FARAHANI AND THE BANKER

TEHRAN, Iran, Feb. 15 (Islamic Republic News Agency) "Iranian police give details on German banker's murder."

"Islamic Republic News Agency" Web site? Where on earth did that link come from?

I certainly don't know. Who knows where I chanced onto that? Who knows how I navigated to the saga of a young man in love whose emotions got the better of him? And who could have predicted that this would be on my mind all week?

What keeps going round and round in my brain is, before there was an Internet, how in God's name would I ever have run across this story? Where outside of a major university library periodicals section would I ever have run into an English-language journal or newspaper printed in Tehran? (This is just bizarre. Something very big and subtle is underway, whether most people recognize it or not!)

"Iran's law enforcement force said in a communique on Monday German banker Heinrich Lembirt was killed by Mohammad Aga Ziarati Farahani, who engaged the police in a gun battle Saturday."

As it happens, I already know a few things about Iran.

I know that pistachio nuts came originally from Iran (Persia), for example. The name is Persian too, pronounced something like "pish-stahsh." I know that Iranians are a gregarious and proud people, and I was aware of that well before the Revolution.

You see, once upon a time I was a teacher of English as a second language down in Austin, Texas. Back then the classes were largely composed of would-be petroleum engineering students from Venezuela, Saudi Arabia, and Iran. For whatever reasons, there always seemed to be more Iranians than any other nationality. I got to know some of them pretty darned well, enough so that a couple of them were brave enough to protest the presence of a Savak agent in one of my classes. If you don't know, that means the Shah's secret police! The man was there taking note of anyone saying bad things about the regime, and the students in question were upset because they were afraid of being arrested if they returned home. He disappeared soon afterwards, of course. At least I finally understood why the guy never did any homework!

"At 9:30 local time saturday a young man (Ziarati Farahani) armed with a Kalashnikov automatic rifle entered the home of a girl he wanted to marry with the idea of abducting her."

Since then most Americans have come to have a much less sympathetic view of Iranians than I developed when I was a teacher -- something to do with taking hostages and rubbing our noses in it for over a year, no doubt. Years of hearing Iranian religious leaders rousing the faithful with denunciations of the Great Satan America didn't help, either. But in the last few years, the Revolution has moderated somewhat, and a new generation of Iranians who remember nothing of the Shah are questioning authority in ways that should make a lot of us pretty damned proud. ("Hey, these guys are a lot like we were!" ) I learned that from watching Dan Rather the other night, but the Internet is the medium doing more than anything else to make everyone on the planet seem a lot more ordinary and human.

You have to wonder whether anyone really knows what's going on with all this interconnectivity and cross-cultural sharing. It's typical of the kind of society we've built that most of what we hear is all about buying and selling, who's getting rich overnight, blah, blah, blah. . .I read an article by yet another "Internet visionary" the other day that declared the whole thing was turning into a giant entertainment engine. All the big guys are trying to figure out what to "do" with it, how to get a handle on it, how to sell a million widgets, how to beat everyone else to the gold. Hah! -- talk about not seeing the forest for the trees. . .the fact is that the evolutionary effects of these developments will eventually make a lot more difference to the human race and the state of the world than how many people go to which portal site and why.

"His forcible entry to the home of the girl was reported to the district police and the police came to the scene. The gunman opened fire on a policeman in front of the home of the girl as the result of which the police officer, Captain Ghazanfar Imani, deputy commander of number 2 District Police, was wounded and died later at hospital."

One thing the Internet is doing that seems (at first )to be pushing in the opposite direction is making it easier for tribalization to occur. Putting up a Web site with custom graphics and icons is like painting your face in certain colors and wearing a special headdress: "Oh, that's THEM!" It doesn't matter whether we're talking about crazy Texas artists, white supremacist Nazis, eco-freaks, Barbie doll collectors, the Taliban, car lovers, or the Navajo Nation. It's all out there, whether you like it or not, and growing every day. But there's a funny side effect.

Our differences are showing, it's true, but they seem more and more like facets of the same thing. This produces a very weird feeling but is reflective of a higher truth, I think. The other night on the evening news I saw a couple of Afghani officials visiting the U.S. State Department to say that the millionaire Saudi terrorist mastermind Osama Bin Laden was no longer residing in their country, so would we please stop planning to drop bombs and commandos and leave them alone. These fellows were from the Taliban, to be sure, the ruling ultra-fundamentalist Afghani group that has decided in all its wisdom that females may not go to school and that any woman flashing an ankle beneath her robe in public should be flogged on the spot.

"The gunman escaped the scene with a Peugeot car and at 15 km Qom-Kashan highway, he stopped the driver of a Toyota car, Ali Sahra-Gard Qomi, and killed him instantly taking the Toyota and continued his way toward Kashan."

For some strange reason I've been to the Taliban Web site recently, probably out of curiosity and amazement that such a thing exists at all. I've never met anyone from Afghanistan and never plan to go there, but I've been to the site! It's a perfectly ordinary, non-threatening manifestion of HTML just like this page you're reading now. There's something about the fact that they can use this medium, that they make themselves accessible in this way (never mind the propaganda), that you can send them e-mail, fergodssakes, just like your sister or the President of the United States, that makes them just a little harder to hate, that makes them a little more human. (Actually, I don't hate 'em at all, although I think they're absolute flaming nut cases when it comes to their perception and treatment of women, and that makes it, uh, kinda hard to think of actually being pals. . .)

Some of you are probably saying now, "AHA, you limp-brained hypocritcal bastard! You got sucked in just because they have a Web site and you think that's cool!" Well, I dunno, maybe you're right. But I don't feel that way about idiot militia group sites flaunting Third Reich symbols, maybe because these characters are old enemies we've all known for years -- and I ain't stupid, after all.

"He then decided to change the car to escape from the police chasing him and stopped another car, an Opel belonging to the German embassy with four German nationals on board. he let three Germans get out of the car and took Heinrich as captive."

Maybe I am a sucker for anyone who can fling code, but I still think there's more to it than that. In the case of the Islamic Republic News Agency from Iran, a lot of the stories I've read at their Web site look like they were lifted from the local Baltimore or Washington D.C. teevee news shows: crime in the streets, boring bureaucrats, greedy businessmen, poor folks being ground into the dirt by the high and mighty.

Who among us can't feel sorry for those murdered Iranian citizens, the local cop and the carjacked Toyota driver? You might be inclined to feel less empathy for the German banker, but Heinrich had to be one horribly frightened and abused person at this point:

"Near Kashan he opened fire on the highway traffic police officers who had already been alerted by telephone. While being chased he again managed to change the car, forcing Heinrich to go with him. A last he killed Heinrich at Imamzadeh Hashem district and he himself was killed by the police."

What a tale: can you imagine the terrified family of Farahani's intended abductee, huddling in a back room as he shoots it out with the investigating officer and leaves him bleeding to death on the doorstep? Can you feel the pain and terror of the carjacked driver? Can you imagine poor Heinrich, messing his pants and sobbing until he's finally executed by the hytsterical gunman? Can you feel the desperation, guilt, and horror in the mind of the kid with with the Kalashnikov as he dies in a hail of bullets?

We know these people now -- that has to make a difference!

John H. Farr also edits the Apple Computer News for Applelinks.com and welcomes your comments. His own website, the ZOO ZONE, could use some revamping but is otherwise pretty darned neat.

The Farr Site Forum , where mortals fear to tread, awaits your input.

About the Taliban's treatment of women: in a word, outrageous! If you missed the link above, here it is again. At this site you will find the whole story, as well as links to a protest petition.

This week's SPECIAL TREAT: hear A Poignant Message to the Muslim Ummah, Arabic Khutbah (Real Audio format). From the Taliban Web site "Islam and Jihad" section. We endorse nothing (that's for sure!), but give this a listen anyway. Turn your speakers up, walk away from your computer for a while, and let another world fill up your house. . .

Picture Credits: Cool Persian fonts are downloadable from IRNA (Islamic Republic News Agency) Web site, which also provided the logo. (We beg forgiveness from native Farsi speakers for improper use of same!)

The Farr Site archives have links to the last 60 (count 'em) columns!

May 16, 2012