[...]
It’s worth separating what’s outrageous about the above from what isn’t. Listening to some of the journalistic rhetoric, you’d think young Andriy was an outrageous decadent in the mold of the Marquis de Sade, squandering the national wealth on ceaseless orgies. In fact, his lifestyle is not atypical of that of young people in positions analogous to his. It might be unfair, but the kids of powerful politicians tend to be showered with gifts and offered opportunities the rest of us don’t get. They get offered high-paying sinecures. When Ukrainska Pravda editor Olena Prytula says in a recent interview that Andriy’s lifestyle raises corruption issues, because Andriy’s unnamed benefactors might be trying to influence the president, she’s mistaken. There’s nothing that says a First Child has to take a vow of poverty, and there’s nothing illegal about a private citizen – which is what Andriy is – accepting gifts or a high salary for doing too little work. Without proof of a quid pro quo involving his father, what Andriy owns – or borrows or uses or accepts as a gift – is no one’s business but his own and his family’s. Unseemliness is no crime. This is a free country.
What is outrageous, however, is Andriy’s allegedly loutish behavior. No one should be able to park illegally in the middle of the street; no one’s bodyguards should be able to warn off the police. This speaks to an old Ukrainian problem: that there have been two sets of laws in this country, one for the guys in the black luxury sedans, and another for everybody else. If young Yushchenko gets to break the laws everyone else lives under, then this is absolutely a matter for a watchdog press.
This brings us back to President Yushchenko’s behavior throughout this hullabaloo. It hasn’t been good. When an Ukrainska Pravda reporter questioned him about his son at a press conference this week, Yushchenko exploded in dudgeon. In a rambling response, he insisted on his son’s flawless morality, weirdly brought up the specter of threats of violence against his family, adjured journalists not to disgrace their profession, offered conflicting versions of who’s paying for his son’s luxuries, and – most startling of all – told Ukrainska Pravda’s reporter not to be a “hired killer.” That’s a loaded thing to say in a country where journalists have indeed been long for hire, and where they’ve too often been killed.
If Yushchenko’s going to be the leader of a European country, he should try to sound like one. Do we believe Yushchenko has the same contempt for a free press that his predecessor in office did? No. But the trouble with this sort of ranting is that it sets a bad example for officials down the food chain. If a newspaper cameraman has his equipment smashed by an Interior Ministry cop next week, we’ll wonder whether Yushchenko’s effusion didn’t have something to do with it.
[...]
The president missed an excellent chance to strengthen democracy and the media environment here, and to affirm that the days of well-connected Ukrainians being above the law are over.
Journey highlights freedom of the press
Educating Ukraine about U.S. journalism teaches Berry more than the language
It's Oct. 31, 2004, and the future of Ukraine depends on the outcome of today's federal election. Assigned to cover a voting district, 21-year-old journalist, Hellen Pany Ly Shyn arrives at her post close to midnight. She waits outside for results as election officials have just finished counting the votes and are putting them in bags.
Yelling erupts from behind the closed door. Curious about the commotion, Ly Shyn walks into the room and witnesses "thugs" trying to steal the election bags. A gun shot is fired. The officials drop the bags and the thugs run off with them.
A short while later Ly Shyn receives a call telling her that she has seen too much and warning her to leave town. So the young journalist flees town, afraid for her safety if she stays and afraid for her life should she publish her story.
This is just one of the many personal accounts that University of Iowa journalism associate professor and Pulitzer prize-winning investigative reporter, Steve Berry, was told during his two-week free press mission in Ukraine.
[...]
Yushchenko talks to his Austrian doctor:
- Doctor, I eat red caviar and shit with red caviar, I eat black caviar and shit with black caviar... Help me, doctor, what should I do?!
- Eat shit and you'll shit like a normal person.
40 GOATS TO BUY CHELSEA
Former US president Bill Clinton has been offered 40 goats and 20 cows for his daughter by a love-struck African government official.
Mr Clinton was offered the deal on a recent trip to Kenya.
He was offered the animals as a traditional African way of getting a father to give away his daughter's hand in marriage.
The dowry is a very generous one by the country's own standards.
Godwin Kipkemoi Chepkurgor wrote to Mr Clinton through Kenya's Foreign Minister.
He said: "Had I succeeded in wooing Chelsea, I would have had a grand wedding.
"I would have invited South African Anglican Archbishop Desmond Tutu to preside at the ceremony."
The councillor gave the names of the former Kenyan president Daniel Arap-Moi and two of his college mates as character references.
Mr Chepkurgor also said he was also impressed by Mr Clinton's wife, Hillary, for standing by Mr Clinton during the Monica Lewinksy scandal.
He said Mrs Clinton acted like a "like an African woman".
Last year's Orange Revolution elevated him to near-hero status, prompting many Ukrainians to joke that the only difference between God and their new president was that God didn't think he was Yushchenko.
[...] It was so hilarious. Yanukovych looked so idiotic. He looked like one of those rubber dolls from the extremely biting and popular Russian political TV show that Putin put an end to a few years ago. It was totally hilarious.
And all of a sudden, I began to wonder: what are we gonna do if Yushchenko gets elected as this country's next president? What, apart from building a truly democratic and prosperous state, are we gonna do if Yanukovych loses? Who are we gonna make jokes about? What are we gonna do with all our beautiful sense of irony, cultivated for so many years by our Soviet leaders and then by President Kuchma? In the past ten years, we've grown so used to disrespecting our current leader, who had provided us with such a smooth transition from the idiocy of the Soviet times. What are we gonna do when Yushchenko gets elected? He's such a positive man, he wouldn't give us reasons to sneer at him. Moreover, his victory would be too precious to mar with our totally healthy sarcasm. What on earth are we gonna do?
We'll see, I guess. We'll find ways to sublimate. Yanukovych and Kuchma aren't gonna vanish into thin air after their fiasco in two weeks. We'll survive.
I still hope so much that Yushchenko, boring or not, wins.
It looks ugly. I think it's the second major PR flop within days of the Goverla fuck-up. Yushchenko wasn't drunk. He just wasn't and isn't Vaclav Havel and that's a big problem for him and all of us who voted for him. He was addressing the UP guy by "ty" but I can sort of swallow that since, I'm sure, they'd known each other for quite some time. Still, even then, Yushchenko shouldn't have said what he said. He said, "Behave as a decent journalist and not as a hired killer." Jesus, Yushchenko won thanks, in many ways, to that particular guy and dozens other journalists and I hope he realizes that. His son behaves like a typical president's son and if I were his father I'd send him out to Africa to help people in Niger and learn about life.
[...]
leshchenko told the nation’s biggest daily tabloid “fakty” on july 27 that he decided to write the story after a local resident complained to him about andrey’s reckless driving.
“one local told me that he came close to running over a family of hedgehogs that lives on lyuteranska,” he said. “we then decided to find out for ourselves how the president’s son drives.”
[...]
however, if every day starts with a camera following my son, police being called, a camera being on till late at night, these are not journalists. as a father i'd like to say these are the people doomed to experience the same in their lives. or the generation of their children.
you can't do business as dirty as that. so i told my son, "son, i can only alleviate your soul with this advice: learn to defend yourself! learn to defend yourself! a bill? get that bill from the restaurant. how many were you there, what did you eat, what did you drink? put that bill in that journalist's mug, and then go to court! and learn to defend yourself!"
[...] I, Oleh Yeltsov, declare with all responsibility that it was me who came up with the idea for this story approximately three months ago, after a conversation with one of the regulars of a [Kyiv] night club. From him, I learned a lot of curious details about Andriy Yushchenko's night life. I offered [this person] to write a story for [this] "Tema" site. [I] had a preliminary talk with his source of information, who was promised a rather humble gift, and the author himself was supposed to be paid a humble $30 (pardon me, but a freelance journalist's income does not allow to spend more). Due to objective reasons, the story's publication was being postponed, and then... it appeared in [Ukrainska Pravda]. The reason for this is not known: either the author wanted to have more impact, or to make more money. [...]
P.S. It somehow reminded me of an episode from my very distant childhood. I lived with my uncle's family then - Mykola Bazhan, a poet and encyclopaedist, who still represents to me all that is called Ukrainian culture and culture in general. Anyway, as I was getting ready for school, I took an orange from the fridge and threw it into my backpack. Mykola noticed this and said it'd be better if I didn't take the orange to school, to avoid inspiring envy in my friends, whose parents were not able to buy oranges, and to avoid putting myself in an awkward position by showing off my undeserved superiority. Oranges were rare at that time - a defitsit, as they used to say. It has to be taken into account that Bazhan was a really famous writer, vice president of the European Pen Club, as well as a CPSU member, Hero of the Socialist Labor, laureate of the Lenin Prize, etc. The president [Yushchenko] hadn't been given advice like this, it seems! Unfortunately!
[...]
During the terror of 1934–7 Bazhan wrote the trilogy Bezsmertia (Immortality, 1935–7), which was dedicated to S. Kirov, and entered the company of poets enjoying official recognition. His later works, written in the spirit of Stalinist patriotism, all belong to the corpus of official Soviet poetry. [...] After Joseph Stalin's death Bazhan did not take part in the cultural renaissance launched by the Shestydesiatnyky (poets of the sixties); his later collections and poems [...] were also written in the spirit of Party ideology.
[...]
[...] The question is on the topic much discussed now - about the president's son, the car he's using and other equipment, pretty expensive... And a question about morality - is it moral in a country like this to be using things like these?
[...] You see, I'm not wearing a watch. Even though I've probably got 20 or 15 of them. And until I remain the president, I won't be wearing them.
I don't need these primitive themes, these primitive analyses, I don't want it! I'll only be wearing a trident badge and a neat suit. That's all I need, my friends! [...]
[...] In the end, none of this is so scandalous. Yushchenko is at worst another rich, well-connected brat, somewhere on the continuum between the Bush daughters and Paris Hilton. Ukraine will survive.
But it will be interesting to see where the kid ends up in a few years. Will he grow out of this high life nonsense, realize it’s unseemly, and make something of himself? Or will he get worse, and become another sponging, string-pulling, nepotism-exploiting victim of “affluenza,” a parasite who drives half-million dollar cars around his impoverished country and takes off to Ibiza for the weekend?
Time will tell. But we’ve got our eye on that young fellow. We trust his father does, too.
[...] They say the struggle between President Viktor Yushchenko, a former chief of Ukraine's National Bank, and Prime Minister Yulia Timoshenko, a former business tycoon, over shaping Ukraine's future is delaying much-needed reforms. It could even erode the popular support that put both leaders - who are very different - into power.
[...]
Neither politician will admit publicly to clashing with the other. But the openness with which their advisers discussed the problem at a weekend conference in Yalta illustrates that the rivalry and clash of agendas are hampering change. This means that much-needed reforms proposed by the International Monetary Fund and the European Bank for Reconstruction and Development - including introduction of clear property rights, the rule of law and privatization - have not gotten very far.
[...]
The story of a 5-day journey to the Caucasus and the south of Russia undertaken by Garry Kasparov, a world chess champion and currently an opposition politician, was incredible indeed. [...] In five days, Kasparov was denied access to approximately a dozen places. [...]
[...] When the bodyguard's heavy hand pushed my head down, all I heard were some screams, and then I felt something sticky flowing down my face. "Cold," I thought. "Not blood."
[...]
We've traveled from Moscow to Russia. Stability is somewhat lacking over there, outside Moscow. The balance over there is so fragile that, it seems, as soon as an opposition politician opens his mouth, everything will collapse. [...]
Cool. We didn't have anything like this even at the height of the election campaign. You should feel flattered, though. B-) As for the eggs and stuff, the main thing is not to lose dignity. Remember Yanukovych's dishonor. B-)
non-Russia
Two sketches.
Stavropol. A woman, head of an entrepreneurs' association, says:
- To hell with it all... I'll move to Russia...
- To where?
- To Russia..
- And where are you now?
- What do you mean? In the Caucasus...
Vladivostok. A businessmen says:
- They now manufacture it all over there, in Russia...
- Where?
- Well, beyond the Ural, in Russia...
I guess what's missing is a sketch from Kaliningrad.
Neeka, I can assure you that Ilyas is not in any kind of relation to Misir Ashyrkulov. I know both of them very well.
 |  |
Nika--
O so pleasant to settle down for your story of lousy Ukrainian trains. You are a sponge wiping up the flavors of life from the table top, the walls,--this metaphor would become quickly disgusting if I said even the liquid off the train's bathroom floor...
I miss you nika. I saw Dima the other night. I went to the Bijou, not knowing what was playing and saw a documentary on a legendary experimental film maker I had never heard of. Dima was doing the same. We walked after the movie and caught up on each other's news. He leaves soon for Munchen-lucky sod.
For myself, I leave soon for LA. I'm spending 6 weeks with my family, then I'll return quickly for a week in Iowa City to defend my thesis for Journalism. Then I'm off for Tanzania. It feels like a huge change, I'm anxious for it yet nervous. I'm trying to get all the details together for my trip, and not doing a good job of it. I hate those travel details, packing mostly.
Between departure and thesis, I have plenty to keep me boringly busy. I look forward to Zanzibar where I'll have nothing to do for a while except learn Kiswahili.
Tutaonana badaye,
I kiss you,
Matveij
Modern fiction brings out the evil in domestic lives, ordinary relations, people like you and me - Reader! Bruder! as Humbert said. [...] We are all capable of becoming the blind censor, of imposing our visions and desires on others.
Once evil is individualized, becoming part of everyday life, the way of resisting it also becomes individual. How does the soul survive? is the essential question. And the response is: through love and imagination. Stalin emptied Russia of its soul by pouring on the old death. Mandelstam and Sinyavsky restored that soul by reciting poetry to fellow convicts and by writing about it in their journals. [...]
On the nights after Ahmadinejad's victory, the atmosphere among many of the liberal Iranians I talked with was reminiscent of another group of intellectuals: the Russian thinkers of the 1860's, Western-educated men and women who had to discover, painfully, just how out of touch their reformist ideas were with the poor and burdened of their own society. Barmaki told me mournfully, ''We reformers have lost five years.''
The political task ahead for the liberal thinkers of Iran is to find a program that links human rights and democracy to the poor's economic grievances.
With oil at about $60 a barrel as I write, there is little likelihood that the regime will be forced to open up and reform the economy. But unless it does, there won't be much democracy or progress for the poor. One human rights truth, universally acknowledged, is that oil is an obstacle to democracy in every developing society. When a government can get what it needs out of oil derricks and ceases to derive its revenue from taxes, it loses any incentive to respond to the people. Theocracy in Iran is built on oil and will endure as long as the oil price holds up.
SPIEGEL: What happened differently than expected?
Surkov: When the Soviet Union was dissolved, most of us didn't even have the feeling that the country was falling apart. We thought we would continue with our lives as in the past, but as good neighbors. Of course, we also believed that the West loved us and would help us, and that we'd be living like the Europeans in ten years. But everything turned out to be more complicated.
SPIEGEL: Because the West didn't love you after all?
Surkov: No. The West doesn't have to love us. In fact, we should ask ourselves more often why people are so suspicious of us. After all, the West isn't a charity organization. How have we been perceived for centuries? As a huge, warlike realm ruled by despots -- first by the czars and then Bolsheviks. Why should anyone have loved us? If we want to be accepted, we have to do something in return. And it's an art that we have yet to master.
SPIEGEL: How far has Putin's Russia come on this path?
Surkov: The people have attained a new sense of soberness. The romantic days are gone. We no longer have the feeling of being surrounded by enemies, but rather by competitors. We have achieved too little when it comes to modernizing our society, and we must look to the West for the technological and intellectual solutions necessary to do so. The idea that we should suddenly be able to produce something, now that we're on our own, is erroneous. We must learn from others.
SPIEGEL: You yourself have your roots in the northern Caucasus.
Surkov: Yes, my father is Chechen, and I spent the first five years of my live in Chechnya. As someone who grew up there, I say: The Chechen Republic must remain part of Russia. Everything else is negotiable.
President Surkov
[...]
There's a legend about Vladislav Surkov: according to it, he's not a public person. This, along with his efficiency, is what makes him attractive for Vladimir Putin. And it's making me think: how come the "non-public" Surkov has been quoted so much in the past months? That is, I'm really not aware of anyone else of this rank in the presidential administration who is being quoted this much. After the president, Slava [Vladislav] ranks second now. If it was someone else, not Surkov, I'd think it's just a coincidence. But to him it cannot happen accidentally. He's been in the Kremlin for too long, and has been shunning publicity for too long. He knows perfectly well how to avoid publicity. Thus, his public appearance can only be calculated, conscious and staged.
As part of this unexpected publicity campaign, Surkov interacted with the people through [Komsomolskaya Pravda] and said precisely what the people wanted to hear. He didn't sound exactly like himself, it seemed to me, but we haven't been in touch in a long time and I can be mistaken. He was a lot more recognizable in his interaction with Der Spiegel's correspondents, an export version [of Surkov]. The West then saw a statesman [who places the interests of the state above those of an individual], albeit not a hawkish one. And finally, Surkov mixed with the Russian elite, and we learned about it verbatim, though belatedly. Since the only structured elite in this country is the business community, Surkov's choice is understandable. The gist of the transcript that was leaked to the press (and I don't think Surkov even tried to prevent the leak) is this: let's work together, guys, or else...
Or else it looks like everything is just going to collapse. Two principal revelations in Surkov's conversation with the businessmen are these: first, [the situation cannot be any worse] in the Caucasus (quote: "It looks like an underground fire."), and second, the United Russia can lose the election, and the 2007-2008 elections pose a serious problem in general. It appears as if Surkov, a smart and well-informed person, fears the future for the reasons he knows very well.
His current publicity, I guess, has a very reasonable explanation. Are you thinking about the successor, my friends? Look at Surkov. What's happening now is a rehearsal of a promotion campaign, making his contours visible. Why not? Everyone keeps talking about our main problem - [the lack of political personalities]. He seems to be saying, carefully: "Here I am, look at me, listen to me." It may be too early for the beginning of a presidential campaign, but who knows which way things are going to go and whether we have 2-3 years before the election. Maybe Surkov knows. But even if these years are available, it wouldn't hurt to make some announcements for the future. And why not Surkov? Who is more experienced than he is? Who of the current Kremlin residents is craftier and smarter than he is? Who knows everyone and everything longer and better than he does? Who is as flexible and diverse? Who is as familiar, almost like family, I'd say? And he's a bridge, in a way, between Yeltsin's past, Putin's present and the future... All in all, he's a 100-percent successor and the keeper of all traditions at once. Find me another person in the current presidential administration who's been on both Khodorkovsky's and Putin's payrolls? You get it, right? If not a reconciliation figure, then at least a hint at one.
Anyway, I think Surkov is quite a candidate and this may well be his ambition. And I believe that with all his recent actions he's been provoking the media to arrive at this very conclusion. And he is absolutely positive he's got the power to refute such blatant allegations and calm down the most jealous ones - that is, to survive politically and to continue his political life. After all, it can't be his highest aspiration to remain the deputy head of the presidential administration!
[...] I often hear that democracy is more important than sovereignty. We don't agree with that. We think that both are needed. An independent state is worth fighting for. It'd be nice to escape to Europe, but they won't accept us there. Russia is a European civilization, it's a poorly lit edge of Europe, but not Europe proper. In this sense, we are completely tied to Europe and have to be friends with it. We are not enemies. We are just competitors. And it hurts not to be enemies. To be enemies is when you can die as a hero at war, having had a head-on collision with your enemy. There's something heroic and beautiful about it. And to lose to your competitor means to be a pathetic loser. And this hurts even more.
It's better to be enemies, and not like what we are now - the ambiguous friends! This is, sort of, what we want.
There are psychological reasons for this. For 500 years the country was a modern state, it was making history and not vice versa. With all respect to these peoples, we are, after all, different from Slovaks, the Baltic peoples and even Ukrainians - they didn't have states of their own. They were being drawn on the maps - by the past Russian politicians, too. We participated in the common creative process, together with the leading countries of the world, in changing the map of the world. [...]
CONFLICT
Crimean natural preserve lands are now being guarded by the troops
The Slavs have risen against the Crimean Tatars, who decided to build eight houses at once in Tikhaya Bukhta
[...] Over 40 years there had been almost 500 nuclear tests there, in the air and underground. Together they were equivalent in strength to 20,000 Hiroshima bombs. When we first went, we found lots of old military machinery and equipment, planes and tanks that had been left out in the open during the tests to see how they were affected. Afterwards they were put into big dumps. We went past these dumps regularly and I saw that they were gradually getting smaller and smaller.
We found out that the locals were taking the radioactive material for scrap or to use in their houses or on farms. They took whatever they could. It was good quality, you see. We had a guide who was a local doctor. One day when we came across some telephone wire, she picked it up and said it was good quality, some general or colonel had probably used it. So she took it home and used it for her telephone.
[...]
Frogs were good for doing these tests because they absorbed the radiation and they have big chromosomes, so you can see the damage. I collected frogs on the testing grounds, especially from a nuclear lake that we found. This was where the largest nuclear explosion took place, in 1965 on the dry bed of the river Shagan. To prevent the nearby river Irtysh being contaminated with radioactive dust, the Shagan was dammed and a radioactive lake formed. The military put carp in the atomic lake. The fish grew really large and we carried out tests on the fish, lizards and frogs.
- Did anyone else know this nuclear lake existed?
The military knew about it, of course, but until we went no non-military scientists knew about it. The local people knew it was there, but they didn't know it was dangerous. They went fishing in it, even swam in it. When we started work, the people who lived in the villages near the Polygon knew nothing about the risks. They took their cattle and goats to feed on the pastures there.
[...]
- But you gave up research. Why?
After a while I felt we had got a lot of scientific information from the research. It showed that the population suffered from even small doses of radiation. But the people themselves felt like guinea pigs. For 70 years, as citizens of the Soviet Union, they had had pensions and social benefits from the state. They thought that now, with the Polygon closed and the discovery that their health had suffered, someone would come and treat them. Instead scientists came to test them and write scientific papers about them, but nothing actually changed in their lives. They had been poisoned and their social conditions were bad, but nobody helped them. So I started on public work to help people change their lives.
July 10, 2005
LONDON AND ME
One of my favorite myths about myself is that I was conceived in Holborn Station, one of the central underground stations in London. The factual basis for this story of my origins is that my refugee parents did sleep there during the Blitz, and were issued passes delineating their space numbers. And because the buzz bombs began on the night of June 12th 1944, and I was born on the night of March 29, 1945, the night they ended, I must have spent every night of my incubation there. [...]
How a Leeds rocker's romance led to a new life in Ukraine - with the PM as his 'mama'
By Jack Malvern
He is a rottweiler-owning rock singer from Leeds, she is the daughter of the Ukrainian Prime Minister: they seem a mismatched couple whose unlikely romance would succeed only in fiction.
But Sean Carr, a cobbler and key cutter, is to wed Evgenia Tymoshenko, the daughter of the billionaire Ukrainian Prime Minister.
[...]
Mr Carr, a tattooed singer who plays in a heavy-metal band called Death Valley Screamers, closed his market stall in Leeds and moved to Ukraine after meeting his future wife in a bar in Egypt.
The improbable romance began when Miss Tymoshenko, 25, asked for Mr Carr’s number from his friend, who initially asked for payment in return. By the time he relented, Mr Carr had returned to Britain.
Miss Tymoshenko, who studied at the London School of Economics, sent Mr Carr, 36, a text message on her return to London and they arranged to meet at a biker festival. But it was only when Mr Carr visited her flat in London that he discovered that she was the heiress to a multibillion-pound fortune.
He told the Yorkshire Evening Post: “I still didn’t know about her mum, but she seemed to be living in an awful lot of luxury for a student.” Five months after they met and the Orange Revolution was at its height, Mr Carr visited Ukraine. Yuliya Tymoshenko was leading the opposition movement alongside Mr Yushchenko, who is now the President.
The day after Mr Carr arrived in Ukraine he stood on a stage in front of thousands of people as his future mother-in-law called for Mr Kuchma to resign. She was appointed Prime Minister six months ago.
Mr Carr said that he was initially terrified of his fiancée’s mother, but now calls her “Mama” and has moved his customised Harley-Davidson motorcycle and 11-stone rottweiler, Salem, to Ukraine.
“I know it’s mad,” he said. “I can’t really believe it myself. It’s just bizarre. It has been a big adjustment for me but I am making it. I am picking up some Ukrainian and have formed a rock band.”
Yuliya Tymoshenko said that she was delighted by her prospective son-in-law. “He is an excellent person,” she said.
The wedding will take place on November 2 and the venue is believed to be in Yorkshire.
Manna had once written about a pair of pink socks for which she was reprimanded by the Muslim Students' Association. When she complained to a favorite professor, he started teasing her about how she had already ensnared and trapped her man, Nima, and did not need the pink socks to entrap him further.
[...]
I wonder if right now, at this moment, I were to turn to the people sitting next to me in this café in a country that is not Iran and talk to them about life in Tehran, how they would react. Would they condemn the totures, the executions and the extreme acts of aggression? I think they would. But what about the acts of transgression on our ordinary lives, like the desire to wear pink socks?
Later, Nima told us that the son of one of his friends, a ten-year-old, had awakened his parents in horror telling them he had been having an "illegal dream." He had been dreaming that he was at the seaside with some men and women who were kissing, and he did not know what to do. He kept repeating to his parents that he was having illegal dreams.
Teaching in the Islamic Republic, like any other vocation, was subservient to politics and subject to arbitrary rules. Always, the joy of teaching was marred by diversions and considerations forced on us by the regime - how well could one teach when the main concern of university officials was not the quality of one's work but the color of one's lips, the subversive potential of a single strand of hair? Could one really concentrate on one's job when what preoccupied the faculty was how to excise the word wine from a Hemingway story, when they decided not to teach Emily Brontë because she appeared to condone adultery?
