Meeting the other . . .
Saturday morning I will begin the longest journey of my life. The journey is not only long in hours, and miles but it crosses elevated boundaries of culture and religion and political rhetoric that seem to grow higher by the day. It’s a long flight, but in a way it feels more like walking through a wall. What will I find on the other side? Will the apparently impenetrable barrier of hyperbole and political polemics yield to my gentle initiative? I will know when the answers emerge.
Saturday evening I will fly out of Kennedy Airport, headed for Tehran Iran with a Fellowship of Reconciliation Civilian Peace Delegation. Fellowship of Reconciliation has sponsored 4 previous Civilian Peace Delegations to Iran, 2 of them earlier this year. Previous delegates speak of a friendly, generous people, modern cities, ancient historical sites, shrines to Islamic saints, and to poets in a land where ancient Persian culture has blended with Islam over the course of a millennium to create a unique society.
This is truly something to look forward to. I am committed to blogging from there if I can reach this site. I am thinking it will be possible, but until I arrive, I cannot be certain. It will be a relief to talk about what I saw today, and with whom I conversed. Where did I go and what did he or she say. Immediacy and the relating of ordinary events provide a nice feeling of stability in a world governed by the abstracts of fear and desire, greed and hunger for power, and all practiced in a vast sea of empty marketing strategies and packaged dreams and simple masks covering deep unresolved social momentums.
In honor of the occasion, I will refrain from elaborating on my cynicism towards Pakistan’s glorious new future, free at last from the military dictatorship, now that the dictator, after first imposing martial law and repopulating the legal system with a more accepting staff, has finally removed his uniform. And, I will resist inferring that the Annapolis meeting is a PR stunt without substance, though I was much impressed to hear Ehud Olmert point out that if the 2 state solution fails and a South Africa – like mêlée ensues, the result will be the end of Israel. It would have been nice if someone figured this out a little sooner, but perhaps some progress can occur now.
There is so much going on in the world, and in the Middle East. But, I am going to let go and focus on Iran, in the here and now, for a couple of weeks. I am going to get on the plane and go to see the real situation. It would please me a lot to take as many people as want to come along with me. I hope the path from Iran to this blog is open so I can share with those who are curious and would like to know what it is like over there. I will arrive at midday on the 3rd, and may not write until the next day. If you have comments or questions, sign up and submit them.