment. They spent 2.5 years here and loved it. I have rarely seen such an adventurous couple and they are really unique in seeing a good thing in everything. Another friend is moved by the company to the UK, another one is going to the U.A.E. When we went to Libya, two of our other friends went to Thailand. Yet one another left for his studies to Canada. We are so dispersed in the world! and that is the beauty of it I suppose.

We will be leaving and will miss the first snowfall in downtown. It happens sometimes well before winter and that is when you truly feel falling for the end of fall.

Visiting Iran

It is more than a week since I started a little vacation in Iran. I stayed off-line most of the time enjoying a sweet reunion with family members. It was the longest time outside of Iran, the past 7 months! It was not so long compared to some people who come back after years living abroad but was long enough for me to miss the delicate feeling, the strange sense and the unknown flavour of being in Iran. It was not just about being homesick but a mysterious combination of memories that dragged us to a short vacation back home. Well, add to that the necessity for spending the travel allowance allocated to me for the year 2007 before it gets perished into 2008!

Not much is changed in Iran since the time we left. There is a new bank note of 50,000 Rials is in circulation (around 5.5 US$), a vivid sign of a major concern of the population: “High Inflation”. Fuel usage is now rationalized. The price is still low but there is an allotment for each car and that is controlled via a dedicated smart card. As always, I paid a visit to a major IT mall. I was happily surprised seeing more and more apple products in the shelves, ipods and iphones were everywhere and many shops were selling iMac and MacBooks. None of them are real official resellers I guess but this has been the case for a long time for American products. For ordinary people, there is no such thing as embargo, only that they could earn more if the country was open and I am not sure if many of them realize that.

We are spending most of the time with family and friends yet I am finding a quality time to catch up with some of the books that I left reading and audiobooks that I gathered and did not listen to.

Rageh Inside Iran

               
 

This is truly a fair report compared to many reports I have happened to see from foreign journalists inside Iran. A reporter who talks about life in Tehran in a unique approach and wisely covers many different angles of this complex city. This is the city in which I am grown up and it was a nostalgic feeling watching this video. Rageh Omar did a much better job than permanent BBC correspondents in Iran. It is a lengthy video but is a good watch. This is the tag of this video on Google Video: "Rageh Omaar embarks on a unique journey inside what he describes as one of the most misunderstood countries in the world, looking at the country through the eyes of people rarely heard - ordinary Iranians. It took a year of wrangling to get permission to film inside Iran but the result is an amazing portrayal of an energetic and vibrant country that is completely different to the usual images seen in the media."

The Lost Innocence

They call them rapists, murderers, drug dealers...call them whatever...what is happening in Iran? In a matter of few weeks, I heard a lot of news and saw many photos and videos about public executions in various parts of the country. No comments about things they did and whether these fellows deserved to be executed or not. Some people say execution is not fair at all, some say the opposite...and Iranian justice system says eye for the eye...let's say we agree to this point but why killing someone in front of others? why?

Public execution is the most bitter thing that can happen in a society and sadly, I saw a little kid in one of the pictures in the scene of an execution. What is the price of her innocence? it is indeed easy to destroy things but no one will leave the scene of the execution thinking about things he/she learned for life...they may cut a bad tree in hope of a better plant to rise from the same land but by poisoning the soil, only death grows...:(

Will you let it go?

It is like an epidemic feeling. When I was inside Iran, reading blogs of Iranians living outside, I could feel a certain degree of exaggeration or if not, an elevated level of sensitivity towards unpleasant political and social news in Iran. Now that I am rather outside, I guess I am getting covered by the same shadow.
The pathetic habit of media in bringing all the ugly in front of me makes this shadow much darker and more scary. Will Iran ever become what we are hoping for her to be? and what are we hoping for anyway? under the shadow, in the darkness, in search of what we are moving our hands so desperately.

Sadly, Iranian government is like an angry gangster that always avenges its owns citizens. They claim they are "Islamic" but they act so harsh to people. If you are an intellectual, you are a spy, if you are a cleric who does not like them, you are "diverted". If are young and want to be just young, you are "made fool by the enemy". I do not want to generalize and be like those who give a picture of Iran as if it is hell...it is not...but the government should just let people live as they want...they can not suffer from economic disasters AND more sanctions AND threat of war AND social restriction AND ban in normal stuff AND censorship AND lack of freedom of speech AND political limitation and and... will you please let it go in one area at least?

While I am getting more into work these days, too busy to write, Mrs.Behi is busy writing. Today she wrote about what she would be involved with if we were in Tehran (read her insights here).

Perhaps I should just give up nagging for the moment. We have rented new movies that we want to watch and it is 10:30 p.m after a long day. I need to go back to Mrs.Behi and did you know how cute she was when she was little? see this

Tehran

Link: TEHRAN. I miss you...This is a good photo collection...

Physics competition in Iran

Link: Updates from the International Competition

This blog is a sort of updating pad written by members of the American team participating in the international physics Olympiad in Esfahan, Iran. It is always good to read the accounts of foreign guests to Iran. Here are some photos from the opening ceremony. Iranian students have always been among the tops of such Olympiads....I heard that almost all those who won medals are now studying outside of Iran and will probably stay there...pity. Anyway...all the best for the Iran team :)

Great Expectations

Two and a half years after Bam Earthquake in Iran (Google image link) ..there are people still living on the wreckage of what used to be their homes. I came across this blog where the new post is about three short letters from Bam Children to GOD...I try my best to translate as close as possible.

- Hello dear merciful GOD. I hope you hear me. Dear merciful GOD, please forgive the people of our city, I apologize to you on their behalf. Please forgive our wrong doings dear merciful GOD. You made us wanderers of the desert and made us to live in tents. Dear GOD. each night, the horrible sound of the earthquake can be heard. Bye. (By a 12 year old)

- Dear GOD, I have one wish. Please build "Bam". Bam is too hot and the nights are too cold. If we were in our house, we could have had the heater on during the night and during the day, the air cooler was on. (By an 11 year old)

- Dear GOD, I ask you to cure me as soon as possible so that I can east something. Dear merciful GOD, please make us also rich. Dear GOD I really like that my mother could have bought the refrigerator today. (A 9 year old).

The Pirates of Petrol

Petrol is outrageously cheap in Iran and I think it makes perfect sense not to subsidize it to the level that it is. It is ridiculous for a giant oil exporter to spend so much money importing petrol while so much of it gets into hands of smugglers who pass it to neighboring countries or gets burnt by old, inefficient cars. Rationalizing the crazy level of internal consumption should have done so long ago....

Knowing that the subject of the above paragraph is Iran, can automatically suggest that things would not be as simple as they should...petrol price is such a sensitive issue that all previous governments did not dare making any drastic increase...they feared what happened in Tehran last night (see pictures).

First of all, I do not understand the Iranian mob! so you collected some more liters of cheap petrol, that means a couple of more kilometers!! and burning petrol pumps! who are they punishing? but at the same time, it is so much to expect from the middle-class and bottom level of Iranian economy to bare this after such a dreadful decline in the economy and the level of unemployment and inflation...and now  shadow of more sanctions...but it is not a big deal...I am sure Iranians will get used to it...I am sure many of my fellow countrymen will consider selling their 1970's monstrous Chevrolet Blazers! or think twice before wandering around the streets Thursday nights...

Instead of global slogans against other countries and spending billions for second hand Russian nuclear plants, shall we make some more refineries? first things first...