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How'd We Do?

Lightning Strikes

Check out Bernardo. He walks the streets of Bogota. Sometimes when he's walking, he saves someone's life.

Can't Help It

These guys are still my favorites, after all these many years.

Cyros Amiri (Part 55): My Father's Murder

I was repeatedly arrested, imprisoned, and tortured over the years but the authorities could never get any proof of my activities.  But eventually they figured it out, when I hid a fugitive political activist and helped him escape from Iran.

Anyway, then my father was murdered and his dead body was found by his gardener at his home.  That was the last chapter of my life in Iran.

The police initially said that the killer's motive was robbery.  Police identified signs of forced entry and claimed that those signs were intended as a decoy.   They believed the killer was a person familiar with the victim and entered without a problem.

Police showed everybody an old picture of me, claiming I was the murderer. They asked my sister where I lived, but she hadn't known for years!  They told my sister that the neighbors had identified me as the killer.  At that time my sister thought that I was in Germany and so she denied the accusations against me.   She asked the police to continue the investigation and arrest the real killer.

I was informed about this story by my other sister.  This confirmed to me my suspicion that my political activities had been discovered. At the time I was hiding at a secret place called "Shahrestanak". I was hiding because of how I had helped a wanted political activist escape from Iran using my passport. Unfortunately, the regime found out about that, through the arrest and interrogation of that political activist's family, so they were seeking to arrest me, too.

My sister wasn't totally wrong.  I had been in Germany, but I was back.  In Germany I met someone who had dedicated his life to political prisoners in Iran.  His greatest concern was about the families of political prisoners. Because of my past relationships and activities with a number of prisoners' families in Iran, he and I were soon able to trust each other and share information.  Through him, I became aware of  a man in Iran who had political difficulties.  His siblings had been arrested in 1981 and were executed in the massacre of 1987, but he had escaped and went into hiding.  His condition was very difficult, and his family was under great pressure by the regime.  So my friend in Germany was looking for a way to get him out of Iran.  I volunteered to return to Iran and help him.

Our initial plan was to organize a program to take him to Turkey. This is typically the easiest way. Unfortunately, when I visited him I realized that he was not physically fit enough do this. For my plan, he needed to be able to walk long distances and climb across the border into Turkey, but he was unable to do that. The alternative, then, was air travel.  I let him use my passport.

Because of their political background; his family were under surveillance and were not allowed to travel without permission from the security officials. We secretly arranged their travel to Tehran for a last visit with their child.  Unfortunately after that they were arrested.  But because by that time their child had already left the country they said everything.  I was therefore in danger and had to go into hiding.

My father was killed a few months later. They accused me, in an attempt to smoke me out of my hiding place, to pressure my family into giving them information about me.

Anyway, a few years later the killer was arrested and confessed to the crime.  The court sentenced him to death, but my brothers and sisters pardoned him and saved him from the death penalty.

Unpublishable Haiku #17

gray mist
one crooked post
under the red balcony

Such a good book

Denis Johnson's new book, Train Dreams. So good. Remember the last time you read a book that kicked you in the gut?

Take it Easy, Take it Hard

Take it Easy, Take it Hard
For Bubba
In the winter I wait for summer. In the thick of summer, it seems like cooler, more tolerable weather will never circle back around. Days and weeks are spiraling past, while simultaneously the bus never seems to round the corner. My friend, you write: Innocents, awaiting the divine, suddenly propelled forward on the edge of an alien tsunami. Fifty years gone in a blink.
And knowing that fifty days and fifty years can blink and drag and blink and drag... how can I argue? How can I deny it?
Instead I will say this:
Go get Marly, walk down and let him splash in the river and shake his natty fur. Sit in the garden near Phebe's witchy thistle patch. Sit in the grass, lay down in the grass. Rest your head on the belly of that smelly precious dog. Light a bonfire, drink wine from a coffee cup on the darkening porch. Dance until the record skips then tell jokes in the kitchen, mosquito slapping. Scratch your beard, take a swim and shake your natty fur. Let your grown son be a child. Take it easy and take it hard. Go get Marly and walk down to the river, I will watch for the bus finally rounding the corner and find myself aboard.

                                                                                                                        -by Angel Hogan

New YouTube Channel

Okay, so at the suggestion of my old newspaper editor, "The Names of Places" has a new YouTube channel.  It is linked to the blog and will be replete with audio posts, slideshows, and Bub songs.  Here's a repeat of a recent Bub song, now available at YouTube.

My favorite Bub song

Perhaps it's a bit sentimental for a half-baked ditty, but what can you do?