By PLS
A couple of weeks ago the national temperature reached boiling point as pundits were reacting more or less vehemently to Iranian President Ahmadinajad’s letter to President Bush. The next big noise was over immigration. Who knows what tomorrow's controversy du jour will be? Something else deserving of more thoughtful consideration, no doubt.
I want to return to the Ahmadinejad letter, but let me establish some cultural context before I get out the dissecting knife.
I attended a thrilling recital of Iraqi classical music recently. The performers were superb, Iraqi oudist Rahim AlHaj and Lebanese percussionist Souhail Kaspar. They were presenting material they’d recorded for a soon-to-be-released Smithsonian Folkways CD—look for it!—and, of course, there was human interest patter before each piece.
Rahim AlHaj is married to woman from Syria. “She’s beautiful and she’s in the audience,” he announced, “and she likes to tease me about Iraq and Iraqi music. ‘Syria’s more civilized,’ she says. ‘Our music’s more sophisticated.’ But I put it to her—and you: who invented reading and writing over two thousand years ago?”
I wonder how strenuously the Bush administration pondered the implications of deep pride in one’s ancient heritage, whatever its contemporary disarray, before invading Iraq.
Iran didn’t invent writing, but the ruins of Persepolis are more impressive than anything that will remain of an American city in two thousand and more years. Not that the leaders of the Islamic Republic of Iran will ever hold a champagne party there as the benighted “Shah” once did, but the ayatollahs aren’t pulverizing the friezes of ancient Persia either.
Iranian culture is the contemporary version of Persian civilization, which clearly inspires pride among modern Iranians. Well-founded self-respect is not a contemptible thing. A healthy psyche needs it. The question is whether, in the case of Ahmadinajad, we’re faced with megalomania.
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