maschamba

 

We had not been prepared to find the cosmologies of our universe so skewed. In California, where I was obsessed with Middle East politics and he was obsessed with the Iranian national soccer team, we had assumed, here, in this country where people could pronounce our names, our world would expand. Instead, we felt constricted, Everywhere, it seemed, there were barriers. Of thought and behaviour, of places and time. And most dizzying of all, a culture of transgression that could only be learned through firsthand experience. For women, these were eternal limits on dress and comportment, but they could be flouted easily - in the right neighbourhood, at the right time of the day or night, in the right way. Young people also faced endless prohibitions, but these too could be circumvented, with the right verbal pretexts, at the right time, in the right places.Ignorance of this culture made you a victim, marooned at home with bad Islamic television. Knowing how to navigate its rules gave you freedom, to choose a lifestyle as sedentary or riotous as you pleased. As newcomers, Daria and I were familiar with a simple, American sort of freedom. Confronted with an oppressive system, we instinctively viewed the Iranians around us as victims, because armed with only our knowledge of California highways and the mall, we had not the slightest idea how to exercise freedom, Tehran-style. We couldn't conceive of a life where you forcibly took your rights, through adept arguments and heaps of attitude. Where you lived "as if" the rules didn't exist, and took the skirmishes for granted. And so it felt that in Tehran, even the sky shrank, the streets twined in mazes and the whole of existed retreated under imposing barriers.Life in America came with its own frontiers, but they were familiar, and from the vantage point of Tehran, seemed more subtle, more bearable... The barriers here were overwhelming, in your face, physical and visual. There were walls and partitions, dour billboards and angy-looking pasdars[guardas da moral e costume],around all the time to enforce them ... In America, I hadn't learned really to scale the barriers. They were political and amorphous, and often I felt they only existed only in my head, that I created and carted them about myself. For now, these Iranian barriers frightened me. They produced incessant confrontations between people itching to scream at one another, escalate, and let loose the brew of anger and resentment inside.

AL

 Conheci hoje Munem Wasif, fotógrafo oriundo do Bangladesh e que muito me agradou. Fotografias maioritariamente a preto e branco de retratos e histórias do quotidiano que ele descreve com a frase que dá o título a este postal. A foto acima faz parte da colecção “Salt Water Tears”.AL

 A Associação Moçambicana de Sociologia organiza no dia 12 de Outubro da 14:30 às 17:00 uma aula pública de sociologia sob o tema “Uma Sociologia sem Fronteiras”, tendo como convidado o Professor Luís de Brito. O local é o Anfiteatro da Faculdade de Medicina da Universidade Eduardo Mondlane em Maputo. Mais informação aqui.AL