Iranian students pictured in the Seventies

Iranian basket ball athlets in the mid 60s. The regime of Shah Reza Pahlevi promoted a modern, western living style of woman.

But this period of personal freedom came to a immediate end: On march 7th Ayatollah Chomeini announced, that all woman have to cover their head in public. This old wannabe despote argued that woman should not be encouraged to go out and show up naked on the streets. This new law caused an uproar among the Iranian woman, mainly those of the urban society. On the following day, March 8th or the International day of Woman, tens of thousands from all political factions were out on the streets. Carried out by mothers, daughter and their grandmas, religious and non-religious people, this was the first stand up against the islamic regime.

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Rebellion against the new islamic variant of indoctrination: The Iranian woman were the first who went out and demonstrated for freedom and civil rights after the new Chomeini regime tried to silence all political opponents in 1979. Foto: Bettmann/Getty Image

40 years later, all the dreams have gone in vain. The pursue for freedom is kept hidden under the omnipresent Tschador.

Spending most of their lifes under the chador. The daily problems of financial and material decline left no space for dreams of freedom and self determination.

And the woman of the younger generation can rarely imagine what their grand-mothers were demonstrating for on the roads and squares of Tehran some 40 years ago. For the students who grew up only under the mullahs-regime, freedom of expression and the pursue of self-determination bears the flavour of heresy.

The young generation of woman dream of a little bid of “normal life”, i.e. less economic problems, but more financial security. Political or intellectual freedom has to come secondary.

The last text that could satisfy the appetite of Salingerites was a non-fictional, but partly imaginary essay by Frédéric Beigbeder about the realtionship between Salinger and Oona O’Neill (Oone Chaplin). But the prospective of reading stories or novels by the master himself is of course another category of shit.

Having seen the loss of so many amazing writers durign the last years (Philip Roth, Lars Gustafsson, Amos Oz, to name just a few) always came with the certainty that one cannot expect any new words from their desk and their mind. This was it, finito. You might read their published books again and again, until you know every sentence by heart, but don’t wait for any novelty any more. In some cases, such as Philip Roth, the sadness about the end of an autors productivity in fact already started years before he died physically. In any case, other than for many rock stars who annonced their final concert again and again (to sell more tickets, of course), with writers one can be quite sure that when they say “Last Call” they stay to their promise. And when they die (always too early, of course), rarely are there still unpublished manuscripts in their heritage that can cope with their already published books. The news from Salingers son, however, could changed this now. As he revealed in an exclusive interview with the Guardian, his father has definitely never stopped writing and that “all of what he wrote will at some point be shared”. Matt Salinger told the Guardian his father “teemed with ideas and thoughts – he’d be driving the car and he’d pull over to write something and laugh to himself – sometimes he’d read it to me, sometimes he wouldn’t. And next to every chair he had a notebook. And these notebooks were filled for the last 45 years of J.D.Salingers life (he died in 2010 at the age of 86). As Matt Salinger described his father, “He just decided that the best thing for his writing was not to have a lot of interactions with people, literary types in particular. He didn’t want to be playing in those poker games, he wanted to, as he would encourage every would-be writer to do, you know, stew in your own juices.” This sort of reasoning could also come from Thomas Pynchon, and as he has shown so perfectly creates not the worst condition for creating excellent literature. Therefore, I have hope now that soon some new books can be added to my J.D.Salinger collection, which entirely dates from the 70s and 80s.

You can see here that they all look a bit used, and they are of course all from East-German publishers (Reclam, Volk&Welt).

East-German editions of J.D.Salingers few books

The first one (“Catcher in the Rye” or “Der Faenger im Roggen”) I managed to by in an export book shop in Prague in 1979. “Franny and Zooey” and “Hebt den Dachbalken hoch” I was lucky enough to grab from the army book store at the baracks in the mid 80s (I had established an illegal traffic network that allowed me to get every rare book before it was put on the shelves). And the last collected short stories “Neun Erzaehlungen” and I received from the central East-German books wholesaler. There a lady from the neighbors appartment were working, to whom I occasionally did babysitting for her daughter.

In the high-street book stores, however it was virtually impossible to buy these books: The printed copies were to few (just 10 or 20 thousands), and the young people were so much in reading, especially modern american writer. So despite “Catcher in the Rye” is considered one of the most published post war books in the West, economic and political restrictions in East Germany prevented a similar popularity there. Therefore, the story of Holden Caulfield and his peculiar view onto life and the world remained a sort of secret or elite knowledge on the Eastern side of the iron courtain. But with some extra effort and some dealing, everybody could explore and discover Salingers universe for himself.

What is funny, but also sad: When I ask around my colleagues at work or friends here in the traditional West Germany about J.D.Salinger, I soon realize that this name does not sound very familiar to them. For most of them, “Lord of the Rings” and “Karl Mays Winnetou” is the highest form of literature they ever encountered. Therefore my excitement about the prospective of J.D.Salingers hidden books now is slightly over-shadowed by my worries that they wont become best-sellers any more, as were his novels and stories in the 70s and 80s. But for the few Salinger afficionados and literature critics it will become a highlight.

But although it all has to do somehow with the joy of successful harvest, the focus is differently. The Americans start eating XXXXL meals of turkey, mashed pumkins etc as if tomorrow the famine would start again.  The Germans officially celebrate the grace of God who – admittedly – is responsible for all the fruits on the field and gardens, but deep inside they are proud that their protestant working ethics finally paid out.

Most of all types of harvest feast I like the jewish Sukkoth (feast of booths), because it involves constructing a nice, airy booth from organic material. This booth is called Sukkah, and you see it here in our garden, both at day light (immediately occupied and defended by our dog) and at night (with a lantern to illuminate it).

I am sure that if their would be a higher diety, Jahve or Flying Spaghetti Monster or Allah (none of them has given me any evidence of their existence yet), he/she would most of all like the Jewish way of celebrating, since it has to do with a pioneer spirit rather than with passive devotion.

But fear is by definition something specific, related to a particular object. In my case this object is the base for all life: WATER. And there comes the wet dreams into play, which I will describe shortly. But to write in a chronological order, I have to start with something that struck me half an hour ago.

Sitting in my office and doing some correction work on a students thesis I suddenly felt an unpleasant sensation. Goose bumps, muscle stiffness, cold sweat, and a feeling of unsafety amidst my most common work environment (and despite a supermodern electronic entrance security system which our research centers management has recently installed). So where came this irrational feeling of discomfort from ?  Outside the office there was apparently just the usual noise of people talking about institutes issues, roaring coffee machines, slapping doors, high heeled technicians strutting along the hallway. Nothing special. Except there was occasionally a silent splatter sound. This was new, and perhaps it would have got completely unrecognized, unless one has a particular high sensitivity for it. It appeared that the cleaning personal used a new kind of wet cloth today to wipe the floor. And when they rinsed this wet cloth in a water bucket, it made this typical splattering noise, as if you pure water from a cup into a filled bathtube.  I can not blame the poor cleaning guy for intentionally causing unpleasant sensations on me. Of course his biggest concern was to keep the institute in a tidy condition, which most people consider of uttermost importance for their personal well being.

But in this particular case I seem to be the collateral victim of his cleaning work. Don’t get me wrong, I usually like splattering water. I like to take a shower, watch water fountains, jump from the highest diving tower into unknown waters or irrigate the garden and careless dogs or people with a water hose. But I hate water that is floating around, uncontrolled and occupying areas that should be dry.

Therefore, the worst pictures that I saw in the news recently were the flooded streets, houses and basements in Huston/Tx. The number of casualities after the hurrican Harvey was not very high, but the pictures made it deep into the very ancient areas of my mind (brainstem and amygdala). Simply the imagination of water that rises more and more, that can not be stopped worries me much more than the imagination of a fire, an earthquake or an avelanche, all of which are usually more life threatening than a flooding (unless you go to the extremes of a tsunami).

I discovered a long time ago that there must be an archetypical fear deeply written in my inconscious memory, a fear of rising and floating water. This is when I have “Wet Dreams”, which I should better call “Wet Nightmares” (but “Wet Dreams” definitely attract much more traffic to my blog). Dreams in which I wade through some centimeters of water in our house or appartment, where the water comes from some cracked pipes or a defunct washing machine, when the “basis of all living matter” simply follows the laws of gravity and quickly soaks all floors and walls down to the basement, eager to find a tiny gap through which it can leak further down into the unknown, such visions make me sweating cold and can temporarily undermine my universal convidence in the general harmony of the universe.

And of course, in the long term, I will be right. The Texas flooding after hurrican Harvey will dry again, and even from the mythological flood described in the Epic of Gilgamesh (and later transcribe into the old testament) little is to be seen nowadays except of beautiful beaches and peaceful orchestrated waves. According to archaeologists Ryan and Pitman the great deluge happened at around 5600 AD in the Black Sea basin.  And I can not imagine a time that gives me more “peace of mind” than sitting there on the beach, observing how well behaving the water is that splatters around my feet, reading a book and thinking 7617 years back in time, when the torrents broke through the bosphorus and turned a former sweet water epicontinental lake into what is today the Black Sea.

   

  At the Black Sea coast, near Varna/Bulgaria. 7617 years ago the great deluge happened right here.

Of course my peace of mind can only be spoiled if somewhere behind me an unlocalized sound of splatter happens. But this in fact might come from some other tourists, who can not sit there quietly, watch the sea, read a book, drink a cocktail, but who have to start some water construction work.

Macho man on the beach can not stop to reshape the landscape. Or are they also afraid of flooding water ?

But despite this geographically very prominent role of Bulgaria didn’t it fit much of the bad connotations of a Balkan countries: Neither was it involved in any nationalistic segregational movements, nor had it any issues with religious heterogeneity.  It used to absorb people from other countries who were expelled as a result of civil war (like Russian aristocrats after the revolution) or genocide (like the turkish Armenians). During the time of fascism, the Bulgarian people successfully resisted the request of the german occupants to deport the sephardic jewish population. In gratitude of this, Israeli survivors of the Holocaust recently honoured this courage by erecting a monument in the form of a jewish shoufa in the city of Varna.

The city of Varna has more reasons to look with great pride on its history. The eldest European civilizations left evidence of their early agricultural communities here (in Ezerovo and Debna), where rich burial sites were excavated that contained the earliest man-made golden artefacts.

It is a tragedy, and here maybe indeed reminiscent of Balkanesque  indifference, that these two sites of prehistoric settlements (dating back to ca. 5000 AD) is hidden now and partly demolished under a socialist-era chemical plant.

For archaeologic sites that link Bulgaria to the Roman history (when it was the province of Thrakia), in particular when they are found in the capital Sofia, the authorities are a bit more careful. The excavation works are done under public observation behind transparent walls.

But to makes aware that we are really in the middle of the Balkan region we can find here (on the railway between Varna and Sofia) the only trainstation worlwide that is simply called Balkan.