[lit-ideas] Re: Desecrating the Qur'an
- From: Austin Meredith <Kouroo@xxxxxxxxx>
- To: lit-ideas@xxxxxxxxxxxxx
- Date: Wed, 18 May 2005 07:26:39 -0400
>What did you do to piss them off so much?
Well, I had made one serious mistake that I can remember, a mistake in my
reading matter. When I arrived in the home, they had thoroughly gone
through my backpack, looking at everything --interested in seeing what the
ferangi was carrying around with him-- and they had come upon the current
issue of TIME magazine. Now, this was the Iran of Shahanshah Pahlavi, and
foreign magazines were totally banned. I mean, really totally banned. So,
they were thrilled to be able to read something from outside Iran, and my
young friend who had brought me into his home was able to read English
(more or less). He began to read aloud the various news articles in this
TIME magazine to the family, translating. They had come to an article in
this issue of TIME, that was about Iran, and so of course they were
particularly interested in this particular article. They considered this
article carefully word for word. The article told them that the Shahanshah
had been selling Iranian oil, *their* oil, to Israel. Shahanshah Pahlavi,
whom they detested, the Enemy of God, had been *having dealings with Jews*,
there it was, right there in black and white! Their fingers poked at the
magazine page, following along word after word. Dealings with Jews.
They had also come across, in the bottom of my pack, a pocket knife with a
two-inch pointed blade, and they had instantly "traded" this with me for
one of their official, allowed village knives, a legal knife with its not
more than half-inch non-pointed blade (that they had been using in the
village to cut the throats of sheep).
You have to bear in mind that the situation in Iran in early 1979 was
tense. In a nearby town, human intestines had recently been strung from
lamp-post to lamp-post. (The intestines had pertained to some local Shah
supporters.) This particular village was built right up against the high
concrete wall of one of the Shah's massive political prisons. Everyone was
living in fear of arrest and torture. And, these people were your ultimate
antisemites.
So in that context, when they interrogated me as to whether they were
translating this article correctly from the English into Farsi, that they
were understanding correctly that *their oil was going to Jews*, I was
testifying that yes indeed, what the words meant was that Shahanshah
Pahlavi had entered into a trade agreement with Israel. I said that I
failed to see why they found this so troubling. I said it wasn't as if the
Shah, no matter how much they hated and feared him, had been *giving away*
any of their oil, and pointed out that what the Shah was doing was, merely,
that he was *selling* it on the open market, an arms-length financial
transaction that did not indicate any love. Incautiously, I said that I
failed to see why they were getting so excited about Jews -- since we were
all of us God's children. --Well, I guess that kinda set them off.
------------------------------------------------------------------
To change your Lit-Ideas settings (subscribe/unsub, vacation on/off,
digest on/off), visit www.andreas.com/faq-lit-ideas.html
Other related posts:
