Yesterday the police were out in force in all the main squares (when I went to Enghelab for bookshopping with the more interesting of the Turks--who's doing a doctorate on Ottoman and Persian literature) in the early afternoon it was only normal police and Gasht-e Ershad, but maybe the vigilantes and motorcycle Basijis showed up late), which suprised me because a journalist I'd met with the day before told me there would be itiraz on tues, but only in the form of everybody turning on all their electrical appliances at once at 9pm to crash the electrical grid (I heard they tried this the week before I came,but the authorities managed to keep the grid running by turning off street lights). Likewise, we didn't lose elecricity yesterday. I seen now on the internet news (internet speed has been unbearably slow the past 2 days; I'm writing this from an internet cafe) that there were street demonstrations and arrests, but know probably less about this than you do.
While bookshopping, we spent a long time in the shop of this Azeri guy who spoke something resembling Turkey Turkish (some Azeri's have such thick accent my roommates have no idea what they're saying, though the Azeris seem to understand them and to almost always prefer--granted that my roommmates both speak miserable Persian--to attempt Turkic rather than speak Persian) and the funny English of someone who has an excellent technical vocabulary in psychology, physics etc but no idea how to pronounce or string it together. Among his many interesting theories was that the heat and electromagnetic fields of arid areas near the equator (eg the Middle East), stimulates the part of the brain responsible for hallucinations of the divine, hence all the prophets coming from the region (poor prophet Mohammad, in addition to having hallucinations, was epileptic). The climate of Western Europe similarly (there was a very technical explanation for this as well, which I forgot) stimulated the rational lobe of the brain, hence the Enlightenment. Greek and Roman philosophical achievement was the product of a diet heavy on olives and fish oil. Moulana Rumi was schizophrenic. He gave me one of the books that he's self-published--unsuprisingly he's afraid to even ask permission to publish it through official channels--which I may or may not read.
The journalist I'd talked to two days ago was a friend of a Vienna friend. After she spent most of the first 20 minutes after we met in Vanak for melon juice (Why don't Americans regularly stick cantaloupe and honeydew in blenders? it's not difficult) talking about the women's rights movement and the stolen election, pro Badminton racket slung over her shoulder, I was suprised to learned that she works for a mainstream, conservative/pro-Khamenei newspaper's Society section. Yeah, it's nonsense but it pays, was basically her response. Fair enough. We ran into some coworkers of hers as we walked to Park Mellat, and they seemed similarly socially liberal.
As we sat in the park (it was getting late and I'm a bit paranoid so I was looking around for police asking coed couples what their relationship was but she wasn't at all concerned) she rubbed her leg where she said some Basiji had whacked her on Friday. She'd been at the front gate of campus on Enghelab St, the first place they broke up, and had followed the crowd in the direction of Azadi. The Basijis had told her to stop walking in the same direction as the demonstators and she'd said What are you going to do about it? and they'd whacked her leg and knocked her down.
I think I'm stressing this post-election turmoil and demonstrations too much--life is pretty much as normal around here.
She had many interesting things to say but this internet cafe has no AC and I'm hungry so I'll make this quick. She was suprised by and approved of Rafsanjani's speech. She's privately religious and when on the Haj 2 years ago, the best trip of her life, and was the first person I met who had nothing but good things to say about Saudi hospitality and culture. There was something else I wanted to mention about her... can't remember
Today I went with my Turkish roommates to the City Theater for a puppet play--a damsel in distress story with some political criticism. In the end, interestingly, the wannabe playboy Prince (wearing green--though the prince rebuts that it's Pistachio when his sidekick crow comments on the color) from Jordan district in Tehran isn't the one who saves the damsel from the anti-modern ogre's imprisonment. Instead the ogre is pursuaded to let himself die and gets rewarded with heaven, leaving the damsel to the prince (the crow pecks him into promising to marry her before taking her back to his apartment).
Outside the theater there was an art festival, Khiyaban-e Honer, going on with artists selling their wares on different streets of the city. Apparently it will continue on wed and thurs for the next few weeks with films being played in the big parks on weekends (the weekend is thurs and fri here). There was some really cool calligraphy and murals being done on the spot.
I'll be starting calligraphy lessons myself with a Lur (Luri? Lurish?) friend of a friend who I'll be giving English lessons in return. There's a wedding of a friend of hers tomorrow (which I'm crashing) so we won't begin until next week, which gives me time to attempt a lesson plan. I think I'll be a miserable language tutor.
update: a good LA Times roundup of current political developments.
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