Akhavan - In search of a better world: a human rights odyssey

THE KNOWLEDGE OF SUFFERING

FROM TEHRAN TO TORONTO

I SPEAK A LITTLE ENGLISH. I like Canada. Nice to meet you. I had rehearsed those words carefully, repeating them like a sacred mantra. It was a long journey from Tehran to Toronto. At first, the hours went by quickly. Like all children flying in airplanes, I was in a euphoric trance. But I was growing impatient to arrive. I needed to meet those foreigners called Canadians and practise the English phrases I had memorized.

There was no in-flight entertainment in those days, except the view from the window seat. I persuaded my older brother, Dariush, to vacate the prized location, using the time-tested technique of incredibly annoying behaviour. I didnt take the opportunity lightly. As the self-appointed sentry for Iran Air, I kept a vigilant watch, observing each and every object visible from those sublime heights, ready to report suspicious activity to the control tower.

Thirty thousand feet is an ideal altitude to wander and dream. When explored from a safe distance, the world is an enchanting but deceptive place. The word exile was not yet part of my linguistic repertoire. The idea of religious persecution was still beyond the realm of my experience. I didnt know at the time that I was about to enter the crucible of suffering that teaches us the true meaning of words. As the land of my birth slowly disappeared over the horizon, I glanced one last time at an innocent past. I had a vague premonition that I would never return to the home I once knew.

When setting out on a journey, do not seek advice from someone who never left home. That was the timeless wisdom of Rumi, the mystical poet of ancient Persia, the land of my ancestors. As children, we needed a safe home so our imagination could wander to distant places, unconstrained by fear. Adventures could be had, effortlessly and endlessly, without expectations and calculations, until it was time to sleep, and even then, our dreams would sustain us until the light of morning. But one day I would awaken to find myself in a strange place, far from home, desperately lost in the wilderness. In that place, I would struggle to find the words, to explain where I had come from, and why part of me was left behind; it seemed that nobody understood what I was trying to say. Knowledge, I was told, was a theoretical abstraction, and purpose a liberal platitude. There was no need to feel deeply, no need to be broken open.

The fate of modern times, the German philosopher Max Weber wrote, is characterized by rationalization and intellectualization and, above all, by the disenchantment of the world. Emancipated from the mimicry of irrational traditions, the demystified mind was poised to conquer the truth, looking down from the commanding heights of utilitarian objectivity. The man of the European Enlightenment was no longer part of the universe; he was on top of it. Henceforth, intellectual ideas would substitute intense experiences, and reason rather than reflection would discover reality through detached observation. By the twentieth century, the unprecedented catastrophes of total war and genocide had exploded modernitys myth of progress. Just as the scientific mind had dispassionately discovered the secrets of the outward universe, the horrors of the Holocaust forced a chastened humanity to rediscover the mystical universe of the inner self. The cornerstone of the new postwar civilization was the idea of human rights of a being with an intrinsically noble essence. In a secular world, it was a reminder of that which must remain sacred.