View from Iran

Amsterdam June 17, 2003

“They should just kill us, this is not life we have in Iran,” said my sister in law couple of days ago when I asked her how things are going.

A lot of our friends think “ we are cool and crazy” to go to Iran now. They all may be right, but we are going. I can’t wait to get there so I can see with my on eyes what is happing. I asked my brother if I can go and see a demonstration, and his answer was funny in a way. He said, “You can bring all of your friends with you. We need all the help we can get.”

For those of you, in the west and America who think there is a lot of diffrence between the so-called reformers and hard liners, you should consider this: Mehdi Karrubi, speaker of the reformist parliament, said that differences "among the children of the revolution are differences of taste but they are all united against the enemy...." (Christian Science Monitor)

Reading this I feel good because I always said that there were not fundamental diffrences between reformists and hardliners in Iran. I also don’t belive that reformists are capable and willing to make a diffrence in Iran. The only way Iran can have a future is a secular government. So-called reformists in Iran are only intersted in re-branding the Islamist republic of Iran. It is not enough anymore.

I am glad I am leving today, because I don’t need to go around like a crazy man shopping for my family. I can’t NOT buy people gifts, and if I do, which I did, I make myself sick to my stomach. This time I told every \body I would not bring anything, which my family finds as no problem at all ( I wish one of them would say something like why did you bring this or that brand and not that brand so that I would have a good reason not to buy them anything at all.). I know one thing for sure, going to all this shops in Amsterdam convinced me that there is nothing wrong with the Dutch economy, because the shops were full and sometimes I had a really hard time to pick the cheap things because somebody just take them from my hand. Maybe shopping is all Dutch women do when they get their first kids because there were a lot of young girls with babies in the shops.

This shopping experience gave me a brand new idea: if I am not successful in anything I will open a company for helping Iranians do their shopping before they go to Iran. But this is maybe not a good idea since we iranians don’t want to pay for services. Like you, we like to get everything free.

Okay I need to call my bank, visit city hall, do the rest of my packing, and get to the Airport. You should see how much bags we are taking with us. It is just so stupid. Hey I had to buy 37 people gifts.

T says that those bags will be filled with pistachios on the way back. She is a pistachio fanatic. Not artwork, not rugs, not books, not gifts for friends, or dirt from Iran.

What a lovely wife I have.

Wish me good luck.