Count down to Iran

It's really happening! Just one month (31 days) from today, we take off for Tehran where my sister and I will join 33 others for my college alumni association's tour of Iran. I'm waiting anxiously, day by day, to get my passport back with my Iranian visa stamped in it.

Yes, the trip is going forward as planned. No, upheavals in Egypt, Libya and Tunisia will not deter us -- any more than did war between Serbia and Croatia deter tourists from visiting Paris and Rome while it was in progress. After all, it's over 1,300 miles from Tehran to Cairo.

Packing for the trip will be easy, because even the well-dressed gentleman in Iran dresses himself informally. Long sleeved shirts are strongly recommended, but I may take some short sleeved shirts for very warm days, just in case I feel brave. No shorts, unfortunately. But it's my sister who'll have the problems. She has to locate and purchase loose flowing garments (abayas) in the proper shapes and hues to wear over her jeans or other pants. And most importantly, she has to remember, at all times, to keep her hair concealed under a scarf. These Islamic dress rules, called hejab, apply to both men and women, but it's the women -- as you'd expect -- who bear most of the burden.

We received our final flight schedules today. I fly from Seattle, my sister from San Francisco, and we meet for a layover of several hours in Amsterdam. We then fly together to Tehran, where we arrive shortly before midnight, to be met (I'm keeping my fingers crossed) by a representative of the tour group who will take us to our hotel (the old Intercontinental, which is now a bit down at its heels, I understand).

I've looked forward to this trip for so long, it's hard to believe the time is almost here. My readers will be treated to a summary of my thoughts and observations after my return on April 17.

Unwelcome visitors

So you're out there lying in the yard on your back, a sunny afternoon in July, gazing lazily up at the sky. An occasional plane flies overhead. A few blue jays flit around. Then far above you see a speck -- gosh, is that an eagle?

The speck gets larger and larger. Soon, it's as big as the moon. It's as big as a house. Now you see that it's irregular in shape, like a big rock. Like a huge boulder. But it keeps filling more and more of the sky. You let out a yell. You want to run, but there's no place to run. It's coming right at you, and it keeps getting larger.

If you're a scientist, perhaps your last thought on earth might be a quick calculation that this odd object is impossibly big -- it's at least seven miles wide. And then you're dead. But you weren't particularly unlucky among all mankind, just because your backyard happened to fall within the seven-mile impact zone. Because within a short time, every other human being on earth -- even those in China -- would also be dead.

Dead though you might be, you would have had the privilege of observing the same sight that an observant dinosaur reclining on a beach in the Yucatan would have observed about 65 million years ago. The impact of an asteroid, seven miles or so in diameter, resulting in the Chicxulub crater off the northern coast of the Yucatan peninsula, was sufficient to have triggered world-wide earthquakes, volcanic eruptions and tidal waves. Enormous quantities of dust and the release of large amounts of carbon dioxide and sulfate aerosols would have resulted in dramatic planetary cooling and acid rain, wiping out or severely disrupting significant portions of the food chain.

Most scientists believe that the impact that resulted in the Chicxulub crater, either by itself or in concert with impacts from other asteroids, resulted in the extinction of the dinosaurs -- the largest animals inhabiting the earth at the time.

In an interesting article in this week's New Yorker, Tad Friend describes efforts by the scientific community to monitor the orbits of known asteroids and comets, in the hope that a similar disaster in the future can somehow be averted. Their efforts, however, remind me of efforts to find better tools to diagnose prostate cancer -- once you've identified the problem, the question becomes what do you do about it?

In 2005, scientists smashed a rocket at 23,000 mph into a passing comet, just to see how much its orbit would be deflected. The answer was -- none at all. No more than firing a bullet at a semi truck speeding on the freeway would shove it off onto the shoulder. And you can't blow a comet or asteroid to smithereens -- that would merely convert a speeding object into a speeding shower of rather large smithereens heading directly at you at tremendous speed.

And yet, if we had even ten years' advance warning of a probable impact, and could change the velocity of the threatening orbital object by just one centimeter per second, we could cause its orbit to change sufficiently over that period of time to avoid the threat to the earth.

One problem that scientists face is the large amounts of money required for accurate advance detection of those orbits posing a risk to the earth. Another problem is the even larger amounts required to meet the danger once detected. And as one scientist quoted in the article noted, American rocket technology has reverted back to where it was in the 1960's.

We all know about the Tunguska explosion over Siberia in 1908, probably caused by a meteor well under a hundred yards in diameter. The explosion in the atmosphere was one thousand times as powerful as the Hiroshima bomb. In 2002, an asteroid exploded over the Mediterraean, and another object hit a mountain in Siberia the same year. In 2008, an asteroid the size of a truck hit the desert in Sudan. In 2009, another one exploded over Indonesia with three times the force of a Hiroshima bomb.

So far we've been lucky. None of these impacts and explosions has been over a city or densely populated area. Even if it had, although it would have been an incalculable disaster, it would not have destroyed humanity. We're used to war and we're used to disasters. With so many problems in the world, it's hard for a government to commit vast amounts of money in an attempt to prevent "limited" potential disasters of this sort, and it's hard for anyone to worry about total annihilation of our species when extinction of the dominant species hasn't occurred for the past 65 million years. Money is scarce. If an asteroid or comet large enough to destroy life on earth hasn't hit us in 65 million years, we tend to rationalize, why should we worry about the next hundred years?

Maybe our hypothetical dinosaur himself had been thinking along those lines as he lay on the beach -- just before he noticed a large speck growing ever larger in the sky.

Winds off the Sahara

On January 14, the president of Tunisia fled to Saudi Arabia, ending 23 years of autocratic rule. Eleven days later, the riots in Egypt began, leading to Mubarak's resignation on February 11.

Since then, the scene painted by the nightly news has been that of a series of dominoes, falling one by one, as demonstrations have broken out in one country after another: Bahrain, Iran (Islamic but not Arab), Libya, Yemen. Together with others receiving less attention from the American press, such as Algeria, Morocco, and Jordan. Few if any of the Muslim states in the Middle East and North Africa have so far escaped at least minor demonstrations against their existing governments.

We've been warned repeatedly in recent years of the dangers of Islamic jihad, imposition of Sharia legal systems, and other fundamentalist horrors that hearken back to the seventh century. But this month's demonstrations, at least so far, have been secular demands for democratic forms of government and for a more equitable distribution of wealth. They have not been demands for more specifically Islamic governments.

All I can do is watch. I don't have much to say; certainly I have no greater insights than does the New York Times. But it does occur to me that, because the demonstrations are occurring swiftly, one after another, we've tended to lose track of the fact that we're living through a remarkable period of history. Decades from now, I suspect, students will look back on early 2011 as a crisis period in the history of the Arab peoples and of their relations with the rest of the world. This will be true whether the demonstrations lead to democracies, to new forms of secular dictatorship, or to Islamic governments such as already exists in Iran.

This past month reminds me of other eventful months, months we lived through calmly -- buying groceries, going to work, chatting with friends, watching the news with fascination but with no real insight -- only to realize later that we had drifted unknowingly through a watershed period of modern history.

I suspect, for example, that anyone who was alive and following the news in October 1956 realized only later the full extent to which his or her world had been changed forever.

The revolt in Hungary, its suppression by Soviet troops, the Anglo-French-Israeli invasion of Egypt, and their retreat in the face of American anger -- all happening within one dramatic month. No one really could have anticipated it at the time, but October 1956 was the month that finally ended, in the minds of even most sympathetic Western European leftists, the Communist movement's pretense that it was anything more exalted than an instrument of Soviet foreign policy. And it was the month that ended forever the prestige of the British and French empires, making it evident to the world that British and French foreign policy would be henceforth subject to American veto.

Few foreign policy experts, and even fewer members of the general public, would have recognized the long term consequences of the events that unfolded during that three or four week period in 1956. I suspect that the events this past month in the Arab states -- events that are still unfolding -- will have equally widespread consequences, consequences that we simply cannot foresee at this time.

We live in "interesting times," as the traditional Chinese curse phrases it. I recall the urban legend that the Chinese character for "crisis" is an amalgam of those for "danger" and "opportunity." We certainly are resting on a fulcrum of crisis in today's Arab world. Let's hope the balance tips toward "opportunity."

Bow down to Washington (his face is on the dollar bill)

When anyone asks where I live in Seattle, I usually use Husky Stadium -- the nearest major landmark -- as my reference point. Although it's been years since I attended a game in the stadium, I pass by it -- on foot and/or by car -- virtually every day. As a result, I keep watch over it with a certain sense of fond proprietorship.

So I'm well aware that a large portion of the stadium is about to be torn down and rebuilt, at a cost of $250 million. The University has been longing to remodel the stadium for many years. The legislature, however, felt that it had better uses for the taxpayers' money. Therefore, the UW finally decided to borrow whatever money it couldn't raise from donors. As the front page article in today's Seattle Times notes, a possible result will be a downgrade in the rating of the University's bonds, making it more difficult for the school to borrow money for other puposes in the future.

The new stadium will have slightly fewer seats -- 71,197 -- but much glitzier facilities. The prices will be glitzier, too, which seems to be the point of the entire endeavor. Ticket prices haven't been fully established yet, but seats near the 50-yard line will run about $1,000 for a season ticket. "Premium" seats would run $2,000-$3,000. Don't expect to rub shoulders in the stadium with the riffraff, the many taxpayers who are just getting by.

Or with kids not accompanied by wealthy parents.

In fact, speaking of kids, one obstacle to maximization of income has always been that the student section is centered on the 50-yard line on the north side of the stadium. That was then, this is now. In the new stadium, the students will find themselves huddled together beyond the end zone. Thus ends the last remnant of the pleasant fiction that college football is primarily a student activity for the amusement of the students, with ticket sales to alumni and others providing a source of income that is welcome but of secondary concern.

My modest proposal, which may not seem outlandish in a few more years, is that the students be assembled inside or outside of the student union building, depending on weather, where they can watch "their" team play on large screen TV. After all, even those end zone seats can be sold for a lot more than ragamuffin students can afford to pay.

When I attended Big Game in Palo Alto a couple of years ago -- played in just-remodeled Stanford stadium -- I noted that the Stanford student section had also been moved from the 50-yard line down to a portion of the end zone. Thus goes life in the "academically oriented" Pac-10. Can you imagine what it must be like at a school in the SEC?

Young advocates

During their three years of law school, students spend endless hours with their noses buried in books. When they aren't reading cases, they risk humiliation in front of their classmates as they respond to questions from their professors probing their understanding of the implications of those cases. They often wonder to what extent they're actually learning to handle the real life challenges they'll face when they're out in the profession.

Mock trial and moot court competitions provide one way in which they can measure their own abilities. I'll be helping to judge an appellate moot court competition on Saturday for the University of Washington Law School. (It's the closest I'll ever get, I'm afraid, to being a justice on the U.S. Supreme Court.) Actually, our "Supreme Court" will consist of only three "judges." The other six, I guess, will be both invisible and as silent as six Clarence Thomases.

I've been provided with about 80 pages of briefs and lower court records to review, documents that supposedly will enable me -- together with my two fellow judges -- to ask intelligent and startling questions of the student "attorneys."

The facts of the fictional appeal that the students will be arguing are juicier and the legal issues more complex than those that many real life attorneys probably encounter in a lifetime. A 26-year-old female sociology graduate student, as part of her graduate studies, was preparing an academic presentation questioning the severity of society's criminalization and punishment of some alleged child molestors. She sought young people (over 18) to be interviewed by video online, with nude web photos taken and used to illustrate the interviews. (She apparently hoped to discover the extent to which some alleged molestations were in reality "consensual.") Before the interview began, each young person was required to prove that he or she was over 18 by emailing appropriate identification to her, as well as displaying the same ID to her over the webcam.

One of her photographs showed a 16-year-old boy, posing nude and flipping off the camera. It is stipulated by both sides that although the photograph was "sexually explicit" in nature, it was not legally obscene and was related to the matters she had planned to discuss in her presentation. The boy had claimed he was 18, and had provided the defendant with phony ID. FBI agents, tipped off by the boy's mother, seized the graduate student's computer, and found a copy of the photo.

A federal grand jury indicted the graduate student for a violation of 18 U.S.C. § 2251(a), a federal statute dealing with "sexual exploitation of children," specifically, in her case, for having induced the boy's on-line posing in a sexually suggestive manner. At trial, the judge suppressed evidence that the boy had offered reasonable proof that he was not a minor, and refused to allow the defendant to argue to the jury, as an affirmative defense, that her mistake as to his actual age was reasonable under the circumstances. The trial judge held that the federal statute is a strict liability statute, and that the actual belief or intent, as well as the reasonable efforts, of the defendant with respect to the boy's age were irrelevant.

The grad student was tried, found guilty, and sentenced to 15 years in prison, the minimum sentence allowed under the statute. On release, she must register as a sex offender. She also will be barred for an additional three years, while on "supervised release," from access to "any form of pornographic material," which would effectively exclude her from work in the field of sociology studies that she had undertaken for her graduate degree.

The Court of Appeals affirmed the conviction, and the Supreme Court accepted review. And that's where the case will stand when it comes before our panel on Saturday.

Judges have been provided briefs drafted on behalf of both the defendant and the United States. Both sides have strong arguments: The government has the literal wording of the statute in its favor, together with favorable decisions by three circuits of the Court of Appeals and the strong public policy of protecting children. The defendant, on the other hand, can point to a favorable decision from another circuit of the Court of Appeals (our own circuit, actually, based in San Francisco), requiring that the defendant be allowed to argue "reasonable mistake" as an affirmative defense. Imposing strict liability in a case involving first amendment rights would result in "self-censorship," with a "chilling effect" on protected speech, the Ninth Circuit held. Also, even in cases not involving first amendment rights, imposition of strict liability in a criminal case is disfavored by the courts, and usually restricted to cases involving enforcement of business regulations.

To a lawyer, this is a fascinating case, presenting the sort of battle between conflicting public policies and interests often found in those disputes that make it as far as the Supreme Court. Such conflicts are hard to resolve, not only with respect to the immediate parties before the court, but also with respect to the precedent the court's decision will set for decades to come in similar future cases.

As the legal maxim goes, "Hard cases make bad law."

Luckily, we judges in a moot court setting don't have to resolve the legal issues. We simply decide which side did the better job presenting the arguments that they had available, in light of the set of facts they were given. And -- for us judges -- the most enjoyable part of the exercise is the post mortem, discussing informally with the students the strengths and weaknesses of their presentations.

If anything unusually interesting happens during Saturday's arguments, I may post a quick follow-up.

Ah, my Beloved, fill the Cup ...

Good news, O meadow bird, spring has come again
The season of drinking and kissing and hugging has come again
The term of withered fading and sadness has ended
The days of dallying with the beloved have come again. ...
To celebrate a beauty's curly tresses
Wine bearers, wine shops, singers and dancing have come again
Should you pass the schoolhouse door, tell the sheikh that
A tulip-cheeked beauty to touch him has come again
Close up the shop of abstinence for this happy season
For my heart's ears hear that the song of the lute has come again.

O Saqi, open the door of the wineshop for me;
Make me heedless of lessons, discussions, asceticism, and hypocrisy
Lay a strand of your curly hair in my way;
Free me from learning, the mosque, teaching, and prayers.
Singing like David, bring me a jug of wine;
Make me heedless of worry over status and its ups and downs.
--Ayatolla Ruhollah Khomeini

Beautiful Persian poetry.¹ Written in the style of Hafiz, the fourteenth century Sufi poet. And the poet? Yes, the poem was written by Ayatollah Khomeini, by him of the harsh words and the scowly face.

Ultra-conservative theologically, politically cunning, and the first Supreme Leader of the Islamic Republic, Ayatollah Khomeini was also Persian. And to be Persian, they say, is also to be a poet.

The mullahs will explain that Khomeini's allusions to wine and romantic love are metaphors in his poetry, metaphors that express the soul's longing and love for God. Just as Christians and Jews interpret the erotic poetry of the Song of Solomon.

No doubt true. A common enough allegorical path followed by those seeking after the Divine. Nevertheless, the many chambers and complexities of the human heart and soul never fail to surprise and delight.

------------------------

¹More beautiful in Farsi, I suspect, than in this very literal English translation.

Back to running

The world outside feels different today. Oh, we've had signs of spring for several weeks now. Birds have been chirping in the mornings. Crocuses, daffodils and primroses are in bloom. The first of the flowering trees are beginning to flower -- in fact, the trees surrounding the entrance to the Mechanical Engineering building were budding before the end of January.

But today didn't just look like spring; it felt like it as well. The sun was shining through a light layer of high clouds, and the temperature crept up and over 50 degrees. Fifty degrees! The results were predictable: Students walking around in shorts. Students in T-shirts. Everyone on campus smiling more; everyone's steps a bit bouncier.

And runners! Overnight, everyone from 12 to 82 seems to have decided that they had to be out running. All those runners was the sight that fired my resolve and my determination.

Until about four years ago, I was a dedicated runner. Then my left Achilles tendon very gradually began bothering me at the end of each run. It got worse and worse. I responded to the problem just like I handle all health problems: "Ignore every discomfort, whether a hangnail or chest pains radiating into your left arm. It's all in your head, and it will go away if you pretend you don't feel it."

Excellent advice, but it didn't work for my Achilles tendon. Even though the discomfort after running each day was becoming annoying, I decided that it was no obstacle to my doing a day hike down into the Grand Canyon. Big mistake. That ended my running hobby. It also ended my walking for a couple of days. I learned, too late, that disregard of inflammation in the Achilles tendon results in scar tissue that, if severe enough, can cause permanent disability. The scar tissue was there, all right. With my fingers, I could feel the lump on the tendon.

I've actually tried running several times since that disaster, but each time I've let either discomfort or some external cause stop me after a few days. But my Achilles tendon hasn't bothered me for some time now, and I've done some serious hiking and trekking without any problems during the last couple of years. Seeing all the runners today inspires me to give it another shot. This time, if I do feel any symptoms, I won't hesitate to dose myself liberally with Aleve to reduce inflammation, and to ease off until I'm sure I'm not causing new damage.

I've signed up for a seriously difficult trek in October, and I need to maximize my cardiovascular condition by that time. Running, for me, has always been the ideal conditioner. If it doesn't work out, if pain returns, then I'll have to think of something else. Bicycling is the obvious alternative, but I'd have to spend significantly more time biking to equal the same workout I can get from running 4 miles several times a week.

I'm already daydreaming about the annual Beat the Bridge 10k race that takes place in May. Could I be ready for that? It's tempting. But I'll keep my eyes on my ultimate goal -- maximum conditioning by October. I'm not going to get carried away with any less important objectives that might stand in the way of my reaching that goal.

Defining a nation

What is a nation? As Wikipedia helpfully points out, "nation" comes ultimately from the Latin natio, to be born. People who were born in the same area, who shared a common language and who were subject to common laws, at least according to one medieval source, were a people who constituted a nation. A tribe would be a primitive nation; an example of a more advanced nation might be a somewhat autonomous ethnic group like the Basques.

Although we may speak of France and Italy as geographical areas in the middle ages, they weren't nations. Those regions were governed as small states in Italy, and by a complicated network of feudal allegiances in France. Medieval England, with its unusually strong monarchy, came closer to being a nation, in the modern sense, but even the English were divided among themselves by language -- English and Norman French -- and, in some parts of the kingdom, were ruled by local feudal rulers under only the nominal control of the king.

It wasn't until the eighteenth century that nationalism -- allegiance to a large geographical grouping of people under a common system of laws, as opposed to allegiance to a personal ruler or to a city-state -- became common.

The world is now carved up into nations -- as are even those parts of Africa that are still, de facto, tribal societies. But we still argue among ourselves about what exactly we mean when we use the term "nation."

These rambling thoughts were prompted by a story in today's New York Times about an ultra-conservative French journalist named Éric Zemmour. No cheese-eating surrender monkey this guy, Zemmour sounds more like the Glenn Beck sort of Frenchman. But I'm not interested so much in his many offensive (to me) specific proposals as I am in his basic concept of what constitutes the French "nation."

Essentially, Zemmour believes that the French nation consists of the French people -- people who speak French, share French civilization and customs, and adhere to French law. Although he would not bar immigration entirely -- he feels you can become French by assimilation, even if not fortunate enough to be born French -- he obviously is not enthusiastic about immigration. Interestingly enough, his own parents were actually Berber Jews, who themselves moved to France from Algeria. But his own family's experiences seem to have hardened his attitude toward other immigrants --clearly Gypsies deserve to be sent back to Romania, and most Muslims deserve to be sent back to some place in the Islamic world. If they haven't assimilated, they aren't French and shouldn't be living in France.

Without specifically disparaging the American model of nationhood -- a nation made great by the diversity of its people and of its values -- he insists that the American model is not appropriate for the French.

We believe that we have the best way of life in the world, the best culture, and that one must thus make an effort to acquire this culture. ... For me, France is civilization with a capital "C."

Although I like France, I don't necessarily agree that French civilization is the touchstone by which other cultures should be tested. But Zemmour's fulminations remind me again that every country is different, and that what works in Canada doesn't necessarily work in the Congo. Or vice versa.

Diversity of background is indeed one of the strengths of the American nation. Although we have at times had trouble swallowing certain large infusions of various ethnicities -- Irish in the mid-nineteenth century, Chinese in the late nineteenth century, Hispanics in recent years -- ultimately the members of each group made the necessary adjustments to function well in American society, and the United States took on new flavorings and ideas from its new immigrants.

Nowadays, we often forget that the Irish didn't come over on the Mayflower. And today -- unlike even 25 years ago -- you can buy fast food enchiladas or a bowl of phở virtually anywhere in the country. We've become a richer country for every new group of immigrants.

But Zemmour's attitudes regarding French civilization aren't necessarily invalid either. We are a nation of immigrants. The French aren't. The Romans laid an indelible Latin imprint on the indigenous Celtic occupants of Gaul two thousand years ago, and the population mix remained quite stable until very recently. The French language became standardized at a relatively early time, and the government still makes obsessive attempts to maintain its changeless purity. For many centuries, there have been unique and recognizable French idioms of architecture, painting, music, literature, and philosophy.

Just as no one would care to see Paris refashioned with modern skyscrapers, no one would care to see French civilization lose its unique characteristics and watered down to become part of a homogeneous global culture. While attempts to ban Muslim women from wearing scarves in public, and prosecutions of businesses for using English words in their advertising, seem both ludicrous and tyrannical to Americans, we should be able to appreciate the objective behind those regulations, even though it's an objective that is neither realistic nor desirable for ourselves, or one that would make much sense in view of our own history and civilization.

The French face serious problems in reconciling protection of human rights with their desire to protect their own "Frenchness," especially in the face of skeptical and hostile EC regulators in Brussels. Let's wish them well, perhaps reminding them tactfully that gradual change is also part of the French tradition. Construction of the Eiffel Tower was attacked as an abomination that would destroy the beauty of Paris -- but it still was built. And the Revolution of 1789 declared the "Rights of Man," not just the rights of the French. Universal justice for all mankind, everywhere, was the cry of the French Revolution, and protection of human rights is also an integral part of French civilization.

For our part, we can avoid our all too eager willingness to heap scorn on those who look at life differently from ourselves. One of our strengths as Americans is the cosmopolitan nature of our society. France's strength, at least as many French view it, is in their society's uniquely French character.

Chacun à son goût, as they like to say over there on the Continent.

Nocturne

It's sure gone by fast. But this week marks the end of my first year as a returning piano student. It's a bit embarrassing to admit that -- aside from a couple of short, easy pieces that I learned to keep my instructor happy -- I've spent the entire year working on nothing but the one Beethoven sonata. And, believe it or not, it's still not ready for Carnegie Hall.

But I've learned -- or relearned -- a lot this year. Learned how to learn. How to practice. How to think about what I'm playing in terms of phrases, in terms of themes, in terms of sections within a movement, in terms of the entire sonata. My instructor asks me -- frustratingly, at times, while I'm still desperately struggling with the fingering -- to contemplate the musical effect of what I'm doing, instead of just playing the piano as though I were typing a letter.

It's been an interesting and educational year. I feel guilty at times for not practicing longer each day -- guilt being my personal substitute for dedication -- but my teacher claims that I've worked more diligently on my music than she'd expected.

To mark the start of a new year (actually, it's just a coincidence), I'm beginning work on a second major piece -- major, but shorter and easier (at least technically) than the Beethoven. I've always enjoyed listening to Chopin's nocturnes, at least once I got past my 1812 Overture phase of musical appreciation. The apparent simplicity of their quiet melancholy belies their actual difficulty for the pianist. I told my instructor a couple of weeks ago that I'd like to try tackling one of them. She seemed a little reluctant at first. But she suggested Nocturne No. 15 in F minor, one of the easiest (technically) of the set.

Yes, the tempo's slow, and yes, the score is much easier for even me to sight-read than was that of the complex Beethoven sonata. But the nocturne's difficulty for the novice pianist lies in learning to play the written score so that it expresses the emotional depths that Chopin intended.

And, hey, don't forget that I'm an attorney. As such, I have no emotional depths. Nevertheless, the nocturne's a challenge worth accepting, and I'm eager to give it a go. I doubt if I'll ever get tired of working on the Beethoven, or that I'll ever feel that I no longer need to improve my playing of it. But it'll be good to season my daily practice with a little Chopin for the sake of variety.

And thus begins Year Two.

Pondering Persia

A Book of Verses underneath the Bough,
A Jug of Wine, a Loaf of Bread-and Thou
Beside me singing in the Wilderness--
Oh, Wilderness were Paradise enow!

--Rubaiyat of Omar Khayyam
(tr. Edward FitzGerald)

Death to the Great Satan!

--Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini

Here in the West, we have conflicting images of Iran. We've heard the medieval Persian poets (in translation), singing of food, wine and romance, while simulataneously praising and questioning their God. We've seen the scowling faces of the ayatollahs, denouncing America and its allies, and all their works. And, if we remember our history, we have vague recollections of the Persian Empire in its various forms; of the stout-hearted defense of the Greek city states against Persian invasion at the Battles of Thermopylae and Marathon; and of the much later burning of the great palace at Persepolis by the triumphant Alexander the Great.

These images are all pictures of Iran as viewed from the outside, perspectives given to us by Western historians and story tellers. And, whatever we recall from the past, present day images of Iran are not favorable: bitter rants by President Ahmadinejad, centrifuges spinning as uranium is enriched, street demonstrations denouncing Israel.

In dealing with a foreign culture, it helps to understand it; to understand a foreign culture, it helps to hear from someone whose life crosses the boundaries between our own culture and theirs.

Such a man is Hooman Majd, writer of a helpful little book entitled The Ayatollah Begs to Differ, and subtitled "The Paradox of Modern Iran." Majd is an Iranian by birth, the son of a diplomat under the Shah who grew up and was educated in Europe and the United States. He lives now in New York. He's been able to maintain relatively friendly ties with the post-1979 revolutionary government. His family and the family of Mohammed Khatami (Iran's president from 1996 to 2005) come from the same village, and are linked by a number of marriages. He has had continuing contact with the more moderate wing of the revolutionary government (including Khatami). He has traveled freely throughout Iran.

Majd discusses aspects of Iranian life that were totally unfamiliar to me. One such revelation was the extent to which the Shi'ite branch of Islam, which finds its homeland in Iran, was an adaptation of the Islamic faith to the historical -- and distinctly non-Arab¹ -- context of Iranian, pre-Islamic civilization, and, as a result, the absorption into Shi'ism of various Zoroastian attitudes and beliefs. Shi'ism's sense of martyrdom -- the belief that Ali, the true and deeply venerated heir of Muhammed's mantle (and a half-Persian) was unjustly killed by his rival in the seventh century and supplanted by the Sunni caliphs -- continues to affect profoundly everyday Iranian society. Iranians of every social and economic level contiue to experience a bitter sense of the injustice of all earthly life, an attitude that derives both from this traumatic origin of Shi'ism and from Iran's modern experiences with Western imperialism.

Majd emphasizes that -- apart from a small group of wealthy and primarily apolitical Westernized citizens, nearly all of whom live in suburbs in North Tehran -- Iranians from all walks of life fully accept the result of the 1979 revolution and the formation of the Islamic Republic. They also accept the legitimacy of rule by the ayatollahs and other members of the Islamic clergy, and the ultimate rule by the Supreme Leader (Ayatollah Ali Khamenei at present). Even within the clergy, there is considerable variation in political attitudes, but they agree in general that it's the role of the elected government to govern the country on a day to day basis. The clergy is, in some ways, similar to our Supreme Court -- a moderating influence, preventing the elected government from becoming either too liberal or too conservative, as well as ensuring that the government's actions are not inconsistent with Islamic beliefs.

Such may not be democracy as we understand it. It is a form of government that appears natural and acceptable to most Iranians, however.

The book was written in 2007, before the disputed 2009 election. Majd felt that Ahmadinejad had been fairly elected in 2005, perhaps because of a poor campaign by his more moderate rival, but that he probably would not win re-election in 2009. He reminds us, in 2007, that Ahmadinejad was genuinely popular with many Iranians. He was a man from a lower class background, a man of the people who had not been corrupted by power or wealth. His life remained simple. He understood the common man, and they understood him. Majd believed that Ahmadinejad would lose in 2009, however, because his aggressive policies were seen as having brought Iran into unnecessary conflict with the rest of the world, with disastrous effects on the economy.

In a June 2009 preface to the paperback edition of his book, Majd notes the result of the 2009 election, in which Ahmadinejad was re-elected, and the subsequent nationwide demonstrations. He has no doubt that the election was fraudulent. More importantly, he feels that the great majority of the Iranian people also believe that the election was stolen, and resent that the social contract by which power was distributed under the Islamic Republic has been subverted.

Majd is disappointed, obviously. However, I sense that he has confidence in the common sense of his compatriots, and in the good judgment of the clerical class, the group that will ultimately pull Iranian government back toward a middle road. He remains optimistic about the country of his birth.

Majd, like other scholars of Iranian society, believes that a Western attack upon Iran over the nuclear arms issue would be a disastrous blunder. While Majd can't rule out the possibility that Ahmadinejad is seeking to develop and brandish nuclear weapons, he feels that its leaders more probably are simply seeking "justice" -- the same right to develop nuclear power resources as is possessed by all other nations. In thus seeking "justice" for Iran, Ahmadinejad expresses the deeply held convictions of virtually every level of Iranian society.

Nothing would unite Iranians more firmly behind the present government than even the threat of attack from without.

My post does not do full justice to the book. Although Majd tackles serious topics, he also discusses the peculiarities of Iranian (and American) society and culture with humor and with telling anecdotes of his travels and discussions. The book is both educational and entertaining. It's well worth reading.

And I hope a few members of our own government have taken the time to read it.

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¹"Iran" comes from the same Indo-European root as "Aryan," meaning Indo-European. The Persians were Indo-European invaders from Central Asia, who conquered and supplanted the indigenous inhabitants of present-day Iran, just as Indo-European invaders also did in Greece, northern India, and most of Europe. Farsi (Persian), like English, is an Indo-European language, in contrast to Arabic, which is Semitic.

Photo: Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, Supreme Leader