I almost forgot to post the most interesting part of my reading, the quotes from the book. This is the kind of stuff which keeps my passion for Reading afresh:
I found a beautiful verse “Out beyond ideas of wrongdoing and rightdoing, there is a field. I’ll meet you there.”
‘You say something; I believe it. You insist; I begin to wonder. You swear on it; I know you’re lying.’
On American hegemony: “We are interested not in compromise but in coexistence.”
An Iranian Diplomat’s view on Holocaust:
“There was no Holocaust.” He gave me a knowing smile. “Sure, some people died,” he carried on, perhaps because of my hanging lower jaw and dead stare, “but you see, there was an outbreak of typhus in the prison camps, and in order to stop its spread, the Germans burned the corpses. All told, something like three hundred thousand people died from typhus.” Mohammadi smiled again, a little triumphant smirk.
For some Freedom means Having the choice to wear whatever they like and for others Having a Full Belly.
My interpretation: Freedom means differently to different people, for a teenager it will be the Freedom to talk to a girl, exchange phone numbers, hang out together, dress as they feel like or even sex. But for a mid-age Iranian, it might mean better economic scenario, cheaper vegetables, free education for his kids or Cable network.
“All business in Iran is like first-time sex: first there are the promises, then a little foreplay, followed by more promises and perhaps a little petting.” He had a disgusted look on his face. “At that stage, things get complicated—you’re not sure who’s the boy and who’s the girl, but what you do know is that if you continue, you might get fucked.”
Sex in Iran has had a “don’t ask, don’t tell” quality…… allows for temporary marriages as short as one hour, known as sigheh, for the very purpose of religiously sanctioned fun………Women were expected to remain virgins until they married, ……..The plastic surgery practice of hymen reconstruction was so common in Tehran in prerevolutionary times that some doctors devoted their practice to it
“I don’t even tell God my problems or worries, but I do tell my problems about God.”
“Iranians deserve their reputation for being annoyingly proud…. the nuclear issue is another matter of Haq, basic rights that deeply resonate for a Shia people that has long suffered from inferiority and superiority complexes, often simultaneously.”
“The Americans aren’t so foolish as to invade a country where ten-year-old boys will strap grenades to their bodies and hurl themselves under tanks.” Witnesses have said that sometimes Iraqi soldiers, seeing the boys charge them in their Hossein-inspired frenzy, would abandon their positions and run away, not necessarily out of fear, but out of shock and amazement. “If you want to understand Iran, you must become a Shia first.” Rafsanjani’s supposed words rang in my head.
On Complicated relation between Arabs and Iranians:
What can one make of Iranians who shed genuine tears for an Arab who died fourteen hundred years ago, who pray in Arabic three times a day, and yet who will in an instant derisively dismiss the Arab people.
Arabs, according to Iranians, were an uncultured lot, barely literate, and their brute force persuaded the Iranians to convert to their religion but not their way of life. Why Allah would choose, in His infinite wisdom, to reveal His Word to an illiterate Arab in the desert is not a subject of debate in Iran, but then again, even for Iranians, Allah putatively works in mysterious ways.
“Iranians long ago became Muslims, but they didn’t become Arabs.”
Kind of Hyperbole we are used to find in religious texts:
“Imam Hossein’s anger at the death of his father, Imam Ali, he said, with much gusto, that Hossein immediately got on his horse and slew, in one continuous action and armed only with his sword, 1,950 soldiers from the Caliph’s army.”
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