23 August 2010

Imagine a college campus. Imagine the turnover a college campus endures every year. Imagine a place with the same turnover, occurring gradually instead of in "peristaltic waves" (one of my favorite ways to describe college population flow by one of my favorite writers, Lorrie Moore). And you've imagined my environment.

And things to do around here flow like the people that do them. Initiatives come and go - but they less often just go and more often and grow and evolve. If there is one thing the Baha'i youth here are good at, it's exploring their world. (The truth is they are good at many things.) I say all this to explain that it all makes it very difficult for those of us who neglect to write home for a while to sum that while up.

Since I last wrote, I basically gave up on my efforts to learn Hebrew. If I wanted to give adequate attention to learning a local language, Arabic would probably be more useful if you balance the environment I am living in (having lots of Arab Christians) and the international utility factor (as well as the "trying to deconstruct the biggest culture clash of our time" factor). The fact is that after Spanish, which I am always working on thanks to my friends and students, what I should concentrate on learning is French. Now that my struggles to read the letters of a foreign alphabet have subsided, I know I'll be amazed and pleased with the progress I can make with a language that's so closely related to English and Spanish. I need to nurture the investment I made and try to become more useful to my office.

Now I'm not sure what that investment will do for me, even if I manage to render myself fluent in French one day. It's never bad to have another way of expressing yourself and another way of looking at the world. My main purpose in going to study French was to make myself more versatile and valuable as a translator. Talking to people around here and at home who have (or know people who have) made their living, partly made their living, or tried to make their living as a translator, I realize that being a professional translator means scraping together a living assignment by assignment, and I realize that scraping together a living assignment by assignment is not so appealing to me.

The more I look at studying library science the more interested I am - I can see upfront why it's a stereotypically boring job, but I can also see the possibilities for really improving people's lives with good access to knowledge and good community programs. I like the balance I perceive between community time and quality time in many possible settings. It seems like a good match for me given my undying lifelong love for books and reading. It would be a dream to work in a community with a large Hispanic population and improve communications on both sides of the language divide. There is also a conservation side to library science and that may actually be more interesting to me - I've been volunteering in the conservation office since May and I am really enjoying it - it's like making art with a very practical, satisfying purpose. While it's probably a trivial factor I find myself thinking that conservation may be the only branch of library science that involves physical books within a couple of decades, and I would prefer that computer screens did not monopolize my professional life. Anyway, ultimately, the good news now is that I seem to be gaining momentum and direction. Some friends and friends-of-friends do translation projects on the side and prefer them that way because then they're actually a treat.

Anyway, I've also been trying to study the writings of the Baha'i faith more. That was at least half of my specific purpose in coming here and I only seem to be beginning to focus on fundamentals. It's just so easy and tempted to get taken into this and that activity and initiative because my time here will come to an end sooner rather than later, and all learning is learning. My understanding of the faith has deepened considerably since I arrived, but the most important advancements I've made in this regard have not been in things like an appreciation of the history of the faith or an understanding of its teachings, but my attitude towards it and towards faith in general. Now I appreciate its purpose and significance much more, my interpretation of the whole world is less foggy, and I am learning to take nothing for granted.

I've also been dabbling in capoeira and liking it. It's like yoga, dance, and martial arts all blended and harmonized with music. Hopefully I can stick with it because I've decided I can no longer play tennis - the "free" (or free so far, anyway) courts are nearly always occupied and the courts that can be booked but cost money are $6 per person, per game. Even if I buy a membership and play once a week the cost is the same. Thank God at least one country in the world (America has its head right about how much outdoor tennis courts should cost to use (nothing). So no way am I going to pay that. I can still run and so I am but...have you ever tried to run in a place that feels like a giant sauna? Let me tell you, don't, if you can avoid it. For the same reason it will be a couple of months before I venture on another hike. But capoeira has great potential for the whole year.

17 August 2010

Before I talk about my own life over the past few weeks I just want to share my thoughts on something that has been occupying my mind:

http://news.bahai.org/story/786

Long story short: Baha'is are the largest religious minority in Iran with about 300,000 recorded adherents and, it is estimated, many more who do not openly declare their faith out of fear. They face significant persecution and in the years shortly after the Iranian revolution in 1979 many Baha'i leaders were killed. After a trial that has been drawn out over more than two years, seven Baha'i leaders in Iran have been sentenced to 20 years in prison for alleged crimes such as espionage for Israel, "spreading corruption on earth", etc. Those are the basic facts. What bothers me most is not the 20 year prison sentence, but a comparison to this:

http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/middle_east/8000522.stm

And how the stories compare. People who followed the international news even a little in April 2009 knew her name and her case. Roxana Saberi is a American journalist, and, pardon me for saying this, nobody important. The 7 Baha'i leaders looked after a community of 300,000. Many of them have had the opportunity to leave the country but have chosen to stay. Roxana Saberi came to Iran from America and looked after herself, in between, according to her BBC profile, accumulating master's degrees. The Baha'is were falsely accused of various serious crimes. Roxana Saberi was charged with buying a bottle of wine and working without a valid license. The Baha'is were sentenced to 20 years in prison. Roxana Saberi was sentenced to 8 years in prison. There was such an uproar over Roxana Saberi's case that hers became a household name for a while, and, under enormous international pressure, the Iranian government set her free. Several public figures have condemned the sentencing of the 7 Baha'is, but "uproar" is not a word I would use to describe international response.

So what is the difference? One possible explanation is the nature of the accusations. Everyone can agree that punishing Roxana Saberi's supposed crimes with eight years in prison is ridiculous. People who don't know much about religion, or care about religious issues, might not realize that the allegations against the Baha'is have no basis in reality. But that seems unlikely given that most people in the west apparently feel that the Iranian government is a peculiar one. The best explanation I can think of is that Roxana Saberi was an American, or maybe more importantly, a westerner, in a country where westerners are vilified by the government as a source of moral and general corruption. And her imprisonment upset Americans (and/or westerners), because they believed that she was being imprisoned because she was an American. If Americans in Iran are being treated with injustice, that's one thing, but if Iranians in Iran are being treated with injustice, that's another.

Unfortunately it's already time for bed so I'll have to write about my life later.