Kamangir (Archer)

Don’t Nuke, Just Kill

Kamangir | April 23, 2006 | Category Iran

I am at the middle of a take-home exam. After solving one of the problems I take a look at BBC to see if there is any new report on Iran. Finding Senator Edward Kennedy (see), whom was recently selected among the ten best US senators by times (see), talking about “do not nuke Iran but do think of an attack” (see) I realize that the debate is no more on “whether or not attacking” but it is on the kind of killing machine which “suits the purpose”. I don’t know how to feel. When Mehdi, one of my friends in Iran, was graduating his masters I repeatedly told him “be afraid of that lorry which is coming to crush all of us”. By that sophisticated sentence I was trying to convince him to get an admission from abroad and leave Iran (According to the Iranian law male students should attend a two-year army service after graduation. The only chance is to get admitted for higher education inside or outside the country). He did not listen to me and served two long years in the army. Fortunately, at last he is leaving Iran for a Ph.D. in a university in eastern Canada.

Azadeh and I jumped off the road just before the lorry crushed us. We are here in Canada with a plan to visit Iran in the summer and I am thinking, is Iran the next Iraq? Or maybe it is the next Japan without the willingness of the hardworking Japanese who built their country from the ash.
It seems that another “lorry” is in the way. This time, being inside or outside Iran, there is no way to escape. I am still thinking how fast it all happened. Is it really happening?

Why They Fight

Kamangir | April 23, 2006 | Category Iran

I strongly recommend watching this fairly long but amazing documentary. It is titled “Why We Fight” and is produced by BBC (see) (see). Thanks Weazl for the link (see).

Religion, The Bad Side

Kamangir | April 23, 2006 | Category Iran

Religious people are very strange creatures. One day Christians flock to see a shadow on a wall which seems to show Jesus (see). The other day Muslims gather around a pink stone which is believed to bleed in the noon of Ashura (Azadeh took this picture from Abasali shrine in Semnan). Though, this is the happy side of the coin. When it comes to suffering, my personal experience says Muslims are experts. Ghame Zani (Persian: قمه زنی) is the ritual of injuring their heads as a sign of sympathy with Imam Hossein (they do not really split their heads into two, they just make it bleed seriously). Some tender Christians have their own ritual of pain, too. In Philippines some people celebrate the Good Friday by nailing themselves to a cross (see picture 8) (see the section about Philippines).

Once I told Azadeh, thanks God I do not believe in God (see).

p.s. Both in Islam and in Christianity the official clergy system is against, at the least, the violent part.