Season of Santatollahs
Nicholas von Hoffman Washington Her Attila the Hen soubriquet beat her to these shores, but it is handed round here more in admiration than derision. The Rhodesian ceasefire achievement has earned Margaret Thatcher pots of respect and the suspicion that she may be a stateswoman of well more than ordinary gifts. Naturally, her comforting burbles about Iran and pledges of eternal sisterhood with the United States have hit the mark at just the moment when our anger at the imbecile Imams has temporarily turned into a form of patriotic self-pity.
The President has led the way in that direction by sadly decreeing that the lights on the National Christmas Tree (that's what they call it) at the back of the White House should not be lit until the unfortunate 50 are returned to their families. Department stores are giving away free Christmas cards to be sent to the hostages. Since the cards have to be picked up in person, it is convenient for indignant patriots to combine standing up for one's countrymen with a bit of Christmas shopping, or is that too nasty an implication? Tuesday was declared 'fly-a-flag' day by the President, who keeps searching with only intermediate success for things to do about Iran which don't end up with us shooting ourselves in the foot. Flag merchants reported that sales of old glory have spurted and for the first time in some weeks have overtaken sales of Iranian flags printed on special, easy-to-burn cloth.
Matters aren't made easier by our almost perfect absence of knowledge about Iran — or Islam for that matter. To most Americans, Iran is made up of oil fields, Teheran or Tehran (no two papers spell it the same) and a place called TheholycityofGom (always one word) where Old X-Ray Eyes, the Ayatollah Hominy-grits, lives on the dark side of Kismet. To us it is a confusing land of unkempt, unwashed, very, very angry munchkins, an Oz with minarets where, if one isn't ensnared by the wicked Ayatollah of the West, it is perhaps because one is unaccountably and irrationally rescued by the good Ayatollah of the East.
As to their religion, all we know is that it makes them prickly and that there are certain months of the year when one does best by avoiding them, specifically TheholymonthofRamadan and TheholymonthofM uharram (both always one word in the papers and on TV). We know that in TheholymonthofMuharram the residents of TheholyeityofGom go off their rockers, marching through the streets wearing winding sheets, beating themselves with chains and generally behaving in a manner suggesting that somebody skipped a tetanus shot. The 40-50, 000 Iranian students here must have formed a not too different picture of the inhabitants of much of North America. What did they think of the story on TV a week or so ago of a large gathering of blonde, blue-eyed Christian Shi'ites in Minnesota throwing rock-androll records on a bonfire because they offend the Christian God?
A letter written to his parents by an Iranian student residing in Pittsburgh while ;tudying marketing and package design was intercepted by the CIA and found to :ontain the following illuminating view of American Christmas rites: Revered Parents: It is TheholymonthofDecember here, when the Christians rush through the streets carrying pine trees and, swept by emotion, ceaselessly sing their cacophonous sacred music which they call carols. On every street corner there is an Ayatollah in black boots, a red jumpsuit and along white beard, endlessly tolling a bell. This bell calls the faithful to prayer. The children are forced to line up in front of these Ayatollahs and then, one by one, they must whisper confession into these ancient hoIymen's ears. The San tatollahs, as they are called, must pass judgment on the children. The good children are awarded presents, the most valuable being lumps of coal because, thanks to our Allah-be-praised Islamic Revolutionary Republic, America no longer has any fuel.
At the climax of TheholymonthofDecember, a day called Christmas, the Americans exchange an enormous number of gifts, always in front of the sacred pine tree. Every house has at least one such tree, illuminated with lights, each one of which represents the soul of a departed ancestor.
We Iranians would find the gifts Americans give each other neither beautiful nor useful. There is a device being given this year which scrambles an egg while it is still in the shell because the children of this strange land find albumen too repulsive or icky, as they would say, to gaze upon, and if the Imam doubts you when you relate this to him, tell him it's no yoke.
An extremely ovoistic people, the Americans, since another gift they are giving each other this year is called an Ork egg. On the television every week they watch a mythic story of an extraterrestrial man called Mork who came from the planet Ork in an interstellar egg. It is copies of this egg which contains, according to the newspapers, 'a foetuslike object surrounded by green play slime' that they give to each other. The children are also given dolls that urinate, grow rashes on their behinds or have names like 'Baby Love' and 'IC issin' Barbi'.
As an Iranian who is proud of his 4, 000-year-old heritage, I hope I am soon deported from the city of the Pittsburgh. My courses in marketing bore me, especially the one on advertising slogans. There are other kinds of slogans I long to compose. I yearn to come home and resume a normal life of chanting and beating myself with chains.
Love, your son, ghoblobhobh.
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