Daily Times Pakistan
Friday, August 24, 2007
Over 100 days in Evin – Pamela Kilpadi
For those of us who have chosen to leave behind relatively comfortable
lives, leave our `narrowed habit’ and engage with those less
fortunate, the importance of addressing social injustice becomes
painfully apparent
In 2004 I first met Kian Tajbakhsh, an Iranian American social
scientist held since last May in Tehran’s notorious Evin Prison. I
remember mentioning that my Indian husband always dreamed of visiting
Iran, especially Esfahan. Kian said that as an Indiaphile, we should
have a lot to talk about.
Kian quickly became a reliable friend of the scholars we helped
support, including many in Pakistan. At the time of his senseless
arrest on May 11, we were planning a meeting scheduled for early June
at the Lahore University of Management Sciences entitled Devolution As
Freedom? Devolving Power and Building Nations in Iran, Iraq,
Afghanistan and Pakistan. I last heard from Kian on May 8. When he did
not respond to an urgent message on May 9 and I read about leading
Woodrow Wilson Center scholar Haleh Esfandiari’s arrest, I immediately
had a sickening, sinking feeling.
Kian is undoubtedly a formidable scholar with an enviable ability to
engage in serious intellectual debate on a wide variety of topics. But
perhaps more importantly, he actively engages and challenges people
from all walks of life, always striving to understand the person
behind the ideas, thereby raising the most crucial questions. Kian’s
interest in urban studies was inspired, as he says, `by the use of the
metaphor of the city as a way to understand some key aspects of
contemporary societies, as well as their potential for human growth
and enlightenment’.
In his 2002 article `Cities and Civilisations: Exploring Problems of
Cultural Interaction from Both Angles’, published in Peace
Policy. `Looking at the concreteness of the spaces of the cities in
which we live helps us ask some important questions about the problems
of peaceful co-existence through negotiation and compromise… This
means that we can perhaps learn from the experience of complex,
multicultural cities something about how `peoples,’ even
civilisations, pursue dialogue, fail at dialogue (when interaction
turns to violence), or just get by…’
Apart from cities defined as a single homogeneous universal community
or those encompassing a multitude of homogeneous individual
communities, Kian attempted to imagine an alternative. `Democratic
procedures in a complex multicultural context require complex selves
where each individual needs to see things not only from other people’s
points of view but from the many different desires and needs,
sometimes contradictory, that exist within each person,’ he
wrote. This is what I have called the promise of the city.
`Unfortunately, an increasingly visible current trend in forms of
urbanism recoils from this possibility and `voluntarily’ withdraws
into residential enclaves and homogeneous spaces, whereby the
boundaries between inside and outside are made more rigid and more
brittle. Examples of these `gated’ or otherwise policed neighbourhood
residential spaces are increasingly to be found throughout North
America and even Latin American countries such as Brazil… The most
understandable reason for this rejection is that the openness I have
advocated can easily – as is the case in colonial experiences – lead
to the erosion and loss of cherished traditions, beliefs, and ways of
life. The stress on change, novelty, and hybridity – critics contend –
underestimates ordinary people’s need for a space of continuity,
stability, and order. These tensions clearly also underlie the debate
over the pros and cons of the interaction of civilisations and
cultures…
`This tension between stability and change, between the defence of the
known versus the embrace of the different and unknown, is also
reflected in the spaces of the modern city. A truly `urban’ city is
one which is complex enough to offer its inhabitants two fundamental
kinds of experience. One is a stable space of continuity, where we can
rely on our beliefs and self-identifications. The other is where we
put ourselves – our beliefs and worldviews – at risk. Through
confrontation with different truths, we question our beliefs, values,
and identities and are thus led to expand our moral imaginations of
what is possible and important.’
Kian is deeply committed to social research. He may dream of a better
world, but he is far from being naïve about the nature of human
behaviour and social interaction. For those of us who have chosen to
leave behind relatively comfortable lives, leave our `narrowed habit’
and engage with those less fortunate, the importance of addressing
social injustice becomes painfully apparent.
But when I think about Kian, I like to remember his incredible
wit. Especially in private conversation, when his mischievous grin
often signals a sarcastic comment or slightly irreverent joke. His
rich personality is a unique mix of the pragmatist and the poet, with
music and the arts central in his life. I remember sharing a meal with
one of our Armenian scholars, when Kian suddenly began humming an
Armenian song he had just recalled from a concert in Yerevan, which
our colleague immediately recognised. He can easily move between
speech and song.
Kian is passionate about his country Iran, its people, its culture – a
fact that makes his detention all the more tragic and cruel. Iranian
officials play directly into the hands of Washington hardliners by
targeting law-abiding patriots. And for those of us with multiple
countries, who live as citizens of the world, the categories and
labels imposed upon individuals by states, particularly post-9/11, are
often glaringly inadequate and arbitrary. As Gandhi once said: `No
culture can live if it attempts to be exclusive.’ There are many
things I had hoped to discuss with Kian – research, books, music –
during our reunion in Lahore. I speak for Kian’s scholars in Pakistan
and around the world as well as myself when I say that Kian and his
family are constantly in our thoughts. Dr Esfandiari has finally been
released on bail. We sincerely hope that Kian will also soon be free.
Pamela Kilpadi, a social science doctoral candidate, served as the
founding director of the International Policy Fellowships programme in
Budapest, Hungary. Her first op-ed on Kian’s detention appeared in the
June 16 edition of Daily Times. Information about Kian Tajbakhsh,
including a petition for his release, is available at