A Head Good for a Grave Stone

With a smile on his face, the announcer on an American television said sneeringly, “One may be the president of a country, yet not have a place to spend the night.” He continued, “Like Mr. Mahmoud Ahmadinejad who until now has not found a place to sleep tonight! He does not know where to rest his head.”


With his pack on his back, the excited small dictator, once again has headed abroad. His “pals” are accompanying him, along with their spouses and kids. And with a behavior that makes him the joke of our time, he has traded his white overcoat [which he wore during his campaign days to portray himself as a populist] with a new suit and a pair of Otofoku slippers boarded the plane that would take “the head of a coup administration” to the land of “infidels”, as the US is constantly called. Prior to this, he probably kissed Mr. Khamenei’s hand, and “asked for his blessings”.

But why is Mr. Ahmadinejad going to New York? Is it to talk about compensation from the Russians for a Bushehr petrochemical plant that was never finished? Is about our share in the Caspian Sea which was taken away from us and glass was raised to celebrate it? Is to thank Venezuela for its oil gift? Is it because of the grief of our rice growers who are now stooping under the pressure of 13 types of imported rice? Or perhaps he is going to talk about global warming? Talk about the destruction of forests, the drying up of Zayanderood River in Iran? Or perhaps to talk about Neda who was shamelessly killed in the aftermath of the June 12 elections? Or about Sohrab? Or talk about the mothers who gather in parks every Saturday and mourn the murder of loved ones in recent weeks?

No. He is going for none of these reasons. If he was to talk about these issues then Ahmad Zeidabadi would not be under the boots of the interrogators of the coup administration. The very people who want to crush him and force him to read an indictment of the kind that we recently saw in 5 show trials on Iranian television. If this was the case then Abdollah Momeni would not have been tortured to the point of loosing hope. If Ahmadinejad had gone to speak as the representative of the Iranian people, then Iranian teachers would not have heard the first bell of the school year under the shadows of the government’s armed agents. Its workers would not have stared at cheap Chinese goods because of their pays that are under the poverty line while the factories in their own country are being shut down so that supporters of Ahmadinejad get their ransom money.

Ahmadinejad is going to New York and the pain of finding a place to spend the night so that he can talk of a referendum in Europe, about leadership of the world, and say that French leaders are below the dignity of its people.  To talk of the Holocaust and of Palestine. A Palestine whose minds have clearly said that these policies are parallel to those of extremist Israelis, and who have exhausted the Palestinians.

Ahmadinejad and his “pals” have gone to get an implicit signal for their survival. They have gone so they can say: “We will give you whatever you want, let us stay in power.”

But he ignores the fact that it is the Iranian people who will make that decision. The same people who in thousands have gathered right now in New York to tell the world through their green message: The man that you see is not from us, he does not represent us. He is a coup perpetrator, he is a rapist, … .

To all the good people of the world: Thank you for not letting such a mean man peacefully lay his head which would be good only as a grave stone.