The Lost Check

Categories: iran, bureaucracy

A friend of mine lost a blank check. First she called the bank to tell them. Then she went to the bank to give them an official, notarized letter for their files. It did not stop there… She had to get an official government letter as well…

I went to some government office/court today accompanying a friend who had lost a check and needed – I believe – an order to arrest anyone using that check. The offices were housed in a converted apartment building that had not been cleaned in god knows how long. The white walls were gray with dirt. The veins in the marble floors had been eaten away by something: maybe harsh cleaning fluid (the floors are probably cleaned once a month) or something else, who knows. The narrow stairways were packed with men neatly dressed in ill-fitting suits, sloppily dressed men in slippers and colorless collarless shirts, young men with big hair, dirty jeans, and bizarre t-shirts, women in black, soldiers, and police. Our task was to get about a million signatures so that we could, finally, get the warrant.

Well. Four signatures.

Each floor held a different surprise. It smelled like deodorant and unwashed men as we headed to the second floor.

On the second floor an older man sat on the floor with his head in his hands and one wrist sporting a loose handcuff. His accompanied soldier sat pitiless in a chair and watched while the man dry heaved into the nearby garbage can. Withdrawal? I think so.

After the second floor, we were sent to the first. "No, we used to sign these letters, but we don't anymore," a bearded man told us. "You have to go to the fourth floor."

We went up and waited outside a door. In front of us a man and a woman had their ears pressed against the door listening to the arguing going on inside the room.

"It's war," a well-dressed man told us. "Civil war."

We laughed.

"You just need a signature?" the man asks. My friend nods. "Go on in."

We go in. They are actually holding court or mediation inside the office. Chairs are set up facing the mediator/judge. A woman in a chador sits to his right. He is lecturing the four people sitting in front of him. We hand over our letter to a non-combatant behind a desk.

"Can you please get a signature quickly?" my friend asks.

"I'll call you," the man behind the desk says and ushers us back outside.

A fight breaks out inside, and we all move out of the way as the yelling spills out into the hallway. "Get out of here!" one of the plaintiffs yells at a young man in a t-shirt and loose-fitting jeans. A soldier follows them both.

After we get our signature, we are sent to another floor where a woman in a chador stamps the letter and sends us across the hallway to get stamps. "After that, go to the building across the terrace for the warrant." A tired man slowly slowly puts two stamps on the letter and then sends us for another signature. Here it smells like Iranian chicken sausages frying in fat (Hebrew National, where are you? What about selling kosher as halal?)

The judge who needs to sign the letter is holding court. "It will be about 20 minutes," we are told.

We wait. Court ends. The judge's door opens. We wait. We go back in the office. "Khanum [miss/ms/ma'am], you have only been here five minutes. I told you twenty."

We've been waiting at least 15 minutes by now. We go back out and wait. "Khanum, come in," the judge calls to us. We go in. He quizzes my friend, and then quizzes me. "Why did you come along?"

"We're friends."

"Where are you from?"

"America"

"What are you doing here?"

"My husband is Iranian."

"Oh…"

We go back out and wait. We wait. "See what it's like?" my friend says. "The judge works, but his employees do not. Government… This office is better than the tax office. When you go there, they just drink tea all day and tell you to wait."

The guy waiting next to us leans over to read our documents. He starts asking questions which my friend graciously answers while I think, "What business is this of yours?"

"Can you help this woman and her American friend?" the judge calls out.

A woman comes out of the office. "What did you say to him?"

"Nothing," my friend tells her.

She begins work on the warrant which she completes incorrectly and with great confusion. Her colleague redoes it for us. Forty minutes have passed.

"You see," the man says handing over my friend's document. "Twenty minutes. Exactly."

Paper play

I learned a new word today. The word for bureaucracy in Persian translates literally to “paper play.” Okay. What could be more pleasing than that?

A nation of hypocrites

What does enforcing an interpretation of religious beliefs on the unwilling do? It creates a nation of hypocrites.

What does enforcing an interpretation of religious beliefs on the willing do? It creates a minority of disgusted believers.
What believer needs or wants to be forced to believe? No one that I know of. It’s insulting.

We were in the home of a devout woman. She has been to Mecca 5 times. She can chant the Koran in a deep gravelly voice. I am certain that she is trying to die on a pilgrimage to Mecca. But boy does she resent the mullah-ocracy. I was a bit shocked by some of the things that were said about them.

It’s no real surprise though. The mullahs in Iran represent bureaucracy more than religion and where is there a people anywhere in the world who loves their bureaucrats?

June 20, 2003
Arak

I have seen more things in the last two days here in Iran than in 2 years in Amsterdam. I am definitely overwhelmed. I am also outraged. I am like the newscaster in the beautiful film called “Network.” I want to open the window of my mother's house and put my head out and scream, "I'm mad as hell, and I can’t take it any more!"

The state of the Islamic republic of Iran sucks.

This is the first time I am writing to you from Iran, so let me please say this:
this government is corrupt, unimaginative, and old-fashioned in the worst way. It is a powerful and growing cancer which forces its victims to give up first before it will take the last breath out of their bodies. Unfortunately a lot of Iranians like to be victims and are still waiting for god, in the form of Uncle Sam, to come and free them. They make the argument that Germany, Italy, Japan, and others were freed from evil governments with the help of Uncle Sam. We are not better than G I Joe. I have heard this argument from neo-conservatives in the US too.

Let me tell you one experience.

Yesterday we left the house around 10 am. We did this to change my Euros to Iranian money, Toman. It is now a good time for people who bring Euros here because the exchange rate is excellent. I pay 1 Euro and I get 958 Toman. With 5 euro I can have excellent food in very good restaurant in Tehran. Anyway, the first bank could not change the Euros because they did not have a machine to see if the Euros were good. We had to take a taxi and go to the other side of the town, to a very nice part of Tehran to exchange money. We went to Bank Melie Iran. The ugly long and square bank had a very long and rounded shape right middle of it which gave you the feeling that the number of customers in the bank was much less than there really were. After asking the director of the bank what we need to do, we get in line to exchange my Euros, There was no way to know where to go when you got in the lobby of the bank, no sign, and nobody to answer your questions. We waited there for almost 20 minutes before somebody came to ask if we needed help. We explained what we needed, and he gave us a form to fill in. He took the money and the form and left. After my nephew asked many times why we needed to wait so long for our money, the guy came back with the form in his hand and left it on the desk of the guy next to him and told us “okay he will take care of the rest.” We move to the next window. Hey we got it done. All we needed to do was to get our money. It took us another 2 hours to get the Iranian travelers checks. This process will take me only 10 minutes on a very busy day in any bank in Amsterdam. The lesson here is that you will not get any work done unless you beg or bribe.

You have to be super human to be able to stay cool and live under these conditions in Iran. Life in Iran will break you one way or another. It has its daily painful effect on my dearest people in the world: my family. I am in constant pain since I came here to see my family living this way. My 8 year old niece is wearing a veil, and when I said, "You are just 8 years old, and it is night, you don’t need that," she answered, "But my father gets upset if I don't wear it."

I know her father better than I know myself. There is nothing Islamic about him. He is just sick of protest. He has given up on changing his life, and I am not sure if he sees any changes for his kids. I am not sure how many people like him live in this country of about 67 million. I know this is what the hardliners in Iran want: to make you worth nothing, with no desire for a better life, no hope for change, and more importantly, no power to make change. I know you get stuck here, and you want to get out.

Football
I love football. In the last couple of days I have found out that I have a couple of things in common with my brothers, they all like to see football alone, without anybody in the room, No talking when there is football on TV. That is the way to watch football.

Football is great.
In Iran I hate football.

It is one of the best tools that the Iranian government has to keep Iranian men with their asses nailed to the ground watching. I saw France playing Colombia. The first 20 minutes was a video of the walls of stadium, but not people. That was probably because there were women in the audience who were not wearing the veil or something like that.

When I look the size of the stomachs of my family looking at the football games, which are bigger than the size of the TV they are watching, I tell myself that the Iranian government will stay here forever because of this wonderful sport. My brothers no everything there is to know about the football players. They know where they live, what they eat for breakfast, what they do for fun. They know all about their parents and where their parents live and what they eat for breakfast.

It is so sad to see all these big dreams go away. The other they somebody told me that we shouldn’t have revolution, because it will be a big and shocking thing. They give you so much bullshit about every player’s personal life and how much money they make that you don’t have to think of other things. I know for sure that this is one of the best ways the Iranian government has of keeping Iranians in line. A lot of us are hooking up to the TV box, so they don’t need to do anything good. Iranians are obsessed with football.

So fuck football in Iran.

Okay I need to calm done before my blood pressure goes as high as Mount Everest. I should stop taking about this. The next time I will be more positive. Help me god. Fuck. god…….