unusual words, swiftly disappeared again behind a barricade of generators, conveyors, relays, and control keys.
("For these people the concrete has become an asylum, a hideout, salvation. Cedarâwell, yes, that's something concrete; so is asphalt. You can speak out about the concrete, express yourself as freely as you like. The great thing about the concrete is that it has its own clearly demarcated armed frontiers with warning bells along them. When a mind immersed in the concrete begins to approach that border, the bells warn that just beyond lies the field of treacherous general ideas, undesirable reflections, and syntheses. At the sound of this signal the cautious mind recoils and dives back into the concrete. We can see the whole process in the face of our interlocutor. He might be going along, talking in the most lively of ways, quoting numbers, percentages, names, and dates. We can see how firmly he's anchored in the concrete, like a rider in the saddle. Then we ask: 'That's all well and good, but why are people, in some way, shall we say, imperfectly satisfied?' At this point we can see how his face changes. The alarm bells have gone off:
Attention! You are about to cross the border of the concrete!
He grows silent and looks desperately for a way outâwhich is, of course, to retreat back into the concrete. Glad to have escaped the trap, panting with relief, he again starts talking with animation, haranguing and crushing us with the concrete in any form whatsoever: an object, an existence, a creature, or a phenomenon. It is a characteristic of disparate concretes that they cannot join together spontaneously to create general images. For example, two negative concretes can exist side by side, but they will not form a joint image until human thought welds them together. But the alarm bells prevent that synthesizing thought from ever occurring, so the negative concretes go on coexisting without forming any disturbing pattern. To succeed in making each person close himself within the borders of his concrete existence is to create an atomized society made up of n-number of concrete individuals unable to unite into a harmoniously acting comity.")
Mahmud, however, decided to tear himself away from mundane problems and sail into the realm of imagination and emotion. He traced another friend who, he learned, had become a respected poet. Hassan Rezvani received him in a luxurious modern villa. They sat at the edge of the swimming pool (the summer heat had set in) sipping gin and tonic from frosty glasses. Hassan complained of tiredness: He had just returned the day before from a trip to Montreal, Chicago, Paris, Geneva, and Athens. He had traveled around giving lectures on the Great Civilization, the Revolution of the Shah and the Nation. It had been hard work, he confessed, because noisy subversives had prevented him from speaking and had insulted him. Hassan showed Mahmud a new volume of his poems, dedicated to the Shah. The first poem bore the title "Where He Casts His Glance, Flowers Bloom." If, so the poem said, the Shah merely looked anywhere at all, a carnation or a tulip would blossom forth.
Â
And where longer his glance reposes,
There blossom roses.
Â
Another poem was titled "Where He Stands, a Spring Appears." In these verses the author assured his readers that wherever the monarch sets his foot, a spring of crystal-clear water will appear:
Â
Let the Shah stop somewhere and stand
And a broad river flows across the land.
Â
These verses were read on the radio and in schools. The monarch himself referred to them in flattering terms and endowed Hassan with a Pahlavi Foundation fellowship.
Walking down the street one day, Mahmud saw a man standing under a tree. Drawing nearer, with difficulty he recognized Mohsen Jalaver, with whom he had broken into print years before in a student magazine. Mahmud knew that Mohsen had been tortured and jailed for sheltering a mujahedeen friend in his apartment.
("For these people the concrete has become an asylum, a hideout, salvation. Cedarâwell, yes, that's something concrete; so is asphalt. You can speak out about the concrete, express yourself as freely as you like. The great thing about the concrete is that it has its own clearly demarcated armed frontiers with warning bells along them. When a mind immersed in the concrete begins to approach that border, the bells warn that just beyond lies the field of treacherous general ideas, undesirable reflections, and syntheses. At the sound of this signal the cautious mind recoils and dives back into the concrete. We can see the whole process in the face of our interlocutor. He might be going along, talking in the most lively of ways, quoting numbers, percentages, names, and dates. We can see how firmly he's anchored in the concrete, like a rider in the saddle. Then we ask: 'That's all well and good, but why are people, in some way, shall we say, imperfectly satisfied?' At this point we can see how his face changes. The alarm bells have gone off:
Attention! You are about to cross the border of the concrete!
He grows silent and looks desperately for a way outâwhich is, of course, to retreat back into the concrete. Glad to have escaped the trap, panting with relief, he again starts talking with animation, haranguing and crushing us with the concrete in any form whatsoever: an object, an existence, a creature, or a phenomenon. It is a characteristic of disparate concretes that they cannot join together spontaneously to create general images. For example, two negative concretes can exist side by side, but they will not form a joint image until human thought welds them together. But the alarm bells prevent that synthesizing thought from ever occurring, so the negative concretes go on coexisting without forming any disturbing pattern. To succeed in making each person close himself within the borders of his concrete existence is to create an atomized society made up of n-number of concrete individuals unable to unite into a harmoniously acting comity.")
Mahmud, however, decided to tear himself away from mundane problems and sail into the realm of imagination and emotion. He traced another friend who, he learned, had become a respected poet. Hassan Rezvani received him in a luxurious modern villa. They sat at the edge of the swimming pool (the summer heat had set in) sipping gin and tonic from frosty glasses. Hassan complained of tiredness: He had just returned the day before from a trip to Montreal, Chicago, Paris, Geneva, and Athens. He had traveled around giving lectures on the Great Civilization, the Revolution of the Shah and the Nation. It had been hard work, he confessed, because noisy subversives had prevented him from speaking and had insulted him. Hassan showed Mahmud a new volume of his poems, dedicated to the Shah. The first poem bore the title "Where He Casts His Glance, Flowers Bloom." If, so the poem said, the Shah merely looked anywhere at all, a carnation or a tulip would blossom forth.
Â
And where longer his glance reposes,
There blossom roses.
Â
Another poem was titled "Where He Stands, a Spring Appears." In these verses the author assured his readers that wherever the monarch sets his foot, a spring of crystal-clear water will appear:
Â
Let the Shah stop somewhere and stand
And a broad river flows across the land.
Â
These verses were read on the radio and in schools. The monarch himself referred to them in flattering terms and endowed Hassan with a Pahlavi Foundation fellowship.
Walking down the street one day, Mahmud saw a man standing under a tree. Drawing nearer, with difficulty he recognized Mohsen Jalaver, with whom he had broken into print years before in a student magazine. Mahmud knew that Mohsen had been tortured and jailed for sheltering a mujahedeen friend in his apartment.
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