Neighborhood women pulled stools and sitting room seats up to
windowsills in preparation. They licked salt sweat off their
lips, adjusted scarves around heads, massaged arthritic hands
and waited. Girls gathered around them, giggling, pulling hair,
anticipating. Men and boys loitered outside, on driveways in front
of gates with cigarettes and stones, respectively. Ivy, bougainvillea
and jasmine draped the weights of their flesh from the high marble
walls blocking neighbor from neighbor, street from home. All comings
and goings paused; only the used water, draining down descended
stone ditches on each side of the street, moved. Just before noon,
just before prayer, before lunch and nap, Abadaan Street quivered
deliriously in the gaseous heat of midday, subsumed by stillness.
The residents stood at the ends of their properties, pulled like
magnets of audacious curiosity: the attraction of positive to
negative. Here, a curtain swept aside to reveal a face or two;
a servant's eyeball, there, pushed up against the hole in the
concrete washroom wall; everywhere, children's toothless mouths
gumming windowsills. All of Abadaan Street, but for the rivulets,
draining off to some unknown stream, paused as one, to watch the
parade death made.
The young boys, who played on the cobblestones of Abadaan Street
every afternoon with beaten-up balls or kites, knew first. Slowly
fathers and old men heard the news at smoky teahouses. Before
eating the evening's sofre, they told their wives, and the listening
daughters heard. Mohammed Reza, the old man down the street, died
last week. "So what?" thought the daughters, for girls'
lives existed only within the walls of the house. "Interesting,"
thought the mothers and grandmothers chewing on the news. Fathers
and grandfathers sighed, thinking of death's inescapability, "Will
I be next?" "Pass it to me! Here! Here!" The boys
went back to playing in the street, unaware.
Mohammed Reza: the old man with the family, neighbor of many
years, the man with the limp and occasionally the cane, the owner
of the only bookstore that sold foreign books in Tehran's bazaar,
a respectable bookseller (everyone assumed from the brown suit
he wore and the hat donned every morning and carried home each
afternoon), the man with the wave and the smile, the man without
words, the man down the way, across the street, next door, the
man with the light-eyed sons and fabled daughters -- the oldest
of whom he sent to school and the youngest harboring a beauty
only whispered about: an unremarkable man never associated with
cause or calamity. Even in death it was impossible to fatten his
gaunt, lifeless frame by suspicion or suspense. Aside from educating
his oldest daughter at the Armenian school, none of his acts called
for inquiry, his wife met the meat and milkmen every afternoon
with a shawl tightly wrapped about her head. So on the morning
of his burial they gathered, these view-hungry neighbors and non-friends,
not to see Mohammed Reza, nor spit upon his passing grave, nor
grieve the loss of an otherwise unknown neighbor, but for a clear
view: of the tragedy of death, the moving feast of sadness that
belonged to someone else, the slow exposition of grief. And for
a glimpse of the daughters, a drop of liquid gossip to replenish
their well of whispers long since dry.
At their evening washings, with a slathered hand across a bony
shoulder, a supple slippery haunch, questions were asked. Mothers
probed sons for information. Beauty on Abadaan Street was one
thing, a common thing, even, but the word was out that Mohammad
Reza's daughter flaunted an exquisiteness of the dangerous sort.
So how old is she? What color are her eyes? Will she go to school,
too? The boys, wet, with bubbles of the day's street dirt floating
off them, held back, pretending to know more than they did. Mohammed
Reza's sons, 14 and 12, played in the street occasionally, when
they weren't studying, and the network of playing boys caught
their offhand words: "She's got men calling already."
"We can't wait until she's gone, she doesn't do anything
around the house, thinks she's too good." "Baba spoils
her." The games would continue, the boys ignoring the brotherly
complaints. Only at home, with a piece of honey candy dangled
in front of them by the fat fingers of their tired mother, did
they associate worth with information. "She's 9," eyes
glazed, "she doesn't do any work," mouth watering, "her
eyes are blue," snatch, unwrap, suck, "ywess" (mouth
full), "zzthey are bluuu."
All for this day, with their knees pressed up against the area
beneath the window (they couldn't get any closer), brazenly staring
out onto the street. Searching other head-filled windows for recognizable
faces and seeing only silhouettes. Hoping only silhouettes of
them would be seen. Mothers and fathers alike gathered, pushed
out of their own dark secrets to watch Mohammed Reza's family
march and weep behind him, thinking about their own deaths in
passing, and inshallah, catching a glimpse of the salacious; the
tragedy; the menace of beauty. They sat reassured, waiting; the
little girls tying each other's hair into knots, the men cautiously
not smoking the last cigarette in the pack, the boys bemoaning
the emptiness of their street. For while all else went into the
wrought iron gates and high walls of the houses on Abadaan Street
-- love, deceit, comfort, beatings, caresses (illicit and maternal),
revelation, disgust, devotion, misery -- only death came out.
Ali Akbar sat on the balcony protruding elegantly above the garden
of his house, knifing out the dried secretions and dead skin crusted
underneath his fingernails from last night's harem girl. "Dirty
whore, my hands are filthy, and for what? Next time I'll get my
money's worth and give her a little something to remember ..."
His thoughts trailed and a shower of flakes and follicles snowed
like builder's dust onto the ground near his feet. Pausing to
sip his tea, he noticed an unusual amount of activity in the second-story
windows and front gardens of the houses on Abadaan Street. Curtains
pulled aside and silhouettes shifted in the window frames; men
and boys caged behind the gates of their houses, pacing. The street
itself was empty, usual for mid- morning. Ali Akbar mimicked the
street, sitting without movement, the demitasse poised at his
lips, striking a pensive pose equal to any of the elegant V-neck-clad
men he'd seen in European magazines. He was reminded again of
last night's whore. He put the tea down and dug beneath his fingernails,
ignoring the street's sizzling murmur.
Abadaan Street ignored Ali Akbar as well. The wealthy 45-year-old
rug merchant who gave the boys their first smell of European aftershave,
took such good care of his mother and father, came home every
day at the same time with a newspaper and a bag of groceries for
the cook, was, like his recently dead neighbor, an unfaultable
man. True, he was a little old not to have been married at least
once. But he was a man and time was his to take.
Without sons, or a nosy wife, Ali Akbar was not privy to the
information of Mohammed Reza's death. Or the news of the two daughters
he left behind, one more beautiful than the porcelain head of
a European doll. So when the screaming started at the end of the
street, Ali Akbar flinched, piercing himself in the space between
finger and nail. "Mother of a dog." He shook his hands
and drops of blood fell from the finger: a liquid point.
She pounded her chest with a rhythm Ali Akbar found appealing.
With each step she fired out a fist, retracted it and released
a wail. He stood up and watched, pulled to the procession like
all the other eyes on Abadaan Street. Leaning his pelvis against
the bar of the balcony he rubbed himself on the metal banister,
a not-quite arousal, something to be seen, what is it? What is
it? He scanned the street below. Not the coffin, a formality of
transport to be abandoned at the rim of whatever hole the poor
bastard would fill. Not the pallbearers, the sons and uncles of
death marching in small steps, their mustaches and eyelids drawn
down by the weight of honor, careful to shoulder their duty with
manly faces of un-grief. It was not the widow, with her screeching
sobs and one drum rhythm of grief (though her sharp blue eyes
did call to something in him, she was old, tears streaking down
her elastic face). Ali Akbar continued pushing his pelvis up against
the bar, arousing not so much a feeling of stimulation as of curious
assurance. Something good is coming. Something good. At the end
of the formal procession, last to leave the gates of Mohammed
Reza's house, came the girls. Covered, but for their downturned
faces and their clasped hands. Aha, Ali Akbar swayed his hips
back and forth, never once losing contact with the bar. Aha.
A taller and a shorter. This much everyone expected. A young
and an old. The veils were not as much a surprise as a disappointment.
Old women began to rely on the experience of age, interpreting
a swagger and analyzing a gait. The younger women, mothers and
daughters, used expert eyes to gauge weight through the black
draperies falling around round heads, across one set of sharp
shoulders and one set of curved shoulders, down one chest of formidable
femininity and another of gaunt girlishness. The men with their
street-level views left the scrutiny aside and waited patiently.
Their vantage point would bring them a clear view. Be it the slant
of a nose, a lid of lashes falling on a cheek, or even an open-eyed
stare, their position afforded them a look. Everyone on Abadaan
Street itched in anticipation for those first few minutes, forgetting
the dead, swaying to the beat of the widow's death drum and freezing
with the fall of the youngest girl's shawl.
From her head to her shoulders the loose head shawl dropped.
Quickly the older sister pulled it back up. Quickly the youngest
tugged it down. Shaking her hair out from its confines, pushing
it away from her eyes, getting a clear view of the street she
had never seen.
At 7, Ali Akbar's mother opened a door in him that led to an
empty room. She placed him between her legs and showed him the
scar of his birth. Her gentle eyes begged him to touch it, to
place an unused child's finger on the wound. With contact, a history
of pain flashed before his eyes: the pain his slick oblong body
caused her, the pain his father had caused and the pain of herself.
Into his mother's gentle eyes he smiled, delighted. Into every
whore and harem girl since he has probed for pain. He lived without
compassion, but not without curiosity; making a point, as of late,
to seek out the youngest girls, the ones without histories of
pain, for a different experience, a push into an interior landscape
not yet charred; verdant, and unscarred. Gazing down at the dead
man's youngest daughter as she, unsheathed, illuminated the street,
Ali Akbar pulsed toward the purity in her. He saw a blank canvas,
a place where he would leave the first mark. The original stroke
in a lifetime's shape of pain.
Laleh Khadivi is a master's of fine arts student in creative
writing at Mills College. "The Parade" is an excerpt
from a work in progress that takes place in Iran in the 1940s
and '50s. She lives in Oakland.
[22] Written in August 1940, for an American symposium on current
matters concerning women.
The Germans were over this house last night and the night before
that. Here they are again. It is a queer experience, lying in
the dark and listening to the zoom of a hornet which may at any
moment sting you to death. It is a sound that interrupts cool
and consecutive thinking about peace. Yet it is a sound‹far
more than prayers and anthems‹that should compel one to think
about peace. Unless we can think peace into existence we‹not
this one body in this one bed but millions of bodies yet to be
born‹will lie in the same darkness and hear the same death
rattle overhead. Let us think what we can do to create the only
efficient airraid shelter while the guns on the hill go pop
pop pop and the searchlights finger the clouds and now and then,
sometimes close at hand, sometimes far away, a bomb drops.
Up there in the sky young Englishmen and young German men are
fighting each other. The defenders are men, the attackers are
men. Arms are not given to Englishwomen either to fight the enemy
or to defend herself. She must lie weaponless tonight. Yet
if she believes that the fight going on up in the sky is a fight
by the English to protect freedom, by the Germans to destroy freedom,
she must fight, so far as she can, on the side of the English.
How far can she fight for freedom without firearms? By making
arms, or clothes or food. But there is another way of fighting
for freedom without arms; we can fight with the mind. We can make
ideas that will help the young Englishman who is fighting up in
the sky to defeat the enemy.
But to make ideas effective, we must be able to fire them off.
We must put them into action. And the hornet in the sky rouses
another hornet in the mind. There was one zooming in THE TIMES
this moming‹a woman¹s voice saying, ³Women have
not a word to say in politics.² There is no woman in the
Cabinet; nor in any responsible post. All the idea makers who
are in a position to make ideas effective are men. That is a thought
that damps thinking, and encourages irresponsibility. Why not
bury the head in the pillow, plug the ears, and cease this futile
activity of ideamaking? Because there are other tables besides
officer tables and conference tables. Are we not leaving the young
Englishman without a weapon that might be of value to him if we
give up private thinking, teatable thinking, because it seems
useless? Are we not stressing our disability because our ability
exposes us perhaps to abuse, perhaps to contempt? ³I will
not cease from mental fight,² Blake wrote. Mental fight means
thinking against the current, not with it.
That current flows fast and furious. It issues in a spate of
words from the loudspeakers and the politicians. Every day they
tell us that we are a free people, fighting to defend freedom.
That is the current that has whirled the young airman up into
the sky and keeps him circling there among the clouds. Down here,
with a roof to cover us and a gas mask handy, it is our business
to puncture gas bags and discover seeds of truth. It is not true
that we are free. We are both prisoners tonight‹he boxed
up in his machine with a gun handy; we lying in the dark with
a gas mask handy. If we were free we should be out in the open,
dancing, at the play, or sitting at the window talking together.
What is it that prevents us? ³Hitler!² the loudspeakers
cry with one voice. Who is Hitler? What is he? Aggressiveness,
tyranny, the insane love of power made manifest, they reply. Destroy
that, and you will be free.
The drone of the planes is now like the sawing of a branch overhead.
Round and round it goes, sawing and sawing at a branch directly
above the house. Another sound begins sawing its way in the brain.
³Women of ability²‹it was Lady Astor speaking in
THE TIMES this morning‹³are held down because of a subconscious
Hitlerism in the hearts of men.² Certainly we are held down.
We are equally prisoners tonight‹the Englishmen in their
planes, the Englishwomen in their beds. But if he stops to think
he may be killed; and we too. So let us think for him. Let us
try to drag up into consciousness the subconscious Hitlerism that
holds us down. It is the desire for aggression; the desire to
dominate and enslave. Even in the darkness we can see that made
visible. We can see shop windows blazing; and women gazing; painted
women; dressedup women; women with crimson lips and crimson
fingernails. They are slaves who are trying to enslave. If we
could free ourselves from slavery we should free men from tyranny.
Hitlers are bred by slaves.
A bomb drops. All the windows rattle. The antiaircraft guns
are getting active. Up there on the hill under a net tagged with
strips of green and brown stuff to imitate the hues of autumn
leaves, guns are concealed. Now they all fire at once. On the
nine o¹clock radio we shall be told ³Fortyfour
enemy planes were shot down during the night, ten of them by antiaircraft
fire.² And one of the terms of peace, the loudspeakers say,
is to be disarmament. There are to be no more guns, no army, no
navy, no air force in the future. No more young men will be trained
to fight with arms. That rouses another mindhornet in the
chambers of the brain‹another quotation. ³To fight against
a real enemy, to earn undying honour and glory by shooting total
strangers, and to come home with my breast covered with medals
and decorations, that was the summit of my hope. . . . It was
for this that my whole life so far had been dedicated, my education,
training, everything. . . .²
Those were the words of a young Englishman who fought in the
last war. In the face of them, do the current thinkers honestly
believe that by writing ³Disarmament² on a sheet of
paper at a conference table they will have done all that is needful?
Othello¹s occupation will be gone; but he will remain Othello.
The young airman up in the sky is driven not only by the voices
of loudspeakers; he is driven by voices in himself‹ancient
instincts, instincts fostered and cherished by education and tradition.
Is he to be blamed for those instincts? Could we switch off the
maternal instinct at the command of a table full of politicians?
Suppose that imperative among the peace terms was: ³Childbearing
is to be restricted to a very small class of specially selected
women,² would we submit? Should we not say, ³The maternal
instinct is a woman¹s glory. It was for this that my whole
life has been dedicated, my education, training, everything. .
. .² But if it were necessary. for the sake of humanity,
for the peace of the world, that childbearing should be restricted,
the maternal instinct subdued, women would attempt it. Men would
help them. They would honour them for their refusal to bear children.
They would give them other openings for their creative power.
That too must make part of our fight for freedom. We must help
the young Englishmen to root out from themselves the love of medals
and decorations. We must create more honourable activities for
those who try to conquer in themselves their fighting instinct,
their subconscious Hitlerism. We must compensate the man for the
loss of his gun.
The sound of sawing overhead has increased. All the searchlights
are erect. They point at a spot exactly above this roof. At any
moment a bomb may fall on this very room. One, two, three, four,
five, six . . . the seconds pass. The bomb did not fall. But during
those seconds of suspense all thinking stopped. All feeling, save
one dull dread, ceased. A nail fixed the whole being to one hard
board. The emotion of fear and of hate is therefore sterile, unfertile.
Directly that fear passes, the mind reaches out and instinctively
revives itself by trying to create. Since the room is dark it
can create only from memory. It reaches out to the memory of other
Augusts‹in Bayreuth, listening to Wagner; in Rome, walking
over the Campagna; in London. Friends¹ voices come back.
Scraps of poetry return. Each of those thoughts, even in memory,
was far more positive, reviving, healing and creative than the
dull dread made of fear and hate. Therefore if we are to compensate
the young man for the loss of his glory and of his gun, we must
give him access to the creative feelings. We must make happiness.
We must free him from the machine. We must bring him out of his
prison into the open air. But what is the use of freeing the young
Englishman if the young German and the young Italian remain slaves?
The searchlights, wavering across the flat, have picked up the
plane now. From this window one can see a little silver insect
turning and twisting in the light. The guns go pop pop pop. Then
they cease. Probably the raider was brought down behind the hill.
One of the pilots landed safe in a field near here the other day.
He said to his captors, speaking fairly good English, ³How
glad I am that the fight is over!² Then an Englishman gave
him a cigarette, and an Englishwoman made him a cup of tea. That
would seem to show that if you can free the man from the machine,
the seed does not fall upon altogether stony ground. The seed
may be fertile.
At last all the guns have stopped firing. All the searchlights
have been extinguished. The natural darkness of a summer¹s
night returns. The innocent sounds of the country are heard again.
An apple thuds to the ground. An owl hoots, winging its way from
tree to tree. And some halfforgotten words of an old English
writer come to mind: ³The huntsmen are up in America. . .
.² Let us send these fragmentary notes to the huntsmen who
are up in America, to the men and women whose sleep has not yet
been broken by machinegun fire, in the belief that they will
rethink them generously and charitably, perhaps shape them into
something serviceable. And now, in the shadowed half of the world,
to sleep.
The Whos down in Whoville liked this country
a lot,
But the Grinch in the White House most certainly did not.
He didn't arrive there by the will of the Whos,
But stole the election that he really did lose.
Vowed to "rule from the middle," then installed his
regime.
(Did this really happen or is it just a bad dream?)
He didn't listen to voters, just his friends
he was pleasin'
Now, please don't ask why, no one quite knows the reason.
It could be his heart wasn't working just right.
It could be, perhaps, that he wasn't too bright.
But I think that the most likely reason of all,
Is that both brain and heart were two sizes too small.
In times of great turmoil, this was bad news,
To have a government that ignores its Whos.
But the Whos shrugged their shoulders,
went on with their work,
Their duties as citizens so casually did shirk.
They shopped at the mall and watched their T.V.
They drove their gas guzzling big S.U.V.
Oblivious to what was going on in D.C.
Ignoring the threats to democracy.
They read the same papers that ran the same leads,
Reporting what only served corporate needs.
(For the policies affecting the lives of all nations
Were made by the giant U.S. Corporations.)
Big business grew fatter, fed by its own greed,
And by people who shopped for the things they didn't need.
But amidst all the apathy came signs of
unrest,
The Whos came to see we were fouling our nest.
And the people who cared for the ideals of this nation
Began to discuss and exchange information.
The things they couldn't read in the corporate-owned news
Of FTAA meetings and CIA coups.
Of drilling for oil and restricting rights.
They published some books, created Websites
Began to write letters and use their e-mail
(Though Homeland Security might send them to jail!)
What began as a whisper soon grew to a
roar,
These things going on they could no longer ignore.
They started to rise up and fight City Hall
Let their voices be heard, they rose to the call,
To vote, to petition, to gather, dissent,
To question the policies of the "President."
As greed gained in power and power knew
no shame
The Whos came together, sang "Not in our name!"
One by one from their sleep and their slumber they woke
The old and the young, all kinds of folk,
The black, brown and white, the gay, bi- and straight,
All united to sing, "Feed our hope, not our hate!
Stop stockpiling weapons and aiming for war!
Stop feeding the rich, start feeding the poor!
Stop storming the deserts to fuel SUV's!
Stop telling us lies on the mainstream T.V.'s!
Stop treating our children as a market to sack!
Stop feeding them Barney, Barbie and Big Mac!
Stop trying to addict them to lifelong consuming,
In a time when severe global warming is looming!
Stop sanctions that are killing the kids in Iraq!
Start dealing with ours that are strung out on crack!"
A mighty sound started to rise and to grow,
"The old way of thinking simply must go!
Enough of God versus Allah, Muslim vs. Jew
With what lies ahead, it simply won't do.
No American dream that cares only for wealth
Ignoring the need for community health.
The rivers and forests are demanding their pay,
If we're to survive, we must walk a new way.
No more excessive and mindless consumption
Let's sharpen our minds and garner our gumption.
For the ideas are simple, but the practice is hard,
And not to be won by a poem on a card.
It needs the ideas and the acts of each Who,
So let's get together and plan what to do!"
And so they all gathered from all 'round
the Earth
And from it all came a miraculous birth.
The hearts and the minds of the Whos they did grow
Three sizes to fit what they felt and they know.
While the Grinches they shrank from their hate and their greed,
Bearing the weight of their every foul deed.
From that day onward the standard of wealth,
Was whatever fed the Whos' spiritual health.
They gathered together to revel and feast,
And thanked all who worked to conquer their beast.
For although our story pits Grinches 'gainst Whos,
The true battle lies in what we daily choose.
For inside each Grinch is a tiny small Who,
And inside each Who is a tiny Grinch too.
One thrives on love and one thrives on greed.
Who will win out? It depends who you feed!
The Message of the Sunflowers:
a Magic Symbol of Peace
By Georgianna Moore
1927-2002
Once upon a time the earth was even more
beautiful than it is today. The water was pure and deep, reflecting
within itself the sunlight which gave life to all the creatures
beneath the waves.
The earth was green with many kinds of
trees and plants. These gave food and shelter to the birds, the
animals, and to all mankind. At night the air was so clear that
the starlight gave a glow almost as bright as the moon.
The people of the earth lived close to
nature. They understood it and honored it and never took more
than what they needed from it. The people lived in peace so they
prospered and began to build many nations all around the world
according to nature's climate.
But one day, a terrible thing happened.
A strange spirit of greed entered the hearts of mankind. People
began to be jealous of one another, and they were not satisfied
with all the good things they already had. The nations wanted
more and more of everything: more land, more water, more resources.
They squeezed precious minerals from the earth to build terrible
weapons to defend their nations from other greedier nations. They
killed one another. They polluted the air and the water with poisons.
Nature began to die. This is called war. War is ugly. It destroys
love and hope and peace.
Then one day a magical thing occurred.
The birds of the air, the animals of the land, and the creatures
beneath the waters came to an agreement: if they were to survive,
something would have to be done to stop these wars. Only through
peace could their world survive.
"We cannot speak the human language,"
they declared, "and mankind can no longer understand ours.
We must find among us a symbol of peace so brilliant that all
who see it will stop and remember that peace and sharing is beautiful."
"I am what you need," said a
golden sunflower. "I am tall and bright. My leaves are food
for the animals, my yellow petals can turn plain cloth to gold,
my seeds are many and are used for food by all living beings.
Yet, the seeds I drop upon the ground can take root and I will
grow again and again. I can be your symbol of peace."
All nature rejoiced, and it was decided
that the birds would each take one sunflower seed and that they
would fly over every nation and plant the seed in the earth as
a gift. The seeds took root and grew, and the sunflowers multiplied.
Wherever the sunflowers grew, there seemed
to be a special golden glow in the air. The people could not ignore
such a magical sight.
Soon they began to understand the message
of the sunflowers so they decided to destroy all of their terrible
weapons and to put an end to the greed and to the fear of war.
They chose the sunflower as a symbol of peace and new life for
all the world to recognize and understand.
A ceremony was celebrated by planting a
whole field of sunflowers. Artists painted pictures of the sunflowers,
writers wrote about them, and the people of the world were asked
to plant more sunflowers seeds as a symbol of remembrance.
All nature rejoiced once more as the golden
sunflowers stood tall with their faces turned eastward to the
rising sun, then following the sun until it sets in the west.
They gave their goodness to the world so
that everyone who sees a sunflower will know that the golden light
of peace is beautiful.
Georgianna Moore's story has just been published in a book,
"Hope In a Dark Time: Reflections on Humanity's Future,"
edited by David Krieger, President of the Nuclear Age Peace
Foundation, with foreword by Archbishop Tutu. It is on amazon.com
now.
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Does the statement, "We've
always done it that way" ring any bells...?
The US standard railroad gauge (distance
between the rails) is 4 feet, 8.5
inches. That's an exceedingly odd number.
Why was that gauge used?
Because that's the way they built them in England, and English
expatriates
built the US Railroads.
Why did the English build them like that?
Because the first rail lines were built by the same people who
built the
pre-railroad tramways, and that's the gauge they used.
Why did "they" use that gauge
then?
Because the people who built the tramways used the same jigs and
tools
that they used for building wagons, which used that wheel spacing.
Okay! Why did the wagons have that particular
odd wheel spacing?
Well, if they tried to use any other spacing, the wagon wheels
would break
on some of the old, long distance roads in England, because that's
the
spacing of the wheel ruts.
So who built those old rutted roads?
Imperial Rome built the first long distance roads in Europe (and
England)
for their legions. The roads have been used ever since.
And the ruts in the roads?
Roman war chariots formed the initial ruts, which everyone else
had to
match for fear of destroying their wagon wheels. Since the chariots
were
made for Imperial Rome, they were all alike in the matter of wheel
spacing.
The United States standard railroad gauge
of 4 feet, 8.5 inches is derived
from the original specifications for an Imperial Roman war chariot.
And
bureaucracies live forever.
So the next time you are handed a spec
and told we have always done it that
way and wonder what horse's ass came up with that, you may be
exactly
right, because the Imperial Roman war chariots were made just
wide enough
to accommodate the back ends of two war horses.
Now the twist to the story...
When you see a Space Shuttle sitting on its launch pad, there
are two big
booster rockets attached to the sides of the main fuel tank. These
are solid
rocket boosters, or SRBs. The SRBs are made by Thiokol at their
factory
in Utah. The engineers who designed the SRBs would have preferred
to make
them a bit fatter, but the SRBs had to be shipped by train from
the factory to
the launch site.
The railroad line from the factory happens
to run through a tunnel in the
mountains. The SRBs had to fit through that tunnel. The tunnel
is slightly
wider than the railroad track, and the railroad track, as you
now know,
is about as wide as two horses' behinds.
So, a major Space Shuttle design feature
of what is arguably the world's
most advanced transportation system was determined over two thousand
years ago by the width of a Horse's ass.
And you thought being a horse's ass wasn't
important ??
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A parable for our times
A man approached the gate of an unfamiliar
city. As he reached
the gate a magician standing there said "Wait! You shouldn't
go in
there without a weapon! Demons lurk there!"
The man said "I need
no weapon and have nothing to do with demons."
The magician drew a sword
from the sheath he held; as he drew it
a frightful demon appeared, but the magician was able to kill
it with
the sword.
"Now will you take
a weapon!?", he said, but the man still refused.
"Are you blind!?",
said the magician, "Do you see the sword
I drew killed the demon?"
"Are you blind?"
the man responded, "Do you not see that the sword
you drew created the demon?"
And he walked on into the
city, armed only with the clarityof his mind
and being.
(Adapted
from Leonard Jacobson)
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The bonds of friendship
in a bitter war
In a year of unspeakable
horror, Israeli and Palestinian teens
join in a Maine refuge to seek a path toward peace
Photo: Melanie Stetson Freeman
By Amanda Paulson
8/15/2002
OTISFIELD, MAINE – In the end, Ariel
Tal came back and Saja Abuhigleh stayed.
Simple acts, perhaps. But also acts of courage
and hope at this wooded Maine camp, a refuge from the devastating
daily violence of the Middle East, a place where teenagers from
Israel and Palestine meet in an effort to find solutions rather
than propagate hatred.
Ariel had twice before attended Seeds of Peace, as the camp is named.
But that was before a suicide bomber in Jerusalem last December
blew up his friend just 20 feet from the ice cream store where Ariel
was sprinkling jimmies onto a cone. Had he not lingered a few seconds,
he knew, it could have been his funeral for which the neighborhood
turned out.
Amid the carnage, he looked down and realized
he was wearing his green Seeds of Peace sweatshirt. "I got
really confused," Ariel says. "I didn't know what I
was looking for here, and why I was chasing it so hard."
Even before arriving for her first year
at camp, Saja had her doubts about sharing a bunkhouse and breaking
bread with Israelis. On her second day, she called home and learned
Israeli soldiers had occupied Ramallah, her hometown. They had
detained her great-uncle's son and struck the elderly man when
he asked why.
"When [my family] told me, I started
crying, and I said, 'I want to go to my home in Palestine right
now! I can't stay here,' " Saja says, stumbling over
her words in the rush to get them out.
But Saja stayed and Ariel shed short-lived
thoughts of vengeance and came back, one of the small group of
returning campers who offer support and mentoring to new arrivals
each year.
Their experiences, however, attest to the
challenges facing a camp that some call naively idealistic and
others see as the only sane response to a world situation that
seems to have lost all reason. Journalist John Wallach founded
Seeds of Peace in 1993, prompted in part by the first bombing
of the World Trade Center. He invited 46 teenagers that year,
hoping to teach young people from this bitterly divided region
how to listen to one another.
But the camp has never faced a summer quite
like this one. Working for peace in the Middle East has always
been a courageous choice. Doing it amid the horrific violence
of the current intifada, and Israel's brutal backlash, is practically
inconceivable. It is a violence that has become personal, even
for teenagers, even for children.
And if the camp is to succeed – if
the three weeks teenagers from each side spend laughing, arguing,
and living together is to mean anything – it is a violence
they somehow must find the strength to look beyond.
Getting acquainted
On June 24 – the same day President
Bush called for the ouster of Yasser Arafat in a much-anticipated
Middle East policy speech – 166 teenagers arrived at this
sleepy lakeside retreat 30 miles northwest of Portland, where
only the names of the campers and the constant presence of police
cars at the gate indicate that this is any different from the
dozens of other camps nearby.
Almost all the campers are sponsored by
Seeds of Peace; all went through a lengthy, competitive application
process to get here, and all were selected by their education
ministries in part for their potential to lead.
Their mission: to get to know one another
as individuals rather than as the enemy, in a place removed from
the hatred back home. Though Seeds of Peace has expanded over
its first decade – it now accepts young people from other
regions of conflict and has established a year-round Center for
Coexistence in Jerusalem – it still rests on the same simple
premise: that interaction breeds understanding.
You don't have to like each other, camp
director Tim Wilson reminds the campers at the opening ceremony
– just recognize that each individual is a human being deserving
of respect.
"You can go home, and yes, there are
things there we have no control over," Mr. Wilson tells them.
"But here, we do have control. You have the right to sit
down and talk to someone you normally would not talk to."
The campers listen eagerly, applauding
vigorously. When it comes time to sing the Seeds of Peace song,
they belt it out: "People of peace, rejoice, rejoice/ For
we have united into one voice...."
When the gathering ends, however, they
cluster with others like them, finding comfort in a shared language
and traditions. It takes a few days, or more, says Wilson, before
many start branching out. When he sees girls from different sides
"sitting around talking about P. Diddy," or boys discussing
the World Cup, he knows they've reached common ground.
The camp is designed for informal interaction.
Six to nine campers, grouped by conflict region, share each of
the well-kept bunkhouses that line the shore of Pleasant Lake.
Campers eat with a second group and join a third for the daily
90-minute "coexistence session." With this third group,
they also play sports and participate in activities intended to
build cooperation and trust, from a ropes course to a dance exercise
in which they mimic each other's movements.
One of this year's new campers is Sami
Habash, an articulate, blond Palestinian from Jerusalem who plans
to attend Israel's prestigious Hebrew University next year although
he's only 16. An intense young man, he's pleased to be in an environment
where everyone wants peace. But his first interest is in scoring
political points.
"I want to tell [the Israelis] that
we don't have water at night. I go up to drink, and no water."
During debate, Sami hopes "to see Israelis themselves freely
admitting their country's mistakes."
Adar Ziegel, an Israeli from Haifa who
for as long as she can remember has dreamed of being her country's
prime minister, has less formulated plans. She's heard great things
about the camp from her boyfriend and is excited to see whether
teens on opposite sides of the checkpoints can find solutions.
Adar shares her bunkhouse and her coexistence
session with Saja. Sami will be in a coexistence session with
Ariel. The Monitor chose to focus on these four teens – two
Israelis and two Palestinians – to gain some insight into
the small triumphs, epiphanies, and setbacks that occur in these
weeks of typical camp fun mixed with not-so-typical discussion
and debate.
All four arrived with hope, but also a
degree of skepticism – their homeland, after all, is in tatters.
Saja, who has never met an Israeli before, came armed with photos,
downloaded from the Internet, that graphically portray Israeli
soldiers' abuse of Palestinians. She cannot forget the day she
saw a soldier strike a small boy on the head, causing blood to
spurt out.
And Sami, though ready to listen, has a
long list of grievances from life under occupation to share with
his Israeli counterparts.
In past years, says Ariel, discussions
focused mainly on policy. "We just argued about the past
and whether or not we want Jerusalem to be united." This
year, "the new kids have personal experiences. I have experiences
of my own."
Trying to win
In a nondescript one-room cabin, words
– and allegations – fly.
Facilitator Marieke Van-woerkom had eased
into the coexistence session with a rather vague question: "What
does it take to have peace?"
But after a few predictable, detached responses
– "Stop war," "End the bombs," "Both
sides have to trust each other" – the campers switch
gears to get at specific gripes, often using a "we-you"
phrasing.
"We can't trust you," says one
Israeli. "We gave you weapons in Oslo. Today, we see those
weapons being used on us." And, he asks, why did Arafat reject
Israel's offer at Camp David two years ago?
"It wasn't enough," responds
a frustrated Palestinian. "We want our land, but also to
be free in this land. We want borders like other countries. A
government, like other countries."
"What – do you want us to build
a government for you?" the Israeli shoots back.
"When you give us the land, you must
trust us."
Saja objects when one Israeli refers to
suicide bombers as terrorists. A fellow Palestinian likens them
to messengers, delivering a message from a people who have no
other resources.
"Do you think the message is being
delivered in the way you want it delivered?" an Israeli girl
wants to know.
After about 90 minutes, Ms. Vanwoerkom
brings the session to a close with a final suggestion: "What
I'd like for you to think about is, what it is inside of us that
makes it so hard to truly listen and understand each other? You
feel you're not being listened to, but where are you not listening?"
Ariel, in his third year, has seen campers
doggedly stake out their own positions before: "They come
to win." So did he, when he first arrived, a camper with
right-wing politics and the view that the best solution was to
remove all Arabs and "put them somewhere else."
"It changes," he says. "They
face the reality and say, 'OK, we can't win. What next?' You realize
understanding is the important part."
Still, even during this particular heated
session, the teenagers have accomplished what many of their compatriots
back home seem incapable of. They've carried on a debate without
violence or, for the most part, raised voices.
Besides, reaching consensus is not really
the goal. Vanwoerkom says she's wary of pushing campers too far,
too fast. The "brick wall" they hit when they get back
home will be that much harder – especially this year. "I'm
trying to find that balance," she says, "between learning,
development, growth – and going back home and being able
to build on those lessons."
Facing challenges
Midway through camp, Adar finds her political
foundations shaken.
She considers herself progressive, even
pro-Palestinian.
But when Saja compares the Israeli occupation
of Palestine to the Holocaust, Adar loses her composure. Her grandparents
narrowly escaped Poland and Germany. Many of her relatives died
in concentration camps.
"[Saja] said that from their point
of view, we can just go back to Germany and Italy and stuff,"
says Adar angrily. "I myself would never go back to a place
that put numbers on my grandparents' arms."
Still, she thinks carefully about how to
teach as well as react, giving Saja a copy of "Anne Frank:
The Diary of a Young Girl." "She's actually reading
it," Adar says a few days later. "I feel that once she
reads that book she'll have a much more wise understanding."
For Sami, facts have been the primary source
of tension.
The Israelis in his coexistence session,
he says, get them all wrong. "When I'm talking to [one Israeli
settler], I'm counting on some facts that I know. When he changes
the facts, I say I'm sure my facts are correct. He's changing
my facts just to make it more difficult for me to talk!"
Like Saja, Sami in his session pressed
the point that Israelis should leave Palestine. He remains baffled
by the outburst his comment provoked.
"They got really crazy about it,"
the normally mild-mannered Palestinian says resentfully. "They
said they were offended because some of them understood it as
'Go back to Hitler.' Others understood it as, 'I don't agree with
the idea of a Jewish state.' "
Neither is true, Sami insists. What he
wants is for Israelis to acknowledge they took land that wasn't
theirs. Finally, he lets it drop. But the experience leaves a
bad taste in his mouth. "At the beginning of camp, I had
some more positive ideas about the people I was negotiating with.
But now – some of [those opinions] have changed."
Final days
If the informal mingling of Israeli and
Palestinian teens signals success, then camp this year could get
high marks.
The camp's color games – three days
of athletic competition – further erode national allegiances.
The competition here is between blue and green, not Israel and
Palestine.
"My team won!" says Saja brightly.
She played baseball and canoed for the first time. Now she's running
around like a senior before graduation, asking everyone she knows
to write indelible-ink messages on her T-shirt.
Adar, meanwhile, eagerly recounts tales
of the talent show, for which she coached a boys' bunkhouse in
a ballet routine.
Now, with a teenager's bent for melodrama,
she says she's heartbroken at the thought of leaving. "I'm
going to hug a tree and carve myself into it," she sighs.
She's already making plans to visit Nada, an Egyptian girl in
her cabin, and says she's even forgiven Saja.
"We have the best bunk ever,"
Adar says firmly.
But all hasn't been perfect.
In the middle of color games, John Wallach,
the camp's founder, died in New York.
"I didn't want to continue any more,"
says Ariel, who knew Wallach. "I was unable to think. But
I realized the kids are looking up to me, and if I were to leave
color games, they would do the same. [So] I kept on going."
Just days after Wallach's death, Dateline
NBC runs an hour-long special about the camp, focusing on five
teenagers from its first summer. One Israeli is now a right-wing
settler, and a Palestinian he befriended at the timeis active
in promoting nationalist causes. The other three also seem to
have drifted a long way from the idealistic teenagers who shook
hands with Bill Clinton and Yasser Arafat 10 years ago.
The camp may create an aura of hope, Dateline
implies, but the dreams the teens walk away with will likely wither
in the heat of the violence back home.
It's a charge the camp's leaders are familiar
with. They accept that some campers will lose the lessons of peace.
Still, Bobbie Gottschalk, the camp's executive
vice president, says she's heard from most of those original campers
since Wallach's death. One, an Egyptian named Tamer Nagy, is this
year's program coordinator. Koby Sadan, who attended Seeds of
Peace in 1994 and '95 and just finished his three-year stint in
the Israeli army, is also working as a counselor this summer.
Seeds of Peace now has more than 2,000
graduates, Ms. Gottschalk says. If just a few of them hang on
to what they've learned – and eventually become leaders in
their region – they could have a big impact.
"We're just trying to get people to
think for themselves," she says. "And to care about
people who are not like them. If we can expand the circle of their
concern to go beyond people who are not exactly like them, then
we've gone a long way toward building a citizen of the world."
Heading home
No one can say what makes the camp's message
stick with one person and fizzle with another. All that's certain
is that it will be tested back home, one reason the camp has created
a year-round center in Jerusalem to continue work with former
campers.
Saja is excited to have made Israeli friends.
But she hesitates when asked what life will be like when she returns
to Ramallah. "Here, I can do everything I want," she
says. "But [in Palestine] I can't move.... To go to school
from Ramallah to Jerusalem, I have to pass three checkpoints.
When I stand there I think that I want to kill these soldiers,
and I don't want peace with them."
Adar insists the bonds she has formed in
three weeks, with Palestinians as well as Israelis, are stronger
than those she's formed over three years back home. She still
feels her country is "falling apart," but she takes
heart from something Tim Wilson, the camp director, told her.
"Tim [who is African-American] asked his father when segregation
will end. And his father said, 'When this generation dies.' "
She and her fellow campers, Adar hopes, will form a new generation.
Sami, however, finds it harder to imagine
how Palestinians his age, pushed to a boiling point, might respond
to a message of tolerance. "They're going to tell me, 'Can't
you see what's happening? Aren't you living in this country? You
still want peace after all you can see?' "
To a point, Sami shares their rage. He
is furious when he thinks of Israeli tanks and guns overpowering
unarmed Palestinians. Still, he has thought carefully about the
situation. "There is no way but peace for Palestinians. The
Israelis have power. They can manage with peace or without peace.
We Palestinians have rocks. We have nothing. So, of course, I
will keep trying."
A few days after he returns home to Jerusalem,
Sami is already thinking about contacting the Israeli friends
he made and visiting the Seeds of Peace center. Recent events
have changed one plan, though: He no longer wants to attend Hebrew
University, shattered last month by a cafeteria suicide bombing.
The Technion, in Haifa, he reasons, is as good a school –
and less of a potential target.
From what Ariel suggests, much of what
Sami, Saja, Adar, and other new campers learned at Seeds of Peace
this summer has yet to sink in. He has learned that the emotional
highs campers take with them from Maine can quickly crash to devastating
lows. Only then can they begin to decide whether what they experienced
was illusion or truth. "The experience is different [for
each one]," says Ariel. "Camp is a bubble."
Ariel, who toyed with the idea of vengeance
after the suicide bombing he saw in December, is now firm in his
own path.
"I got to a conclusion that we have
no other way [but to work for peace]," he says. "We
can do this. We can't do anything else."
Jerusalem -- On the day of the bombing,
my friend Julia and I arrived at Hebrew University around 12:45
p.m., said hello to friends in the student forum and walked to
the Frank Sinatra cafeteria to buy sandwiches. On our way out,
we ran into one of my professors. He jokingly reminded me that
I still owe him a paper from the fall semester. We walked
across the plaza, down the steps and through the pedestrian tunnel
that connects the outside courtyard and the cafeteria to the Boyar
Building.
I went upstairs to pick up a registration
form for my Hebrew exam, then went looking for Janis Coulter,
assistant director of academic affairs for the Rothberg International
School. She worked at the university's New York office and had
arrived in Israel the day before to greet new students and meet
with colleagues. My friend Daniel had sent Janis a package of
lecture notes and tapes, which she had agreed to bring to me.
We met at 1:15, exchanged phone numbers and planned to meet again
after my 5 p.m. exam. It was the first time Janis and I had
met -- and it turned out to be only 15 minutes before she was
killed.
I went to the third-floor foyer, a large
open area with seats. A few minutes later, as I sat eating my
sandwich and reviewing for my Hebrew exam, I watched Janis walk
out of the building on her way to lunch. Marla Bennett walked
with a friend out the same door. Julia pointed out Ben Blutstein,
someone she knew from Pardes (Institute of Jewish Studies), as
he walked out, playing his drum as he strolled off to eat lunch
at Frank Sinatra.
Suddenly, a tremendous boom rocked the
building. A huge roar seemed to come from the general direction
of the cafeteria. Everything continued as normal for the next
few minutes, and nobody seemed to pay much attention to the explosion.
Then it all changed. Slowly, people began running into Boyar,
screaming and crying. A woman came through the entrance with her
hair singed and her arm burned by the blast. I will never forget
the smell of her burned hair.
She sat down next to an Asian man, who
had blood on his back. I asked if he was hurt and needed help.
He answered in Hebrew that he couldn't hear me. The blast was
so loud he couldn't hear anything.
The next hour is a blur. We crowded together
in the lobby and on the stairs,
watching out the window, as the campus
became engulfed in a sea of police officers, soldiers and emergency
officials dressed in orange and yellow vests. There was a crowd
of people on the bridge in front of the law school, so at first
I thought the explosion had taken place there. Someone else said
he saw the bomb go off in the parking lot. As I walked toward
the third floor exit, a woman was laid on a stretcher, her clothes
drenched with blood from her head to her waist. I started to cry
and had to turn away.
The staff of the overseas school gathered
students in the auditorium, making announcements in several languages
that the phones would be open to call family abroad. I called
Janis' cell phone right after the bombing and then again in the
evening, leaving two messages, asking her to please call and let
me know that she was OK. She never returned the call.
A few friends and I left the university
around 3:30. I spent the rest of the afternoon answering phone
calls, assuring everyone that I was OK. I finally reached the
professor I'd bumped into on my way out of the cafeteria. He was
walking out of the cafeteria when the bomb went off. Thankfully,
he was not injured.
Julia and I needed to get some fresh air
and went for a walk in the park around 7. Gan Sacher Park was
full of families picnicking and barbecuing. There were several
soccer games going on, kids riding their bikes, people having
fun. It was as if they lived in another world and had no sense
of what had just happened. Or perhaps they knew too well and had
made a point of getting on with their lives.
A few friends gathered at my apartment
for dinner later. As we ate, Julia got a phone call from a friend
named Michael Simon, saying that his girlfriend,
Marla, was not on any of the hospital lists.
The following morning, Marla Bennett's body was identified. She
was from San Diego and only 24. Ben Blutstein's name was also
listed among those killed.
The next afternoon, Julia and I went to
Pardes so she could pay her condolences to Michael, a friend and
Dorot fellow. A group of teachers, staff and students was standing
in the common area, talking quietly, hugging and just being with
each other.
As soon as I saw Michael, it suddenly occurred
to me who Marla was. I hadn't put the names and faces together.
Both Michael and Marla were in a couple of my classes, and I saw
them occasionally at Shabbat dinners, at Merkaz Hamagshimim and
other social events. Marla was a friendly, outgoing girl, full
of life and energy. I can see clearly an image of her face --
her sweet smile and warm eyes.
Until the attack at the university, the
bombing at Rehavia's Cafe Moment in March had been the most difficult
attack to digest. It struck right in the heart of my neighborhood,
two blocks from my apartment. Those killed were mostly young Israelis,
but I was lucky not to have had any friends injured or killed.
This time, I knew two who were killed and several of those injured.
I had never considered the possibility of a terrorist attack at
the university. Like many others, I considered it off-limits.
I now realize that there are no boundaries or rules in this game
of violence and terror.
I ran into one of my professors this morning
who asked: "Why are you still here? Why don't you go back
to your home in America?"
"Because my home is here," I
said as I pointed to my apartment building down the block. "I
made Aliyah and chose to live my life here. I am staying here,
and not going anywhere."
As Israel continues to suffer through these
difficult times, I will endure the strain as well. There's no
doubt that the road ahead will be bumpy. But in my heart, I know
that the struggle must eventually come to an end. I want to be
here to smell peace when it comes.
Victoria Blint, a former Bay Area resident,
is studying at Hebrew University in Jerusalem.
This article is excerpted from a recent e-mail
she sent her family and friends.
Natasha Walter reports
from Kabul on what the future
holds for the women of Afghanistan
The Guardian, July 20, 2002
The students
are crammed on to the benches in the cavernous lecture hall of
Kabul University's science faculty. Four hundred eager faces stare
down at us, and 150 of them are female. A few rows from the front
sits a young woman wearing a white lace scarf tucked tightly around
her rosy face. Her name is Zohal Faiz Mohammed. She shakes her
head, smiling, when I ask how she feels to be back at university
after five years' absence. "I can't say my feelings - you
can see. For the first time we can experience the university,
this atmosphere. We can all study, boys and girls together."
That evening, Zohal invites us to have
supper with her and her parents. They live in what is, by Kabul's
standards, a comfortable neighbourhood, but that still means a
chaotic stretch of apartment blocks with blown-out windows and
walls riddled with bullet holes. While Zohal prepares the meal,
we sit on cushions on the floor of the pink sitting room, talking
to her parents. Suddenly Zohal rushes in, worried that we are
bored, and shows off one of her most precious possessions, a video
of songs from Indian films. "My father and I love these,"
she says eagerly.
She watches the gorgeous Aishwarya Rai
dancing in a Technicolor field of dreams. "Isn't she beautiful?"
As she watches the video, Zohal, in jeans and a white shirt with
the sleeves rolled up, her thick black hair in a ponytail, looks
younger than her 22 years.
She is determined to be young, determined
to be happy, determined not to talk about politics - instead,
we talk about her errant fiance and her plans for the future.
After dinner, she, her mother and her cousin squabble over the
arrangements for the photographs. "Don't fight!" Zohal
says. "All right, do fight." "I'll be Rabbani and
you can be Hekmatyar," says the photographer. Peals of laughter
ring out. Those are the names of the men whose armies laid Kabul
waste in the 1990s. "All you can do sometimes is laugh,"
says her mother, wiping her eyes with a corner of her scarf.
As we talk over dinner, I can't help thinking
that Zohal's happiness feels like the uncomplicated optimism of
any young woman at the start of her life. But Afghan women are
not like other women, and when they sound optimistic, this is
an act of determined bravery. On another day, when Zohal and I
meet for tea, she talks about the past. Her face changes, loses
its pink glow, and she fumbles with her fingers.
Her comfortable childhood came under siege
in 1992, after the Soviet-backed regime fell and mujaheddin armies
- armed by the west - battled for control of Kabul, street by
street. "I remember every night, sitting in the corner of
the room, listening to the rockets and the bombs," says Zohal
in a dull tone very different from her earlier quick chatter.
"And every morning we would go out and help to collect the
dead bodies. There was nothing to think about. We were just waiting
for our death. We had no hope for the future, not even for our
lives."
Zohal's family were forced out of their
home more than once when the fighting concentrated around their
area. They became refugees again when they fled from the extreme
oppression of the Taliban, and spent two years in Pakistan, but
the destitution that faced so many Afghans there forced them back
to Kabul last year. They went on the move again to the Pakistani
border during the US bombing last winter. Refugees three times
- from the mujaheddin, the Taliban and the Americans - Zohal's
family are now starting over, trying to put their lives back together
out of the fragments they have left.
But Zohal's face is set towards the future.
She wants to be an engineer, studies at the university in the
morning, and takes English and computing classes in the afternoon.
Since today is a holiday, we visit one of Kabul's newly opened
beauty salons. Marya salon sits next to a restaurant where lamb
kebabs are seared over open barbecues, and beside a music stall
that is stacked with colourful Indian and Iranian cassettes. But
even here, in this reawakened part of Kabul, if you stop on the
street for a moment, the beggars, women and children, tug at your
arms and hands.
Inside the salon, the air is thick with
hairspray and scent, and Fazila, the owner, a stout woman in a
black dress with neatly styled auburn hair, is getting through
one client after another with astonishing speed. She and her two
young daughters work like an assembly line. Curlers are whipped
out and in, tweezers tug at eyebrows, kohl is rubbed on to eyelids.
Shaima and Suheila, two sisters, both doctors, are waiting on
Fazila's couches. Both have their hair pinned up under hairnets.
Tomorrow is Shaima's wedding day and they are determined to do
it in high Afghan style, all glittery dresses and curled hair
and hennaed hands.
"When she had her engagement ceremony,"
Suheila explains, "we couldn't take photographs - though
we did, secretly. We couldn't even have musicians." What
would the Taliban have done if you had invited musicians? Suheila
draws a finger across her throat. "But I played a cassette,
quietly, and I danced - I was determined to dance." She is
about to tell me more when a little boy runs in. The girls at
home need more curlers. Suheila springs to her feet and picks
up her burka. "Don't you want to know why I still wear this?"
she asks. She stands silhouetted in the bright doorway, holding
the swathe of blue nylon above her face.
The western press has made so much of the
idea that, as the Taliban left Kabul, the liberated women threw
off their blue shrouds. But in Kabul, almost all the young women
are still wearing the burka. This is not through force of tradition.
There was a custom of wearing the burka among some ethnic groups
in Afghanistan, but not among educated women in the cities. I
asked 20 or 30 women why they were still wearing it, and all gave
the same answer. Fear.
"We aren't safe yet," says Suheila
succinctly. This sense of insecurity is understandable. The mujaheddin
and the Taliban weren't just a few maniacs who have now disappeared,
but hundreds and thousands of "willing executioners"
- men who gang-raped women as part of their wars, as the mujaheddin
did, or who beat women savagely for showing their faces, as the
Taliban did. These men have not gone away, and although in Kabul
they are kept quiet by the presence of the international security
force, if that departs, many women fear that the violence will
start again.
"Of course, the burka was not the
worst thing about the Taliban time," Suheila emphasises.
"But until we are safe, we can't take it off." Even
now, reports of politically and religiously motivated violence
against women continue. Human Rights Watch has documented rapes
and assaults against certain ethnic groups in northern Afghanistan.
Female aid workers have even been withdrawn from Mazar-i-Sharif
after one was gang-raped. In Kabul a month ago, two women wearing
scarves instead of burkas had acid sprayed in their faces. So,
for the women of Afghanistan, the anonymity of the burka still
gives them a sense of protection. Zohal, who also wears the burka
when she goes out, agrees with Suheila.
"Of course we would like to take it
off," she says, "but it just isn't possible yet."
Some of the women who have taken off the
burka are those now moving into politics. My visit coincides with
the start of the loya jirga, the gathering of a council of 1,500
delegates who are to decide the structure of the future government.
Nearly 200 are women. I visit the council offices, where dozens
of Afghan men circle the courtyard, talking eagerly. Out on the
parched grass is a tent, and inside the stifling tent sit 15 women,
newly arrived delegates from western provinces of the country.
A woman in her early 30s, also called Zohal,
talks enthusiastically about what this means to her. Her two-year-old
daughter, silently playing with a wilted pink rose, sits on her
lap as she talks. "The doors of everything have been closed
to women for so long," she says. "Now we hope that the
doors are swinging open. This loya jirga is only a first step,
but in the future parliament there must be equal representation
for women and for men."
Mindful that even in western countries
women haven't achieved such representation, I ask the other women
in the tent if they feel the same. There is an eruption of noise.
"Yes, they all agree," my tr
