Kalle-Pache, or The Day That Freedom ... Died Again
8:30 Dec. 10, 2021 We learned yesterday that Julian's fate, and that of the freedom of the press, which is also freedom of speech, will be announced today by the High Court at 10:30 GMT, 11:30 German time. It's bad enough to have to say that, to be waiting for a British court to "announce" the fate of something so important, but that's the way it is. I am going to write this for the rest of the day as a record of, well, my thoughts. Because they will definitely change by noon. I'll leave the ending of the title open, until I know what the verdict is: The Day That Freedom …
To while away the time (unless I find something better to do) I will tell you about what one website calls "a delicious traditional Persian dish that dates back to 2000 BC." I will spare you the description because you can easily find it on the net under "kalle-pache" or a similar spelling. If you are a glutton for punishment you can also find videos of it being made.
I've got about an hour left. I'm trying to watch Wikileaks' and Stella Moris's Twitter pages because I assume the news will appear first there. I suppose there will be live videos too. Yes, I'm nervous. In an hour I will either be much happier or much sadder and depressed.
Back to Tehran. Vee says I ought to write about it, but I don't have much to say about the year and a half I lived there (1975-76). Not much I want to say. The taxi driver who took me to the early-morning eatery, normally frequented by workers, may have told me what we (since I invited him to join me) were about to partake of, I don't remember, but it must have sobered me up because I did remember afterwards what it was called, even though I don't remember what it tasted like. Sheep soup. Cheap soup, too.
Earlier that night I had narrowly escaped being sent to the notorious Evin prison for refusing to pay a nightclub bill. A few of us went to a famous nightclub called the Shekh-e Ferno. I can find no references to it now so the spelling is a guess. Singing, dancing, magic acts, stuff like that. At some point we found ourselves in the company of three young Iranian men, and we must have invited them to join us at our table because that is what they did. We all proceeded to drink the night away, assuming that we would all pay our bills separately, or settle up accordingly. But the Iranians turned out to have no money.
Later I learned that there was an Iranian custom, similar to fighting over who should go first through a doorway, of fighting over who should pay the (collective) tab at a restaurant. Apparently this custom also applied to strangers sitting at your table in a nightclub. Or maybe they were scamming us for free drinks. In any case, the manager threatened to call the police, which would have meant a trip to Evin. That scared the hell out of us. Whether the US embassy would have helped us in that event I don't know. Someone had told me that if I got in trouble I should call the Russians, not the Americans. So we paid up. I don't know what happened to the Iranians. Nothing, I hope. I resented what they had done but I would not have wanted them to go to Evin for it, and it may really just have been a cultural misunderstanding.
35 minutes left. I'm a slow writer.
This was before the revolution, and I saw no signs of what was coming, nor of any anti-Americanism. We were teaching at the Bagh-e Shah military base. For a few weeks we were able to eat lunch at a nearby student cafeteria, but the students, or someone, objected and put an end to it. After all, we were not students, but teachers, albeit American teachers. Our employer, a company called Language House out of Chicago, a subdivision of something else called Telemedia, which apparently still exists – see Telemedia LLC – but I don't know what LLC means and can't find anything about the history of Language House. No matter. Eybi na dare. That means "Not important" and is one of the few Persian phrases I learned. You heard it a lot. Another one was Mohem nist. That means the same thing.
The money was coming from Bell Helicopter, who needed to train Iranian soldiers as pilots and mechanics. Hence our job to "train" the students with rapid-fire memorization and pattern drills with sentences like "This is a rotor blade" and "Hand me the wrench." I'm sure this was a welcome relief from their normal routine, especially since a few of the teachers were female, but it had no perceptible learning effect.
There were at least two spies in my teaching unit. Not officially, of course, but the word got around. One was a blonde and rather attractive woman on special assignment from the US Air Force. The other was an Iranian, whom I will call Behrooz and whose English was not very good so you had to wonder why he had been hired. Behrooz and the Air Force woman usually sat together on the bus that took us back and forth from our various dwellings to the base.
Once during a break, in the teachers lounge, when the conversation turned to politics, the phone rang and it was for me. My supervisor, an American, wanted to talk with me in another room. "Behrooz is a spy," the supervisor told me. "Be careful what you say. He's not only a spy but a stupid spy. That makes him even more dangerous."
I stayed away from political discussions after that. I was not "political" at the time anyway. The Vietnam war was effectively over, and so were – it seemed – my days of opposition to the Red White and Blue. There was little to do in our spare time but hang around in hotel bars. The almost total lockdown on the native female population didn't help. The one woman I did get involved with wanted to get married, of course, since she was divorced and remarriage was the only way to have a normal life, or as I think she would have preferred, to get out of the country. I think at least half the Language House teachers were gay, which must have made life more pleasant for them, but it didn't help me.
11:29 Oh God. I have just read on Twitter: "Appeal has been allowed. High Court says it's satisfied 'assurances exclude the possibility of Mr Assange being made subject to SAMs or held at the ADX facility, unless he commits any future act which renders him liable'. The case is sent back to Westminster Mags to be sent to the Home Secretary."
My heart is racing and my stomach is churning with anger and despair. FUCK!
I have the rest of my title: "The Day That Freedom Died Again." "Again" because it has died many deaths, but this may be the last one. The last for free speech anyway.
3 pm I know what I have to do. The same thing I do whenever I witness some gross "miscarriage of justice" – which always seems like such an understatement. I have to try to turn the despair into anger, and the anger into a manageable cold burn that will keep me fighting. There is no alternative but to curl up and die or not give a shit, which I do not want to do and cannot do, respectively.
So let me see if I can get back to Iran. I escaped Bagh-e Shah by volunteering for a new "civilian" branch of the school in Tehran, but instead of making do with my slightly improved lot I did what I have often done, and never to my benefit: I suggested some improvements to the curriculum. I did get to meet the British couple who were tutoring the Shah's children in English, who had stopped by for a visit, but it wasn't long until I quit. The company was not happy about that, obviously, not because they were so pleased with my work but because, after all, they had paid for my flight. On the other hand, I was forfeiting the cost of the return trip, which would have come at the end of one or two years, I don't remember which.
I took a job with another, much smaller commercial language school called the Mary Lou English Training Center. There I had the exalted title of "Curriculum Director" but nothing much to do, so after a couple of months there I graduated to the Free University of Iran (Daneshgahe Azad), where I had been offered a job in the English department. They had a project with the National Radio and Television services to create correspondence courses on the model of Open University in Britain. That was a nice job. I had a couple of American colleagues, and the English department head, Dr. Seid Ziahosseini, was a gentle and competent boss. He tried to persuade me to stay on, but after a few months I threw in the towel there too. I was just not making it in Tehran. I was very glad to get on a Qantas flight headed for Bangkok, Hong Kong, Singapore, Seoul, Honolulu and, finally, Los Angeles. I felt I deserved a vacation.
Unfortunately I don't remember enough about most of the people I ran into – yes, mainly in bars – even to look for them on Facebook. There was Lliam from Belfast, Jean the red-haired Frenchman, and Helmut, the ponderous German who wanted to tell me about the differences between Irish and German Catholicism, which might have been interesting under less alcoholic circumstances. I had no idea what they were doing in Tehran and had learned not to ask too many questions. Teachers they were not.
One of the more exotic specimens, because he was so different from me, was a Texan called Mo Johnson. I do remember his real name but wouldn't dare use it! He was a roustabout on an oil rig somewhere and spent his down time at the Excelsior Hotel, which was also my favorite haunt. He was a black belt karate adept, ex-boxer and dishonorably discharged Marine. Because of his tendency to get in trouble, he said, he slept with a pistol under his pillow. "Sometimes I have to use these," he said, indicating his pointy-toed cowboy boots. I rather liked him, I probably should be ashamed to say, I suppose for the same reason boys like Superman and Roy Rogers, except that Mo was more the outlaw hero, and not of the Robin Hood type, either. Billy the Kid and Jesse James might be more fitting – which is why I say I probably ought to be ashamed. Fortunately I never had to see him in action, although we barely made it out of one place he took us to – that is, me and couple of other peaceful types – a bar where for some reason the dishes started flying toward closing time and through it all an Iranian guy, also in cowboy boots, sat calmly on a bar stool with his arms crossed over his chest and wished us a good evening on our way out. He and Mo obviously knew each other. That I think was something like the OK Corral, interrupted.
And there was Jennie (I don't remember her real name but I hope it wasn't Jennie), a Jewish girl also working for Mary Lou. I wanted to take her to see Ryan's Daughter and made the mistake of calling on her unannounced. She introduced me to her Israeli boyfriend, who said he was in the import-export business. I didn't believe that but of course did not question it. I had become used to seeing "agents" of one stripe or another around every corner.
That's the end of my Iran story. Yes, I did buy hash on the Xiabune Elizabeth (only once), and smoked opium (also only once) with a taxi driver – not the same one I had the kalle-pache breakfast with – but I did not get into any fights, got no one pregnant, and did not become homosexual. I don't mean to imply that that would have been bad, just not right for me, if I am allowed to say so. I would have been more likely to "go gay," if it was going to happen at all, in the summer of 1974 that I spent at loose ends in San Francisco. Polk Street was a short walk from Nob Hill, where I had my apartment. That's another non-story. I'll save it for another day. Maybe. Domani è un altro giorno.
5:30 pm Meanwhile, I've made it (almost) through this particular day. I heard Stella Moris's comments outside the courtroom on the Ruptly live video coverage. What a strong woman she is, this Stella. Craig Murray too.
Oh my God! Ruptly is Ruskies! What kind of stinking propaganda trick is this! Ted Cruz to the rescue! Kill 'em all!
Good grief, and good night.