Why we're going to Iran

The members of our peace delegations come from all over the United States and from all walks of life. Collected here are the voices of the participants in our upcoming Iran delegation - in poetry, prose, and first-person stories. Please spend some time reading them. We look forward to more reflections after they arrive in Iran on Wednesday. (State department-willing!)

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It happens that the act of following ones conscience can be a lonely enterprise especially in a climate of tension, misunderstanding, and militarism. However, joining with like minded people here, and encountering like minded and other people abroad, especially those perceived to be the enemy, can be a great affirmation of our beliefs and efforts. Our struggle is nonviolent and for peace. I am a witness for this nonviolent struggle and by going to Iran will reach out to the Iranian people to join with them to affirm a world that can live together in peace.

- Ivan Kasimoff, Los Angeles CA

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There is a corner of the universe
Where the fortress I build,
The fortified sandbags I fill
With stones of the wrongs done to me
And all the parts of me killed,
They are cut away and spill out into
Distant stars, moons, and planets, and
All that is left is this place inside us alive-
I'm here to listen to the sound of this
Rarely explored and vast outer reach beat that
Plays the music of many-and-one intertwined
It is the voice of the prophets and poets;
The open and broken hearted;
The Abrahams and the Isaacs;
Almost always betrayed and defeated;
But my memory drifts to their stories
Like an echo returns to its source.

I find this place begin to form
Between us
Where the sounds of our conversations
Unite us
Where the notorious blood-stained past
No longer taunts
The promise of what may come to pass
Ahead of us
Where the heavy and bitter
Pretense of power and slavery's weight
Is latched
To the back of my thoughts
Not my back
As I open the gifts of your words
I try to promise the best of my worth
To the worlds they arrange
The wounds that they heal
But I'm tripped and seduced by my personal ills
Fault lines keep me from
Believing in change
Day-to-day
So we drift,
further and further and further...a---

Wait!
I'm tired of moving pieces of ground-up rock in these sacks
I lug them around on my sinking shoulders
And abandon the eyes
Of a child in return
For survival
And empty contracts-
Cataracts
Blur my way forward
I've come to rely on blind justice and force-
To fight pain with pain
And what have I gained?

So, I'm here to witness
Liberty's light from a new point of view
To reveal in a flash what I've all along known
That it's wrong
To be so far removed
From myself and from You-
Now
Is the time and this is the place
Deep in the heart of this presence I somehow
Belong to this peace,
I may never know it complete-
But it knows me,
It knows us-
I'm here to listen.

- Shervin Bloorian, Washington DC

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For many years I have turned to FOR for guidance in my journey for peace. As many of us worked hard to stop the US war on Iraq and during this tragic and unnecessary war, FOR has provided the resources and guidance that have kept us informed and motivated in our struggle. Now, with the threat of another unjust US attack on Iran, I am honored to be part of their peace and friendship delegation as a means of promoting non violent alternatives to war.

The idea of applying for this delegation grew out of my frustration and anger over the possiblility of another war. I look forward to acting as a civilian diplomat and meeting the Iranian people, listening to their stories, and bringing them home to share with people in my community, as well as, my representatives in Congress.

Our experiences in Iran will be a great education and our new friendships a sign of understanding, mutual respect and hope.

- Elizabeth Pappalardo, Crystal Lake IL

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Less than 48-Hours Until Lift-Off....

Iran? Are you serious? Why, of all the places in the world, would you want to go to Iran? Wouldn't your time be better spent on a nice, safe, tropical island? Don't you know you could be killed over there? Have you lost your mind? I thought you were a feminist, how are you going to make it traveling to Iran, where women are "second class" and treated so poorly? Do you have some sort of death wish? Wow, you're brave, I'm glad it's not me!

When I announced my intention to travel to Iran in the role of civilian ambassador as part of the Fellowship of Reconciliation's 8th Delegation, the above statements are just a sampling of what I heard from those I told. Although I did receive support from some of my more progressive, activist friends, the majority of those with whom I conversed had similar reactions...generally, the consensus seemed to be that I had lost my mind. I guess I can understand their point....I am a 32-year old woman announcing my intention to travel internationally for the first time and where am I going? The Islamic Republic of Iran. For many, this decision came out of "left field" and they just didn't understand.

If I am honest, the decision to make the trip has been a whirlwind process for me, too. In fact, I didn't know about the Fellowship of Reconciliation, much less the Iran Delegations, until May 15th of this year when I read Larry Beirnhart's article, "A Jew's Eye View of Iran," which he'd written and posted on alternet.org upon his return from the last FOR Iran Delegation. Prior to reading this article, I had been interested in Persian culture, having been introduced to it by past, as well as current, relationships with Iranian-Americans. I am unsure what lit the fire within me, but once it was lit, I couldn't learn enough about what I was coming to understand as a mystical and intriguing society. I started taking Farsi lessons, reading anything related to Persian history/culture, and interrogating my Persian friends about their lives when back in their homeland.

On multiple occasions I had mentioned how I would love to travel to Iran, but just didn't know how I was going to make such a trip "work," as traveling there by myself was out of the question and going with a boyfriend, even if he was Persian, was not going to be acceptable. Imagine my excitement when I heard about FOR's delegation...here it was! The opportunity I'd been waiting for! I decided right away, on a whim, to apply for a place on the Delegation. By this time, I was interested not just in seeing Iran and her beauty, but, having become increasingly concerned over the well-being of my friends and their families in Iran, interested in doing whatever I could to help de-escalate the tension that was building between our two nations. It was a surreal moment when I learned I had been selected as one of the Delegation members. It was going to happen, I was going to Iran.

As I write this, I am less than 48-hours away from boarding a plane from Richmond, Virginia to New York City, at which point I will travel on to Paris and then Tehran. I am excited, nervous, and anxious....all normal reactions, I do believe. However, I believe in the purpose of this delegation...to participate in person-to-person dialogue in an attempt for cultural exchange and bridge building between our two cultures. I hope to learn more about what life is like in the Islamic Republic of Iran, without the filters of the media or my friends' memories. For the next two weeks I intend to live life as a Persian woman and experience what it means to be female in Iran. When I return from my trip safe and sound (in'shalla!), I hope to dispel or confirm the myths that many in the West hold toward the great, historical nation once known as Persia.

I look forward to sharing my experience with you.

- Wendy Boggs, Richmond, VA
http://persianthoughts.wordpress.com

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I am going to Iran because of a conversation I had with my 80 year, lifelong Republican father last spring. He had no compunction about expressing extremely racist views on Muslims and Islam in a way that wouldn't be socially acceptable if he were talking about any other group. He accused all Muslims of being complicit in terror attacks like 9/11 and stated that it was a religion of war and agression. Shocked, I made a half-hearted attempt to point out that most of the world's religions have a history of not following their prophets' teachings ("Remember the Crusades, Dad?") and that ordinary Muslims abhor acts of terror. But the conversation had degenerated to the point where neither of us was listening to the other and nothing productive came of continuing.

What made the conversation personally painful was that for the past five years, I've been serious student of Sufism, one of the mystical flowerings of Islam. Although initiates in my particular order aren't required to become Muslim and there are interfaith dances and services in which all faiths are honored, most of our practices, prayers, and teaching stories have Islamic roots. I've read histories of Islam and biographies of Mohammed, and immersed myself in the poetry of Kabir, Rumi and Hafez. On a 2007 trip to India, I spent much of my time meditating in the tombs of Sufi saints and admiring splendors of Moghul architecture. I 'm grateful for the insight and joy that's come into my life through Sufism,and appreciate the Islamic faith and cultures from which it evolved. It was hard to hear my father out of ignorance trash something I treasured so deeply, and to know that if he felt that way, so did many other Americans.

After that conversation, I felt compelled to do something to combat the Islamophobia rampant in this country today.
Like most of us, I've alternated between between rage, dumb amazement and profound despair at the arrogance and inhumanity of US policies in the Middle East and at the media disinformation that feeds it. I'm going to Iran replace this so-called "axis of evil" with human beings and come back and tell Americans about them. I am going to Iran to make heart to heart connections with ordinary Iranians; to eat and speak and pray with them. I want to have firsthand knowledge about the beauty of Iran's mosques and monuments and landscapes; about the courage and hospitality of its people. As my Muslim friend Nur Habib puts it, I'm going to Iran to "show the world the beauty of the rose of Islam."

This past week, at a celebration marking the miraj or night journey of Mohammed up into the heavens from the Dome of the Rock in Jerusalem, I was moved to take shahada and become a Muslim. I'm not that interested in the minutae of the outward forms of Islam, and I interpret Mohammed's teachings differently than the fundamentalists. But what strikes me about the Quaranic Mohammed, like Christ and the Hebrew prophets before him, is his deep commitment to peace and social justice; to sharing resources and defending weaker, more vulnerable members of the community. I hope in some small way that this trip to Iran helps me to follow in all of those illustrious footsteps.

- Teresa Jean Foundriat, Saugerties NY

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One of my goals when I visit Iran with the FOR August delegation is to understand the status of the country's infrastructure. The issue is illustrated by two contradictorily pictures.

On one hand there are 537 photographs of Tehran on the website TheWorldIsRound.com that show a vibrant, modern city. There are high-rise business and residential districts, and many construction cranes suggesting an active building program. There is a new subway that is clean and well appointed with original art. The streets are clean, well paved, and full of newish automobiles. There are photos of modern shopping malls. Photos captioned as high end residential look like they can fit into Beverly Hills. Other photos captioned middle-class neighborhood and subsidized housing look like they would fit into any large eastern American city such as Boston, New York, or Philadelphia.

Brian William (anchor of the NBC nightly news) just returned from Tehran where he interviewed Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad. In a Aug. 31 appearance on the Daily Show, Williams described Tehran with "city streets [that] remind you of a cross between Havana and Baghdad," an atmosphere like an "eastern-bloc nation that hasn't had a cent invested in it in years," and his hotel, formally a Hilton, that "has gone to hell" because "its dirty and awful."

These are completely different descriptions. My mission is to verify one of these pictures of Tehran. Are the photographs on the web site highly selective? Or is Williams supporting the Israeli-American story that all Iran does is support terrorism and build nuclear bombs.

- Jeff Warner, LaHabra Heights CA

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I welcome the opportunity to be part of this FOR delegation to Iran for one main reason and that is to help defuse the current unnecessary crisis between the US (and some European Union countries) and Iran which threatens to turn into an equally unnecessary war with unspeakable consequences for all concerned, but especially for Iran. I am a former US intelligence officer who helped expose the false claims the United Sates used to justify its aggression against Nicaragua during the 1980s. Later, I helped organize and lead a group of other former US intelligence officers in opposing other so-called US "covert operations" around the world. Most recently I have been one of the leaders of Veteran Intelligence professionals for Sanity (VIPS) which, during the runup to the US invasion of Iraq in 2003 demonstrated the falsity of the Bush administration charges that Iraq possessed so-called weapons of mass destruction that posed an imminent threat to the national security of the United States. I, and many others, see the same tactics and false charges being used to justify both economic sanctions and threats of military force against Iran if it does not abandon its legitimate attempts to develop nuclear power for electricity generation, arguing that its program is merely a cover for developing nuclear weapons.

What I hope to do in Iran is to discuss this situation with Iranian citizens and with Iranian officials. With the increased understanding I expect to gain from these discussions and my observations I think I can, on my return to the United States, resume my opposition to current US government policy toward Iran with both more vigor and credibility. At the same time, while in Iran I want to convince those Iranian citizens with whom I interact that, regardless of the criticisms and disagreements that I, as a United States citizen, coming from a very different political system and culture, might have with Iran, represent the majority of my fellow citizens who want peace between our countries and friendship with the Iranian people.

- David MacMichael, Linden VA

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Twenty-four years ago I was standing in the back of an open-bed farm truck with about 40 other North Americans. We were members of a brigade headed out from Managua, Nicaragua to the Chinandega area. After six hours of riding over the dusty roads, "Guantanamera," which we sang lustily, had been blessed with several funny verses about a "One Ton Iguana" to the same melody.

Our job was to help with cotton harvesting. Our real purpose was to be there so our presence would deter the U.S. government from its threat to bomb the Nicaraguans in that area. In fact, the CIA did bomb, but in the Gulf of Fonseca near-by - we could see the fire in the night sky - but at least not inland at that time.

Now our government is threatening to bomb Iran. You can guess a major reason why I'm going to Iran with this delegation. I had never before been to Nicaragua when I went there as a brigadista. My children and I lived in Iran and it was home to us for over four years. My participation in this delegation is my way of thanking Iranian people for their kindness and hospitality to our family and for the wonderful memories we have.
with peace and aloha

- Rosalind "Bunny" Smith, Hilo HI