Letters to a Persian Cat

Last Friday night I came home from a 3 days conference in the beautiful town of La Coruna in Galicia/Spain, and as usually a pile of unopened letters was waiting for me. One of them stand out from all the others, since it arrived in a yellow envelope. I found it suspicious right away, becaus it was not the glossy yellow paper which the shops use to send around their discount offers, but a greyish yellow which for some reason reminded me of the draft order card I received at the age of 18 from the east German army.

Further inspection showed that indeed it was a letter from my dear country, but this time not represented by the military forces, but by the states prosecutor (who has a nice red seal saying “Attention, this is a legal notice”).  The letter inside was a rather short order, again reminiscent of the orders you hear at the army. The general prosecutor requested me to report to the Munich Stadelheim prison within 5 days after receipt of this letter, to start a one day coercive detention. I tried to sort out at which criminal offence they might have caught me that is serious enough to invite me to prison. The only frequent crime I use to commit from time to time is sneaking in rock concerts without having a ticket, as I recently did in London for Last Night of the Proms or in Munich for an Al-di-Meola concert. But first of all, I was never caught, and second I doubt that this would justify imprisonment.

Thanks God, the general prosecutor at least is more informative than the army was (which never gave any reasonable explanation what they needed me for in their barracks). The general prosecutor is a man who studied the laws, and from there he has the desire to explaine every decision he is taking. Therefore, on the second page of the letter he wrote that the reason for this summon was my ignorance of paying property tax to the city of Munich despite being asked to do that already 3 times. Therefore he decided that I deserve this so-called enforcement-detention in Stadelheim.

The name of Stadelheim prison has a particular sound in Germany, for its famous inmates: real bastards were detained here such as John Demianiuk, one of the last sentenced SS-guards of the German concentration camps. He was sentenced 2011 to 5 years in that prison (but died already in 2012). And perhaps his greatest master, Adolf Hitler himself was arrested in Stadelheim already in 1922 alleged for breaking the kings peace.

But many more of political courageous persons spend time or lost their life here:  Hans and Sophie Scholl and other activists of the anti-nazi group White Rose were first put in custody there in 1943 and later executed. Also, the main representatives of the 1919 Bavarian Soviet Republic, Ernst Toller, Eugene Levine, Kurt Eisner and Gustav Landauer were put behind the Stadelheim bars after this political project was finished by a reactionary soldateska.  So I was relieved to understand not only ordinary criminals or mass-murder spend time in this establishment, but that also highly acknowledged positive characters of our recent history were unlawfully imprisoned in Stadelheim -  and I was about to follow them soon.  It was hard to imagine, though, that the guards of the Stadelheim prison would open and close the heavy iron gates there with the same sense of duty for somebody who only owes 15 Euro to the municipality as for somebody who tried to overthrow the state regime.  But another famous inmate of that prison, Marcel Avram convinced me that the general prosecutor nowadays (in the absence of wanna-be dictators or revolutionary masses) is much less reluctant to use a Stadelheim cell simply to press overdue taxes out of peoples pockets. Mr. Avram owns one of the most successful concert agencies in Germany, which made him a suspected income tax evader for the authorities. 1997 they put him into custody, and some of the great pop and rock stars who were promoted by his Mama Concerts Ltd. did not miss the opportunity to visit him there. Michael Jackson and Joe Cocker both showed their support for Mr.Avram and brought the jailhouse rock to Stadelheim.  I like Marcel Avram a lot for the wonderful concerts he organized in Munich such as Pink or Greenday in 2010, which were always most easy to get in without purchasing a ticket, and even allowed me to guide some friends or colleagues through the fences.

So you now think that it is rediculous of the general prosecutor to offer me the same world class prison for only 15 Euro tax debt as to somebody who was convicted (but never really found guilty) of 7 million tax evation, let alone the crimes of the convicted mass morders or the braveness of the revolutionaries ? The truth is that I not even owe the tax office 15 Euro, since we already sold the apartment under question more than a year ago and it was simply a neglectance of the land registry office which did not communicate with the tax office and still keeps our name as the owner of the estate. Therefore, they continued to send tax invoices to us every 3 month, which I simply ignored for obvious irrelevance.

When I called the prosecutors office yesterday morning the clerk in charge explained to me that whatever the gouvernment or the municipality required from me, I first have to satisfy them, even if it is obvious that they are wrong. First you give us the money, than you can complain, and if your complaints are sound, we will give you the money back (there again was some Deja-vu to the time I spent at the army, where you are also requested to obey all orders, no matter how stupid they are, but wait with your complaints for later time).

I explained to the office man that I am awfully busy at the moment, and a whole day in jail would not suit me right now: Monday we are invited to a friend with Indian cusine, on Tuesday I have to attend the thesis committe meeting of one of my PhD students, on Wednesday we have a rehearsal with our band, and on Thursday we have to go to the school parents evening to sort out some issues with our son. And in general, Marina my wife is always very suspicious when I tell her I have to stay overnight somewhere else. This, in fact, was a lie, at least on this occasion. Marina, in contrary exhibited an absolutely weired excitement for the idea to see me behind the steel bars of Stadelheim, even if it is only for a day. But this would give her the possibility to visit me in jail, and bring some cake and beer to her poor imprisoned husband. For her, the perspective to visit me there was nothing more than a reference to her grandparents legendary love:  While grandpa Nikolai spend 11 years of his life in Stalins labor camps, his wife Marussja followed him from town to town, always trying to live not far away from the camp, always ready to bring some extra food or even freshly cooked meals to the gates, making sure that grandpa Nikolai would survive the harshness and cold.

Marina was not very supportive when I tried to negotiate with the prosecutors office to avoid the day in prison. She even offered me to go to the school parents evening on her own, so I could nicely spent the entire Thursday and the following night in Stadelheim (and she would bring the cake and the beer around in the afternoon). I said that I would enjoy her delicious cake and the beer much more if I could consume it at home and not in a confinement cell, and that I also highly acknowledge her offer to go to the school’s parents evening alone and give me a free evening. Marina agreed at the end, but only on the condition that next weekend I dress in a grey linnen overall and work the entire day in our garden to carry away (on my shoulders) the brick stones left over ages ago.

So I called again the prosecutors office and tried to negotiate a last chance to spare the one-day imprisonment. He said:  only if you come around and pay the 15 Euro debt right on his desk would they consider turning down my summons. So I went there, paid the 15 Euro in cash and instantaneously filed my complain about the invoice.  Eventually, I saw a sort of new sense in my life, and the next days appeared full of sunshine and the smell of freedom. I could avoid the day in prison, and do all the things I had planned for this week:  Monday we went to the excellent Indian dinner with our friend Dora, today I could attend my students thesis committe meeting, tomorrow I will go playing with our rock band – and on Thursday I HAVE A FREE EVENING (since Marina will go to the school’s parents evening alone).

Perhaps the highest concentration of horse related activities in Germany can be found in the two villages of Daglfing and Riem, which both are today part of Munich. When we moved here 6 years ago we found a house that once was owned of Charly Seiffert, a famous jokey and horse trainer.  Some of the wooden beams in our bicycle shed still preserve the marks of horse teeths, obviously serving them decades ago as a toy to test there bite strength. In the village around there are still several blacksmith doing the horseshoes, horse ranches, riding schools, some workshops which manufacture and repair sulkies and coaches and a factory that produces world famouse leather saddles which rank in termes of reputation in the same league as the famous Hermes company.

There is a large horse farm that teaches professional show jumping and dressage riding next to the stalls where the Munich police horses are stabled. Most popular attention, of course attract the three big stadions, or hippodromes – one for harness racing, one for galopp horse racing and a third one for show jumping. Since summer this year even a Polo club moved to this large campus.

I like very much to go to the races, to lose some money and enjoy the thrill and the beautiful horses. In particular, I like to go over there after work when they once a month have the late evening race.

Pictures taken on my daily ride to work, from Daglfing on the eastern outskirt of Munich, to Neuherberg, on its northern parts. The picture on the very bottom was shot about 40 minutes after the picture on the top. Thats about the time the ride takes me by bike.

For their personal wealth-management people have a quite different perception of a failed investmemnt, depending on whether they lossed some money by investing into a falling fund or they missed the opportunity to invest their money into a growing fund. In the first instance, they count it once was their own money which was lost by putting it into the “wrong” company. In contrast to that, if they failed or forgot to invest into a company whos shares increased over time, this missed opportunities causes them much less regret. This is difficult to understand from a pure economic point of view, since it does not make a real difference on the long run if you either lost money that you possesed before, or if you missed the opportunity to gain the same sum of money. In mathematical terms: a double negation (avoiding a loss) is the same as positive gain.
Professional wealth manager know this, and to improve the performance it is equally efficient to avoid losses at single positions or to go into positions which are gain provit. The failure to invest into a growing fund (like W.Buffets Berkshire-Hathaway Inc) is as stupid as putting money into a loss-making fund (like Dell Computers Inc), the first of which doubled its share value over the last 5 years, wheres the latter lost half of its value during the same period.

You might say that, first of all, this is pure economic theory, and it is far away from the emotions we are suffering when we see our hardly earned money being burnt down by a badly advised investment. But at least it wont cause us a heartache. Both arguments are somehow right, but only if one leaves the pure economic reasoning and starts arguing on the psychological level.

Now we came to point where economic reason interferes with emotions, with sorrow, feeling of pleasure and happiness and the like. And on this stage, we can go another step and compare the losses/missed opportunities on the stock market with another area of life where we also hope that investments will also give us lots of rewards and happiness over a long time: I am talking now about partnership, romance and love.
Here again, you hope that a loving relationship into which you have invested your feelings, many years of your life, last but not least some precious parts of your body, that this investment does not suddenly fail. If it does, it is usually associated with unpleasant emotions, hate, and a long term decline in self-esteem. People talking of their broken relationships are not really a source of very poetic ideas. They see themself as being betrayed, and – like in the case of a wrong investment – they deeply regret to have actively made a wrong decision. They would like to turn back time thinking “I wished I would have never meet you, becaused you have taken away the best 5/10/20 years of my life”. People are usually not very enthusiastic writing blogs about their broken relationships, and if you find them they are not very touching somehow.
Another reaction you can find in people who suffer from an unresponded love. Objectively, their net ballance is the same as in case of a broken relationship. But in contrast to them, they suffer from the feeling that they don’t manage to start a relationship (investment) that would be so beneficial for them. So in contrast to people who face the ruins of a failed relationship, the second category of people feel unlucky to start the relationship they want so heavily. (Rolling Stones: “Love in Vain”)

The great song “Love in Vain” (original Blues by Robert Johnsson) shows very clearly that the feeling of not achieving the love we want might not be much easier to live with, but in contrast to the mental state after a broken relationship, at least it can be the source of great artistic expression. Garcia Marquez’ great novel “Love in the times of Cholera” describes this, as did Charlotte Bronte in “Jane Eyre”. The different self perception after a soul-destructing end of a relationship, and in contrast during the patient, tolerable time in a waiting room of a romantic love must have to do with peculiarities of our emotional reward system. It is easier to hope (endlessly) for the opportunity to get a reward, than to see that a reward has been refused for something we invested in.

hi michael, over the last 3 years i more and more revised my former indifference with books, and now i like to visit book stores more regularily. my aunt Farnaz has red many books, and it is her who gives me good literature to read or recommends my new or classic books. Jane Eyre by Charlotte Brontë, you might remember was one of the first classical english novels i red, and it sort of infected me with a literature virus.
here in stockholm, unfortunately, there are not so many bookstores, and some smaller one even had to close down because the competition by amazon and other on-line shops was too strong. recently, we went with sarah to the ERR meeting in dublin, and our flight back had a half day stop over in London. we managed to go to the center, and i showed her around the places where i lived 4 years ago near kings cross and where i went to ucl for the msc course. we came along Foyles book store in Charing Cross Road, which I never visited before. It was the first time I saw such a hugh book empire, distributed over 4 floors and with books from all over the world. I send a whatsapp to Farnaz in Stockholm, to ask her what book she’d like me to buy there and bring home. she recommended Shahrnush Parsipur’s memories about her time in Evin prison. i was happy, there was indeed the just recently released first english translation of it, called KISSING THE SWORD.
only when i red the introductory text i understoud that Shahrnush Parsipur is the writer of “Woman without Men”, i.e. the novel which served as the base for the movie with Golshifteh Farahani. You must remember the movie, cause we watched it together in the Munich Theatiner bioscop.
“Kissing the Sword” starts with when Mrs. Parsipur was in her late 20s, just finishing Tehran University still during the Shahs reign. She and her brother, a famous Iranian movie director who also fall in disgrace after the islamic revolution, where part of the progressive, left wing intellectual groups who opposed the autocratic regime of the Pahlevis. To avoid repression, she left Iran in 1976 to further study and work in France. Full of enthusiasm for the fall of the Shahs regime she returned to Tehran in 1980, but only to find out that the degree of oppression slowly started to reach new levels of violence and religious and political intollerance under the mullahs, who step by step tried to eliminate all other of the former opposition groups (tudeh party, peoples muhjaheddin, liberal artists and philosophers).
in 1983, Shahrnush was imprisoned together with her mother in the notorious Evin prison. they were sentenced for 4 years, without ever seeing a normal court trial, only being confronted with some fabricated evidence and blackmailed testimonials,which were blaming her for opposing the mandatory hijab.
almost 3 quarters of the book (chapter 1 to 15) are the records of her prison time, and for me it was quite shoking. it was not so much the cruelity of the evin guardians, who used to beat and torture the female prisoners both physically and mentally at every possible occasion, but i was disappointed to read about the lack of solidarity between the prisoners, how quickly they showed obedience to the guards, therefore losing the ability to fight the omnipresent prison authorities. maybe i was just to much preoccupied with the idea that everybody who is imprisoned for political reasons remains brave and heroic. but in Parsipurs memories one sees so often that the prisoners try to reliefe their terrible situation by colaborating with the guards. Shahrnush Parsipur herself does not clearly condemn this tactics, she might know that it is not her right to condemn the very attempt of a prisoner to save its own life. and all the prisoners see that day by day, that cell inmates are taken away and shot dead in the central prison yard.
so the first 16 chapters of the book are not easy to digest, they left me with sadness about the inability of resist a totalitarian regime. and the pursue of survival in evin does not appear to be a very heroic fight, its is mainly the attempt to survive the next day without sacrificing all your ideals.
Now i started reading chapter 16. Shahrnush Parsipur has been released from prison after 4 years, her brave brother has died, and she has lost her job at the university and her connections with the book publishers.
she than starts to translate chinese history books to earn a living for herself and her son, and to find a personal challenge, she opens a little bookstore in a Tehran side street. The bookstore in fact consumes more money than she earns from selling, but it offers her the possibility te establish an independent existence.
how she describes her live as a book shop owner reminded me of khianush, the persian girl who works in the Munich Avicenna book shop.

After several weeks of facing a complete and long-lasting shut-down of the US government, sending home all public sector workers and closing most administrative offices, a friend of mine working at the NIH NCI in Bethesda/Maryland told how relieved she was yesterday to pass again the gates of her re-opened institute. I had completely forgotten that many americans just like her saw a more immediate treat to their personal life by the Republican Parties blockade and the radical TeaParty followers. From a distant view, however it looked more like a big show, with the ultimate chance to turn Washington D.C.  or  Los Angeles  into a mirror-images of Gotham City.

Gotham City from the original cartoon serie (1940)

The similarity would have been indeed stuning:  The richest country in the world, with a government at the verge of going bust.  And finally, comrade Obama can triumph over the evil forces and emerge as the saviour, just as Batman.

Well done, Barack

Shall I feel honoured that finally the Iranian authorities recognised my effort to promote the Persian Cat as a mayor player in science and research ?  Or shall I tell them what other science nations have experienced a long time ago ? That is the recent news (source: The Guardian) about another effort of the Tehran regime to conquer space: