Hi Michael, I have recently been back to Munich for a conference. It was a pity we did not met there. But guess what, on my flight from Stockholm we had these on-seat entertainment systems. I was browsing through the music-clips, and found one by Sade. It reminded me of her songs that we were listening together in your car three years ago. On the music clip it said “Munich, 1984″. Whow, I thought, so amazing music was played before i was born. But since the clip does not mention exactly when in 1984 the concert took place, in theory my mom could have been there while being already pregnant with me, and I heard the song prenataly. I found a copy of it on youtube, so enjoy Sade.
Take care
/ghazal

Ghazal Dear, some days ago we had the pleasure to attend the 200 anniversary of the foundation of the “Max-Joseph-Stift“, the most prestigious girls college in Bavaria and the third highest ranked one in Germany. The daughter of good friends of us is learning at this elite gymnasium since 5 years now, and at the 200 years celebration we really got a nice impression of how well money can be spent to improve school education. The entire evening was choreographed by the girls themself, and it was really a nice show, a mixture of classical and pop and jazz music, theater, a sort of poetry-slam and video-performance of the 200 years history of the school and the building.
So I was absolutely convinced that a college that receives so much extra funding from the gouvernment to provide dedicated high-class training (historically to the daughters of the influential and powerful Bavarian families, but now to every girl who passes the competitive entrance exam) should have a long list of famous alumni, woman who went into politics, arts, science, became famous musicians or writers or journalists, filmmakers, critics, great painters and so on. Than I red an article from the local newspaper about the “Max-Joseph-Stift” and how proud the people from Munich-Bogenhausen can be to host such a renowned place of education on their territory. And as an example they listed some “famous” “Max-Alumni”: Putzi von Opel, Ottilie of Faber-Castel and Hannelore Elsner.
Hannelore Elsner I knew pretty well, because she is a good actress, but not really of world class or international rank. She played a couple of good character roles in sort of low-budget movies (like “Alles auf Zucker”), but did not reach the dramatic stand as Franka Potente or Marlene Dietrich or Hildegard Kneef. So Hannelore Elsner is a good actress, but not a great one. I would say there are maybe 200 actress in Germany in her league.
The first of the “famous” Max-alumni, Putzi von Opel however, I did not knew at all, and now it seems it is because I never was a regular reader of the yellow press. Since apart from beeing the grand-great daughter of Adam Opel, founder of the car-manufacturer, Putzi only became famous for her Paris Hilton life style in the Munich Schikeria, and for organising one of the biggest Canabis dealing networks in Munich. In 2006 she died in a car accident in Spain at the age of 55 years.
The third of the famous alumni from this college, Ottilie von Faber-Castel again did not gained fame for her own merrits, but for being born to a rich industrial dynasty, the pen-manufacturer Lothar Faber. What we can say positively on her is that during the time when she led the company, no major economic hussles occured and she continued to produce good-quality pencils, and the company is still doing this.

So from the 200 years of dedicated elite education for girls, the creme-de-la-creme of the alumni is an TV actress, a paparazzi celebrity and a woman who is famous for being born to a rich family. I am not questioning the potential of woman to reach the highest achievements in any area of human activity; I am absolutely positive they can easily compete with the creativity and commitment of us men. There are plenty of woman in Germany and anywhere in the world who by their genious, their talent and their courage can ashame all machos. Scientists such as Liselotte Meitner, Marie Curie or Rosalind Franklin, a mathematician as Sophie Kovalevskaja, Geneticists as Elizabeth Blackburn, Barbara McClintock or Christiane Nüsslein-Volhard found their places in the pantheon of human discoveries and knowledge.  There were woman in politics such as Rosa Luxemburg, Olga Benario Prestes, Angela Davis or Tanja Bunke, who led heroic fights for a better world. There were fighters against fascism in Germany, like Sophie Scholl of the “White Rose Group” or Libertas Schulze-Boysen of the “Red Orchestra Group” or Ruth Werner. I have no space here to list all the great, gifted writers and poets among woman who stay equally high as their male peers.  And in music and performing arts, the world would look only half as entertaining and productive without singers such as Maria Callas, Montserrat Caballe, Joan Baez, Kate Bush, Sherley Bassey, Miriam Makeba, Sade, Janis Joplin, Edith Piaf or actresses as Nicole Kidman, Greta Garbo, Marlene Dietrich, Sharon Stone and many others.  But funny enough, neither of them went through a “girls-only-school”. I doubt that the idea to provide a protected environment for girls to achieve education without the harmful influence of boys is doing any good. For the parents it might seem that their daughters have less trouble to get good notes in such a single-gender school, and the students themself might also have the feeling that learning is easier if they are in separate girls classes. But on the long run, they are obviously not performing any better in real life. For the requirements of the real life, when you have to put the text books aside and forget about good marks, when you have to face the challenges of a modern world with its economic, political, social changes, when you have to find a place in the world and have to buildt your natural talents into productivity and raise your creative potential, than an education with the challenges and obstacles of mixed boys and girls classes provide a much better school for life. Of course every family is proud of its daughter, when she comes home with excellent marks, and at the end of term can even perform in front of the entire school playing some Schumanns piano piece or reading a nice essay. But as the English say: The proof of the pudding is by eating, i.e. school is a nice preparation, but sooner or later it should demonstrate its success by the achievements and the standing of its alumni later in life.

Ghazal dear, the following reply to a post of Bahmani I could have never written without experiencing the tightness of the relationship between you and your family and feeling how much a resistance this provides against any potential intruder (like myself).

In Iran, the frequently expressed demand to do something for the community/society is a compensatory reflex to the traditional 150% focus on familial relation as the only important ones. Neither the Shahs aristocratic wealth nor the religious dogma of Shia islam could provide any common framework for all Iranians. The aristocracy was always considered corrupt and only interested in rising the power and wealth of their own dynasty, and the islamic religion was from its very beginning alian and hostile towards the historic Persian values of the Archemenidian, Sassanidian and Parthians empires and their culture and faith.
So over centuries, the Iranians converted to their very own family worlds, which provided a sort of constant values, safety, and system of trust, pride, and historic continuity. But the rise of modern societies in the 19th and 20th century required a new social “contract”, and even though in both the capitalist and the socialist countries the economic models were so much different, in both cases the masses “sacrificed” their privat life to the socio-economic requirements. Japans rise to such a economic superpower would have been unthinkable without the devotion of the people to finally commit their whole life for the prosperity of their employer (or formerly to the prosperity of the shogun). In Europe the mostly benevolent dynasties had a similar function, or the republic values in France. All of these provide values systems to the individual, which could easily be transformed into the requirements of modern, anonymous, industrial societies.
But in a society where the main social relationships and values are provided by an extended family clan, this transformation is much more difficult. Because you can easily get rid of your faith (like in Russia) or loosen your devotion to the royal dynasty (like in England, where the Windsors became more or less decorative and cultural institutions), but you can never get rid of your parents, your grandparents and uncles and aunts. Everybody of us has them, and of course they will always try to keep the children, grandchildren, nices and nephrews as close as possible and as obidient as possible. And this in reality made any consense on a national or society scale very difficult. And because people deep inside are very aware of this, they invent the narratives of the hero who devotes his whole life for the sake of the society. These narratives are pure sublementations for the complex of lacking a minimal social responsibility. The second narrative that is reproduced again and again to satisfy this desire for a devotion of the individuum to the socium is the Shia victim mythology. Wunderful and so atractive to please god, if some martyres loos their life not to defend the family, but to spread the religion. These are the prototype of social workers: Giving their own life for the sake of a “higher” institution. But (thanks god) these cult of Shia islamic martyrdom could not supersede in primary family values in Iranian society neither. I was always fascinated by the observation that even though Shia islam has this dogma of the martyrdom, there were never suicide terrorists coming from the Iranian society. My guess would be that these very tight family relationships in which each person is imbedded, the idea to commit one family member to be sent out to give its life away for a “higher purpose” is extremely difficult to justify. The palestinians are always happy to do this, and the Iraqies and the Pakistany are always willing to do this. Iranians not. So they love these fantastic stories of Rustam or of Ali and Hussein, but the verve and absoluteness of this love says much more about their deep-down feeling that they lack such “higher purposes” in daily life.

regards, Michael

Dear Michael,

It is no secret that many Iranian woman do not value their impressive, arian noses very high. In contrast, they tend to follow a very questionable beauty picture that more and more seems to be coined by the Japanese manga figures. For them, a nose is merely anything more than a small ridge to hide the nostrils.
The historical form of Iranian noses, however, is impressive, and if an ancient myth is true that the nose is the main site of human character, than Iranians must have a lot of it (which I believe many of them will agree).

The more I regret that low self-esteem of Iranians when it comes to the shape of their facial “center of gravity”. Iranian woman try to raise their competetiveness in hunting for a good match on the vanity fair, and the men, beeing either the driving force behind this or the obidient donkey, quickly got trapped by this.

Here I will explaine to you (based on what I feel as a young woman and what I learned as a young geneticist) the short and the long term consequences of this:

1) In the short term, there will be a constant drop of beauty among Iranian woman, because more and more of them afford a “Nose Job”. So very soon, you will see less and less Iranian ladies whom their strong and proud character is clearly located in an equally strong, sharp and expressive nose. We might be confused soon, that Iranians with strong self-esteem decline to western beauty standard, have their face irreversibly damaged only to fill the pockets of those medics, who as all their colleagues from other disciplines agree, are the least qualified ones to distinguish between health and disease, let alone to cure any real sick patient.

The Iranian woman who had this attribute of an ancient, devine beauty surgically removed, will in fact increase her chances to catch a husband and have more children. That is what we know from natural selection of the fittest, which if we like it or not, becomes the natural selection for the most attractive in the human population.

But, thanks to genetic laws, there is not only hope in sight, as I will explaine in the following, but in the long term these “Iranian Nose Jobs” even have the potential to rescue the Iranian Nose from becomming extinct by natural selection.

2)  Because on the long term,  of course, no plastic surgery can change the genetic code, which over hundreds of generations turned Iranians, considered to represent the original Arians, as representatives of the niceest, sharp, impressive noses. No ordinary medic, let alone the half-educted plastic surgeons, have any clue where in the Iranian genome the key for nose shape is hidden, or how this could be manipulated. So with the current genetic knowledge and the status-quo of molecular technologies, the real treasure of the Iranian nose is still hidden and safely deposited deep in our genome.  So even if all Iranians have their “noses done”, the next and all following generations still carry the fertile seeds to grow proper Iranian noses again.

But this is only half of the truths, the real excitement comes here:  Without plastic surgery, large Iranian noses could in fact become extinct due to genetic admixture from (Iranian x Non-Iranian) partnerships (introgressing the Small-Nose-Gene-Variant from East-Asian or US or Latin-Americans) followed by preferential marriages between the descendents inheriting the Small-Nose-Genes (and consequently growing these dwarf nose variants reminiscent of a Hobbit face). Over just a few generations, there would indeed take place a natural selection for the Small-Nose-Gene-Variants, resulting in irreversible loss of the Iranian Large Noses.  But this, in fact, does not happen, thanks to the plastic surgeons and their messing up with the natural link between beauty, genes, and attractiveness, thus interfering with genetic evolution.  By virtually “hiding” the real (heritable) Iranian Nose variant behind a fake, non-heritable small nose, natural selection is fooled. Therefore, nose jobs to Iranian woman will guarantee that in the long term the precious Iranian nose shape with its distinct and impressive sharpness will always comes back in every new generation.

Dear Michael, you wrote some articles here at your blog and at Iranian.com about the modern Iranian cinematography. I’d like to add a movie by the young Iranian filmmaker Maryam Kesharvarz onto your list , called “Circumstances” (“Sharayet” in its persian original).

I saw it recently with friends who got it on DVD, since it is not yet shown in the movie-theaters in Sweden. The movie is about two girls who go to University and are like sisters in mind. The parents of Shirin, the more quiet of the two, were obviously killed by the regime for participating in political opposition. The family of Atafeh, however, is very well situated and rich, although not conformist. A brother of Atafeh, in the past supposed to start a career as musician, returns from a long absence and makes a completely brain-washed impression. Still loved by his mother and dad, he is depressed and drug addicted and finally only sees a way out his mental problems by devoting his life to Allah and becoming a servant of the regime.
The main person of the movie, however, are the two girls Shirin and Atafeh, who are both full of dreams of a career as singers, in a liberal and free society. This clashes with both the opressive political regime in Iran, with the dogmatic situation at the college, but brings them also in conflict with Atafehs well positioned family. In one scene of the movie, during a family celebration where usually everybody contributes a song on the piano, Atafehs brother insist that the girls should not perform any more, since he considers this as anti-islamic. Trying to avoid any conflict, her family declines to the brothers hypocrism and recommends their daughter to stay silent.
Atafeh and Shirin look for freedom of thoughts and more wild experiences by joining the Tehran party scene. When one of these illegal parties is raided by the regimes Basidj thugs, they both get arrested. Whereas Atafehs parents manage to bribe some of the police officers to get their daughter out, Shirin is kept for longer in custody and she is mentally tortured there. Atafehs depressive brother suddenly appears to work for the police. When he finds Shirin he offers her to work for her release, but only if she agrees to marry her.
Throughout the entire film, however, it is obvious that Shirin and Atafeh are more than just friends, they are connected by a deep, mutual love. This love between the two girls is the source of all their strength, of their endless confidence that a better and free life will come and they will start a great music career together somewhere abroad.
The film finishes undecided, without happy end. At one moment, Shirin declines to the possessory claims by her husband, Shirins brother. But it is clear that she is only suffering here.
The unconditional love between the two girls serves as the big contrast to a society which is driven by anxiety, lies and hate. When Shirin and Atafeh are together, their honesty and love is like a glance into a better future of the country.

And this is what I red in the UK newspaper Guardian about this marvellous movie:

“Circumstance’s strength is in the exuberance of Atafeh and Shireen, filled with adolescent fantasies of escape (and cringeworthy lad’s mag-style fantasies of each other: all matching underwear and high heels) and their rebellious rush to dance, drink and break rules. At times the sensuous hair-flicking and the way the camera lingers on their beauty feels overdone and their interest in liberalism seems to extend only to their right to party.
But the film frames their insistence on following their desires, whatever the consequences, as a powerful form of dissent; Atafeh tells a friend: “Here anything illegal becomes politically subversive.”
Set immediately before the protests of the Green movement swept through Iran, the film aims to show where the anger behind the demonstrations came from. “In Iran where the state controls your behaviour … they want you to dress a certain way, and not speak to people of the opposite sex in the street – of course the personal is political,” explains Keshavarz, “in a more explicit way than anywhere else.”“

Marina Keegan, still a Yale student in her last term, 22 years old, on track to become a writer for “The New Yorker”, wrote this essay “The Opposite of Loneliness“, that became her emotional legacy. Shortly after publishing her text in Yale Universities “Cross Campus”, Marina Keegan died in a car accident.

Throughout her essay she expresses a very clear, rational view on the conflict between our destiny as members of a complex, more and more annonymous society and our archaic desire to find a safe place in a community. She knows about the impossibility to harmonize these two forces, but she does not end in despair.

Hi Ghazal, you told me recently that none of the people of your generation would be impressed by Jimmy Hendrix guitar music. I would say it is just a matter of tasting it. How can you judge something, if you have never tried it ? o.k., the few songs you were listening to from my car stereo might have been hampered by the poor sound quality. But have a look how a girl who is now 19 plays Hendrix style guitar herself. Desiree Bassett learned her first guitar rifs at the age of five from her father. Now she frequently rocks the Boston area with cover versions of Jimmy Hendrix, Eric Clapton and van Halen songs.

She was born 25 years after Jimmy Hendrix’ death, but look how she can revitalize his guitar spirit.

I hope it is no big deal for her to learn how to play it with a slightly slower pace, she seems to be in a rush at least at this concert. What I find amazing is to see that you don’t have to play left-handed like Mr. Hendrix to get the “All along the Watchtower” right.

Enjoy, Take Care
Michael

Hello Michael!

Sorry for the late mail!! There is just a lot to do every day. Go to university every day and them come home eat and spend time with family. Or meet a friend after work and come home late. But Now i found some good time to sit and write. Hope that everything is fine with you. The weather here is around 10 degrees, but it has been sunny and not so windy this week. so its nice.
So nice that you invited omid and his family. they are very kind, I met them.
I am not going to shajarian, its not the type of music that I usually listen to. Nice that you went, so you liked it.
YES!! Believe it or not, I am reading Jane Eyre… and its so pitty but I have not so much time to read either! But I have started.

take care
/ghazal

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Ghazal my Dear,

It was so nice to read your e-mail.
And it gave me a big relieve to hear that life is exciting,
the PhD project goes as well as do the experiments,
that you can use pipettes which don”t harm your joints,
that you discivered a nice book and that in addition to all of
this you still have time to write a nice and – this time – funny e-mail.

I always knew that your comment from last year about books, and that you hate reading and so on was perhaps a temporal feeling, maybe due to a single bad book that you tried once.
So this time you very likely got a better choice. I never red Jane Eyre myself, but my sister (who works in a library) told me a lot about it. It is by one of the Bronte sisters, as I remember. I think it is a long novel. And it has some tragic moments. But it is concidered a key literature for female liberation, at least liberation from the old victorian and religious stereotypes. I hope you like it a lot.
When we lived in England (in a suburban village south of London), our Landlady was a Ms. Reed (she was 72 years old, but still wanted to be called Miss, not Misses. She was a real dragon. We were not allowed to open the window to the garden side of the house, and she always switch off the heating, so we had to survive in winter time in 12 degrees cold rooms.
My sister, when she visited us, and we introduced her to the Landlady, she said to her “O nice to meet you. I know another Miss Reed, from Charlotte Brontes “Jane Eyre”" When I asked my sister later on who on earth is this Miss Reed from “Jane Eyre” she told me that in the book this is perhaps the most disgusting character. I had the feeling that our Landlady did not understand
the meaning of my sisters comment.

Maybe I should also read the book, eventually.
Maybe I first wait till you have finished it, and hear your opinion.
Do you have a swedish translation, or you read the english original ?
I red recently (within one afternood sitting in a large Munich book shop a novel by Fattaneh Haj Seyed Javadi called “The morning of drunkeness”. In the intro it was described as a iranian bestseller and key book for womans liberation. But I found it pretty boring and conventional. I guess compared with Jane Eyre, it will appear even more mediocre.

I hope every day is a sunny day for you, Ghazal.
Take Care,
Michael

Dear Michael,

Fattaneh Haj Seyed Javadi wrote her Iranian bestseller novel “Bamdade Chomar” in 1995. It has since been translated only into german.
Keith Hitchins wrote about it in World Literature Reviews “…The charm of the novel lies in the finely drawn portrait of Mahbube, in effect a self-portrait as she gradually reveals herself. Equally complex is the character of Rahim. (…) Masterly also is the novelist’s delineation of character through dialogue and his depiction of extended dramatic scenes” . The comments following its german translation in 2002 where less enthusiastic, accusing the author for showing that Mahbubehs initial battle to live a selfdetermined life and choose a partner of love rather than of family compatibility has to fail and that she finds eventual happiness only in the frame of a very traditional but slave-like role as a secondary wife of a cousin.

In particular Fahim eh Farsaie, iranian himself blamed Haj Seyed Javadi in a review in the german weekly paper “Die Zeit” of following in her book a political agenda, namely that of the official policy of Teheran by opposing any modern and liberal life in particular when it comes to the relationship between men and woman.

http://www.perlentaucher.de/autoren/3900/Fattaneh_Haj_Seyed_Javadi.html

I am wondering if people who pushed ”Bamdade Chomar” or its german translation “Morning of Drunkeness” into the best-seller ranks of the book market ever  red “Jane Eyre” in their live.  In an exclusively deep-thought essay Danusha Goska compares Janes couragement to that of Leonidas, whos army was defeated by the massive predominance of the persian army.

best greetings from Stockholm
take care
/ghazal

Zoe Margolis, writer of the blog “Girl with a one-track mind” and author of a book with the same name (under her pseudonym Abby Lee) wrote a remarkable witty and obviously experienced essay about the evolution of a relationship in the era of social networking. It shows that it is so damned easy to turn a loos exchange of some thoughts with a so-called “friend” at Facebook into a more and more privat and intimate relationship. Because it is just words, ideas, and maybe photos that are exchanged, one never has to present itself in his entire personality. The social networks are almost invented to polish a personal identity from all unwanted details. It starts with the very simple thing as a photograph on your privat page. It usually shows you at a younger age, in a very pleasant condition, sometimes after sophisticated Photoshop work. One of the obvious examples is Zoe Margolis Blog-page itself: Whereas in reality in front of a TV camera she appeares as a mature, self-confident woman, her blog autobiography shows her on a college girl style picture. I”m not trying to make any judgement here about which of the two appears more attractive (this as usually lays in the eye of the viewer), for sure the two images almost show two different characters. And as there are these huge uncertainties to find out how somebody looks in reality, if you only know him through social networks, the rest of your web identity is usually also a reflection of how you would like to be, rather than what you really are.
Zoe Margolis describes in her short essay in a very clear and pointed way how sooner or later the real person behind the web identity has to unvail itself, if the relation gets closer and closer. And a relationship goes trough a difficult, not so say catastrophic time if confronted with these torn images. How hard it is and how painful if the social network link suddenly dries out.
Zoe Margolis describes this as following:

“Once upon a time, outside the social network of the Internet, you’d just shrug if someone dropped communication and accept that if they really wanted to stay in contact, they’d simply pick up the ”phone and say hello. But in the web of modern interactivity, where you get used to the regular loud chatter of the (false?) intimacy of the social network, the sudden distance and silence from someone you’ve connected with on a frequent and personal basis is –ironically – deafening.”