Fieldnotes on Humanity

In the neighborhood where I live, there is an Iranian grocery store and a bakery inside, which I usually go to. The grocery store's owner is a pro-Shah. The entire store is decorated with mini Lion and Sun flags. Last night at seven o'clock, I went to get bread and saw a long line. I forced myself to wait in line, which I usually don't, unless I am starving. Within moments, I noticed middle-aged women in the line had their phones out of their purses, showing each other photos of men with white and black turbans. I saw one of those photos from a distance; it was of Gholam-Hossein Mohseni-Eje'i, the former Iranian minister of intelligence. A tall, middle-aged woman with a large bracelet on her right hand said to the woman in front of her, " kasafat ra nabudash kardan" -  they eliminated that filt. She meant Ali Khamenei. One of the women replied, " dasti shon dard nakuna -- thank you so much. "They hit him in a way we didn't expect," she added...

-- Here in a program directed by Riz khan on Al Jazeera, young Palestinians and Israelis face off in a debate about their past, present and future. What do they think about their leaders, and do they think that they will see peace in their lifetime? It seems that to Israeli youth, the pain of Palestinians is not quite understandable. What to blame? Their ignorance? State's manufacturing knowledge and history fed to the youth? How do Israelis learn about their country's history? A country that was built from ashes? Ashes of Palestinians? Who lived there before? What happened to the Palestinians who lived there?  (I assume the same questions apply to settlers of the US, Canada, and Australia. What happened to the indigenous population?) Palestinians have suffered from multiple losses, including losses of territories and also human beings since the formation of Israel in 1948. On the other side, Palestinian youth are complaining about the way they are treated by the Israeli soldie...

In 2008, during a hot summer of Kabul, while I was wandering around the city of Kabul and trying to raise money in order to rent an internet café to teach blogging and online journalism to the students and journalists who were interested in doing citizen journalism, I approached a young documentary filmmaker who randomly spoke to me about the Oscar Award. He mentioned the movie ‘ Waltz with Bashir ,’ which was nominated for that award, but because I lived in a country that seemed disconnected from the rest of the world, I would never have hoped to watch the latest movies. Therefore, I never expected to watch “Waltz with Bashir” until I was assigned to write about it for my class. The movie “Waltz with Bashir” is an Israeli animated documentary written and directed by Ari Folman. Folman served in the Israeli army and was an infantry soldier. He depicts his memories of nightmares of two refugee camps: Sabra and Shatila. At a time when the Israeli Defense Force (IDF) occupied Beirut and b...