Or and Yifat invited us over for lunch. They picked Ari's brain a little but, Or showed us some pictures of her from the army and then it was time for me to get back to work. I kept working on my paper and Ari played on the Internet and helped cook food for dinner. But while I was working, the electricity in the village kept going out! I wanted to kill someone. Boaz said that even though the village was approved and even designed by the government 5 years ago, our electricity hook up is not permanent. Doesn't make much sense to me, but hey, I don't live in the Middle East. I'm just passing through. Far be it from me to judge their dysfunctional governments. I mean sure its a region filled with unaccountable dictatorships and Israel is the one democracy that happens to have a government that is completely unaccountable to its citizens due to a ludicrous parliamentary system that hasn't work in years, but I guess no place is perfect right? Who need accountable governments or permanent electricity when the Arabs can blame all the problems on Israel and Israelis are too distracted by reality TV to notice that their government is completely out of control. But I digress.
Of course Shabbat started before I got as far as I would like with my paper, but there wasn't much I could do about that. We got dressed for Shul and I took Ari on a tour around Dimona. Not on purpose, but I was so used to walking to the high school that we got halfway there before I realized we were going the wrong way. So we wandered around for a little while before we finally got to shul. Afterwards we came back to the village for dinner. We ate at Racheli's with Inbar, Stav, her boyfriend, Rotem, her friend Estar (not Esther) and Omer. It was a lot of fun and I think Ari enjoyed himself.
After dinner, Ari can I ran back to my place where we huddled for warmth in my room next to my heater. Contrary to popular belief, it does get cold in the desert. Very, very cold at times. Did I mention that it hailed here on Thursday? That's right, hail. At least we only had to deal with rain and the cold on Shabbat. I forced Ari to stay up for a while to tell me all about what's going on back home but he passed out pretty quickly. Poor little guy was run ragged by his birthrighters.
The next day we woke up and went back to Racheli's for lunch. We then took Shoko on a walk in the desert. But Shoko thought it would be more fun to run off and play with some Bedouin sheep-dogs. So I had to run after him because he would have followed them all the way back to their village. I finally caught up with him. The dog's belong to a Bedouin boy named Sahar who was grazing his sheep with his little brother who was too shy to tell me his name. He wasn't too impressed by my Arabic. But he did seem to think it was funny when I asked if he named his sheep. Sahar then asked if he could keep Shoko and that was my cue to go. I said goodbye, picked Shoko up and we made our way back.
We finally got back to the village and Ari and I sat down and took in the scenery. The clouds had completely cleared up by then and we could see all the way to Jordan. Not a bad way to end the day.
Unfortunately for me, that wasn't where my day was going to end. After Shabbat, Ari and I cleaned the caravan since it got incredibly muddy from all the rain and Shoko. We made some dinner and then I got to work, while Ari perused the Internet. After a little while, he had to get going and start his trek up to Ben-Gurion Airport. It was too bad he came for the Shabbat when my papers were due, but we still had a good time and got to talk a lot.
Then I was left alone with my paper on the development of the Basij. It's interesting, I had never thought about the democratic nature of Iran before. The Iranians really got screwed over by history. After years of direct imperial intervention, they got a few decades of indirect imperial intervention through the Shah. They then rose up against him and created a democratic system. But then the most radical revolutionaries took over and pushed through a constitution with three very important aspects: 1. A Supreme Leader who can overrule the President. 2. The Council of Guardians that can veto not just legislation, but even elected officials. 3. The Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC) which deals with popular threats to the revolution. So even though they elect the President, if he wants to do something, lets say grant more freedom of the press, the Supreme Leader can say "no" and it doesn't happen. If the Majlis tries to pass a law that is perceived to threaten the status quo, the Council of Guardian (who of course are unelected) can veto that legislation. They actually also vet the candidates who are able to be elected, so even if a true reformer is able to sneak through their vetting process, the Council can make sure they aren't able to get anything done. Then there is the Basij who are run by the IRGC who now tackle domestic security threats (read: democratic-minded Iranian citizens). So when thousands of people came out into the streets last summer to protest the fact that Ahmadinejad stole the election, the Basij were the ones dispatched to crush them.
But during the Iran-Iraq War the Basij were mainly a source of cannon-fodder for the Iranian military. The recruited people who, by and large, were too young, too old or too illiterate for the standard army, gave them a plastic key that they were told would open the "gates of paradise" and then sent on suicidal missions, like running through minefields or running directly at the Iraqi frontlines, often without weapons. But they were effective, even if they did have a very high casualty rate. But after the war, the government saw that there was little threatening the country from the outside, and recognized that the greatest threat to its power was from Iranian citizens. Since the Basij were trained in an ideology that made them extremely devoted to the revolution, they were the perfect people to call on to protect it.
After writing all night, I was finally able to finish my paper and send it in! I also sent in my historiography final! Now I just need to study for my Arabic final next Sunday and finish my paper for Benny Morris and I'm halfway done!
Staying up all night to finish a paper isn't so fun, but it was pretty cool that this was what I saw when I let Shoko out in the morning:
As promised, here are some more pictures of the puppy:
No comments:
Post a Comment