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The Unitarian Church of All Souls • 1157 Lexington Avenue • New York, NY 10021 email: peacetaskforcenyc@yahoo.com
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To view archived materials, please click on one of the links below: |
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THE HUMAN FACE OF IRAN
January 27, 2008 At 1:00 p.m., in Reidy Friendship Hall, the Peace Task Force hosted a slide show in continuation of the effort to enhance our understanding of Iran and its culture. This event was presented by Ann and Ahmad Shirazi, who had appeared two weeks before in connection with the film Children of Heaven, and Ellie Ommani. Mr. Shirazi is a film editor who grew up in Iran. He came to the United States in the early 1960s and is the only one of his family of 150 to 200 members to come here. Ann Shirazi has worked as a social worker and is now a full-time peace activist. Ms Ommani and her husband, Ardeshir, who was unable to attend, are both retired school teachers and founded the American-Iranian Friendship Committee, whose mission is to promote "trust, mutual understanding, and peace between Americans, on one hand, and Iranians living in Iran and abroad, on the other." Most of the program consisted of the Shirazis' slide show of two and three generations of Iranians, taken during family visits to Iran, in three cities: Tehran, the capital; Shiraz, known as the city of flowers and the poets Saadi and Hafez; and Esfahan, the ancient capital of Iran with its historic Ali Quapu bazaar and beautiful domed mosques. The audience was treated to views inside people's homes as well as outside. In Iran, it is typical for four generations to live together and to socialize at home. Thus, they have large living rooms with little furniture beyond carpets on the floors and a television set. Traditional families eat on the floor on a cloth, which a man lays out and cleans; while the younger generation tends to eat at table and chairs, as Westerners do. Another furnishing people tend to have in the cities is a refrigerator, and women cook immense quantities of food, a lot of which they give away. Outdoors in Tehran, there is much construction and air pollution, but flowers everywhere, including on the outside steps to people's homes. We got glimpses of a glitzy shopping mall and of the old bazaar, hundreds of years old, as well as of the small ones that are in every neighborhood. These bazaars carry primarily dried fruit, grains, tea, dates, nuts, rice. There are also many bookstores and newsstands carrying English-language newspapers. English is taught in the schools. For entertainment, Iranians picnic a lot -- as shown in slides of one picnic with a bonfire on the shore of the Caspian Sea, as well as of another in a cemetery on and near the gravestones of the million young men killed in the Iran-Iraq War of the 1980s. Iranians visit the tomb of a classic poet, such as Hafez, much as we go to a museum here. Ms Ommani's slide show, much shorter than the Shirazis', was accompanied by music and featured a lively conversation with a young Iranian woman in a headscarf who, speaking of Iranians and Americans, declared, "All humans are the same." In regard to the United States's aim of occupying Iraq in order to bring it democracy, she said, "If my house is dirty, I don't ask a neighbor to clean it. I do it myself." Among the questions after the show someone pointed out that the pictures shown were largely of the middle class, and wondered whether there are any poor in Iran. Mr. Shirazi said that there are both extremely rich people and poor ones, and that his large family runs the gamut. Ms Shirazi noted that poverty isn't visible on the street, and the government issues coupons for cheaper food. To the suggestion that it would be desirable to initiate an exchange between children in the two countries, Ahmad Shirazi said that while Iran has made overtures for joint cultural activities, our government has refused them. To a question about the Iranians' freedom, Mr. Shirazi stated, "The problem of our world is government." Pointing out that, as here, there is a distinction between the government and its people, he observed that so far Iran is not attempting to change our government. As for Ahmadinejab, the president of Iran, even if Iranians don't like his policies, they defend the government. |