Erkan's field diary

things...

Finally I called Nukhet Sirman, my M.A. advisor and chair of sociology at Bogazici University. Under normal conditions, we will have a brunch on Sunday and talk and gossip about lots of things. I am glad she invited me.

I hear gossips that my dean is now troubled with his mother.

I booked a round-trip plane ticket today: Istanbul-Houston Dec 16-25.

November 28, 2004

Happy new look, Erkan's field diary! When I was in Iran, I thought you could use that pattern of speech to acknowledge anything that was new, so I taught my students to say Happy new shoes, Happy new pen, etc. This was before I found out you do not acknowledge very many new things over here, and when you do it is nothing like that pattern. But still, Happy new look, Erkan's weblog (:

Nahal's SF report

I think this long and cool piece deserves a place for easier reading! Nahal, as I already hinted I have the same problem here.

So while everyone was trying to cope with wet and gloomy conditions of their lives in different parts of the world, I was enjoying my solitary honeymoon in sunny San Francisco! I saw the Hilton picketers in person, a small group of mostly Asian but also some Hispanic people, carrying placards that said "locked out" and banging on buckets with their sticks well into the night whenever somebody crossed the line and saying "shame on you". I stayed in my humble youth hostel across the street from Hilton, where I slept in a bunk bed and met world travelers in a relatively clean commons. Europeans bored me with their excessive and repetitious criticism of the US (as if they are not the ones who ignore human rights violations repeatedly in the same countries the US invaded in fear of losing their business opportunities) and I met a cute guy from Israel who sort of fled from me quietly when he learnt I was from Iran! I didn't blame him, but I wish it could be different. I talked with a Londoner for many hours, who told me at the end that I was the first Iranian he ever met and "but you look like a normal person"!

My other conference (Middle Eastrern Studies) went well, though I didn't attend that many sessions. Much to my relief and surprise, the pickets ended a few minutes before my conference started at Hyatt, so no shame on me. I met a Stanford Ph.d student who is doing an ethnography of Iranian weblogs and websites as new sites of dissent against the Iranian government in the Iranian diaspora. Some of what she was doing overlapped with what I am doing or was planning to get into later, so at least now I know. She, too, however, indulged in the nowadays fashionable Bush-bashing and America bashing in the academia so much that I almost felt sick. You might think that I'm a little neocon myself now after living in Washington for some 5 months, but I'm just appalled when I see these people criticize the US for fingerprinting them or searching their suitcases like this is the most humiliating thing that ever happened to them whereas their own government could jail them and kill them upon arrival in Tehran airport! I know that the US's treatment of its foreign guests (nowadays mostly Middle Easterners) deserves criticism, it really does, but can we be silent about the way we are treated as citizens of our own country, where we are not foreign, where we have full rights, where we supposedly belong? Can we be silent about the fact that we chose to live, work, or study in the US as foreigners instead of living, working, and studying in our own country as citizens? This should not, of course, stop us from criticizing the US where criticism is due, after all injustice is injustice no matter where it takes place, where it is common practice or where it is at least prohibitted by law. But I do find it appalling when I see some of these Iranian academics and intellectuals join the American left in what is considered cool and alternative and so forth, as if this is the worst kind of injustice they have encountered in their lives! They say "we sat here and criticized the Iranian government for 25 years; what came of it? Now we are citizens of this country; it is time for us to stand up for our rights here, to have a voice here, to question what matters to us in our everyday lives here instead of what happens in a country to which we probably will never return." I see their point; I think it is a great point in Iranian diaspora discourse when they try to shift their focus from their distant and nostalgia-ridden home to their current home; I think it is a necessary move, it is a great move. But I still cannot live peacefully with the idea that their experience and position as American citizens can suddenly be the same as an American citizen who has no memory or no recent history of life in completely different conditions, somebody for whom the Bush administration is the first and only form of fascism and dictatorship and terror they have ever experienced. If you have lived under bombs in Iran and lost your beloved friends and family members to execution and have had to flee your country through the mountains, can you suddenly leave all that behind and perceive of fascism, dictatorship, and terror in a way that is not accented, spiced, in any way affected by those experiences? Is it suddenly politically incorrect, uncool, and "right wing" for you to criticize Afghanistan, Iraq, Iran, and Palestine for the injustice they do to their citizens just because the US has now invaded them or is supporting their enemies? Sorry for all this ranting, but I'm really fed up with the way things go in the academia and among intellectuals these days (well, I've been mostly in contact with the Iranian side of things recently, but) that you cannot criticize the victims wheareas often the worst forms of brutality are to be found among the victims. I'm terrified when I see these people seem to think Khomeini, Saddam, and Osama ben Laden make more sense and are nicer people than the Bush administration. Anyhow!

 Comments

WOW, Erkan, I'm humbled and flattered! Thanks for being so hospitable and making me feel invited and at home in your virtual room (: Yey, I was an entry!