Conversations With An Afghan Teacher; Part 8

One of the ‘side-effects’ of talking to an older, more level-headed person is the loss of part of your enthusiasm. When the teacher reminded me that there was a super-creature called ‘reality’ who ruled ruthlessly over the world of actions, suddenly, like a ‘terrified cave-man’, I felt the presence of the invisible ‘super-creature’ everywhere. The super-creature tolerated thinking, imagining and believing whatever I wanted in the safety of my head but the moment, I expressed or put them into action, He took actions against the impractical ones. 

The teacher paused and narrowed his eyes.The wrinkles on the corners of his almond eyes and nose became more visible. Either he remembered something or struggled with some deep thoughts. I wanted to allow him some moments and looked around. Three teen boys sat on the front-step of the workshop adjacent to the flour store, whispered and giggled. It wasn’t appropriate to stand on the corner of street and talk like teen boys. But I didn’t want to invite him home, as I knew he would decline the offer and that would end our that day’s conversation. 

“What are you thinking about, Ustad?”

“Nothing important.” he fixed his glasses over his nose, something he did when he wanted to concentrate. “As you are a curious young man, I thought to share some of my observations…”

“Balay Ustad.”

“I don’t know if you have noticed an illusions that have become popular among our people….” I got alerted. I wanted to know, if I shared that illusion “...I met a number of people who recently adopted the surnames, like Changizi, Mongol, Ilkhani, Chughtai and like that. Choosing a name is a personal choice and I have no rights to object on that. What I want to point out is the mindset behind those names. They have developed this illusion that, unless a people don’t have a great history, they can’t become great people, or more precisely, unless, you don’t have a proud history, you can’t have a bright future. My problem with this mindset is that, it encourages to look at history the way we like it to be, instead it really was. You can’t force your liking on reality, instead, learn to like the reality. Titles, slogans, badges, etc only confuse our youths, nothing more. ”

“Balay Ustad.” I said in low voice. Actually, influenced by the trend, once I thought to adopt the surname Changizi but then after long conversations with my grand uncle, I abandoned the idea. My grand uncle had the similar views, that if you you weren’t cool with your situation and instead of earning pride, you wanted to borrow it, you were under strong influence of a delusion. 

“And I met people who believed unless, you get rid of your past and become from hair to toe, in and out, identical to a western person, you couldn’t be an enlightened person.They have this illusion that everything have already been worked out , and if we just follow the West, all our problems will be solved. Period. That’s exactly like the mindset of Salafists who believe, if Muslims implement the Islamic laws as they were practiced during Prophet and His caliphs, all their problems will be solved by themselves.The reality is that Science and Technology are common and work everywhere the same but when it comes to the human societies, each society has its own personality and has to go through its own developmental stages.If I expect all my students perform the same at my class because they get the same instructions, in the same environment, I will get disappointed by the results….”

In those days, I was an ultra-idealist person. I started thinking of a “possible” future utopian world that I called “elysium”. I thought, Science will continue to increase our understanding and technological advances will help us solve all the problems. There will no illness, no shortage of food, no psychological, social and economical problem and so on. Everyday I read news about new breakthroughs which solved this and that problem and they were all pointing to the possibility of the elysium. Besides, the pursuit of the Master degree gave me a sense of mastery of the world affairs and I had no doubt that my “prediction” will come true. Certainly, I will not be there to see the elysium but I could enjoy imagining it. Then, this teacher that I didn’t know anything about his educational background tore down my “elysium” by pointing the human element that was missing in my prediction. When the teacher said, each society has its own personality, I couldn’t help myself but to interrupt him, 

“Don’t you think, if people become increasingly rational, over time, they will come to similar conclusions and ultimately, they will become identical?” 

“What’s your field of study?” asked the teacher.

“Geology.” I replied.

“Good.” his face radiated with a warm smile “So you know the forces that drive the continental plates are the same all over the world, right?”

“Balay Ustad.” I nodded.

“But the history of Sulaiman mountain chains are different than the history of Ural mountains, right?”

“Balay Ustad.”

“Okay, Genetic inheritance works the same all over the world, half of the chromosomes are inherited from mother and other half from father, right?”

“Balay Ustad.”

“Then, why are we different from Indonesians, for example?”

“Our genes and Indonesians genes had different mutation histories.” Based on his previous arguments, I guessed the kind of answer he wanted to hear.

“Good.” he smiled and fixed his glasses again. “As genes carry information about our physical make-ups and determine the physical appearances and the diseases of next generations to a large extent, likewise, the cultures carry information about our ethics, values, fears, worldviews and things like that and they determine to a large extent the worldviews of the next generations. As different mutation histories result in different genetic makeups, similarly, different cultural mutations histories result in different cultural makeups….”

“But humans are rational animals and they can fix cultural practices that are stupid.” I interrupted.

“Of course, humans can change, and we both are exchanging views to recognize some of our stupidities.” he looked at his wrist watch.

“You must have some work or have to take your lunch or something?” he inquired.

“No, no, Ustad, I’m free afternoons.”

“OK, I very like to talk something about the relation of rationality to stupidity…”

Continued…. 

Part ; 7

Conversations With An Afghan Teacher: Part 7

He took a pause and looked at me. I guess, he wanted to make sure that I followed him. At least that was, how I felt. My feeling wasn’t baseless. It was a common habit of all the teachers that I encountered; when they had to explain something of importance, difficult or spoke for long, they paused and asked, if they were followed. 

“Interesting!” I replied.

We were close to our street. On the main road a large truck with all those showy decorations (my uncle called them shrines) blocked the road for vehicles. Only pedestrians, bicyclists and motorcyclists could pass through the space between the truck and the wall. Two laborers unloaded the hundred kilograms sacs of flours off the truck on their backs. Usually, It took three of us (my father and two of his sons) to pull one of those flour sacks on a wheelbarrow from the store to home. The one who pulled the wheelbarrow definitely expected appreciation as if he had accomplished a difficult task. 

It was dismissal time of the schools (and the beginning of second shifts in some schools). The street was full of students. Some of the female students wore scarves, some dupatta, some shawls and some chadar. Male students dressed in traditional shalwar-kameez and some in pants and dress shirts. It was just another school day. Students walked in both directions, in groups, chattering and laughing. 

Our conversation hadn’t finished and I didn’t want to say goodbye to the teacher without knowing why he wanted a culture that helped people to feel better about themselves. We stopped at the street corner and continued our conversation.

“I highlighted some important historical events just to bring you where we both stand.” There wasn’t anything extra-ordinary about where we stood. Our town was a poor, neglected town in a poor, neglected province of a third world country that struggled with messy multi-level, local and regional conflicts. While even our houses hadn’t postal addresses, how could I believe that we were moving along the events of our time? I felt we were just following the trails that others had already walked. And our disagreements were on what trail take to reach a better place? 

“Have you noticed that most of the students wear dresses that are different from what their parents wear?

“That’s obvious. Parents aren’t expected to wear uniforms of their children?” I tried to crack a joke but the teacher didn’t laugh. That was a bad joke.

“Whenever I see all these different uniforms, they fill me with hope. Those uniforms represent different visions for the future. They remind me that the parents have many choices for education of their children and which school system will attract most students will depend on how their students will perform. It also shows the openness of our people….”

“But don’t you think that these variations may divide our people?” I interrupted.

“I understand your concern.” The teacher answered. “And you are not alone in that regard. Remember, I counted a number of recent failures just to illustrate that we live in uncertain times, and in uncertain times, it is not safe ‘to put all your eggs in one basket’. It is a tested prescription from ancient times, that the more diverse your assets are, the minimum is the risk of your losses. And our children our real assets. Aren’t they?”

“Balay Ustad.” I nodded. “I get your point about modern schools but what about religious institutions? Do you think, they still have usage in our time?”

He smiled. “Instead of yes or no answer, let me put your question in its context and then let you finalize the conclusion.”

“Balay Ustad.”

“ Have you heard this quote, “religion is the opium of masses”?”

“Yeah, I hear it frequently and I assume that it is a darling quote for some of my friends.” I laughed.

“Let me tell you this.” he adjusted his glasses. “Don’t think that I am a mullah or intend to replace mullahs....” and rubbed his “belly”. 

“I know that.” I interrupted to assure him that I believed him. In those times, it was a growing trend to look at religious people as stupids. To avoid the embarrassment of being considered as stupids, the learned individuals, either didn’t mention religion at all, or if they mentioned, they quickly clarified that they are not religious at all. Contrary to individuals who were filled with the air of intellect, the teacher didn’t exhibit any arrogance of understanding or intellect. He just behaved like a teacher, offered his shoulders for the curious ones to climb and see the other side of the walls, still, I wanted to assure him that I didn’t think of him as a “stupid” person.

“... Despite of my deepest desires to look at everything with pure reason, over time, I have learnt to distinguish between ideas that look reasonable and those that are actually practical. For example, in the months of Ramadan and Muharram, my friends remind me now and then, that ‘religion is the opium of masses’ and count all those money, time and skills wasted on those occasions that could otherwise go into building schools, hospitals, roads and other positive things. I do agree with them. One doesn’t need to be Socrates to agree with them. But then, I see the massive consumption of tea, coffee, cigarettes, snuffs, hookahs, opium, painkillers, hallucinogens, alcoholic beverages, and those are the list of things that I know. From time to time, I hear the names of new compounds that are even more potent, and like any other field, I can only expect for more dangerous stuffs…” he paused again to readjust his glasses. 

“Yes Ustad.” I nodded. Unlike our first conversation, this time, he was in mood of explaining things in detail and I wanted him to continue. 

“... And you know all those stuffs are consumed on such massive scales that an entire world of subcultures and dark economies have developed. In a realistic sense, that is the real “opium of masses...”.

“Yes Ustad.” I got his point. I wanted to ask if he was defending one “opium” against another but I let him finished his point. 

“....When I see the popularity of both religion and other stuffs as long back as I can track the history and across the cultures, I have no other choice but to conclude that, the masses need opium or even sometimes, I inclined to think, humans in general are addicted for need of some sort of addiction. You don’t allow them a “spiritual opium” or religions, they will turn to the “material opium”. 

“Ustad, In that sense, movies, songs and video-games (social media, esp, Facebook wasn’t that common in those days) are also opium of masses.”

“Oh, Yes. I forgot to mention them…” he laughed. “Again, my aim is not to favor one thing over another. I want to distinguish between practicality and reason.” 

“Balay (yes) Ustad. Balay Ustad.” I repeated to assure him that I followed him.

“You know, why I’m so obsessed with distinguishing between practicality and reasoning?”

“From your personal experience, I guess.” I threw a stone in the dark. 

“From witnessing the collapse of Soviet Union. For a large part of my youth, I believed the Soviet Union, with all her brilliant scientists, engineers, economists, social scientists, and public servants is the beacon of practical reasoning. But then, I witnessed her collapsing under the enormous weight of the plunders and scattering into daughter-states. Her daughter states are still struggling to come in terms with the realities of the wider world. I used to have a teacher who told us that engineers are the most logical people. If an engineer constructs a building of his liking and ignores reality, the reality will soon deconstruct his building into a lump of concrete, steel and glass. I don’t doubt that Soviets had the best engineers but they constructed a super-state of their liking ignoring the reality and as my teacher used to say, the reality deconstructed their darling super-state. Religious institutions have been part of our society for centuries and they are still standing and that indicate that they are still having some usage, otherwise, they were long deconstructed….”

“Ustad, but we also have seen the spread of hatred and destruction by the promotions of religious institutions?”

“That’s right. As I said, if you construct a building of your liking ignoring reality, the reality will deconstruct it. As you know better than me that, the States opposed Soviet Union worked as a together as a team for over two decades to turn the religious institutions from places of spiritual services to places of training and recruiting militants to counter the expansion of Soviet Union and the rival states. The ongoing war on terror is the biggest evidence that it was a very bad engineering, and the world has to pay the costs deconstruction and of fallout for a long time.” 2 

Continued…. 

Footnote,

2. Since, at the time of conversation, there was no sign of Arab Spring and the following Arab Winter, I have to add a footnote here. It seems, despite the earlier failures, there are some countries, for whom, turning religious institutions into factories of militancy are still more beneficial than the costs of resulting destruction. The benefits to costs ratio may be higher for now but as we have seen it in Pakistan, those rations will finally start to change, and they will have to pay the overdue costs of dealing with the destruction, the militants and the mindsets for a long time.

Conversations With An Afghan Teacher: Part 6

“Are you suggesting that human rights activists are modern saints?” I interrupted. 

When I asked a question, he nodded his head repeatedly , while maintaining a light smile. His humble gestures reduced the gapes of our ages and knowledge levels. 

“I am sure, you have heard the names of Che Guevara, Mahatma Gandhi, Martin Luther King and Nelson Mandela?”

“I knew about the three others but Martin Luther King, I recently learnt about from a textbook on American Politics. I guess, very few people around here know him as I have never heard anyone speaking about him.”

“I know people around here consider Che Guevara a bigger saint than Mandela and some may even consider Gandhi as villain. “ he laughed. “For obvious reason. But I mentioned those four names as they are generally celebrated as some sort of saint across the globe. My point is though each of those personalities had different ideologies and struggled against different systems, they stood for equal rights and in an age, human rights were recognized globally, their struggles were considered noble and earned them special statuses…”1

“If I understand you correctly, you are suggesting that in our time, human rights is virtue, not knowledge?”

“I am glad that you asked that question. Though the answer is very obvious, especially to a person like me who had suffered significantly from it....” I noticed the rush of blood in his face. “When I was at the same age as you are or probably a bit younger, I found myself torn apart between three systems of knowledge, each rejecting the validity of two others. The communists thought, they were the real representative of rationality and rejected libertarians as modern sophists who had narrow world-view that revolved around profits. Libertarians rejected communists as anti-intellectuals who wanted to punish talented individuals for their talents and spread stupidity. These two groups stressed that they are the real face of Science. And there were Mujahideen who stressed to bend all forms of knowledge to fit their Islamic worldview, as the words of God were the only true knowledge. The war of those three worldviews destroyed the world of our generation…” he took a long breath. “So you see, we are no more living in the world of Greeks, and like Greeks, we can’t propose, knowledge is virtue…”

“The Athenians punished Socrates to death, blaming him for misguiding the youths of Athens, and Taliban (students of madrassa) are killing people indiscriminately for what they consider misguided lifestyles.” I interrupted. 

“Unfortunately, that is true.”

I didn’t want to turn our conversation into talks about news (The news and talks about the news were taking over normal conversations. On TV, at homes, schools, stores, workplaces and roadsides, almost everywhere people talked news. I had developed “news-acid-reflux”. 

“I feel like, somehow, you believe, our culture should solace people. Am I right?”

“To a large extent, yes.”

“What made you to develop such tendencies?”

“May be I am a bit more inclined to link current trends to events that shaped them. I guess, that is how I was taught to see the world. Anyway, “amadam bar sari matlab” (farsi phrase: I returned to the point). In my opinion, soon after world war second, people were confused, distrusted traditional sources of identities and looked for alternatives. Philosophers, men and women of letters, artists and movie stars became very influential and the intellectuals gravitated towards introspection. People were open and readily accepted new ideas and were ready to experiment new things. The popularity of existentialism, deconstructionism, “skimmed-Buddhism” and hippie movements are few examples that demonstrated people’s changed moods. My understanding is that all of those movements failed to open up new ways and that’s why we see a trend of looking to Science for guide. The popularity of tech-products, sci-fi, star-wars and dystopia are the fallout of those failures. In East, people turned to the golden times in their relative histories and tried to reincarnate those golden societies. Islamism and nationalism spread throughout of the region and created the mess that we are currently “enjoying” their fruits in forms of the distrust, hatred and terrorist activities…”

Continued…..

Footnote 

At the time of conversation, I (and most probably the teacher) wasn’t familiar with the concept of social entrepreneurship and neo-Philanthropy. so I mention as footnote to this conversation. These are new trends that are creating new billionaire-saints. The tech-billionaires create investment organizations that invest in the startups or initiatives that have or supposedly to have vast social impacts. Although the moves are positive and they may some have good impacts (as they are able to pull vast resources and attract experts people), still institutional philanthropism will cost taxpayers more (as the significant tax savings of those institutions will have to be compensated by the taxes of lower income people, and as decision makers are few rich individuals instead of people's representatives, their benefits might be in places of particular choices.)

Conversations With An Afghan Teacher: Part 5

Perhaps, it was the lens of identity through which I like most had looked at our culture, as the “Afghan” teacher suggested. I was proud of it and anything said against it hurt my ego. At the first conversation, I realized that I loved the image of the culture (as my natural ID) more than the culture, and in practice, I wasn’t that enthusiastic about it. It allowed me to set aside my ego and rethink it. In the process, I faced the reality that I was pride of a collection of things and practices that had very little intellectual foundation. 

I used to go to the library of center of excellence in mineralogy after my classes to do some reading. It was the quietest part of the University and I barely came across another person there in days. That day, I got out of University soon after I finished my classes. By that time, Hazaras had been attacked several times by the terrorists, still, Saryab road and surrounded areas had not turned into a no-go-area for Hazaras yet, and instead of Sabzal road, I rode through backstreets to cut the travel time as well as to avoid the crazy drivers and their overloaded trucks. All the way, I rehearsed my questions. By the time, I arrived at Hussain Abad road, I had rehearsed my questions several times and I felt, I was ready to face the teacher. The feelings gave me shots of relaxation and confidence. I parked my bike next to a popcorn cart, bought a bag of freshly popped warm-creamy-salty popcorn and sat next to a watch vendor on the front-step of a store. The street was packed with people and there were plenty to not get bored. 

The town was new and rapidly expanding. It happened many times that someone inquired about a street or a neighborhood and I had no clue. The streets frequently changed names and no postal address was assigned to any house or any other building in the town. The streets of the town was already aged and worn out. Like a young overweight person, she struggled to go with everyday life. There was a clear division between the city and the sky that watched over her. While the city was deeply segregated and the government services were unequally “distributed”, the sky shared sunshine and polluted air equally to all the creatures. Like the people, the valley’s bedrocks were broken and wrenched by active faults and folds and had plenty of fossilized water. I worried about a time when the thick forest of the people gasp for fresh air and water like creatures of a drying pool. The absence of prominent buildings informed visitors that “important” persons didn’t consider the town worthy of themselves, and in a society obsessed with VIP culture, that simply meant, the resident of the town weren’t important at all. Though the town was very humble, she possessed the strange ability to provoke immense emotions. She charmed me with the abundant young faces who rushed from a school to another school and from one academy to another one. The broken streets between those schools and academies were the only paths left to hopeful tomorrows. And, she tormented my soul with visibly exhausted middle-aged and older men and women whose sunken eyes struggled to remain open under the load of worries. 

I saw the teacher coming. Only his age and relaxed walking differentiated him from students. 

“Salam Ustad.” I offered popcorn as I approached him. “Do you recognize me?”

“Salam.” he picked few popcorn. “Yes, yes, why not…. so, what we are discussing this time, politics, culture or something else?” he asked. I liked his style. He saved time by avoiding formal repetitive inquires about health, business, studies, family...blah, blah, blah… 

“What about an easy and practical definition of culture?” I suggested.

“Basha (OK), basha (OK)” he smiled. 

We walked for a while without talking. He maintained his light smile. “Do you agree that we all have unique set of habits, both healthy and unhealthy ones?” 

“That’s obvious!” I replied.

“Just as each individual has a set of unique habits, each society has a set of collective habits and that’s their culture.”

For a while, I couldn’t think of anything. I needed time to process the definition. I prepared and rehearsed some questions about cultural “features” and the processes that shaped them. The conversation took a different track than I anticipated from very beginning, nonetheless, I liked the explanation. It was definitely simple and practical. Still I needed something that I could call “intellectual”.

“Ustad, do you remember, the other day you asked me, if I feel better by participating in happy occasions like marriage parties and Eids?”

“Yes, yes, I remember…” he interrupted.

“Don’t you agree that the more knowledge a person gains, he grows more discontent with his situation?”

“For example?” he asked.

“Like, when I was a kid, everything seemed perfect and I enjoyed everything. As I grew up and learned more about our past and present, I became discontent with almost everything.” 

“In that sense, yes, I do agree.”

“You may also heard Socrates believed that, ‘Knowledge is virtue.”

“Yes. I know that…..”

“Then, Do you think, discomfort is also virtue?” I interrupted him. 

“Huh” he chuckled. “Before I express my opinion on the relation of knowledge and comfort to virtue, I want to tell you what I think about notion of virtue…”

“That’s fair.”

“My understanding is that the concept of virtue has considerably evolved. From code of Hammurabi to the time of Greeks and Romans, the concept of honor or an eye for an eye stood at the core of concept of virtue. If you was harmed and you couldn’t exact an revenge, you had no honor. The good warriors were celebrated as national heroes. The tribal societies of our region still stand on the same concept. You may have heard that a tribal chief proudly boasted his first killing at age of twelve in an interview . The Christians upgraded the concept of virtue by declaring that love and forgiveness is more virtuous than revenge. Saints gained higher ranking than warriors. Islam introduced the classes of virtues, Qisas (revenge), diyya (compensation money) and forgiveness. Islamic saints were good warriors as well as kind and merciful. In modern world, the nations have agreed on human rights, and now, human rights is a global virtue. My point is that the concept of virtue is not a fixed one. It is evolving, and so are the concepts of knowledge and comfort…”

Continued….

Conversations With An Afghan Teacher; Part 4

I brain-stormed to come up with my own definitions and when no more spot left on the page for another circle and a line to go around all those closely spaced circles, and their connecting lines to the main circle, I looked at my mind-map to find the most relevant ideas and organize them in a meaningful order. The mind-map appeared like the pile of second-hand clothes at landa-bazaar and finding the relevant ideas were like finding decent clothes of your size from those piles. 

The year was 2004, and I was obsessed with Geology, checked out a lot of geology books and spent most of my time reading them and looked at everything through lenses of the geological concepts. What I liked most about Geology was that it explained every land feature through the mechanism of plate tectonics. It was a surreal experience and had changed my taste permanently. The other neat thing about Geology that had won over me was, though its subjects were mostly Earth’s history but the processes that shaped Earth’s history were still alive and observable, and in that sense, I was in love with the idea of “Present is key to the past.” 

I looked at my landa-bazaar type mind-map and tried to find “features” that I could link them in “plate tectonic” style. It was like trying to cook a popular hotel recipe at home but not knowing the proper ingredients and measures and still expecting the same good look and taste. 

The biggest circle in the center of the page hosted the phrase, “Forces that cause appearances and disappearances of cultural features”, and it was connected to other circles hosted those “forces” and each circle had little notes with tiny fonts sizes to include some features. War, Famine, Conversion, Invention and Major Constructions were the main forces and most of the notes, explained nearly the same thing, like, those forces resulted in migration, resettlement, new rivalries, economic competitions and transfer of ideas and material wealth, changes in gene pools...blah blah blah.

As I look through some of my old notes that somehow survived and are associated with those days, it occurs to me that my biggest struggle was to be clear about the “transition”. In those days, I used to hear the expressions from different people, “we are in transitional stage”, but no one explained what they meant by transitional stage and that worried me. Like many, I believed, change was the only constant. Paradoxical that it had sound, it made perfect sense to me. I made a list of cultural features that were rapidly disappearing and a parallel list of cultural features that were becoming mainstream and the “forces” behind those appearances and disappearances. It was two column list and with tiny notes all around it that explained and compared those features. The result were a set of questions, or concerns, to be more precise. 

Usually, I come across the conversations about “progress” and I was aware of points made in favor and against of the notion. My biggest concern was, what a real progress meant? I compared my list, and almost all of the changes appeared to me as results of “improved purchasing power”, access to “modern products” and changes in perspectives as results of “political developments in the region.” All those changes were introduced by people other than people of my community. We were just the end consumers. That was a very shallow and superficial concept of “progress”. They were like teeny-tiny form of the “progress in the Gulf states” as result of their purchasing power from oil exports. That made me to question a number of other major concepts that we held so dear. Were our concepts of morality, justice, generosity (big heart), success in this world and world after, living the lives of freemen (just, brave, bowing to no one but God), brotherhood (equality)....blah blah were as shallow and superficial as our concepts of “progress”? If we had “longer measuring stick” for those ideals than the rest, did they translate in deeper, more meaningful and content lives? Did our culture really base on those ideals? Were the changes indicative of moving up or down on the yardstick? 

Those were the really messy questions. What made me really uncomfortable was that in practice, we, as a community had mistaken the improved purchasing power of few with progress, and that blinded us of our century long uprooting that were hollowing us from inside. I did try to think of clear messages, so I could went out and stirred debates but everything I thought weren’t convincing enough to me. I thought about the Afghan teacher and decided to meet him to see, if he had something to offer? 

Continued….

Conversations With An Afghan Teacher: Part 3

I got busy with my routines and forgot about the conversation. I guess, over time my mind’s “recycle bin” had been grown more active at the cost of rest of it. Anything that didn’t touch me deeply was quickly trashed into the recycle bin. I should say it in my defense that I wasn’t arrogant and thinking of myself high but as I imagined that there were so many fascinating things that I wasn’t aware of, I simply didn’t want to waste my time on less fascinating things. An afternoon, on of way back from University, I saw the teacher again. I paddled faster my bicycle past the teacher so he couldn’t see me. 

I had a mixed feelings about our first conversation. Some of the teacher’s ideas were new for me but as I felt that I had embarrassed myself by jumping from one question to another without adding something meaningful, I wasn’t ready to go through another session of embarrassments that soon 😛. 

I escaped from being noticed by the teacher but I failed to take him out of my mind. In the conversation, he mentioned the “wisdom of East”, and at that age wisdom appeared to me something mysterious that special people possessed. I wanted to know what teacher actually meant by wisdom of East. My earlier experiences with what I considered part of the “Wisdom of East” weren’t pleasant. 

I had watched some of the martial arts movies and read some rudimentary books on the power of breathing and concentration exercises and tried some of those exercises without any positive results 🙈. I concluded that one of the two things are true; either those exercises were just imaginations of the charlatans or they needed some special talents and I had no talents for such things. I actually tried to learn them from the “experts” as well. I remember that in our neighborhood, a new Kung-Fu master arrived. He started a class in a dark and damp basement. The basement had neither windows nor stairs. In order to get into the basement, one had to climb down a ladder that was placed against a square hole cut in the floor of first floor. I visited the club several times to see the skill levels of the master. The master had the same hair style, body shape, walked and screamed like Bruce Lee except that Bruce Lee was shorter and didn’t wear the red ribbon like the master. May be Bruce Lee didn’t need red ribbon for evil eyes or personal charisma 🙏. 

I got impressed and enrolled in the class, despite not having money for uniforms. The master allowed to practice with regular activewear. In the class, everyone had a practice partner. The partners practiced kicks and punches on each other and exercised together. My partner was a fat bakery boy who was older than me a couple of years. I really enjoyed punching and kicking his pulpy body. He had heavy hands but his punches didn’t hurt. He wasn’t able to kick and that was fun too. But that wasn’t all. During abdominal exercises the partners had to cross their legs and do the workouts. My partner was a gaseous guy and lost total control during abs exercises and that was disgusting. The basement was already a microcosm of advanced level of global warming. It was hot, damp and filled with smell of perspiration of the students and I like Bangladesh I had to bear the most of my partners greenhouse gases. I bore all those things just to get enlightened by the master’s lectures. At the end of each session, he delivered a brief lecture. But all those lectures were about not using our improved punching and kicking abilities in the street fights. Those lectures didn’t work at all, as I actually started looking for troubles to test the improvements 😈. After a few months, I got bored with repetition and left the class. Years later, a new large multi-story building was constructed which had a large, well-lighted and aerated basement. The master had also earned a good name for himself. I enrolled in the class in hope to see the concepts in the practice. The master, somehow stressed more on improving the physical strength than teaching the art. He kicked and punched with full force on the stomach, back and legs. I left the class in a month as I didn’t want to live with damaged internal organs and nerves all my life. 

As the Afghan teacher didn’t require any special uniform, he didn’t charge me for conversation and I had not to tolerate the greenhouses and beatings, and hoped that the teacher might had known things that I didn’t, I decided to meet him again.

Continued….

Conversations With An Afghan Teacher: Part 2

“There is a renewed interest and disagreements about Hazaragi culture. How do you define a culture?” I asked.

“We are in Hazara Town, right?” He asked me instead of answering my question.

“Haw, I guess, we are.” I chuckled.

“And most of the people who live in this town are Hazara, right?”

“Yes!”

“Then, look around and you see Hazaragi culture.”

“I know that.” I protested. “I expected an educated opinion from you.”

“That’s my opinion.” He smiled.

I couldn’t think of something and there was a bitter silence for a while. I hated when things were abstract, particularly, when real things appeared abstract.

“I can sense your discontent.” the teacher broke the silence. “And I guess, the main reason for your discontent is your dissatisfaction with the culture you are living in. You are not accepting what you are surrounded with and want something more glorious. Maybe something you take pride in, right?”

He was partially right. I just nodded.

“You see, I am also dissatisfied and want changes. But change without a clear understanding of what you want will only result in chaos.”

The word “change” made me think of two groups, socialists and religious groups. Both were more clear than the rest in what they wanted. The teacher couldn’t be an Islamist, so he must be a socialist, I thought.

“Do you dream of a classless society or something?”

“A classless society sounds good but I am not an idealist to have such desires.” he smiled.

“What do you want?”

“I am still working on it.”

I couldn’t believe that a middle-aged, apparently thoughtful person wasn’t still clear about the changes he wanted in society.

“So, all you want is stability?” I asked. “No change, right?”

Let me ask you a few questions.” He asked.

“OK.”

“When you go to a marriage party, do you feel more comfortable in the party and return from the party more content than your routine days?”

“I am not a party person,” I replied. “I try to avoid marriage parties as much I can.”

“What about Eid days?” he asked another question. “Do you feel happier on Eid days than the rest of the days?”

“No.” It was too embarrassing to tell the reasons that made me feel uncomfortable on those days.

“If you don’t feel better on the happiest occasions then, I assume, the sad occasions don’t make you feel better either, right?”

“Right.”

“Don’t you think taking pride in things that make you uncomfortable is a bit unreasonable?”

I was unprepared for the question. Pride was the main driver of the Hazara diaspora of Quetta. Everything (both national and religious) revolved around pride. I felt as if my existence and everything that I stood for were questioned. I couldn’t think of anything and just nodded.

“Have you heard about Buddhas of Bamiyan?”

“Everybody knows about those statues.”

“What comes to your mind when you think of links between the statues and Hazaras?”

“That we were Buddhists before conversion to Islam.”

“Right.” The teacher agreed. “But other than statues, do you recognize any other aspect of Buddhism in our culture?”

“No. But that is not important.” I replied.

“How?” He asked.

“In those days, Buddhism was the religion of Central Asia, South Asia, and the Far East. It wasn’t limited to Bamiyan. Buddhist statues and stupas were found all across the region.”

“You are right.” He smiled. “The reason I asked you the question is to point out the fact that during our conversion to Islam, we got rid of our whole heritage. Maybe you are aware that people from all around the world go to what you call the “Far East” region in search of mental and physical health. Meditation, yoga, martial arts, traditional healing through massage, herbal teas, acupuncture, and food are considered as “wisdom of the East”. What is our share in the wisdom of the East?”

I had not thought along those lines and had nothing to add.

“I am not criticizing our past. I am critical of our present. We are repeating the same mistakes. If we were fortunate enough and had some visionary people, they certainly preserved good parts of older traditions while embracing the good of new ones. We are once again in the middle of a transitional stage. We are adopting new things and trashing our old tradition but we are doing so just by following the popular trends. We are not critical and that’s the main reason that neither our happy occasions make us feel good nor our sad occasions. In fact, we are developing a culture that encourages feeling bad about everything. Our houses look more like stores than houses, everything is for show-off and there is very little in them to soothe the souls and bodies. Our celebrations are filled with ostentatious things, unhealthy foods and we take pride in things that do not exist anymore….”

As we were close to our home, I interrupted him, “What do you suggest?”

“About what?”

“About our culture.”

“It is not me or you who make our culture. It is our people but we have our own roles. If we want our culture to survive and prosper, we have to put mental and physical well-being at the center of our culture. Otherwise, we are only destined for total disintegration. Empty prides are too weak to keep us together....”

“But what are our Hazaragi traditional dresses, caps, cuisines, and languages?” I interrupted him again. “Aren’t they unique enough to preserve our identity?”

“I am not saying those things aren’t important. But we are no longer living in an alienated world. In our world, the things you mentioned have become trade goods and trade goods change frequently as market changes….”

We were in front of our house. I was so consumed by the conversation that I barely noticed things around me. I invited him for a cup of tea. He declined the invitation by saying that he needed things to do, and promised to meet me again to continue our conversation.


Continued…

Conversations With An "Afghan" Teacher

Although the conversation is more than a decade old, it is still relevant today:

As I neared Barma Road (Hussain Abad, Hazara Town, Quetta), I heard the loud sounds of noha and matam. I thought a procession was approaching, so I braked my bicycle and waited for the procession to pass. After a minute or two, Abdullah’s pas-sari’s cart showed up. It wasn’t a Muharram procession but Abdullah’s tape recorder that played loud noha. It was embarrassing and amusing. If people could read my mind, there would be a burst of laughter. I was about to mount on my bicycle when I spotted the “Afghan” teacher. I identified him easily as most of the time he wore a khaki overcoat over a white shalwar kameez held a couple of books in his right hand and walked slowly with his head down as if he was looking for something on the asphalt. He was a short, bony, and bespectacled man, with brown curly hair. Although I had no acquaintance with him I had seen him many times on the road and from his appearance, I had developed the perception of a thoughtful person and it was my chance to find out. I walked fast and soon, I was walking along with the teacher.

“Salam Ustad.”

“Walaikum Salam!” the teacher replied while he looked at me in puzzlement. 

“I guess, you are a teacher,” I asked.

He nodded.

“I have a few questions for you if you don’t mind.” I continued.

“Befurma (ask please)” he answered politely.

In those days, I was reading an American textbook on politics, that I had borrowed from the provincial library. It was my first introduction to Aristotle’s cycle of political change, individualism, social rights movement, and libertarianism. I wanted to dig deeper and was looking for more resources on the subjects. Inspired by Socrates, I was also trying to “mind-map” my own concepts.

“How do you define politics?” I asked the teacher.

“You look like a reasonable person.” he smiled.

“I don’t know, how reasonable am I, but I like reasoning and respect people with reasoning,” I replied.

He took out a toffee from his pocket and asked, “How much is the toffee?”

“Char-anna (a quarter of a rupee)”

“Do you like toffees?”

“Yes!”

“Do you often buy toffees?”

“Yes.”

“Do you buy particular toffee brands or do you buy any toffee when you go to stores?”

“I am very picky when it comes to toffees!”

“That’s politics.”

“How?” I was puzzled.

“Money is power and when you choose to buy one brand over another, you are actually empowering the company that produces that brand.”

“I never thought it that way.”

“That’s the problem. Even our most literate ones aren’t aware of the power of their actions.” He smiled.

I was embarrassed and wanted to change the topic.

“There is a renewed interest and also disagreements on Hazaragi culture. How do you define a culture?” I asked.

Continued….

Inequality and Jugaad

Bowl of Hazar Chiragh

Thanks to photographer-friends who let us see Mehrabad (also Mariabad) through their lenses, by sharing their pictures on social media. This allow us appreciate the uniqueness of the valley, which, otherwise is an ordinary town. In fact Mehrabad's pictures create a mix feelings; a sense of pleasure from rugged beauty of the valley , and a sense of deep sadness from first-hand knowledge of the unequal treatments, and in a lot of cases criminal-ignorance or complacence that forced people to build their houses on the mountainside.

On this Blog Action Day, I wanted to write a post about issues that are common, but as they say, "charity begins at home", I thought, I might remind the concerned/sensible people of the continued injustices to the people, I recognize with, myself:

 While the homes that are built all around mountainsides create an image of a bowl of Hazar-Chiragh (thousand-lamps) which might be an appropriate name to the valley, where Hazara people live (People of the valley also call it Mehr-Abad - The land of love -, for the valley is an oasis of love in the desert of hatred that has encircled it.). Beautiful and lovely, as the valley appears is only the soul of the valley. The body of the valley are the results of the  thousands of jugaads that evolved as a results of deep rooted inequalities that Hazaras in Quetta face. In fact, Hazaras are reminded regularly to not think of themselves equals (following is the list of some):

* The extremists religious groups remind Hazaras, no matter what you do or say, we are not accepting you as equal Muslims, by issuing constant warnings through media outlets calling Hazaras infidels, by target killings and by suicide bombings (Human Rights Watch Detailed Report)

* Hazara Town residents are reminded to not think of themselves as an equal humans by denying access to drinking water: Despite of several capped-water-wells (drilled wells and capped) in Karkhasa nala for last decade, Hazara Town, which is adjacent to nala and suffers from its annual flooding are not supplied of these wells. They are even denied of rights to drill tube-wells and forced them to buy drinking  water from tub-wells of adjacent orchards. If you have heard of water-tanker mafia, it is well-established in Hazara town.

* Hazara Students are reminded they are not equal in the eyes of Department of education: There is only one government boy high school and a government girl high school for a population of more than 200,000 people  of Hazara Town (Total Hazara population in Quetta is 500,000 - 600,000. Approximately half of that population live in Hazara Town).

* Although a sports stadium was part of the development plan in PSDP 2009 (District Development Profile 2011: Section: 7.1), there is no playground in Hazara Town (People who were using Hazara Town's graveyard for morning walk was attacked by terrorists). Hazara town residents are reminded that they are not equal to other areas, despite of giving the province sportsmen, who have won several national and international medals.

These are only a few examples of many including, constant police and land-mafia harassment of the people.

There are two populations of Hazaras in Quetta, Mehrabad and Hazara Town. As Mehrabad is much better-off in terms of roads, schooling, housing and is surrounded three sides by mountains (a sense of security), a lot of Hazara Town residents migrated back to Mehrabad (although it created economic hardships for them). In fact, Mehrabad had become overpopulated by mid-90's, and that is the reason, a lot of people moved to Hazara Town, which is a plain area, with abundant space. When target killing of Hazaras intensified and a lot of people were targeted traveling between Hazara Town and Mehrabad, a lot of people migrated back to Mehrabad. This forced people to build houses over the mountain. Yes, these houses turn the valley into bowl of Hazar-Chiragh but imagine for a moment, all those old men and women who live in those houses. They have to climb, hundred plus concrete/stone-steps to reach their houses. Think of pregnant women who live in those houses. What if they need emergency medical help. The ambulance neither fit in those alleys, nor they can climb those steps. What about the children, who have to walk to school and play on those steps. Some of these houses don't even get  enough share of daylight (as sunrise is late and sunset is early). These houses are jugaads of the people to escape insecurity and unequal treatments. I see these houses as a living statue of inequality.

The Return of Walkers

Ali was watching The Walking Dead and I was reading Madam Bovary. I have no stomach for horror shows, even those, in words of Ali with "moderate zombies", still, when I have an interesting read in my hand, I can even tolerate the "extremists zombies", of course, in the safety of TV screen. Long story short, while I was wandering in the world of Madam Bovary, a dialogue caught my ears. A woman in the show asks another one, "Are you a practicing Atheist?" 

"What! a 'practicing Atheist?' " I asked Ali, "That doesn't make sense at all."

"It does." Ali axed my doubt. He paused the show to explain, "If one doesn't believe in God, he is a practicing Atheist? Isn't he?" 

"I guess, that makes the person a professing Atheist. Practicing means, observing the obligatory codes, for example a practicing Muslim is one who prays everyday, fasts in month of Ramadan, eats halal food only...etc, and a practicing Christian is a church-going Christian. I don't know any kind of ritual among known Atheists to call them practicing Atheist." I looked at Ali's face to see his reaction.

"I don't know but Google might know." Ali giggled and played again the show.

I opened my laptop and searched the phrase, "Practicing Atheist".

"Ah, now it makes sense!" I tell myself, as I find a page which defines a Practicing Atheist as someone who claims believing in God, and practicing the religion but actually they doubt the existence of God. "With this definition, most people are practicing Atheists. Most of people did not come into believing in God through their personal quests but through indoctrination. As saying goes, "Do in Rome as Romans do". It is just practical to accept practices that are accepted by majority in a society." Thoughts surge.

                                                                          ***

"I know the Walking Dead is quiet an imaginative show, but biologically speaking, the Walkers (zombies) in it doesn't make sense at all." I suggested Ali.

"There are times that one can explain things through non-sense better than things that make sense." Ali replied me, as he was leafing through Catcher in the Rye. 

"But, biologically speaking, body works as a whole system. If someone's major organs are damaged or missing, it is not possible that he or she could function. Don't you agree?" I tried to make my point clearer.

"Let me put it this way: Last evening, a teenager suicide bomber walked to Hazara Town chowk and blew himself up near vegetable cart of an old man. The vegetable vendor, a woman with her two daughters and a 6-7 years old boy were killed on the spot. More than a dozen other people were injured in the blast, some critically. What your biology tells about that? Does that makes sense at all to you?" Ali argued.

I stayed silent...

"Don't you think that the boy was infected by a lethal virus (ideology), he was already dead, and he was hungry for human flesh and blood?" he added.

"Oh, I get it, what you wanted to say." I replied, "By the way, I had seen that old-man for years. He even had not a proper cart. He had converted a wheelbarrow into a vegetable stall and was selling fresh salad for a few rupees. Every time, I had bought a bunch of salad from him, I asked myself the question, how is he running his family with this salad cart? I agree, only a Walker can do this, not a human being."

The old salad-vendor, who had not even a proper cart and had converted a wheelbarrow into salad-stall was the main target of suicide attack :(

People are examining the remains of old-man's salad stall. The wheelbarrow, salad and blood/pieces of flesh of the old-man is visible in the picture :(

"Have you heard about the story of the mother with her two daughters who were killed in the attack?" Ali inquired.

"No, I just saw them in the picture. They were covered with chaddar and I couldn't recognize them." I nodded my head.

The women with her children :(

"I learned through my friends about them." Ali put aside the book, and sighed.

"Who were they?" I became curious.

"Around ten years ago, the woman's husband went to Iran to find a job there in order to support his family and since then he is missing. No one knows he either is alive or dead. You know, a lot of our people have lost their lives in that route. The woman had four children, two daughters and two sons. You can imagine, what she was going through.... She tailored the Eidi clothes for her children. That evening she took the hand of her two daughters and was on her way to machine-stitch the buttonholes of the clothes in one of the tailor-shops of Ali Abad road. They never reached the shops." Ali was quite emotional.

That Weird Aha Moment :P

Can you imagine that weird moment, when tonnes of newspapers articles, talk-shows, interviews with experts, and number books that you have been through, not only fail to explain series of apparently counter-intuitive events, instead add to your confusion, a movie explains all in one scene? My gut feeling is that most people have had that Aha moments, at least one time in their lives. Here, I am sharing my latest such an Aha moment;

Being a hardcore fan of “Pirates of Caribbean” movie series that I am, I was watching the “Pirates of Caribbean: At World’s End”;

Pirate lords have gathered in Pirate Council Chamber on Shipwreck Island for a brethren court. A globe is placed inside the chamber, close to the entrance. Each pirate lord thrusts in his/her sword in the globe, as he/she enters the hall. The globe symbolizes the earth and the insertion of sword into it, the rights of pirates to plunder the wealth of the earth as per their wishes.

Elizabeth has replaced late Sau-Feng, as a new pirate lord of Singaporean pirates, and is new in the brethren court:

During the court, the pirates lords start a messy fight with each other, with no clear enemies or friends, everyone attacking everyone else:

Elizabeth: This is madness.

Captain Jack Sparrow: This is politics. 

Nothing has so clearly demonstrated the messy world affairs of our time than this scene from Pirates of Caribbean movie;

Not so distant, there was a time, when world was divided between reds (communists) at on side, blues (capitalist democrats) and greens (Islamic dictatorships) at the other side. Once red was gone, the blues and greens started fighting each other. Then greens blew up from inside out. Blues favored some of the greens against other greens. Then some green allies turned against blues and now, everyone fighting everyone else. Everyone with a sword thrusting the globe, and declaring their rights to plunder the earth as they see fit.

My Idealism

I certainly do understand that most of the clashes in the world of ideas predates me, and I have just happened to prefer one over the other, and hence have become highly opinionated, but still, I like to stay opinionated. And there is a reason for that. Over time, I have realized that, Idealism is the beginning of coherent thinking. Actually, it is one of my “tools of analyses”. Whenever, I see idealism, I try to find the young forces behind it. My own exploration into the world of ideas started with strong tendency to develop my own idealistic worldview, and still, some of my ideals are so dear to me that I do my best to stick to them as the foundations of my core values. Although, sometimes, they do create a lot of troubles for me, and I have paid for them (still paying for some of them), but I have reasons to do so. As you may have guessed from my concept of coherent thinking, idealism allows one to stay enthusiastic and mentally youthful. But that is not the main reason. The main reason is that I have seen “reasoning” being used both ways, for peace and conflicts, for inclusion and exclusion, for freedom and servitude, for humanization and dehumanization, and hence, I can’t rely solely on reasoning, but I need a bunch of value system to steer my reasoning in favor of peace, inclusion, freedom and humane faces of individualistic life perspectives. 

My idealism was not, and is not so bookish, or to say just a mental process out of ease of a chair. It was in fact developed from the harsh realities of the city that I was born and grown in. Quetta was/is a multi-ethnic, segregated city, and the peace in the city was always fragile (any small incident can turn into a bloody chaos, as it has happened many times). All the people in the province complain about mistreatment of the province at federal level, but at the same time, whatever little assets that the province has, are also targeted and destroyed by locales. Now, here is the hard reality. Roads, bridges, electricity grids, gas pipelines, railway lines, schools, hospitals have no ethnicity or religion, and they serve anyone who use them, e.g,there is a overhead road in Quetta and it serves thousands of people a day without any discrimination. First time, that I traveled from Quetta to Islamabad crossing three provinces, I could clearly experience the differences in developments but then seeing businesses, workers and students from Balochistan all across Punjab and Sindh, I realized, poverty and progress do not stay at one place. If there is a development in one place, its fruits will definitely reaches to all corners. My inclination towards my idealism is not just limited to my experiences of my city, province or country. It is also global. Politically the world is divided between countries, regions and civilizations and conflicts make people suffer. That is a reality. No one can deny that. But it has also another face. Electricity, engines, electronics, modern medicine and agriculture were developed in West but they did not stayed in West and have reached all corners of the world, irrespective of race, ethnicity and religion. Technology, Science and Commerce have no race, ethnicity and religion. If I look back in history, even the rise of Mongols (that have been labelled as blood thirsty nomads) was proved to be a force to take out world from dark ages of Medieval period. The world in general and West specifically owe ancient Greeks and Roman for the modern system of governance. 

So, how this idealism actually translates into my “core values” or so called my steering of reasoning? Well, there is an easy answer to that. It certainly makes me submit to “justice” as inclusion of all than any kind of “ism” as exclusion of some in the favor of some ( the “ism” is my idealism is an exception to this rule :P).

A Quick Story For A Friend

Here is a quick story for a friend:

To enjoy the story, one needs to have a mental image of the area, and a sense of the time, when it occurred. In those days, the place of the story was known as Kaday Ghulam. It was an open area, with small muddy ridges, shallow depressions, and many holes, some with few meters diameters. Kada means a hole in the ground, and it might have been the reason, the place was named Kaday Ghulam. People used to take dirt from the area for construction purposes. These holes were also used as shelters by drug addicted individuals. They would eat, sleep, smoke and poop there. On our way back from school, we used to peek into these holes, and if there were candlelight, that were signs of their presence. We would throw stones in the holes, and escaped. When it rained, some of the large depressions would turn into pools. We would swim in them. Our hairs and clothes would get muddy and we couldn't go home with dirty clothes (Punishment for dirty clothes. Also punishment for being late: To not get punished we would put straw under our tongues believing that it would make the elders kind). So, we would go to water tank, wash ourselves and waited there until we got dry. In Mornings and evenings, people would come to play soccer, cricket, occasionally hockey (very rarely golf), fly kites, bird fights, play cards, and friends gathered to converse and socialize. Long story short, this was an undeveloped part of the area, and at the time, people were mostly sit back and relaxed. Now, it is an upscale area of Alamdar Road, and is called Gulistan Town. Now, that we have a picture of the area, the story begins like this,

That afternoon, we were sitting on a small muddy ridge, and were having a general discussion. It was a spring afternoon. There were some goats and sheep grazing on patches of wild bushes and grasses. On our left side, some young men playing soccer. The soft breeze were really refreshing. A tall man carrying a bicycle also appeared. He took the bicycle on a larger ridge, sat on it, hold the handle tight, both of his feet were still touching the ground, took a deep breath and let the bicycle go. From wobbling of the bicycle, his dragging feet, and rigid posture, it was evident that he was practicing to learn riding the bicycle. Just like a boat on stormy waves, the bicycle was going up on ridges, and then down on depressions. After several ups and downs, the man with the bicycle disappeared. After a couple of minutes, someone in the group asked, “Where did that bicycle-man go?” Some hypothesized that he was actually successful in riding and had gone further down that is hard to see from where we were sitting. Others however, hypothesized that he had fallen in one of those holes. When there was no consensus, it was decided to bet on the issue. Everyone walked down and guess, what we saw in the first hole? The bicycle was on one side and the tall man was sitting on the floor of the hole and was cleaning his hand with dirt clods (his bicycle and clothes were stained with... :P)

A History of A Problem

The term syndrome is so frequent, that sometimes, I wonder, if this term really does mean, what it supposed to mean? I mean, it is used so frequently that I doubt, and feel, that this feeling is quiet genuine, that psychologists have the syndrome of making syndromes. I have a problem with it, and the problem is that syndromes make you get this syndrome of looking for patterns, and it makes your observations patchy, and that is something negative. It stops from looking to life, and people, who struggle so hard for that life, as a single entity, complete in itself, but as problems need to be managed and solved. If people is more concerned about their looks than about their ideas, if they are more concerned about their weight than their impacts, if they are more worried about their dogs than refugees, if they are more interested in knowing what Angela Julie is doing than what policy makers are doing, if they are more mad on the noisy children next door than noisy politicians trying their best to prove entire populations evils, if ......, if..., if..... , still, calling them suffering from some sort of syndrome is heartbreaking. The world is and has never been black and white. Different civilizations at different times in their histories have discovered, and acknowledged the duality as an essence of things. So, no matter, what one observes, one always has the choices in describing that thing as negative or positive. Let me follow the tradition of elaborating the ideas by providing examples. Sherlock Holmes is an imaginary character, with a gift of genius, possessing a mind, totally occupied by scientific thinking. "That is brilliant" in the words of Dr. Watson. But there are people out there obsessed in proving that this character was bipolar manic. Here is where my problem begins. When one has the choice in describing things, what is the pleasure in seeking negativity? 

I have this problem for a long time, and here is a description of the earliest history of this problem. When I was at class one or two, I was seeing two conflicting worlds, and had no idea, why this conflict exist at all. Our drawing teacher was drawing a mountain, a sun that had half risen behind those mountains, a school in front of the mountain, a flag on the roof of the school, a green front yard, a road running parallel to school, a car on the road, a running water tab at the corner of the road, a blue sky, two clouds, one on right side of sky and one on left and a lot of birds flying in between two clouds. This world was on black board and we had to transfer it on our notebook and color this world. Now, I had two problems, each one more serious than the other. The first problem was that the mountain on the black board was triangular and black in color. In my real world, our area was surrounded from three sides by mountains. These mountains had multiple peaks, light to dark grey colors (depending on the time of day) and were standing tightly shoulder to shoulder with each other. Each mountain had a quiet a personality, each their own recognizable features. They had no resemblance to triangular mountains on black board that were just clones. Our school was surrounded by walls, had many classrooms, all with flat roofs, a medium size metallic gate on main entrance. The school on black board had a gable roof with no walls surrounding it. Even funnier was the flag on school, which was rectangular and crispy like new bank-notes. The flag in our school was a piece of cloth, always folded and hanging down lazily from a pole. There wasn't any green lawn in our school. There were a lot of pigeons in the sky during morning or evening but they weren't looking like those lines on the black board either, and clouds? No need to say anything about that, right? My tiny brain had the problem in understanding, why my teacher wants us to draw the world, the way it doesn't exist? The other problem that I had was that my hand was not getting what my eyes were commanding it. What I was seeing on blackboard, I wanted my hand to draw the same on the page. But when I was looking to what it had drawn, they were just pieces of modern art (as I know it today. At that time, I didn't know about Picasso. I am pretty sure, if I knew that I creating abstract art, I would not definitely weren't concerned about low marks on my drawings) and were just disappointing to both me and my teacher. I had the problem to understand, why my hands are not as good as my eyes.

It was not that just drawings weren't conflicting with my real worlds. The same was true with photographs. On my way back from school to home, there were a number photographic stores that had displayed framed photographs of the individuals on the glass shelves. In a couple of photographs, individuals had photographed themselves in the front of shrine of Imam Reza (A.S). I was trying to understand the photographs but they weren't making sense to me. The individuals were taller than the shrine. I hadn't seen any individual taller than building or any building shorter than people. I had that much sense that there must be some benefits in not conforming with real world, however, no one was there to explain, what are the benefits? As a child, all I was struggling with my conflicting worlds. I still struggle, though, the subjects and nature of the struggles have changed a lot. In real world, there are as many worldviews as many people are there. I mean quiet a lot. When I see the struggles to make people conform with a particular worldview, it appears to like those drawings on blackboard or those photographs that differ from real world. When people function and function well, searching problems in them is a problem in itself. 

Less Serious History

Everyone has some "weaknesses", and one of my "weaknesses" is history. History fascinates me much more than futuristic objects, ideas and visions. I blame two things for this biased behavior towards futuristic utopias, my stronger inclination towards verbal-perception than visual perception, and my utter dislike of star-war shows. Actually, I disliked the first star war show that I watched and my opinions of such shows have not improved over time. I believe that my verbal-perception developed out of my passion to see the world. Since our circumstances weren't allowing me to travel, so I compensated this passion of mine by reading whatever were available to me. Words were allowing to be in places, and live the lives of the people, who I had not the privilege to visit and meet. Travel journals and biographies were and are my best friends. Why I don't like star war shows? Well, I don't remember any time that I could have tolerated watching a whole episode of a star war show. Although, my memories of the first shows are vague, but I remember the reasons that I disliked it, and since then, I haven't dared to disturb this perception. I watched my first show on our black and white, made in Russia TV. It was not the colors, or the dotted, low-resolution screen that generated the dislikes, but the characters, their appearances, their environments and the lack of a "real" story in them. The characters had the minimal facial expressions, almost devoid of normal emotions, dressed in bright, tight, shiny covering, walking, sitting and behaving in abnormally rude manners (I would rather say, fake self-confidence), and the environments were clean (devoid of any signs of "real" life: life is more messy than tidy) and extravagantly geometrical, the interactions were absolutely spartan, and all they were living for, were survival and dominance. I thought, the shows were totally laboratorian (I made the term, so don't look it up in dictionary), and were poor in imaginations. I thought, if I have to live such a life, I would definitely not survive in such an environment, and even if I could somehow survive, it would be a life of agony and despair, sugar-coated by fake perceptions of living-beings and life in general. In fact, it was as frightening as imagining oneself as a crocodile living with other crocodiles, the kind of scaly skins of crocodiles, rough faces, devoid of any expression and two big eyes and large, strong toothed mouth, always greedily looking for preys. No tolerance for emotions, weaknesses, compassion or anything associated with softheadedness (It is not that I don't like crocodiles. It is just, how our brains are wired to see scaly skins as scary, part of our warning system).

I like natural landscapes, museums, cities and people, as they are less serious histories, and are too diversified (may be a better word is too complicated) that never let your imaginations become sleepy (always have hidden surprises ☼), and are always open to interpretations of the observers. In comparison, written histories are always organized around certain worldviews. Written histories are limited and lose their charm once one is aware of the details.

It was one of those nice summer weekends that I decided to visit the Metropolitan Museum of Art. I like NYC not because of her skyscrapers, but because she let me realize that, life is not a single story. Life is millions of stories that no matter, how much they contradict each other, each is worth living and keep people struggle hard for. In other words there are millions of life perspectives, and that is just magnificent and really absorbing, once you start observing the life perspectives. It let one free himself from conformity with traditional lenses of great, good, bad and evil, and start understanding the passion and struggle in each perspective, and see things as they are instead of how should they be. I had planned a sort of "time travel". The whole city is a like giant museum full of different characters, each carrying his/her own histories. Everybody sees and only few really observe (I regularly read the metropolitan diary, just to know, of all those things that city dwellers see, what they choose to observe . It is a kind of comparison with my own observations. After all, it is believed that US is all about freedom of choices, and while seeing is mostly a matter of chance, observations are what we choose to see in details). The time travel plan was to spent sometime around the city, make some rudimentary sketches out of my observations, and then go to museum to observe the historical art pieces from around the world. I found a terrace like place at the edge of a pond in the central park, where people were sitting, eating, walking, biking, taking pictures, some reading and a couple guys were fishing. After spending sometimes and taking some notes, I headed northward towards museum. I realized, I had difficulty finding my location on the map, and to avoid going in the wrong direction, I needed the help. I started looking around to find somebody to help me finding my direction. A lady with two woolly puppies were on the same trail that I was. I asked her to help in locating me on the map. She told me to follow her to the road, where I could locate myself and then could easily follow the map. While we were walking towards the road, she asked, "You like flowers"... "Everybody does" I replied... "You like drawing?"..."Yes, but did you guess it because I am going to Museum of art?" ... "No, I guessed it from your cap. It has embroidered flowers on it" ... I got curious (embroidery and flowers are usually taken to be feminine, and I didn't want☻) ... "It also has a man, holding an ax in his right hand. It is a contradictory combination" I showed it to her by pointing with my finger... and tried to explain that the cap doesn't represent me in any way, "The cap was on sell, and its size was re-adjustable, which is useful during summer time. That is the reason that I bought it"... "That is complementary combination, flowers and tools are man's best friends" ... That was an expected answer....Her fingers and wrists were filled with all sorts of beads and stones, and usually artists and those who have spiritual tendencies use their fingers, wrists, ears and necks as galleries... "Do you do some sort of art?" I asked..."Oh, I lived the craziest life ever.." and there came the road .... I thought, we all carry our histories that we have made by the choices that we have made. Even if I insist that the cap didn't represent me, still it was one of the choices that I made..