Kamangir (Archer)

Mahmoud Ahmadinejad makes me shame

Kamangir | December 15, 2005 | Category Iran

This is an English translation of “Mahmoud Ahmadinejad makes me shame, by Navid Kermani” from Le Monde (see). I understand him and agree with him. The translationis done using “Google Tralnslate” (see).

Oui, I have shame. I am ashamed of the new Iranian president and I hope that the presenters of television will never manage to pronounce its name correctly. I have shame when it declares that Israel should be destroyed. I am ashamed of his lack of education. I am ashamed of his contempt for the Iranian secular culture. I am ashamed of his badly cut costumes which give him the air of a clown. I have shame to see his badly waxed shoes. With believing some of them blogs Iranian, it appears that it is not even washed. Undoubtedly it finds that the soap made middle-class. Undoubtedly wants he to resemble to somebody who arrives straight of the barricades or, still better, of the last seat of the American embassy. In each telephone conversation with Iran, you can be sure that there will be at least a joke on the new president. An example? Why the president capped is lately with the line in the medium? To separate the male chips from the female chips.
I know, one can find that funny. Me, I cannot laugh at it any more. This man is my president. And in spite of my second passport, the German passport, I am not able any more to calm me. I feel taken with the trap, with the feeling which I will remain always a poor Iranian, no matter what I make. And then it is true, at the end, I adore this country, the perfume of its rice, the sad humour of its inhabitants, the tenderness of their relations. If I card-indexed myself some, I would be satisfied to raise the shoulders or I would decide to embroider a history around some ideas on Islamic Fascism.
My fine wordss will not be enough to encroach on this ideological misery, especially if they emanate from abroad. Misery, it, will not disappear therefore. It is the misery of my own country, that of my own religion. I estimate to know sufficiently well Iran and Islam to allow myself to say that they fell well low both.
That showed nausea to me the new president in front of the Plenary assembly of the United Nations. He spoke as if he were with the congress of the Communist Party of North Korea. How to support that this man expresses himself in the name of Iran, in the name of the country of the poets and the thinkers like Hafiz or Avicenne? The history of our evolution advances with move back. There is nobody, among 70 million citizens, who can better represent us, abroad, that this rowdy character imbu of itself?
I do not stop repeating that the Iranians are not like him, that the president represents a negligible minority, that the elections were faked with the first turn and that 10 or 15 million people who, with the second turn, gave their voice to the new president, had of it large on the heart, because of their job, of the fight against corruption, his adversary Mr. Rafsandjani, the richest man of Iran. But they do not intend to destroy Israel — as if Iran did not have anything of to better do with its 30 % of unemployment!
Without slackening, I beseech my German and Israeli friends to believe myself. Go, see, we are not like say him, them I. Myself, I took part in gatherings organized by the State, for example at the time of the Day of release of Palestine. They are popular festivals. Those which one wants to do to pass for demonstrators are rameutés on the spot by whole buses; there are horse-gears, tombolas, free meals, everyone has fun.
What to say these images televised, of these bearded and these women, veiled feet with the head, which, raised fists, stress “Dead in Israel” ? Eh well, they are the fruits of the work of Iranian public television. Perched on a affublé travelling truck of a swiveling crane, a cameraman overhangs crowd to film a few hundreds of people who, promised thing, which had thing, shout: “Died in the USA, died in Israel, died with the detractors of the lawyers, died with the liberals, died with the evil veiled, died with the ties.” In short, a whole program, which varies according to the event commemorated the day of the emission.
Hardly the swiveling crane of disappeared public television, the fists drop and the fanatics disperse to go to draw a batch with the tombola or to pay a Coke with their offspring. Front, they were million to move to go to such gatherings. Today, they are just enough numerous to simulate a crowd, 10 000 people with all to break, and still, they do not agree to come that to great reinforcements from barb to dad.
These are the things that I explain to my friends. And if that is not enough to convince them, I say to them to go themselves to Iran, to make the test of the turban/kippa and to observe what occurs. The test of the turban/kippa? Perfectly. You with a corner of street post, with a kippa on the head, in Teheran, and seek a taxi. You will find one without problem of them. But if you let yourselves push the beard then, if you put a turban and a dress of mollah and if you post yourselves with the corner of a street in Tehran, there, you do not find any taxi. Or that will take time. And if you find one of them, it will tell you the last joke on the president. Or it will ask you which are the last declarations of Islam on the soap and on the waxing which make it possible to the new president to unload, name of God, with a similar look. It is that, Tehran. Nothing to see with these boors who currently carry the title of president or minister.
Even the Guide of the revolution finds that the new president is a too extremist. There is beautiful lurette that it gave it to its place while meaning to him that Iran did not provide at all to attack, nor to even threaten, some country that it either. In addition, it let him know that Iran did not want to export its revolution and that the negotiations would begin again with Europe. Basta. Return in the row, Mr. President.
The only problem, it is that Mr. President does not want any more to return in the row. It is invested of a mission. It has transport of heart. To Teheran, the bets go good train on the date of the attack which will make it possible the mode to raise the new president with the row of martyr. It would not be the first time, appears it. At the beginning of the years 1980, we already had a extremist of the same gauge to the presidency. It did not make long fire. Too much ideology sied badly to the Islamic Republic. And a politician who believes in all that public television tells, it is still worse.
When opponents are put in prison, that books are prohibited or that newspapers are closed, it is tolerable, with the rigour, on behalf of a president. That does not make a movement abroad. They arrived hundred times since its arrival with the capacity without the Western media not being offusquent any especially. We could even give us to lapidations or start again to slice hands, for example. That would remain field of the bearable one. These facts could come to enrich the “dialogue with Islam” or to be used as starting point with a debate entitled “To include/understand the values of the other”. But to affirm while passing that yes, indeed, we intend to destroy Israel, then not, that not. One should not be quite smart to know that it is really the last thing to be said in Iran. The Guide of the revolution, knows the consequences of such declarations to him; Iran finds itself in situation of worsened insulation, the stock exchange collapses a little more, the rate of unemployment climbs a little higher and the Iranians have more and more evil to obtain a visa for the foreigner.
The new president does not card-index himself any badly. Questioned on the economic crisis, it declared recently that it was not there to create jobs, but to take care of the next arrival of Mahdi. Mahdi is it twelfth imam Shiites. It disappeared there is 1 100 years, and it must return, like the Messiah, at the end of times, to save the world and to establish eternal justice on Earth. Eternity: it is the dimension in which the new president fits. Amen. But, of the bottom of its religious ignorance, does he know the conditions necessary so that twelfth imam can return it in this low world? As in the Messianic visions of the orthodoxe Judaism and Christianity, it twelfth imam will create the paradise on Earth only as from the moment when this one will have become a hell. To prepare the arrival of the twelfth imam, life thus should be made a hell. The new president is with thousand miles to imagine how much its goal is close. Mahdi, please, hold you ready for the changing.
© Die Zeit .Translated from German by Genevieve Hesse.