Desperate husbands

[Rasputin]

First part

[Rasputin]

Second Part

Another one of our grievances circled around the documentaries that from time to time are made about Iran. Recently Public TV showed the documentary “Mystic Iran.” It was appalling how the focus is always on the wild side, most of the documentary was focused on an ugly deranged woman with substantial facial hair somewhere in Northern Iran, whom under the influence of rituals of dervishes and recitation of poems from Rumi, started a trance that made her produce sounds which was like a cow, a wildebeest or a badger and kept touching fire with her bare hands while others where dancing around her! What the hell is “mystic” about that?

Why in the world should anyone focus on this part of Iran, the animalistic rituals that 99% of Iranians neither participate nor even care for? It is like if someone wants to make a similar documentary about USA put most of her focus on snake dancing and voodoo practices conducted in some churches in the Deep South? Would that be a true cultural representation?

If I had a choice I would want to make the Iranian version TV series “Desperate Housewives.” Just like the American version of it the Iranian production most likely will break television audience record in Iran if not all over the world. Don’t you agree?

One other comment I brought up was that since 1979 every one of the documentaries made about Iran must at least have several minutes of coverage of bearded angry-looking men using chains for self-flagellation in the name of martyrs of Islam. While the rest of the world use similar chains on their automobile tires on their way to ski resorts to have fun, the Iranians on the other hand promote the use of chain as a means of purifying their soul by beating the crap out of themselves and make themselves bleed each year during the religious ceremonies of Moharram. Can you imagine if the French had a similar ceremony every year for the war that Napoleon lost? Gathering around Arch de Triumph each year and beating themselves with chains!

To put it in a nutshell self-flagellation is what you can call “Extreme Sport” in Iran! The sad thing is that those martyrs never conducted such animalistic rituals themselves, but thanks to the British and other western documentary makers the eyes and cameras of foreigners should constantly be focused on these rituals.

No one makes a documentary talking about the mathematicians in Iran, the thousands of Iranian surgeons inside and outside of Iran. To interview the great engineers and technicians and scientists who are in top positions in many companies in America, many of them founders of such corporations. Instead, every documentary has to show the negative traits of Sheism and ritualistic masochism that has produced an ugly portrayal of Iran.

Back to our afternoon tea at my friend’s house let me tell you how it ended.

As we talked about all these nonsense, my friend kept laughing wildly and his wife kept arguing and her anger became more obvious as her husband continued with his laughter. I saw her hand going for the crystal dish full of Persian Baklava (hey Greeks eat your heart out) and she was clearly getting ready to throw the dish to his face. Like a horrible accident rolling in front of my eyes in slow motion I was waiting for the crashing sound of glass and facial bones.

But boy were we lucky! And thanks to an undoubtedly divine intervention such accident did not take place. You see, as she lifted the crystal dish and aimed at her husband, suddenly the five year old daughter rushed to the backyard and yelled: “mommy jeesh daram” (mommy I have to pee!)... Her good timing and her urge to urinate saved our afternoon, saved a crystal dish and perhaps prevented a visit to the hospital. She is a true angel.


By F Ashtiani