Come the Revolution
D'Rose's Uncle Muhammad carries three passports--one from Iran, his place of birth, one from Germany, his place of exile and one from Brazil, his wife's home country.
He is semi-retired. Semi-retired means he hangs out and travels a lot, shakes a lot of hands, exchanges his business cards with a lot of people. He's a professional hanger-outer, a full-time business card exchanger, a human currency converter, instant time zone calculator, a healthy combination of dreamer, idealist, swindler, bullshit artist. He wears his exile like a pair of silk pajamas.
Uncle Muhammed, or Max as he is known in Bangkok, has come to pay us a visit as he wings his way from Bejing to Hong Kong to Bangkok. After staying with us, it's on to Tehran before he heads back to Germany to say hello then goodbye to his wife and daughter. Then he'll head back to Bangkok, then on to Hong Kong, Bejing . . .
"Before revolution, during Shah days," Uncle Max says, "one dollar, 70 tuman. Now, one dollar, 1,000 tuman."
He is semi-retired. Semi-retired means he hangs out and travels a lot, shakes a lot of hands, exchanges his business cards with a lot of people. He's a professional hanger-outer, a full-time business card exchanger, a human currency converter, instant time zone calculator, a healthy combination of dreamer, idealist, swindler, bullshit artist. He wears his exile like a pair of silk pajamas.
Uncle Muhammed, or Max as he is known in Bangkok, has come to pay us a visit as he wings his way from Bejing to Hong Kong to Bangkok. After staying with us, it's on to Tehran before he heads back to Germany to say hello then goodbye to his wife and daughter. Then he'll head back to Bangkok, then on to Hong Kong, Bejing . . .
"Before revolution, during Shah days," Uncle Max says, "one dollar, 70 tuman. Now, one dollar, 1,000 tuman."
This report on the devaluation of the tuman should not be read as downbeat. One would think that he is, like many Iranians I've met, saddened by the dismal reality of present-day Iran or that he longs for the days when Christmas time in Tehran meant that the cabarets were jumping and when it was mostly Muslims who came to taste the wine and to blow their horns.
But no. As much as he or any Iranian who isn't a bag-o-hammers half wit might pine for the days when the Shah sold his oil and his soul to the west, when Iranians could travel abroad with a wallet full of platinum cards and a closet full of Italian suits, this isn't the case, because some of those trodden upon worms have most definitely turned.
I hear D'Rose begin many sentences with, "In those days. . ." or "Before revolution. . .", but mostly these phrases introduce romantic, reflective, melancholy reminiscences.
"Before revolution, boyfriends and girlfriends could walk in beautiful parks holding hands."
"In those days, we had villa on Caspian Sea."
"Before revolution Iranian wine was better quality even than French wine."
"In those days, we could go to Italy, get visa at airport then exchange Iranian tuman for lira. . .in Rome."
Those days were the days. These days, why, things have gotten so medieval, a pre-pubescent girl can get arrested and sentenced to forty lashes with a bamboo cane for eating an ice cream cone in public! By law, after the age of nine, a girl in Tehran has to spoon her ice cream! I'm lying if I'm dying.
But the passing of the days when a Persian enchantress could dab her seductive tongue at a double scoop of Rocky Road shouldn't necesarily spell woe for D'Rose. Nostalgia is a moveable feast. The only thing necessary, it seems, for the triumph of profit margins over the way things are is for good men to do nothing and for good women to quit hungering for the good old days.
Now, desperate for Yankee dollars, Iranian government banks offer its prosperous, prodigal children 17% interest payable in monthly annuities--provided they make their deposits in real money, that is to say dollars.
You can now return home, they seem to be saying, but be sure to bring some of that folding money from the land of the Great Satan. We'll even send a taxi to pick you up at the airport, give you a discount at the Esteghlal Grand Hotel, and just to sweeten the deal, we promise we won't shoot you.
I want to open one of those double-digit annuity accounts. I want to become a full-time business card exchanger. I want to be like Uncle Max or more to the point, I want to do more hanging out, a lot more hanging out.
If I can stand before my students day in/day out and make believe with a straight face that their futures depend upon understanding that there is a difference between the Present Perfect (I have been to Mecca) and the Simple Past (I went to Mecca) when in fact, there really is, all nitpicking, grammar Nazi arguments aside, no appreciable difference at all, then I'm pretty sure I can bullshit with the best of them and do what Uncle Max does.
I too can breeze into some dung hole Northern Chinese factory town with a sample case of designer jeans, take meetings over steamy soup tureens, oozles of noodles and a case of local beer; "You make same/same!", order a boat load of knock-offs for pennies on the dollar, then retire to my hotel room where I shall acquiesce my shaky morals to that Far Asian deal sealer, that juicy, inevitable knock on the door bearing perfumed lagniappe in high heels.
The time has come for change. But to become a professional hanger outer/bullshit artist etc I would first have to have a reliable, steady cash flow. That's where the Iranian savings account comes into play. The only catch is, if I want to open one of those accounts in Tehran, I have to have an Iranian passport.
I don't, of course. But I know someone who does.
Now, I'm thinking, maybe we should hold off on getting her that blue passport or. . .axis of evil schmevil. . . perhaps I should see what needs to be done to get me one of those purplish passports from the Islamic Republic of. . . .
Those days were the days. These days, why, things have gotten so medieval, a pre-pubescent girl can get arrested and sentenced to forty lashes with a bamboo cane for eating an ice cream cone in public! By law, after the age of nine, a girl in Tehran has to spoon her ice cream! I'm lying if I'm dying.
But the passing of the days when a Persian enchantress could dab her seductive tongue at a double scoop of Rocky Road shouldn't necesarily spell woe for D'Rose. Nostalgia is a moveable feast. The only thing necessary, it seems, for the triumph of profit margins over the way things are is for good men to do nothing and for good women to quit hungering for the good old days.
Now, desperate for Yankee dollars, Iranian government banks offer its prosperous, prodigal children 17% interest payable in monthly annuities--provided they make their deposits in real money, that is to say dollars.
You can now return home, they seem to be saying, but be sure to bring some of that folding money from the land of the Great Satan. We'll even send a taxi to pick you up at the airport, give you a discount at the Esteghlal Grand Hotel, and just to sweeten the deal, we promise we won't shoot you.
I want to open one of those double-digit annuity accounts. I want to become a full-time business card exchanger. I want to be like Uncle Max or more to the point, I want to do more hanging out, a lot more hanging out.
If I can stand before my students day in/day out and make believe with a straight face that their futures depend upon understanding that there is a difference between the Present Perfect (I have been to Mecca) and the Simple Past (I went to Mecca) when in fact, there really is, all nitpicking, grammar Nazi arguments aside, no appreciable difference at all, then I'm pretty sure I can bullshit with the best of them and do what Uncle Max does.
I too can breeze into some dung hole Northern Chinese factory town with a sample case of designer jeans, take meetings over steamy soup tureens, oozles of noodles and a case of local beer; "You make same/same!", order a boat load of knock-offs for pennies on the dollar, then retire to my hotel room where I shall acquiesce my shaky morals to that Far Asian deal sealer, that juicy, inevitable knock on the door bearing perfumed lagniappe in high heels.
The time has come for change. But to become a professional hanger outer/bullshit artist etc I would first have to have a reliable, steady cash flow. That's where the Iranian savings account comes into play. The only catch is, if I want to open one of those accounts in Tehran, I have to have an Iranian passport.
I don't, of course. But I know someone who does.
Now, I'm thinking, maybe we should hold off on getting her that blue passport or. . .axis of evil schmevil. . . perhaps I should see what needs to be done to get me one of those purplish passports from the Islamic Republic of. . . .
Labels: baksheesh, bank melli, bank saderat, iran, knock-off designer jeans
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5 Comments:
It seems to me you're eminently qualified for hanging out - I'd bet my little bit of Satan's currency on it.
Of course, this impression is based entirely on your self descriptions - maybe you've been preparing yourself for what's clearly an improvement in careers.
Well, except for those penalties. A tongue lashing, that I can take. It's the other kind that sting my delicate sensibilties, the sensibilities that like very much lounging around eating bon bons. Penalties, more of them and harsher, that come with regime changes never add up to an improvement, I don't care what the Rapture nuts and fundamentalists say.
Pete Townsend might rephrase it: "Meet the new boss/Worse than the old boss"
Imagine Turks and Turkey if the fundamentalists took over and you get a very good picture of how most Iranians feel about the regime in Iran.
The Shahs admittedly took pages from Ataturk's book. They wanted Iran to be European so badly they even changed the name of the country from Persia to "Land of the Aryans" (Iran). As more exiles return even if it's in name on a bank account only, change will come or is coming--there's too much profit in stocking the hotel mini-bars with booze.
Although wife says she's never going back, I for one wouldn't mind a room with a view of the Caspian Sea and that backdoor to "The New Europe", but then I don't have to wear the head gear and I don't have to use a spoon to eat ice cream in public.
Yah, it's hard to cozy up to a country that liked its European possibilities enough to cozy up to the Nazis (although that seems to have been going around a lot back then).
That resemblance to Turkey and borrowing from Ataturk makes sense. It's only on the ground that one (me) appreciates some of the necessity (if the country was to survive at all) of Ataturk.
Booda: Yup. You right. Pappa Shah, Charles Lindberg, CS Lewis were all bedazzled by those jackboots.
Shah Junior, however, was a good boy, i.e. our boy. He swung the other way accepting an Israeli Embassy in Tehran, putting an Iranian Embassy in Tel Aviv way before Sadat made the trip up country. "Iranic", isn't it.
From Ataturk to Saddam Hussein the real politik of bringing progressive secularism to a Muslim country means y'gotta have that iron fist, total control of the press and a spit shined secret police. "Operation Iraqi Freedom" ha! When the Malaki government in Iraq took total control of the Iraqi press last year, not even the Daily Show picked up on it.
Great post. I wish I had something impressive to say.
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