To Iran, with love
Iran is in turmoil. I am a small echo of that turmoil, sitting at my desk in the himilayas.
To say I care about Iran and Iranians would be a gross understatement. Four years ago they were a shape on the map, and any mention of them conjured up images in my of traditional headgear and the inevitable AK-47 held in an upraised hand.
Just days ago I returned from the Peace in the Middle East gathering in Turkey for the fourth year in a row. Just days ago I clasped arms with my Iranian brothers and wished them a safe journey back to Tehran.
They are some of my dearest friends, the kindest people I have ever met (even the world famous good cheer and helpfulness of the Canadians would have to bow out of that race) and I love them dearly. Iran is not a shape on the map anymore for me, it is the amazing homeland of my brothers and sisters, whom I have shared an unlikely and surprising long friendship.
Only days ago I noticed that we were flying over Iran and even over Tehran on Turkish Airlines flight 1070 from Istanbul to New Delhi. I strained to catch a glimpse of it, but it was shrouded in darkness. I contented myself with a prayer and a recommitment of my promise to my friends to visit them in Iran.
“After the revolution” they would always say. Can you listen to Radiohead in Iran? “After the revolution”. Do you think we can have a rainbow gathering in Iran? “After the revolution”. This was always said with great certainty, with a knowing and patient smile. Like saying, after sunrise.
What is happening there grips me, worries me. But that is nothing compared to the great risk that all my many iranian friends are surely taken. they all told me that Ahdeminijab would be gone soon. the election was in a few days. I thought I was sending them home to a new and more hopeful Iran. Instead they are returning to chaos.
I share all this about myself to humanize this. Doubtless if you are reading this you are my friend or family, or maybe someone who just got a little hooked on our crazy life. I am a human being, I suffer and care and act stupid sometimes. I pray and breathe and like vanilla ice cream and anime flicks.
They are human too. By knowing a few of their stories, I see our connection, how they like Radiohead as much as I do, even though they have to listen in secret. They are human beings, believe it or not.
And they are dying. They are being beaten. They are standing up. they are fighting and informing and trying with all that is in them to make their voices heard. So thats what I can help them do, be heard.
follow on twitter here
BEWARE! - Incredibly graphic video, but its much worse to live it than to only have to see it.
So what can you do?
get informed, follow the news. http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/middle_east/8106507.stm and many others.
Get on twitter and offer survival info if you have it. Many useful things have been posted to help the iranians, like not using oil based skin products as it binds chemical warefare and riot control agents to the body. To remove the marks put on their houses by the Basij to show they are traitors. To not be violent, to take care and know that people are praying for them. Follow #IranElection, #Neda, #Basij and several others.
If you are a praying person, pray for them. Write congress and ask them what they are doing about it. Sign internet petitions.
Mostly take notice. This will shift the entire middle east region and effect millions of lives, even yours. The revolution is here, it could end in freedom for many of the brutal oppresion of many. maybe you can make a difference.
Portraits: Both sides now
This one was first. A tiny indian girl and her friend accosted me on the road and demanded that I take a photo of them. I noticed the stylish tribal piercing in her nose and decided to comply.
Not to be out divafied, her friend also applied her pressure and got one too.
if you see these two on a road in india, run, they are unstoppable.
Of course the story is that they then turned around and demanded that I model for them. errrr..OK. click
Turns out she is good photographer, I dont think i have a picture of myself that I can stand besides this one. thanks Poojah!
snip snip snip…
…children disgorging themselves from the village school in a cheering smiling wave, shouting Obama when i tell them i am from america. they are awestruck. so am i…
…sublime dulcimer music in istanbul, an entire street filled with bewitching turkish instruments. the resonant and sweet chumbush saz, the unearthly arabic flute called the ney, ornate ouds, bazoukis, doubek, more exotic intruments than i could take in, i played them all…
…the taste of koska baklava, orange blossom honey…
…the whooping shouts of rainbow family, welcome home. my beloved turks and iranians. ahmed’s arms around me again. caught up in the most unlikely yet natural friendship i have ever had. mahmoud’s huge smile asking me how is Kenya…
…playing mandolin around the fire, real musicians take up the tune like they were born for it. everyone dances…
…praying in my tent, my small fire waiting to be lit, a rich solitude speared through with pangs and thoughts of my family…
…walking in fethiye, i notice giant greco roman tombs carved into the hillside. amazingly beutiful and enormous. i have never even heard of them. anywhere else they would be a national treasure. here its another in an endless series of amazing ruins. we sat in a 2000 year old ampitheatre and i could almost hear them shouting…
…i sat where kai and i had ice cream. the sticky and richly flavored turkish kind, gelato vs taffy. i thought of my boy…
turkey. what can i say? i love it here. i miss my family, we had an amazing time. it was the doorway into our new life. One year ago we left america.
Climbing Truind:Rocky Balboa vs Kid A mashup
My son hiked 11 hours to conquer a mountain. I have that kind of unabashed man-pride in him that he did something very physical. He is a very cerebral and emotional kid, but seems to be able to turn a switch on and accomplish very physical things with surprising ease. I am sure I could not have done it at his age.
And here’s a dad confession. To us dads, kids are a kind of handy experiment always in within arms reach. Heres a sample of our thinking. How many stairs could he jump down and land without a fracture? If he sits on my feet like this, and I kick-thrust as hard as I can, like this, how far will he go? Yes, he’s ready to carry his own backpack through the airport, he’s been walking for weeks now.
No one ever wonders which parent tossed the kid into the lake to teach him how to swim. But, let’s remember that it was also the dad plucked the coughing and grinning kid out to tell him how good he did, how proud he was, and sometimes you even might get a swimmer out of your experiment. I’m not saying its right, or even legal, but it happens.
True to form I envited my son to take a eleven-hour hike up a very tall mountain. I honestly did not know if he could do it, but I was sure it would coat his tiny chest with hard won hairs if he did it. I knew we could always come down at any time, and I practiced my speech. It went something like, you really tried hard, I am proud how hard you tried, we will do it next time. Chest hairs would have to wait.
But He more than conquered. I couldn’t believe it. He sometimes groans when he has to climb home from Bagsu, 15 minutes straight up. Not that I blame him, it a ticker grabber for sure. But given the chance, he gave the Himalayas a serious smack down. When he got tired, he just looked up to the top and kept going. Sometimes you have to give a kid a big enough challenge to call up his true reserves.
Anyway I am as proud as a dad can be. I am amazed by him. What will he become I wonder? What will this life traveling the world and putting mountain ranges underfoot impart to him? I am not at all sure, but let’s see.
more pics anyone?
Delhi Adventure with Kid A
What do you do when your kids are globe trotters? Make your own discovery channel piece of course. Here is a discovery channelesque thingy I whipped up for the kids. Turns out iMovie is about as easy as they say. The kids loved it by the way.
A very fascinating book about delhi that i am reading now is called City of the Djinns, by William Darymple. I had already read The Last Mogul by the same author and loved it. It really makes sense of one of the most bewildering and wonderful places on earth. Check it out if you get the chance.
Losing a camera bag in delhi, trust 101.
So it turns out Delhi is an amazing place for a lot of fun things. Here’s a modest sampling of possibilities….
- Seeing layers of entire civilizations tossed like a salad and driven over.
- Rat Watching. It’s like bird watching, only not as colorful.
- Catching glimpses of zoo animals walking around a city, attached to various modes of transportation.
- Being caught up in some random celebration and forced to dance by a large crowd of men.
- Drinking orange juice by the road that taste like salty kool-aid with a dash of foot sweat added.
- A terrifying ride the ubiquitous, wonderful, polluting, buzzing box of wonder, the auto-rickshaw.
- A great place to lose expensive camera gear.
If you don’t know what a rickshaw is, imagine a weed-whacker with wheels. Pop-up a yellow dome tent and staple it on top of the weed-whacker. Put a license plate and a meter on it and you are ready to go. The auto-rickshaw is a symbol of this country, infused with all the zany personality of my beloved India.
But that day I stood there gaping at a vast churning sea of auto rickshaws with horror. My bag was gone. Yes the same bag cradled carefully on the overnight bus in my sleep. The bag I has sweated over, watched over, cunningly hidden in piles of clothes when away from home. It holds the only thing we have ever really invested on earth. If it were and egg, I would actually have sat on it and pecked anyone who got too close. It was my camera bag, and yes, in a way my baby was inside. I left it sitting in the back seat of a rickshaw.
India had stolen my baby. OK that’s dramatic. But inside the bag was is an array of lenses, all collected over the last six years, my two flashes, various modifiers and goodies that make the thing work, make money for you occasionally and to capture this crazy life you are living.
I told my wife, her and kids started to pray. Right there on the pavement at a crowded intersection on the P block of Connaught Place, New Delhi. Honestly I had better things to do. I needed to mill around and look important. You know like I was doing something about it.
I ran over to the dilapidated rickshaw stand populated by pan-chewing men. Do you know that rickshaw I just took? I left a bag in it. Do you know that guy? NO, how can I find him? He was an Indian guy, with black hair…
I look out a the seething intersection, looking like all the bats in hell have just been released for a foray. I feel very calm and hollow. Its just gone, this is futile.
One boss gestures for me to come over. I know he is a boss because his shirt and pants are the same color and he carries himself as like prime minister in miniature. With his pan filled mouth and his imperial bald spot, he listens for all of four seconds to my story and declares confidently that it is no problem. He does not explain beyond this. What’s in the bag? Camera? Costing how much? Yes yes, just wait. No problem.
Men begin to mill about like me, asking questions, arousing interest, prompting scratched heads, banding together and moving around. Like some runaway chemical reaction, the thing grew. Soon people were milling around importantly just like me. I almost started to hope. But then it seemed to fizzle. People returned to their posts, sympathetic heads were wagged.
The problem was, no one knew him or his cell number, and he was an independent driver. The boss on this corner could not locate him. There was no description beyond a guy with a rickshaw, which narrowed it down to a million or so. They knew he had just given a ride to a large black guy with hair like Bob Marley. Even the seemingly unflappable boss sent an emissary over to tell me that sometimes, driver is coming back, but sometimes driver is not coming back. He held up his hands helplessly.
I realize that something like this almost had to happen, I have a family to take care of, its very different from when I was here before. You are thinking about the likely hood of a whole new host of ways that your kids could be injured, kidnapped, lost in the shuffle, trampled by animals. You find yourself with vivid and sordid visions that come unbidden; your kids being sold at an auction down the alley, your wife abducted, your passport gone, and you being forced to drive a rickshaw and chew pan for the rest of your life. While guarding against this impending disasters, your attention wanders. Off your camera equipment sails without so much as a goodbye.
I finally decided to try praying. You may not know this, but I have a hard time praying for “things”. Praying is great, i love it. But begging for just more stuff, like better parking spots, and new clothes, a nice car, or almost any other material thing makes me a little uncomfortable.
It doesn’t seem right sometimes. I am a westerner with privilege, and by world standards there is little I lack. My children are healthy and there is food on the table. Now I’m going to waste air asking God to please sir could you return something my stupid lack of attention cost me. All the while prisoners are not free, while hunger still kills, women and children are marginalized, while oil is still king, and so on and so forth. The endless litany of global injustices that I would have to stand in line with holding my little request.
I prayed anyway. But even while I prayed for the “thing”, my mind wandered out to my whole life, out to how vulnerable I am. Of how vulnerable I have made myself by coming here. Losing the camera became a symbol of my own fragility. It brought into sharp relief all the other things and people that could be taken from me, and how easily they would disappear into the turbid sea of unknown, like a rickshaw slipping into the river of uncaring honking riotous Delhi traffic. I thought about how India could swallow us whole without noticing.
It started to dawnon me, slowly at first, then expanding quickly and taking me over entirely. I started to trust. In moments like this, standing on a corner in a distant country, with no one around who knew me or cared, trust is all you have. Its all you ever have, but you don’t always notice.
A faith as a system of beliefs, is light years away from “faith”, a trust between two conscious beings. Its like the difference between pen pals and conjoined twins.
Trust is not magic or hocus-pocus. Faith can be talked about that way, manifesting things with intention, faith that twist the arm of the whole universe until it cries uncle. As if faith were chips that the divine had to cash in on like a overgrown casino teller.
But faith like that is a parlor trick, and real trust is life itself. The thing was, I knew that I would probably not get the camera back. I knew that the same God who gives could take as well. But the trust nourished me all the same. I trust that the same mind and hands that spun out the nebulae and galaxy clusters, that had preserved life in my premature little body at birth, that had won me over completely in my teens, that had given me more than anyone could reasonably ask for could be thanked and loved no matter what happened to my “things”.
Then, impossibly, improbably, a single rickshaw buzzed out of the maelstrom and aimed straight at me. I swear the afternoon light filled it from behind and made it look like a heavenly chariot. The driver was looking non-chalant as only a Delhi wallah can. Infinitely cool and relaxed exactly as if he were not in the middle of someone’s shining vision.
My bag was in his hand. He told me to check and make sure everything was there. I also checked his back for wings. He buzzed off before I could offer him anything and didn’t even ask. I was left dumbfounded on the street corner. The boss sauntered over, fully vindicated and looking like he was one step closer to being elected. See, no problem!!
In the end I love both God and India a smidgeon more. India because it is so much larger that me I feel like a child again, and God because trust is there and growing. By these little degrees, that trust is woven, wonder is fed, the whole wide and wacky world is a little more dear.
Just one last note to the tiny sermonizer in all of us. The moral of the story is not, trust real hard and you will get your stuff back. That’s just silly. But as it turned out, it was a nice ending now wasn’t it?
Portraits
I need to borrow your eyes. Don’t worry, I don’t mean pluck them out, suspend them in a briny solution and air-mail them to India. Although honestly if you did that I would be impressed in a simultaneously horrified kind of way.
Truth is, I need to work on improving my portrait photography, and it just occurred to me how you could help and have fun along the way.
OK so here’s how. I’m going to post some portraits I’m currently doing and you’re going to help me see them through your eyes. You are allowed to fawn or flame as you see fit, any comment is fair game. You get the picture (pun intended).
So walking along the road in Naddi, when we happened upon this girl…
How does this photo make you feel? does it communicate anything. too cliche? let ‘em fly.
Proof
OK so quickly, here are some pics. Pictures in a blog are hardly remarkable, but you have to get this part, even having my camera in my hand is a miracle.
Next post I will tell you the harrowing story of how I lost my camera into a sea of rickshaws in the most zany, wild, and bizzare cities in the world. But for now, just pics.
So here are the himilayas, one of the many views hiding around McCloed Ganj.
The view when we arrive, I just pulled out my camera and went to the roof.
Yaya at home in the mountains. Apart from the annoying tendency to bleat loudly when startled, being part goat has its benefits for a little girl. Like the absolute lack of fear on sheer cliffs.
Traveling companions, playmates, family, they are alot to each other. For those who wonder, your kids just might love traveling with you.
Thanks for following, I did not shake as many readers as I thought I might with my six month juke. Of course It doesnt hurt that my wife has such an amazing blog over at (shameless plug alert) jouneymama. Blessing all.
Snake-men, cheesecake and the conundrum of child labor.
Don’t think for a minute that I haven’t noticed the six month gap in posting. I took a tiny break from anything and everything that wasn’t Goa. It became a kind of chrysalis for me, a place of transformation. Only with dolphins and felafel and beaches inside of it. Now that I am in North Inida, I’m all better, and bursting with things to say.
Rather than try to catch everyone up, I will just forge ahead as if nothing happened. I might do flashbacks.
Let’s test a theory. I am told that post are more interesting if you add a picture…
Interested yet? Hey I know, amazing things are going on all around me and all I can manage to show you is a thinly veiled attempt to show off my left bicep. What did you expect, me giving the Dalai Lama a noogie?
By now, surely I have shaken off all but the most tenacious readers. Hats off to you if you are reading this.
So anyhoo, today met a man who’s spiritual master was evidently a 115 year old were-snake. He showed me a picture of a scruffy wild man in a polyester suit that was supposedly moonlighting as a cobra. This man assured me that my next two months would be lucky. I was doubtful.
I mean look, snakes are nocturnal so he would never get any sleep. Have you ever sat at the feet of a spiritual master who never slept? All mumbles. Plus he would begin each day with raw whole rats in his belly. Filling yes, but unsanitary. The whole story is full of holes.
The funny thing is, he would probably call me nuts for believing in Jesus. But although ironically enough, Christ could be reasonably called a were-God. Wow, I wonder if that connection has ever been made.
Just as I was shaking off that experience, I saw a fascinating and somehow tragic sight. It was a small girl balancing five cooking pots on her head, on a 8 foot tightrope, on the edge of a sheer cliff. Did I mention she was walking on a bike wheel? She did this with all the ho-hum and world weariness of a McDonald’s fry box stuffer, only infinitely more likely to be gruesomely killed from some small error.
I was torn between applauding and jouncing the rope so that she would tumble into my waiting arms, then whisking her off to the nearest school for a real chance in life. I would slap her parents on my way out, who were providing all the music but none of the safety measures you might expect from doting parents. But then, she had a skill, and the whole family was using it to put food on the table. Who am I to judge them? In the end I smiled at her and gave them some insignificant amount of rupees.
This is the constant pressure of India, the vast and maddening unknowing. What is a person of conscience to do? People are suffering around you on an unimaginable scale, and you buy a shirt and walk on by.
Do you boldly pray on the spot when a 15 year old boy shows you his infected burnt and shriveled arm? Do you give money to lepers but not shoe-shiners? What about a shoe-shining leper? Do you organize a trash pickup when the neighbors will just lay down an even more shockingly destructive layer of wrappers in a week?
Who the heck are you anyway? Some kind of western-born savior coming to snap your fingers over slums, wave your fancy magic wand over heaps of plastic, put your finger on a thousand lips crying for food and make it all dissapear?
Maybe you are. Or maybe you should try to be more humble. Maybe you should run out and get a degree, or join an organization that is already doing it. Maybe you should flip your lid and start shouting wild-eyed in the squares about the high cost of plumbing (seen that one). After years coming to India, I still have these questions myself.
The only thing I can do is face the mountain of suffering cascading down and not really know. I dont know, but I care. You keep that part alive. You feed it with small victories, you encourage yourself to care beyond your means. You try things that may be wrong. You ask questions, you try to be patient. Above all, you keep it human sized, bite sized. Love the people in front of you. When in doubt, err on the side of kindness.
In other news, I enjoyed a nearly credible slice of cheesecake this morning, quite an impressive feat for this part of the world. For reference I once ordered a cheeseburger and was served (with some aplomb, as I remember) a large round ball of cheese balanced just so between two pieces of wheat bread. Really in comparison, the cheesecake was more than acceptable.
Monks milled around on the road below as I bit into my almost cheesecake, apparently free enough from their busy schedule of seeking enlightenment to pose in pictures, try on sunglasses, chase crows with a slingshot, and pop into grimy internet joints. What a place to go people watching. People are everything.
That is exactly why I had a wave of gratefulness for facebook just yesterday, which has put me in touch with a lot of people I have known for years and years, but have lost touch with. Yes facebook is somewhat trite and pithy, and granted the format is not conducive to much depth. But I happen to need all my friends now, from all the various unreconciled and misshapen parts of my life as a sojourner. Not using it now would be like a starving man refusing to eat a piece of bread because its a bit thin. Gimme another slice!
I am especially thankful for my family, all the Bragg and Johnson branches that I swing from. I love you more than I let on, even if I’m always off on my own thing. Ahh but you knew that already.
Wow, what a word-a-thon. Stopping now:)
I had fun, how about you?
Ode to a Sister-in-Law
This post is about Lara, dear Lara, my sister-in-law. It is a kind of penance for not writing many posts (or any posts if you are a stickler) on this blog in more than two months. However I assure you it is completely heartfelt and as honest as I could make it.
Because when you stop to think about it, the single most astoundingly wonderful person you know is not Barack Obama. He’s wonderful, don’t get me wrong. But surely you can understand that after the maelstrom of media attention and the fawning crowds have dissipated, there will inevitably come a quiet and profound realization that the most important person in recent memory is living out her amazing life in Vancouver British Columbia. Although there are always a few doubters, I can say confidently that she is, in her own way, saving the universe.
Although I really don’t have to argue the point of her value to us as a species (because many of us know it in our bowels), it is nice to remind ourselves once in a while. Just consider the following nifty facts.
- The title of the popular children’s book of “Where the Wild Things Are” was originally penned as “Places Lara Lived and Partied” and is still doggedly called that by the author.
- When asked what it feels like to be a greatest thinker of the age, Noam Chomsky somewhat grumpily replied, “I have no idea, go ask Lara!”. Lara was 18 months old at the time.
- She’s pretty handy with a switchblade
- The pop-eyed face of her pet dog Brodie. Imagine her constant surprise at her good luck in being able to live with Lara.
- When Lara was born, the planet Jupiter grew another spot just so that it could gaze at her with two eyes. To the surprise of many scientists, the Cassinni satellite distinctly recorded the word “Golly!” emanating from somewhere near the planet’s core at the moment she emerged.
- Just last week several high ranking monks approached the dalai lama and asked if they could rename nirvana “Laravana”, to their surprised he had already done so.
- Look who she married. (Rae’s brother, Matty.) He can finish a rubik’s cube so clearly the man is no fool.
- She has promised to come and visit us in Goa next year. The coconut tress almost pissed thier barky pants when they heard. All india awaits the honor.