It was like watching a wave approach from a great distance, so great that at first it is not a wave at all, but a mere horizon, static and singular, so that one, it being possible, presumably, to avail oneself of the diversions of the beach, might turn one's back on the ocean altogether, might turn instead to the sand, heaped and tunnelled, the sunscreened hand that fumbles for a book, indeed, the book, the sentence, the syntax, the sun blanching the page, stained, perhaps, with sweat, the creamy pleasure of not-laboring, when one would otherwise labor, the pleasure of wasting oneself, of decadent uselessness, though one might, of course, always alarm to some emergency, a child caught in the undertow, say, who must be dragged to shore and breathed into like an empty balloon, an empty balloon on which everything depends, might, bent over the small body, waiting for it to rise, to float, casting a shadow the size of oneself, not even see, though one was, of course, warned it would come, and soon, the shadow of that wave, like a new sky, already overhead and even now descending.
|
|
Citizens of the Islamic Republic of Iran are officially divided into four categories: Muslims, Zoroastrians, Jews and Christians. This official division ignores other religious minorities in Iran, notably those of the Baháʼí Faith. State sanctioned persecution of Bahá’ís follows from them being an "non-recognized" religious minority without any legal existence, classified as "unprotected infidels" by the authorities, and are subject to systematic discrimination on the basis of their beliefs. Similarly, atheism is officially disallowed; one must declare oneself as a member of one of the four recognized faiths in order to avail oneself of many of the rights of citizenship.
|
|