Reminiscence in Soap Water

A closet actress, she was good at playing a little girl. Maybe in her own imagination, away from the huff and puff of this world, she never really grew up.

The little chubby girl with frizzy hair runs around the house and sings a song, “One day, a Mr. rabbit walked into a dark tiny hole where a mouse lived…” He picks her up, kisses her meaty cheek and takes her for the nightly bath. While sitting on her little pink stool with her feet in the large pink bowl designated for her nightly feet-washing ceremony, she taps on her dad’s shoulder who is busy washing her feet in warm soap water before bed. He looks up with a smile. She asks , “Babyee, will you come to my house when I grow up and get married and wash my feet every night?”

The spoiled little girl that she is waits for a pleasing response. Her dad chuckles while massaging her little chubby feet and says, “You will always be my little angel. But, I won’t be able to wash your feet when you grow up, little princess!” She pulls her foot from his strong hands and screams, “ No, you have to! I order you to! You have to! You must!” Then she starts to cry and calls out her mom, “Mummy, he doesn’t want to wash my feet when I grow up. Go away! I hate you. You don’t love me!”

While drying her feet, he lowers his head and kisses her chubby foot. She kicks his face and says, “No, you don’t love me. You have to come to my house when I grow up and wash my feet if you love me!” She kicks him with his every gesture of love. “Mummy, he doesn’t love me!” she screams.

Her mom walks into the bathroom. “What are you two doing here? Why are you screaming at your dad? Shshshshsh!” her mom says annoyingly.

She starts to cry even more loudly as he takes her in his arms and walks to her bedroom. It is time for a bedtime story. “He doesn’t love me!” the little girl says with a shaky voice while looking at her mom.

Her mom walks closer to them, wipes off the tears from her chubby face and asks, “Why? What happened?”

She begins to cry again and says, “He says that he won’t come to my house to wash my feet when I grow up! He hates me.” Her mom begins to laugh and her father kisses her short frizzy curly hair.

“You are a princess”, he whispered in her ear as she puts her thumb in her mouth while staring at him and commandingly waiting for him to tell her the same old story: “Once upon a time, there was a lonely princess…”

Twenty and some years pass. “You don’t love me anymore!” she whispers into the air while sitting on the edge of the bed and staring at her dirty feet. She smiles…and, little else to report.

He was a Dog

He was a dog; pure and chaste. He was of the kind who had fallen in love once in his life and had lost that love due to shyness to express his feelings. Some call this quality of his a form of excessive pride. But, I think he is a chaste dog; a chaste dog whose morale is only fragile when it comes to politics. Once upon a time, he was a revolutionary. I do not recall in which place or year. I heard he was hanged once, but survived the execution by a mere coincidence the details of which I do not recall.

Such a handsome dog he is: fit and muscular, as white as a bridal dress of a virgin bride, stainless and with big curious eyes. He rarely barks and if he does, it is a gracious bark; one that has rhythm and commands respect. He looks seemingly indifferent to his immediate environment. But, he observes with the eyes of an eagle. He finds humans excessively boring and finds their ideas outdated and colorless. He especially hates those horrific animals, otherwise called humans, who violently show him affection as they pass by his owner and compliment the owner for her handsome dog. In particular, among the human race, he resents his owner. When his eyes meet hers, he conveys silent hatred and ridicules her when she misunderstands this revengeful glance as a sign of love and affection of the dog for her.

Her former lover called him disturbed. He thinks she was right. They only met once on the sidewalk when her owner was pulling her away from him. They fell in love on sight; or at least this is what he thinks. He thinks she was incredibly smart for detecting his disturbed soul on the spot. In fact, this might have been the reason for why he fell in love with her. Ever since, he embraces his own disturbed soul with pride as this is the only souvenir of that failed love extravaganza; as he calls it.

He does not recall when he was born a dog; he only speculates that it must have been when he faced the misery of his own revolution. He remembers giving a speech to a nation of sorts. He recalls millions of hopeful eyes staring at him in search of their prosperous future. He remembers killing them in the name of some glorious revolution of sorts. And, he remembers long evenings saturated with night letters, clandestine political lovemaking and glorious laughter filled with orgasmic fear of death and execution. He remembers dying and he remembers rising a hero who participated in bloody rebellions against his own revolution. But, nobody ever listened to him anymore.

He became a heroic statue glorified as a patriotic solider who lived and died for his own nation of sorts. And, once a hero, nobody cared about what he had to say anymore. He stood there with his lifeless body to represent death and cruelty in the name of some glorious revolution. They executed thousands in that square in front of his eyes and when he cried his tears rolled over his statue-body. Nobody ever noticed his tears, his screams, his regrets, his self-beatings and self-hatred. They only praised him and eventually when the time came they threw pebbles at his statue. He enjoyed the intolerable pain of the pebbles thrown against his statue-body beyond words. He remembered her say, “you are disturbed!” and he remembered that failed love extravaganza that had yet to happen.

He is not there anymore; wherever that was. He does not know where he is. In fact, the reason he does not escape the miserable life of his owner might be that he has no clue where in this world he is and he is afraid of getting lost; or at least this has been his excuse for staying around in the past years. “Such a handsome dog!” the owner’s neighbor disgustingly compliments him as she walks by.

Perhaps this is the Right Place to Start the Story..

Perhaps this is the right place to start the story. Right is such a funny word. But, you know what I mean, don’t you? Columbus Circle, New York City, Year 2011. I mean what other setting could be more typically authentic for the story of an Americanized immigrant than midtown Manhattan and its organized chaos? But, my story, this story, has very little to do with New York City. In fact, if anything this story is one of the loss of time and space altogether.

You know, I have lately started to like New York, because it makes me feel the very skin of the person who I feel I have grown to become: a lost exiled immigrant who looks more Americanized than anything else really perhaps. It is not like Washington DC where it gives me the illusion of one day climbing up the ladder of power with the help of my story and growing to become a serious American politician of sorts; a feeling that admittedly used to intoxicate me with one million dreams. It is also not like Cambridge, Massachusetts where I went to Harvard University and where one lives the illusion of being among the few intelligent minds of the world; a feeling that I admittedly embraced for some years. New York makes me feel like a commoner; even worse like an immigrant commoner who is going to have to start from point zero over and over again and never really reach the top or perhaps never really aspiring to reach the top. Now, I know I sound like an elitist woman who tries to resemble the sound of the masses. Don’t ask me why I have this feeling. I just somehow do. It could be the greatness of New York or somehow the invisibility that it grants the people or its particular rhythm. Whatever it is, it is only recently that I have begun to feel the the pulse of this town beating against mine or against millions rather. It is a rough feeling and an irritatingly honest one. It is like a man that does not know romance, but knows love, a man that does not know how to pamper you or rather does not think that pampering you is necessary, but knows how to love you better than all other men in the world or at least that is what you think.

Somehow sitting here today in my formal suit, waiting for work meetings and biting on a large slice of pizza while holding a second slice in my other hand, I feel the way I think I should have felt all these years: numb. I feel numb and therefore liberated. I feel I don’t belong to this place nor to any other place really. One tear drops from my left eye right on my ravaged slice of pizza. I blame it on the wind; the deceiving warm breeze of November that has been procrastinating in turning freezing cold.

I feel full. It is such a warm November day here in the city. I feel sleepy and lazy. I look at a homeless guy who is sleeping across the street and envy him for his deep sleep. It has been now almost a month that I have not been able to really sleep. My sleep has become as light as a feather; that’s only when I actually do fall asleep. Some Chinese woman at the other side of the circle shouts out somebody’s name and for some silly reason I hear her say my name in a Chinese accent. I get up and look around to see which of my long list of shadow-like friends have bumped into me and soon I realize it is the reunion of two Chinese ladies on the other side of the square and their excitement has nothing to do with me.I miss the days when I was certain that I were the center of the universe. I don't remember how and when my bubble burst. It must been hard to wake up from that dream. I do not really recall. Mild Alzheimer, I repeat the mild kind, could be a blessing at times.

Well, in any case, I said to you that I want to tell you some story. But, honestly, I wonder if you are even interested. It could be quite an arbitrary story. It certainly feels so damn irrelevant to where I am sitting as we speak. You must have heard these stories a million times. I mean looking around me here in this town, there must be at least some few million stories like the one that I wish I had the time to tell you. Maybe some other time! But, right now, I am enjoying the invisibility that this city has granted me. I have to run to my meeting. New York is a wonderland, but oh my, I miss Tehran so much. I heard it snowed there today. I wish I could just touch that silky snow of Tehran; this is just me romanticizing the snow that perhaps has already turned grey in the pollution of Tehran. I wonder if my dad was able to feel the snow this time around. It must have sat on his gravestone. I hope he enjoyed the fresh feeling of it. I am late for my meeting.

I am a doorknob.

I am a doorknob. You don’t take us seriously because we don’t have eyes or ears or the ability to write in your language. And you have learned in your small world of human beings not to notice insignificant objects or even insignificant human beings. It’s funny actually, because were you aware of my presence my life would have been so incredibly boring with your overhyped consciousness.

You see, I am stuck in this door for as long as somehow someone decides to destroy this door and even if this door is destroyed my freedom is not entirely guaranteed as the door could well get thrown away along with its doorknob. But, unlike most of you, freedom has little meaning to me anyways. I am after all here in this world to serve the door. Without it I would have no identity. I even know a few doorknobs who awaited freedom from their tyrannical doors and now they are feeling lonely sitting in a secondhand hardware store waiting for a door or its owner to take them home. I heard from another doorknob friend in this hallway who was at that same secondhand store not too long ago that the life of used doorknobs that have to wait for a new door is, indeed, quite miserable. They apparently miss their old door and could never get over the trauma of this loss. At the same time, they feel quite liberated and feel that they could finally be themselves away from the rules, regulations and expectations of the door. But then the life on the shelves of a secondhand store is also not all that exciting. Yes, there is, of course, more freedom of expression and a sense of community that all the doorknobs on the shelves could enjoy. But, then again, there is always this fear that at any moment any one of them could get picked up and disappear forever.

The first time we all got sold after sitting on the shelves of a hardware store of sorts, we really never said goodbye, because we really did not understand what it was to be taken away for good for the sake of a door. We would see our doorknob friends leave and we also were impatiently and nervously waiting to leave the routine of the shelves. We sort of thought that the world out there must be more exciting than sitting idly on those shelves.

To be fair, co-existence with doors could be quite adventurous and interesting. For instance, I have had the chance to see and hear so much by just simply serving a door of a ... Well, actually, what does it matter which door I serve? Let it remain unknown as I enjoy mysteries. In fact, as a doorknob devoted to my job of separating various artificially built spaces and serving as the connecting object between the two worlds if necessary, I could tell you that there is no need for all mysteries to be revealed. You human beings are somehow obsessed with the idea of creating “mysteries” in your creative minds—that can’t stop imagining scenarios and things— and then you spend days, months, years or perhaps a lifetime trying to reveal the unknowns of this mystery.

While I agree with you that sometimes such curiosity is critical, I think you do too much uncovering of the unknowns and you somehow never seem to stop. After one mystery that eats your soul for some time, you find some other mystery to tackle. And, at the same time[imagine the humble doorknob that I am amusingly chuckling at your humanness right now] you create and hide behind so many mysteries yourself, hoping for nobody in the world or nobody that particularly matters to the story to find out about your mystery. Let me tell you, you are all somehow taking it all too seriously. Let’s be honest, you like this game of chasing after mysterious things and you also enjoy creating secrets that you are either ashamed or scared to reveal or you simply enjoy the mysterious look. Either way, my dear humans, you ought to relax with your divisions of facts and fictions. You are often working against your nature, I have realized. Your nature is to create and live in the grey area and yet you are mostly busy diagnosing your life or others in black and white terms. Let go of these ancestral complexes that you have allowed too deeply into your lives, if I may give you my humble opinion. How unappreciative of me to give advice to my creators and Gods, you might think.

In my years of being a doorknob to this particular door, I have had moments when I have cried or laughed with you. I have been there listening to your worries, private weak, emotional, strong and logical moments when you have thought nobody else is listening to you. Some of you keep thinking that there is a “mystery” out there in the sky named “God” that is watching over you; which well might or might not be true and anyways if you want it to be true it should well be true and if you don’t want it to be true it should well be untrue. But, sometimes I wonder. How could you be so aware of the presence of an at least seemingly physically absent existence (God) when you easily forget about the presence of so many things in your immediate surroundings? You know, you have created us. So, if you think about it, in essence, you are our God. And yet, I see your weakness. Your weakness is your discomfort with who you are and your lack of interest in your routine.

You create things and once they are there you forget about them. You only remember them again when they are absent. Have you ever thought of the doorknob when it has been properly working? Have you ever thought of it other than in moments that you were closing the door shut or opening it wide? Have you ever thought of a doorknob other than the moments when you were, rightfully or otherwise, secretly doing something or trying to sneak into the secret world of another human being? Have you ever thought of the doorknob when it has served no particular purpose for you other than simply being there? Ok, maybe I am asking for too much from you.

There is only one thing that I know, my dears: You are simpler than you think and even the illiterate insignificant doorknob that I am, I could understand your desire for sophisticated facts and certainties. I could tell your own stories to you better than you can imagine, because you are all incredibly interesting characters. Even the most seemingly boring of you has a story that could excite a doorknob that sits at the edge a door and watches all day. Or, perhaps I find it all amusing and story-like as all the restricting facts in your lives appear as unique fictions to me. You are all stories to me. I used to take you more seriously. But, then as your stories impacted me too much emotionally, the door advised me to watch you like I would watch a movie: as fictive characters who come and go and do normal or strange things as their story requires them to. Keep playing the movie, keep playing your roles, keep writing your story. Keep entertaining me!

And now that you read all my ramblings, I give you the unknown fact about me that bothered you all along. I am the doorknob of room 196 at a mental hospital not too far from you. I love my location as where I am (at least on the more private side of the door where one of my two sides is facing) there lives a man who lives his life like a story. Yet, on the other side of this door, the educated doctors, nurses or the worried loved ones of the man that keep appearing and disappearing seem to be too occupied with the world of facts. They keep speculating over the diseases of the man at the better side of this door and try to seek all the one million reasons for his endless misery. But, only I know that he is happy. He is just not in love with facts. Call me a crazy doorknob, but I relate much more with the man at the better side of this door. Whenever you stop seeking facts about him and his diagnosis for the day and shut the door of 196 closed for the evening, he looks at me, chuckles and says, “They all have to relax a bit! Poor things!” And, he apathetically goes on with his story away from the huff and puff of your factually obsessed world.

No offense, I am not insulting you or anything with all of this. In fact, go on with what you are doing. Without you, even the story of room 196 will become too plain and undisputed. Go on with your obsession with facts. After all, it’s who you are. Why change?

A Lonely Ballerina & An Invisible Audience

I don’t really know much about ballet or anything. But, when I read in the New Yorker yesterday that the New York City Ballet is running the deficit of about five million dollars and that it is not doing too well, somehow I felt sad. As I read along, I realized one of the main problems is that that people now prefer to watch even ballet performances online. Talking to my mom, I told her about the situation of the New York City Ballet and quizzed her on why she thinks this prominent dance company is struggling. She looked at me teasingly and said, “Cause of the Internet, silly!” And, that was when I was struck by the reality that we sometimes falsely think only belongs to our generation. Even my mom, who is at least four generation older than me, has come to comprehend the power of the Internet and is well aware of its implications for the imminent future.

She said, “One day the world will truly experience how much the Internet and its accessories have changed the world. But, then it will be too late. By then, the life we lived in the absence of this phenomenon will feel like the times of the dinosaurs!” Her words made me think about the ways older generations have been literally attacked by the force of the Internet. She said, “Sometimes I feel I am fighting in a war against what you people call the digital world.” I miss the old world, you know. You and especially the younger generations might never understand the beauty of not having immediate access to information or how it was to wait anxiously for two months to receive a letter from your brother who had immigrated to London.” She continued, “Yes, life might have been harder in your perspective. But, in my perspective, it had more meaning. Life would take its own course without any rush. We could not afford to be impatient for results. We had to wait. We had learned how to go on with our life while waiting. We were involved in the process. Your generation is not.”

While listening to her, I thought of a ballerina who, one day not too far into the future, might have to dance in solitude in front of an auditorium that is absolutely empty of audience and a small camera that broadcasts her performance live to millions of people throughout the world. A sad image perhaps or rather just a different one? Or, it could well be just a world with a conspicuously different façade and yet an enormously similar one to what our parents experienced.

As I was thinking about all of this, my mom said, “When you were gone last year, I learned how to send text messages and despite what you made it sound it is quite easy to send SMS. But, now I want you to teach me how to update my website. I am sure it’s easier than what I think! I don’t like to rely on you guys anymore who are too busy to help me, anyway.” She paused because she had received a message on Google Talk from a colleague in Iran and began to chat with him. Amused by the scene, I sent her a text message as she was sitting in front of me and chatting. My text message read,“You are a champion :-)” She replied to me with a text message while also chatting, “How do you insert that happy face?”

And, so has our world transformed, I guess: A lonely ballerina in an empty auditorium full of invisible eyes and a lady with grey hair who is eagerly and stubbornly learning the art of the invisibility of presence so that she could also blend in this strangely absent audience...

“And so it is. Life goes easy on me most of the time…”

It has been a while that I have not written here. I don’t know why and how, but after Dad’s death I went more into my own shell and I began to prefer my personal journal more than this public space in the past couple of months. I mean the first few weeks I spoke out just because I felt I had to spread his words to all those who cared about him all throughout the world. But, then, somehow I was hit by the strong desire to go into a seemingly heavy silence. But, really, I was not and am not all that silent. So much is happening on my mind. It feels like a movie played on rewind. I had never thought of any story from the end really. Usually I had thought of the end for the sake of an end. I thought “the end” is simply there in every story and every movie to announce the end of it all. I never thought of it as just the beginning and just as fundamental as the marked beginning of the tale. Nowadays, I have started to realize that beginnings would really perhaps be meaningless without this horrific end that we all escape so hurriedly and fearfully. In my story, the end, despite its ugly looks, is not all that horrific somehow anymore. In my Dad’s death I faced “the end”, in its absolute sense, for the very first time in my life and to my surprise this so-called end injected an incredible doze of energy for life into my bloodstreams. I even feel high sometimes. High on life…So incredibly restless to live life and to observe and listen to the not so obvious noises and sounds of this world more than before. I am writing from the end to the beginning in my solitude and living every second of this story of ours in rewind. And, like you always wished for me, Dad, life goes easy on me, most of the time. And, our fairy tale is more eager than ever to be told.

The Imminent Nightmare of Dictatorships

Once upon a time when superior voices were the sole voices in the world it was essential to focus merely on objectivity. Facts were viewed as the foundation of speech as reality was constructed with the objective observations of the voices that had access to tribunes of sorts. While the reign of the superior voices in the world remains, the subaltern voices that were denied narration and expression of thoughts for as long as history recalls are to slowly discover small cracks in the tall walls built by the façade of those who exert power through their loud voices and emphasis on artificially designed facts that set the foundation for objectivity.

What is happening in this tragically fantastic era of information is beyond the imagination of all those who forcefully not only reigned territories but also ruthlessly constructed objectivity for their people; an objectivity deviation from which is considered an unforgettable sin. Thus, while on the surface the age of information might seem to help those hungry to oppress others and define the mindset and thinking of millions below them, it will prove to grow as oppression’s most vicious enemy of all times.

In the era of information, it will become increasingly difficult for any one human being to impose their definitions of objectivity and factual construction of History on others. Through the small horizons that this fantasy-like era of information and vigorous age of cyber communications have created, all those opinions, thoughts, stories and narrations of history that have been shut down for the sake of a divine objectiveness and the protection of the reign of superior voices will finally have a chance to flow beyond the minds of the forgotten humans. It is through the chaos of voices challenging one another’s versions of history and objective facts that the constructed reality will become more blurry than ever. It is in this grey and blurry sphere of reality that previously unheard and oppressed voices could begin to share their stories and facts.

Given my passion and involvement in the realm of politics, human rights and the struggle for freedom of speech , I see the indefinite possibility that the fast growing era of information overload could present to the citizens of the world who strive to speak their mind. I see this silent information revolution as a force that, if spreads sufficiently wide and used effectively, will alter not only the way information is conveyed, but also the nature of information. The information flow that has been historically top-down will be challenged by the streams of information that will enter the debate and even the strongest censorship engines could not ultimately block the escalation of voices that simultaneously narrate bits and pieces of their personal stories and opinions. It is these interconnected bits and pieces of fragmented voices that, in this era of information, will create an altered scenario of history and of current events. And, this phenomenon, is—and if not is, it should be—the most terrifying nightmare of dictatorial and oppressive authorities throughout the world.

While it is difficult to disregard the ways in which the current oppressive governments utilize the information technological advancements to strengthen their censorship and repressive engines, ultimately no one individual, authority or government could battle the unstoppable force of information in today’s world. Looking at the political upheavals and movements that took place in Iran in 2009(the Green Movement), the Revolution 2.0 of Egypt and the recent happenings in the rest of the Middle East the relentless wonders of internet technology and information sharing become cinematically clear. The era of information that facilitates ways of communication and mobilization that was beyond imagination even until a few years ago is now shaking the foundation of those political establishments that aim to forcefully rule over millions.

Furthermore, these information technological facilities are slowly reworking the ideals and nature of leadership and followership in political arenas. With the current dynamic information sharing and technologically advanced cyber spaces for communication, leadership will—and has to an extent—transcends its original definition of central authority and spreads to the bottom of the society where the voiceless are silenced. The trend of information technological advancements will ultimately reach those who deserve political and social change more than anybody else—those who have been innocently subjected to systematic violence and oppression—and they will collectively lead movements in search of justice. As such, slowly the idea of a single token leadership will dissolve and instead collective leadership trends will evolve.

In other words, the superior voice has historically constructed reality based on its very fears of falling and its desires to oppress the subaltern voices. Thus, I use the analogy of photography for the construction of nations’ collective history crafted by statesmen and stateswomen who have often successfully neglected the narratives of those who were denied the right to speech. As the semiologist, Ronald Barthes, famously introduced an innovative discourse on the meaning of photography by calling photography as medium that depicts reality, political history of peoples have been written as a way to portray a version of reality crafted, spread and praised by those on power.

Thinking carefully about the theory of Barthes on photography as a medium which portrays reality that once has been and his argument about photos not as once real experiences but as constructions, I conclude the following: Just as photographers are able to construct a reality through their camera lens, statesmen and politicians—in particular in dictatorial governments— have been able to construct a reality for their people deviation from which would have grand consequences. However, imagine if the number of photographers of one incident and one event multiplies by the second, soon there will be thousands of photographers capturing one scene. And, all these photographers will construct their version of reality and will instantly share it with millions throughout the world. It is then the multitude of realities taken from one scene that will evolve to become a story and ultimately history. This is simply how the era of information technology will victoriously defeat even the most sophisticated censorship empires such as China. No matter how much the fearful statesmen and stateswomen of oppressive governments try to construct reality and history on their own accounts, the number of cameras, citizen journalists and ordinary observes who have instantaneous access to millions throughout the world will increase even further thereby obstructing the imposition of one artificial reality upon millions.

This, I believe, will be the nightmare of dictatorial governments and my dream for the future of a world that is fast embracing the new possibilities of information technological advancements.

Note 1: This short essay indirectly relies on the ideas of postmodernism, post-colonialism, the literature of social movements and the theory of Roland Barthes on photography.

Note 2: I initially wrote this paper as part of an assignment for Nyenrode Business University IMBA program.