Arash Zeini

In the very early hours of Wednesday, when a war between Iran and the USA seemed inevitable, I was unsure I could teach my two classes as if nothing had happened. One being on Iranian history and the other on Zoroastrianism in late antiquity, there was no easy way to connect the teaching to the political events of the day. I had woken up to the news of Iran having fired missiles at US military bases over in Iraq. The development was not entirely unexpected, but I was shocked and could sense the signs of that familiar feeling of paralising anxiety that comes with the expectation of a bloody conflict that I have known since the Iranian revolution of 1979, when I was younger than my youngest son is today. A couple of decades and more violent conflicts later, I am unsure, I will ever be old and wise enough to understand violence of this sort.

I have observed the phenomenon of the Neglected Child for over a decade. I admit, I’m not a psychologist and might have had to do with a particularly difficult instance of this personality trait, otherwise often referred to as “narcissism”.

I once knew someone whose mother drove his/her divorced father into alcoholism by emotional abuse, incessant calls, abusive language, and harassment. She did the same to her Child, while the alcoholic father also abused the Child in different and unimaginable ways.

I know, the title is a clickbait and will disappoint most. Still, those thinking that exegesis is a matter of highly theological speculation, reserved for those educated in the study of scripture, might be wrong. Exegesis hits when you expect it the least. The following text, for instance, is an excerpt from an e-mail that I received in May 2018. It questions the relationship between holy scripture, oaths, and truth:

If for nothing else, Hafez is a genius just for this one line:

در تنگنای حیرتم از نخوت رقیب
یارب مباد آن که گدا معتبر شود

Must be a universal feeling, as Robert Walser seems to have felt similar: “Wenn Schwache sich für stark halten”!