I would then scorn and chastise the Euroamerican Weltbild, the fallacy of patiently waiting for capitalism to make its way around the world, spawning plenty of good art in its wake, the arrogant assumption that places not yet subsumed under the logic of Capital would simply join the others in time, like latecomers at a dinner party. Holding the young artist to my side, actually smiling down at him benignly, perhaps clutching his hand from underneath the bedspread, I would say it was up to him, him and his compagnons de route, to undermine the Hegelian dynamic. To incapacitate the conceit of a historiography serving only to prove its own logic. To expose the phantasmagoria of an emancipatory Spirit of Global Capitalism.
The bassiji officer has finally sent me a tape, along with the camera, thanking me profusely, mentioning that his sister-in-law had taken the Panasonic to a wedding ceremony in Shahr-e Rey and that the results were simply marvelous. The thank-you note ends with two stanzas from a Hafez poem, Farsi at its most impenetrable, something to do with drunken dervishes and the futility of life.
The first half-hour of the DV tape shows teenage bassijis waving at the trembling, unfocussed camera, cracking jokes, reciting more stanzas from eleventh-century poetry, including, incidentally, some early Kalegondeh, and greeting their friends and families as if they were on nationwide TV. Maman, I miss you so much, really I do. You gave me everything, I’d be nothing without you, Maman. But the remaining hour on the tape shows a quiet walk through the City Park, an off-voice commenting on the beauty of Iranian trees, the splendor of the Iranian mountainside and the long hiking sprees of the Iranian youth, who trek through the Alborz mountains as if it were a necessity, a matter of life and death, but who are actually walking out of sheer love for nature. You can find so much truth in the Iranian people’s love for nature. So much truth.
I edit a six-minute episode from the City Park sequence, saturate the colors and decide to present it at the opening as a collective work-in-progress by the Zirzamin Militia, calling it ‘Magiciens de la terre’. Moreover, the color-blind Zahedani has already started painting the first SAC items on to canvas, and both the crime novelist and the Baltimore Muslim have confirmed their readings, although Stella, on the other hand, has cancelled hers.
Sorry I can’t. We can discuss when you come to Zurich, book flight tomorrow morning. Promessa sounds toptabulosa. I hear even celebrities are coming your way. Have you heard the Neil Diamond rumor? He was last in China. Too bad about San. Just wish you would check back with us before you act from time to time. Read a new novel the other day, a very nice saga-esque submission from Uruguay. The writer said it was a tale of ‘poverty through poverty via poverty back to poverty’. More anon. Off to buy a coffee from the cute/scary Albanians downstairs. GeStella PS I was going to say something about the purple pizzeria bathroom tiles and the bit with the architects in the Prada dinner jackets under ‘Patronage’, remind me when we meet.
Due to a deep and pious sense of faith in the metaphysics of Helvetic safety standards, throughout my childhood, my parents would invariably fly Swissair, and the flights on Swissair aircraft gradually became an unchanging, cherished childhood memory. A Heimatgefühl enmeshed with the luscious aura of privilege, embedded in a carefully composed symbolic universe. The adorable little cross on the tailfin, the marine-blue vomit bags, the comic-strip emergency regulations, the Cailler chocolate before landing, the sturdy women and tender men in ink-blue uniforms, cautioning and thanking the passengers in the many marvelous accents of the Confédération Helvétique.
Any country of such tiny size as Switzerland, packed with as many communes and cantons, national languages, celebrated design traditions, petty regional contentions and government parties in power would indeed be the perfect starting point for any modern sense of national habitat. As liberating as it is synthetic, a product of historical circumstance and meticulous risk management, rather than any deep-seated emotional consensus. Sitting next to me on the Tehran–Zurich flight is an elderly couple talking in a Swiss-German dialect I cannot understand, although I can make out the terms ‘Shiraz’ and ‘beautiful prostitutes’.
‘Moll, Shiraz isch huara-schön gsii. Chash nüd sägä.’ Both of them are wearing baseball caps, Nike sneakers and Michel Jordi wristwatches.
As the plane takes off from Mehrabad airport, I start flicking through a notebook bearing a daisy-shaped sticker of the Revolutionary Leader on the cover. Zsa Zsa, letter to Rock Hudson, Regal Springs Cruise Ship 1976. No one here speaks any English, but that’s OK. I’ve used my hands before. I reach into my bag and pull out another notebook at random, but even before opening it I’m sidetracked by fantasies involving Stella and Mehrangiz, but also starring Mina and her charming chuckle, her dark eyes and slender fingers sloppily wiping my come off her Chevrolet dashboard.
The aircraft wheels up to the arrival gate, past a billboard saying, ‘Grüezi! Welcome to Unique!’ in Tyler Brûlé polish. Muzak by the Alan Parsons Project starts piping at the passengers from above their seats. As I’d half suspected, Stella isn’t there to meet me at Unique Grüezi Airport, merely sending a string of lengthy text messages.
Her numerous attempts to reach me on my cellphone had failed, she says, ‘for as we all know, Iran has an operating network that stops at its national borders, as in the Zoroastrian precept of a territorial God’. Stella does, however, confirm that Dr Christenhuber would have time to meet me at the I-CON in person, but would also be arriving in Tehran on the night of the opening, towards 1 AM. ‘He’s really looking forward to this.’
She then describes the way to the apartment by taxi, leaving a key at the information desk, in a small manila envelope, and recommending ‘early-morning jogging and sunbathing on the Seefeld side of the lake, the aubergine appetizer at the Darius, the Sashimi at the Hopp Sushi near the station, the Komplett Bar by the Limmat, and this spooky Shiite brotherhood thing on the Förrlibuckstrasse, might interest you, who knows’. She also mentions her local dealer Marco ‘for anything you might need by way of uppers or downers or whatever.’
The cab driver is a young Tamil with an immature, fluffy moustache, his radio tuned to a station playing one hard rock evergreen after another. Gina dreams of running away, when she cries in the night, Tommy whispers baby it’s OK, someday. After a ten-minute drive, we reach a residential area where almost everyone, as far as I can see, is wearing a bulky DJ bag and a pair of plastic flip-flops, neo-Celtic designs tattooed up and down their arms. We come to a halt in front of a high-rise apartment building just behind a soccer stadium, from where I can make out the happy sounds of a Metallica concert.
After stopping the car, the driver gently places a ringed forefinger on the digital display, indicating a sum that would have caused Mehrangiz to bargain for a good hour and a half. But I, with my usual, capricious meandering between blushing courtesy and an aggressive display of indifference, which some, particularly the Francophone, tend to consider mysterious and attractive, even thank the cab driver as I clumsily duck my head to step out of the car.
The furniture in Stella’s thirty-fourth floor apartment is unexpectedly plain. An Ikea sofabed, a silk Chinese carpet, two potted lemon trees placed on either side of the balcony. By the doorway are several shelves filled entirely with stiletto shoes, with an additional shelf for high-heeled boots of black or white leather.
From the balcony I can see the lake and city center surrounded by a small expanse of dark green hills nestled around the lake of Zurich, bathed in a spectacular sunset of red, scarlet and cherry blue. Just next to Stella’s apartment building are three other towers, of precisely the same build and height. I count the balconies of the tower opposite, every single one perfectly empty save for flowerpots, or tables and chairs of white plastic. I light a cigarette, then change my mind and flick it over the railing before walking back inside to look through Stella’s belongings. In the drawers of a tiny dressing-table in the bedroom I find a strap-on vibrator, some L’Oréal make-up, Pokémon corn snacks and several stacks of persona
l photographs, mostly of small children, Labradors, Boxers, German Shepherds and family relatives from Munich.
The refrigerator is empty save for yakisoba noodles, pickled shoga ginger, two open packs of Pokémon corn snacks and an untouched pack of Haribo Gummibärchen. A perfect set of props, straight out of nineties lifestyle journalism as written by young generations of bourgeois bohemians with studied routines, born of a vague sense of being told they were something special, if anxiously suspecting they were not. I realize I cannot see any books in the apartment, only a photocopied article on Marcus Garvey and one on Vincent Gallo, both in German.
I find a small collection of VHS tapes behind a cheap Grundig TV with a built-in VCR, and choose some seventies Italian softcore, but the video recorder jams, clicking and buzzing, and proceeds to chew up the cassette. I extract it from the VCR with the help of a fork and a pair of scissors and insert another tape, labeled Foot Fetish Interracial, then another, Sinnliche Rebellen: Vincent Gallo, and a third, Sinnliche Rebellen: Dr Boris Groys. Which are all, in turn, destroyed by the VCR as it reduces smooth, luminous tape to crinkled filament. Although I’m not looking forward to seeing Uncle Tan in the slightest, I call the I-CON nonetheless, to hear a recorded announcement thanking the caller for calling but not allowing for a message of his own.
The next morning, upon hearing the same message on the I-CON answering machine, I decide to drop by unannounced. It’s raining as the driver stops in front of a massive steel door in bright yellow, I-CON spelled out in fluorescent orange in the upper right-hand corner. I walk up to the entrance and notice a camera lens at eye level, just above the buzzer. I press it, sheepishly eyeing the lens, and the door clicks open almost instantly. Once inside, I scrutinize the door and realize the lens is a fake, the surveillance camera a cheap piece of fiction, precisely the kind of affected prank that longtime academics would indulge in.
I walk down an unlit corridor, along a series of empty rooms, all equipped with spacious office desks with unusually glossy black desktops, until I reach a small foyer, where I’m received by a tubby brunette in high heels, a tight skirt and a black denim shirt that goes well with her unsparing bust, impish, dark eyes and blushing cheeks. Very much reminiscent of the fuck-me cheeks and the big eyes, or was it vice versa.
‘Der Herr Doktor Christenhuber’, she announces, was at a biweekly fundraising meeting with Business Unusual, the board of official sponsors of AVANTI, a federal committee charged with ‘catalyzing creative approaches to stimulating the national economy’, but he would probably be here in a few minutes. She leaves me to study the I-CON brochures announcing upcoming events and publications and wondering whether the Promessa would fit in among these studied contemplations of amputee video artists, Polish postmodernism, Saigon urban design, oral histories of Peruvian head massage, black-market trade routes in Albania and Greece, and Mapping Hetereologia: Liminality and the Everyday Cultures of Shanghai.
Within half an hour or so, Christenhuber is walking in to greet me, one arm eagerly outstretched to shake my hand, wearing his felt hat and black corduroys, a black cashmere sweater casually thrown over his shoulders. He offers me espresso in the meeting room, where the conference table has the same peculiar, plastic surface I noticed in the remaining rooms along the hall. As I sit down, I realize the surface reflects the moisture from my palms in the form of two prominently glistening sweat patches, with several smaller ones where my fingertips were.
Tan, familiar with the furniture and its disciplinary potentialities, grips the rim of his espresso cup with one hand, the other resting on his right forearm, making little drumming motions with his fingers. When I mention the camera lens downstairs, he throws back his head and chortles loudly at the ceiling without interrupting the thrum of his fingers on his arm, as if I’d mentioned an old, private joke between the two of us. Going back to some essay, say, by Donna Haraway or Trinh T. Minh-ha. I hopefully assume that, following my fit at the Restaurant Central, the air is cleared between us once again. Christenhuber gathers himself, interrupting the drumming of his fingers only to wipe a tear out of the corner of his eye, the other hand still gripping his cup, then enquires about my position on African art, on the Promessa and on Tarofi’s projects for the local art scene.
After a brief chat on recent happenings in Tehran, including the unfortunate loss of San, and a second espresso that was brought in by the assistant, Christenhuber eventually concludes that, if I don’t mind his saying so, I don’t seem to have much personal distance from the subject matter as a whole, and whether I think this might hinder or otherwise affect my sense of critical analysis. I savor thick waves of pristine rage surging up through my gut and lapping at my temples. But remembering the many contracts and obligations, promises and pledges I have made in Tehran and elsewhere, I briefly close my eyes, fighting the urge to ask for the restrooms and leave the building as discreetly as I can, obediently answering that no, no I think not, you can rest assured on that count.
For lack of a better idea, I take a cab to what Stella referred to as the ‘Komplett Bar’. Sitting on a barstool by the Limmat river, I find myself surrounded by slender men and women in their twenties and thirties, all in tasteful flip-flops, drinking light beers from transparent plastic cups, smoking a brand called Parisienne Mild. Most are tattooed. A woman in Ray Ban sunglasses and camouflage flip-flops brushes past, swirling, neo-Celtic symbolics on her lower back, stretching down to her buttocks beneath her blue jeans, and I’m reminded of the Japanese tattoo artist on the BBC.
‘Bootkick Here,’ I speculate. ‘Please Insert Celtic Blowhorn Here’.
Seated at the other end of the bar, I notice the I-CON office assistant with the Persian cheeks, sipping on peach daiquiri and reading a paperback, a large DJ bag lying nearby. I watch her as she drinks, immersed in her paperback, occasionally lighting a Parisienne Mild or rearranging the slush in her daiquiri with her straw, her dark-brown hair tied back into a bun, wearing designer camouflage fatigues and a white T-shirt with BRITNEY SWALLOWS stenciled across the front. I slide off the barstool and walk over to her, trying to breathe the air all the way down into my lower gut. I can now see she has a small Celtic pattern on her forearm and is reading Marguerite Duras.
‘Excuse me.’ She looks up from Les petits chevaux de Tarquinia. ‘Have you had dinner?’
‘I suppose I know you from somewhere?’ She grimly shuts her Duras paperback, though not without positioning a cardboard bookmark at the appropriate page.
‘No. I don’t think so.’ I hesitate. ‘I mean, yes. You do. We met this morning at the I-CON. Have you had dinner?’
She orders the green chicken curry, I have a papaya salad and determine that her boyfriend owns a futon store, that she’s finished her studies in New Interaction Design at the Art Academy, that she’s working part-time at the I-CON and that she just got back from Cadiz where she was taking a winter course in beginner’s Spanish. When she asks me my name, I thank God it isn’t Franz or Michael, for it always offers a good ten minutes’ worth of conversation. ‘Khatami: sounds like a futon, doesn’t it?’ I quip, which makes her giggle.
She asks me a series of questions on Tehran, and Iran, but also on the pan-Arab movement, and on Arab women’s rights, and the cultural politics of the Arab mass media in the Arab world. Rather than point out the standard geocultural inaccuracy, I do my best to answer. Nasser, Queen Rania, Al-Jazeera, and after another ten minutes of conversation I ask her whether she’d like to go home with me.
‘Don’t think so,’ she says, ‘I really don’t think so.’
We smile sheepishly, first at each other, then down at our plates. I take off my glasses, clean them with my shirtsleeve and put them on again. Twenty feet away, a woman in tight blue jeans and a studded leather belt is twirling a little girl around, both of them laughing and giggling. Watching them from a wooden cot nearby is a man in camouflage shorts and a white T-Shirt saying PUNK’S NOT DEAD in ransom note cutouts, a plastic beer glass in one hand. I’m wonder
ing whether to try and convince her to at least reconsider, or whether to simply walk away, when she stands up and thanks me for dinner. This is when I realize she has pockmarks around her chin and wonder why I hadn’t noticed before.
‘Time to get back to my Petits chevaux de Tarquinia.’ She smiles sweetly at me.
‘Guess so.’ I do my best to smile back.
I stay where I am, watching long processions of tattooed men and women with perfect tans, immaculate pedicures and designer sunglasses. The man on the wooden cot, a persisting, dreamy smile on his lips, is still observing the forever twirling woman and spinning child, shrieking and chortling in the hazy sunset.
Someone taps me on the shoulder. It’s the I-CON secretary, smiling down at me. ‘I changed my mind,’ she says, visibly only half convinced by her decision.
In the elevator to the thirty-fourth floor, I unbutton her army fatigues, stroking her nervously, then stick several fingers into her at a time, moving them quickly back and forth, which obviously whets her appetite, since she starts breathing heavily into my mouth. I try to concentrate on her fingers, reaching for my penis through the open zipper, but I’m annoyed by the distinct scent of chicken and green curry. ‘You’re panting down my throat.’
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