Reli gio n • Society • Polity • Arts
In this issue ...
Historical Absolutism Versus Historical Diversity Editorial
Island Life Robin White in New Zealand and Kiribati Adrienne Jervis
Rethinking "There Goes the Neighborhood" Lynnea Yancy
The Art of Romare Bearden Anne Gordon Perry
Out of Iran B. Barry Darugar
Poems by: Susan McLaren, Paul Mantle, Valerie Martinez, Ron Price, and Janet Tomkins
T he Literary and Visual Arts Exploring Social Issues and Social Change 2004-05 Volume 36, No. 2 INFORMATION FOR AUTHORS World Order is published quarterly by the National Spiri rnal Assembly of the Baha' ls of the United States, 536 Sheri dan Road , W il mette, IL 60091- 1811. T he views expressed here in are those of the authors and do not necessarily refl ect the opinions of the publisher or of the Editorial Board. Peer review: Submiss ions to the journal will be subj ect to extern al blind peer review if they fa ll outside the expertise of the Editorial Board or upon request by the author. Submissions and other editorial correspondence should be addressed to the Editor, World Order, 7311 Quail Springs Place N E, Albuquerque, NM 87 11 3-1780 or e-mail ed to Religion • Society • Polity • Arts
TO UNDERSTAND THE RELATIONSHIPS BETWEEN INFORMATION FOR SUBSCRIBERS Subsc ription Rates: U.S.A. and surface to all other coun CONTEMPORARY LIFE AND tries, I yea r, US $25; 2 years, US $48. Airmail to all other countries, 1 year, US $30, 2 yea rs, US $58. Single copies US $7 plus shi ppin g and handling. Make checks or money CONTEMPORARY RELIGIOUS TEACHINGS ord ers payable to Baha'i Distribution Service. Se nd address changes to and ord er subsc riptio ns from the Baha'i Distri AND PHILOSOPHY. bution Service, 4703 Fulton Indust ri al Boulevard , Atl anta, GA 30336-201 7. Telephone: 1-800-999-9019, United States a nd Canada; 404-472-901 9, all other countries. O r, please e- mail: . EDITORIAL BOARD Back iss ues sri ll in prim may be obtai ned fro m the Ba ha'i Betty J. Fisher Distribution Service at the mail in g address above or by e Arash Abizadeh mail
ART CREDITS C over des ig n by Richard D oering; p. 7, p hotograph, Steve Garri gues; pp. 8, II, 12, 14, 15, 17, 18, photo graphs, courtesy Ro bin W hite; pp. 20 , 27, 28, photo graphs, courtesy Paula H enderso n; p. 34, photograph, Stan Phillips; p. 38, The Blues a nd The Piano Lesson, Art © Roma re Bearden Foundation/Licensed by VAGA, New York , NY; pp. 4 0, 48, photographs, Steve G arrigues. 2 Historical Absolutism Versus Historical Diversity Editorial
4 Interchange: Letters from and to the Editor 9 Island Life-Robin White in New Zealand and Kiribati by Adrienne Jervis
19 Nude a poem by Valerie Martinez
21 Rethinking "There Goes the Neighborhood" by Lynnea Ytmry
30 The Grudge a poem by Paul Mantle
31 Crystalizing a Beauty a poem by Ron Price
32 Temple Storm a poem by Susan Mclaren
35 The Art of Romare Bearden by Anne Gordon Perry
39 The Baha'i Faith grows a poem by Janet Tomkins
41 Out of Iran by B. Barry Darugar Editorial Historical Absolutism Versus Historical Diversity
The Bah6'f Faith teaches that all of the revealed religions, collectively, constitute the world's greatest good. With each successive religion, Bah6'u'll6h writes, come incalculable infusions of faith, vision, inspira tion, hope, and guidance for a struggling humanity. The restorative and generative power of the new religion is so great that it produces not only a new religious community but a new civilization that fulfills many of the promises embed ded in earlier faiths. While great religions, as historical phenomena, appear to specific peoples in specific times and places, their influence, Baha'is believe, eventually pervades many regions and many peoples, empirically, intellectually, and mystically. Inevitably, each new revelation is destined to come into conflict with older religions and cultures, and-because of its vitality and its more comprehensive social vision-eventually to supplant earlier religions as the dominant spiritual organizing principle in human societies. Yet a new religion, vital though it is, owes its ex istence to earlier traditions. Indeed, a new religion's relationship to immediate older religious traditions is primal, in the way that a child's relationship to its parents is primal. The new religion is destined to survive older religions and to surpass them, but without them it would never have been born. Historically there has always been an unfortunate tendency among some to equate the appearance of a new religion with the disappearance, or, more pointedly, with the instant irrelevance of earlier traditions. Such adherents of more recently appear ing religions (in the broad historical sense), all too often develop a disdain for older traditions. The more fanatical among their ranks characteristically begin to objectify and to demonize the people of the older religious traditions and to use chronological superiority as a license (at the least) to discriminate or (at the worst) to exterminate. Just as insidiously, the peoples of older religious traditions often use the historical calendar to prove their own superiority. Using as justification the argument that older is greater, they, too, terrorize people who dare to investigate or, even worse in their eyes, to accept a more recently appearing religion. Cultures and societies wage con flicts for extraordinarily complex reasons, but they often find it easy to use religious claims to garner support and to inflame their followers against those whose beliefs do not coincide with their own. History is littered with the residue of bloodbaths fueled by religious arguments: the Christian pogroms against Jews in Medieval Europe and against Muslims in Spain and the Middle East; the discrimination against Christians and Jews (even though Muhammad explicitly called for the protection of "the people of the Book")
2 World Order. 2004-05. Vo l. 36. No. 2 EDI TORIAL
and against Bahi'fs and other non-Muslims in Muslim countries; the conflicts between Hindus and Muslims in Pakistan and India; and so on. The most current and universally visible is the declared war against the Christian and Jewish West by ultra-extremist elements within Islam who claim a religious motive in defending their actions. But other lava flows of hate, including arguments within various religions, often between conservatives and liberals, continue to spread dangerously even within the avowedly moderate centers of every society. Given our collective history, has humanity the means to interrupt this recurrent and devastating pattern? Throughout the ages the greatest changes have always begun with a shift in perception, reflected in changes to language, new metaphors signaling new life. What our own time needs is an utterly new perception of what is meant by "history" and by "historical diversity." Collectively, we need to abandon the reductive assumptions that history mainly involves the appearance of absolute events that instantly erase everything that has come before. We also need to abandon the notions that history is purely linear and that history is simple. Humanity needs to acknowledge that, although superseded by new historical events, ideas, philosophies, and revelations, older religions continue to live and to contribute for centuries and ages after the birth of a new one, both as communities (however much they may dwindle in size) and as ideas that continue to influence humanity even when disconnected from their source. Hence, as long as one adherent of an ancient religion walks the earth, or a tiny religious community continues to worship in a way that is impenetrable to others, they deserve to have a loving, re spected, protected, and honored place within the larger human community. Bahi'u'llah admonishes people to see themselves as part of one human family, saying, '"Ye are all leaves of one tree and the fruits of one branch."' He also emphatically affirms that the purpose of His new revelation is a general rebirth of spirit within humanity and the fulfillment of earlier revelations (logically, He would hardly be concerned with fulfilling something that is irrelevantly dead). Metaphori cally, people would be much better served were we to see the then and the now of human history less as a chronological narrative and more as, say, a living tissue, and its religion-inspired cultures as a healthy capillary system of life-giving good, pouring their teachings, ideals, powers of inspiration, and influence through the spiritual body of humanity. In matters of religious history, perhaps the time has come for humanity to see that recurring historical change and persistent historical con tinuity are always present and always simultaneously true. If understood (in the words of Bahi'u'llah) as fruits and branches of the tree of life, all religions, separately and together, have an incalculable, unceasing, interdependent power for good to affect the fate of humanity.
World Order, 2004-05, Vol. 36, No. 2 3 Interchange Letters from and to the Editor
In "The Power of Art," an editorial in of the personal stories she captures in an issue devoted to film (Vol. 35, No. her art that, in turn, are infused with 1), we wrote that "our society has tended spiri tuality and universal challenges. to equate science and its application with Half a world away from New Zealand the most serious kind of knowledge, while and Kiribati, Lynnea Yancy, in "Rethink art is often thought of as 'mere enter ing 'There Goes the Neighborhood,"' tainment' or as somehow dispensable." introduces us to Chicago artist Paula We went on to observe that, "in reality, Henderson and to the compelling issues art also disseminates knowledge, how her Next Migration series of paintings ever subtly. It heightens our awareness, raises "about social policy and continu deepens our sense of the aesthetic, and ing efforts to provide adequate housing teaches us about the artist or ourselves, for all, while confronting and trying to about human nature or the world." This resolve racism in America." issue of World Order, which contains The Next Migration paintings allude reviews of exhibitions by three disparate to the Great Migration, between 1890 artists, brings us face to face with the and 1970, of millions of African Ameri aesthetic and with artistic discussions cans from the economically depressed that do, indeed, teach us about artists, and segregated southern part of the ourselves, human nature (good and bad), United States to other sections of the and the world. country, particularly to Northern states. In "Island Life-Robin White in New While African Americans found some Zealand and Kiribati," Adrienne Jervis, benefits in the move, institutionalized a New Zealand journalist, introduces us segregation forced many into ghettos and to artist Robin White and to a traveling substandard slums, which gave way to retrospective of her works. White's sen large public housing developments, which sitive yet trenchant art uses, she says, are now being demolished as gentrifi '"the familiar as a starting point for cation robs African Americans of homes exploring more universal themes.'" Those and forces them into a new, and this themes include, among others, spiritual time unwanted, migration. Henderson's transformation, promoting new knowl series of paintings captures the essence edge, challenging traditional culture and of an unresolved racial agenda. The build beliefs, moments in life when one has to ings being demolished were inadequate make choices, the equality of the sexes, warehouses for human beings, but in the strength of women, and the rela the paintings they cry out for a resolu tionships between peoples and places. tion to America's long-unfinished agenda Along the way, the reader comes to of unity, justice, and equity for all its appreciate White and the "intimacies" c1t1zens.
4 World Order, 2004-05. Vol. 36, No. 2 INTERC HANGE
In "The Art of Romare Bearden," face with the realities of the difficulties Anne Gordon Perry introduces us to under which Iranian Bahi'fs have been North Carolina artist Romare Bearden living for many decades. Names have and to a large traveling exhibit that has been changed to protect the individuals visited Washington, D.C.; San Francisco; involved and family members still living Dallas, Texas; New York; and Atlanta, in Iran, and some of the dialogue and Georgia. Bearden, perhaps best known some of the scenes are reconstructed. for his collages and for his depictions of But the events are real, and the preju blues music and jazz, bridged the gap dice, pervasive and unresolved. between his "'double-consciousness' of the African-American community and mainstream art." He drew on multiple influences: African, Caribbean, andAsian art; Byzantine mosaics; Mexican mu rals; Christian iconography; magical realism; voodoo ritual; documentary film; Over the years the Editorial Board has photography; advertising; abstractionism; found itself consulting about the kinds representationism; cubism; dadaism; of article submissions World Order re surrealism; and more. Throughout his ceives. Since a number of patterns con works he captures, in rhythms, colors, tinue to repeat themselves, we feel we and movement, the richness of Ameri should begin a dialogue with our much can life, from the inside and outside, valued authors and potential authors. with the diversity of city and country But, first, a bit of background and context side, of families and loners, of religion is in order. and conjure, of the sensual and the The Board considers that two of its metaphysical-always inviting his view primary tasks include being an advocate ers to see all fellow human beings as for the magazine's readers and also being equals, as participants in the same fas the best bridge possible between readers cinating human drama. and authors. The magazine's mandate is always at the front of our minds: seek ing to stimulate, inspire, and serve its readers in their search to understand the relationships between contemporary life and contemporary religious teachings and A final nonfiction piece-B. Barry philosophy. The patterns we sometimes Darugar's "Out of Iran" -takes us to see in article submissions tend to work another part of the world and face to against stimulating such dialogue. Some
World Order. 2004-05, Vol. 36. No. 2 5 INTERCHANGE of the familiar approaches are outmoded spective, discuss Baha'i texts, and pro and difficult to make publishable. We vide insights into them, without pre thought it might help prospective au suming that their own interpretations thors avoid foreseeable pitfalls if we shared stand for THE Baha'i view. Other Bahi' is some of the more problematic patterns may very well see things quite differently. with you. Hence it is important for authors to write One kind of article is the Lofty Prin in such a way that the reader is free to ciples Article. These submissions oper judge the merits of an interpretation. ate at a high level of abstraction. Their A third type of submission is the strength lies in the fact that they are Cavalry Article. These articles devote the clearly focused on fundamental prin first part to reviewing some of the ex ciples, such as the principle that human isting literature in a field, assert or imply kind is one or that humanity today needs that all the scholars are wrong, and end global institutions. To be publishable, the article with the cavalry: a list of however, such articles must go further. Baha'i quotations that are asserted as the If they remain at the level of principles, solution. Often there is little or no at authors must support lofty principles with tempt to understand why so many in arguments, and they must also grapple telligent persons hold contrary views or genuinely with the best objections that to engage the conflicting views in a intelligent critics of these principles might meaningful discussion. raise. Or authors must go beyond criti To write a publishable article, authors cal analysis of principles and provide must recognize the difference between scientific, empirical evidence for how debating and pursuing truth. In a de the lofty principles could become a re bate, the goal is to portray contrary views ality. in the weakest possible light. In a pro Another, related, type of article is cess dedicated to pursuing truth in the THE Baha'i View Article. In this kind spirit of consultation, the goal is to of article, the author claims that the understand the arguments supporting view he or she presents is simply report contrary views in their strongest pos ing on THE Baha'i view. The impres sible light. Seeing contrary views at their sion that the author's view is THE Baha'i best forces authors to strengthen, nu view is created by drawing heavily on ance, and even revise their own views. quotations from the Baha'i writings. The What are kinds of article submissions, problem, however, is that such an ap then, for which the World Order Edito proach fails to recognize that no indi rial Board looks? We are seeking, among vidual is in a position to speak for THE others, articles that provide: Baha'i view: Every act of trying to make • methodologically rigorous analysis sense of a text, including the Baha'i (which involves good evidence, writings, is an act of interpretation. Even good thinking, and good writing) quoting a text within a particular con of the causes of phenomena that text presumes a particular interpretation are barriers to realizing Bahi' i ide of the text. To write a publishable ar als, such as the development of ticle, authors should explore topics of global institutions; broad social concern from a Baha'i per- • studies of the philosophical un-
6 World Order, 2004-05, Vol. 36, No. 2 INTERCHANGE
derpinnings of Baha'i ideals, such We invite you, our authors (past and as global institutions; prospective), to share your views and • articles that take seriously the ob thoughts with us as we seek to clarify jections to global institutions and our thinking about article submissions. engage with them; In subsequent issues we will discuss other • examinations that situate them types of submissions (reviews, historical selves at the beginning of the pro articles, reflection pieces, interviews, cess of the search for truth, rather AfterWord submissions, and so on). And than at the end; and we are working on an account of what • articles that avoid orthodoxies or happens to submissions from the mo conventional assumptions and con ment they arrive via e-mail or snail mail ventional ways of talking about until an issue of World Order comes off them. the press.
World Order, 2004-05, Vol. 36, No. 2 7 ' r
8 World Order, 2004-05, Vol. 36, No. 2 ADRIENNE JERVIS
Island Life-Robin White in New Zealand and Kiribati
If a picture-as the saying goes-is worth a thousand words, high profile New Zealand artist Robin White has found full expression in her latest large-scale exhibition (seventy-five works of art) Island Life Robin White in New Zealand and Kiribati . The retrospective has been curated by Linda Tyler at the Hocken Library in Dunedin, New Zealand, drawing on works it owns and on works from private and public collections. 1 It opened in February 2002 at the Porirua Museum of Arts & Culture, Pataka, near Wellington, as part of the New Zealand Festival of Arts, and has been touring urban and regional art galleries throughout New Zealand; it will close in November 2005. Providing a journey through White's life, Island Life introduces a kaleidoscope of people and places that are brought to life in screen prints and paintings, woodcuts and drawings, and pandanus mats. 2 "It is a survey of my work covering a thirty year period from 1968 to 1998," says Whire.3 The exhibition has a strong narrative as pect.
Copyrighr © 2005 by Adrienne Jervis. Opposite page: Rob in W hite's This far and no farther, one of four hand-colored woodprints from a 1992 series called Nei Tiein Goes for a Walk. According to White, the Kiribati women in the village worri ed lest Nei Tiein (Miss Jane), who was brajn damaged, would wa nder too far from home. "This far and no furrher" is a phrase found in the Baha'i writings, but the painting also alludes to Willi am Blake's three judges-three vill age men who were the arbiters, according to trad ition, of all that is good and proper. The Nei Tiein series also makes an oblique reference to W. B. Yeats' Crazy Jane poems, a reflection on reality as perceived by those who step outsid e the bounds of what is co nsidered normal. l. Establi shed in 1910, the Hocken Collections, which co nce ntrates on the history and cu lture of New Zealand, the Pacific, and Antarctica, is one of the foremosr historical research collections in New Zealand. 2. Pandanus is a tropical tree or shrub. Its long leaves are used for weaving mats and for thatching houses. In the culture of the I-Ki ribati, the indigenous peoples of the Republic of Kiribati, it is a sacred material believed to provide a totem ic key to the origins and history of the occupation of the islands. 3. Robin White, e-mail message to author, May 12, 2004, supplemented with additional e-mails
ADRIENNE JERVIS who makes a first appearance in World Order, writes columns, reviews, and feature articles for two New Zealand newspapers-the Waikato Times, New Zealand's largest provincial newspaper, and the Rotorua Daily Post. Her interests include writing short stories. playing flamenco guitar. dancing. reading, and fitness.
World Order. 2004-05. Vol. 36. No. 2 9 ADRIENNE JERVIS
White's religion, the Baha'i Faith, has had a strong influence on her art, which is reflected both in her artistic outpourings and her work ethic. She calls to mind the words of 'Abdu'l-Baha, the son of the Founder of the Baha'i Faith: "In this great dispensation, art (or a profession) is identical with an act of worship .. . . extreme effort should be made in art.... " 4 White's parents were one of the first couples in New Zealand to become members of the Baha'i Faith. Born in 1946, Robin was brought up in a Baha'i household m a climate of tolerance and social awareness, her vision broadened by a global perspective of the world. Her WHITE'S RELIGION, THE BAHA'f FAITH, father, Albert Tikitu White, a HAS HAD A STRONG INFLUENCE ON HER ART, World War I veteran, was a WHICH IS REFLECTED BOTH IN HER committed advocate of peace ARTISTIC OUTPOURINGS AND HER WORK ETHIC. whose love of education, his- tory, and social change influ enced his daughter's childhood years. "He believed in books and ideas and work," says White. He put me to work in the kumara [sweet potatoes, a traditional Maori crop] patch where I spent long hot afternoons all through the summer, lifting the tendrils and trimming the shoots. And when the rows were finished, I started all over again. "Don't be afraid of hard work," my father would say. "Be methodical." He was a carpenter, and he loved order and precision and excellence, even in the kumara patch. He called me his "little lieutenant." My childhood wasn't what you would call normal: colonial pioneer and Maori ancestry, a girl doing a man's work, protest marches and religious meetings. From her mother, Florence Miriam Dunlop White, Robin also learned the ethic of hard work and resourcefulness. "As with many women of her generation," White explains, "her life was dedicated to the service of others, especially to her family." Interested in drawing and painting as a child, White received support from her parents when she decided to pursue art as a career. From 1965 to 1967 she studied at the Elam School of Fine Arts in Auckland, where her tutors included prominent New Zealand artist Colin McCahon. A major influence in her life was acclaimed New Zealand painter Rita Angus. ''And in particular," White adds, "Rita Angus's portrait of Betty Curnow." In 1968 White enrolled at Auckland Teachers College (now the Faculty of Education of the University of Auckland). A meeting that year with poet Sam Hunt led her to Paremata, north of the country's capital, Wellington, then a popular place for artists and poets. She took a teaching job at Wellington's Mana College and lived in a small cottage at Paremata's Bottle Creek where she stayed until moving in 1971 to the Otago Peninsula on the lower east side of the South Island. While living in
and letters over a two-month period. Subsequent quotations from White are from these co mmunica tions, unless otherwise noted. 4 . 'Abdu'l-Baha, in Baha'u'llah, Baha 'i World Faith: Selected Writings of Bahd'u'!Ldh and :Abdu'l-Bahd, 2d ed. (Wilmette, IL, USA: Baha'i Publishing Trust, 1976) 377.
JO World Order, 2004-05, Vol. 36, No. 2 ISLAND LIFE
Fig. 1. Robin White's studio, Bikenibeu, South Tarawa, Kiribati, 1984 .
Paremata, White became a full-time artist. In 1981 , ten years after her marriage to Mike Fudakowski, and the birth of their first child Michael in 1973, the family moved to Tarawa, the capital of Kiribati, as "an added resource for the local Baha'i community."5 They remained there for seventeen years during which time two more children-Conrad and Florence- were born. While New Zealand is predominantly mountainous with some large coastal plains and a temperate climate with sharp regional contrasts, the Republic of Kiribati, a collection of low-lying coral islands and atolls in the Pacific Ocean straddling the equator about halfway between Hawaii and Australia, is hot and humid, moderated by trade winds. Moving from New Zealand with its familiar landscape of hills and bush to the vast blue vista of sea and sky provided an extreme change for White. "The exhibition charts the transition of my life in New Zealand to the influences of life in Kiribati. It was a radical shift in environment," says White. Artistically, White moved from a canvas of green to a canopy of blue. Immersing themselves in island life, White and her family abandoned a conven tional Western-style house for a pandanus-rharched and coconut-ribbed dwelling with a studio on stilts (fig. 1). White, the artist who begins with what she sees, made artistic changes as well. Her adopted island life became the focus of her works, and
5. Kiribati, formerly part of the British colony known as the Gilbert and Ellice Islands, derives its contemporary name from "Gilberts," rendered in the pronunciation and written form of the local language. Kiribati gained its independence in 1979.
World Order, 2004-05. Vol. 36. No. 2 11 ADRIENNE JERVIS
Fig. 2. Fig. 3. Tera ae kam karaoia? [What are you doing?] from The fisherman is brought down from the Tree from Sa inimele Goes Fishing, a 1995 se ries of four the 1995 seri es of woodcut prims The Fisherman woodcm prims. Loses His Way.
soon she was producing images depicting the Kiribati environment. Rather than creating individual works, White began to work in series, moving from paintings and screen prints to woodcuts and other forms of printmaking, a number of which appear in the exhibition. White says her 1995 series of four woodcut prints The Fisherman Loses His Way is probably best viewed alongside its companion series of four woodcur prints Saini mele Goes Fishing (1995). In the latter series a woman, Sainimele, is seen moving through the same village-Bikenibeu on the island of Tarawa-on her way to the lagoon to fish (fig 2) . She asks some challenging questions of the people she meets along the way, and in the final image she and her female companions are out in the lagoon lifting their net and extracting fish. In The Fisherman Loses His Way series Sainimele appears again (fig. 3), as if in peripheral vision, on her way to the shore, and then beside the road selling her fish. Although aware of what is going on, she continues with her work, undistracted by the fisherman's situation. The eight woodcut prints in The Fisherman Loses His Way and Sainimele Goes Fishing capture White's response to her adopted Kiribati environment, bur the two series "can also be considered in the context of Baha'i beliefs and the language of metaphor found in Baha'i scripture," explains White.
12 World Order. 2004-05. Vol. 36, No. 2 ISLAND LIFE
Sainimele is a real person and like myself, a member of the Baha'i Faith. She was my neighbor and a friend whom I admired for her intelligence, courage, and audacity. She did go fishing regularly, and I would see her pass my studio in Bikenibeu on the way to the lagoon, carrying her net. The fisherman was also a man from our village, and all the things depicted actually happened. Thus it can be seen that the two series of woodcut prints represent simultaneous events. "On a superficial level they depict a slice of village life, " THE EIGHT WOODCUT PRINTS IN White says. THE FISHERMAN LOSES HIS WAY AND But my intention was to use SAINIMELE GOES FISHING CAPTURE WHITE'S the familiar as a starting point RESPONSE TO HER ADOPTED KIRIBATI ENVIRONMENT. for exploring more universal themes. So, on an allegorical level, these images represent concurrent trends within village life and beyond. One trend is the process of growth and devel opment and, in this sense, I have taken the symbolism of fishing to refer to the promotion of new knowledge, and, as a consequence, the challenging of tradi tional culture and beliefs. Running counter to this trend is the decline of those traditional beliefs and patterns of behavior that, in the past, provided stability and order. It is not accidental that a woman is depicted in the forefront of change. The Island Life exhibit also highlights another phase in White's varied career. In 1996 a fire in her studio in Kiribati made her even more of an island artist. Losing all the tools of her trade and the materials on which she relied, she was compelled to use what was available locally. Thus she began in 1997 to collaborate with indi genous women to produce woven pandanus mats, her first works being the New Angel series of woven place mats produced with the assistance of Nei Katimira at Teitoiningaina, the Catholic Women's Training Centre. The series was divided into six subsets of three, each subset deriving its design and imagery from the packaging of a commonly used food item available for sale in the many small roadside stores on South Tarawa. For example, Sunshine Instant Milk Powder, imported from Aus tralia, became Instant Sunshine (fig. 4). "The mats," White says, are about identity and belief and about the fact that identity and belief are subject to the processes of change. The title New Angel derives from a brand of tinned mackerel, and we are all familiar with the fish as a Christian symbol-the symbol of Christ [fig. 5]. So the works can be "read" on different levels or as parallel narratives: not only change in terms of social and political systems and the effects of colonization, but also the transformation and change in spiritual beliefs, from traditional beliefs to the coming of Christianity and its ensuing influence. And now, the advent of a new religious message and a new order. White said the influence of Rita Angus is present in the work she did while living in Kiribati, describing it as "something like a fragrance rather than a substance": Perhaps her influence is there in the portrayal of my friend Florence Masipei, her identity announced not just by name- The name of this girl is Florence [fig. 6] -but also by her clothing, the tibuta and lavalava, favored by I-Kiribati women and worn by myself in self-portraits made in Kiribati, signaling the adoption of
World Order, 2004-05, Vol. 36, No. 2 13 ADRIENNE JERVIS
Fig.4. Fig.5. Instant Sunshine (1998, woven pandanus) from New Angel ( 1998, woven pandanus) from rh e rh e New Angel series begun in 1997. New Angel series begun in 1997.
a new place and a new language.6 There were many more portraits produced during the years we spent beside the lagoon at Bikenibeu. Kiribati was exactly the right place to be for pursuing an interest in people- indeed, there was little else of interest. No land to speak of. T he New Zealand portion of the Island Life exhibit showcases other aspects of White's voluminous output. Talking to newspaper reporter Hugh Barlow after she re turned to New Zealand in 1999 (she now lives and works in the town of Masterton on the lower North Island of New Zealand), White said, '"My work emerges out of an engagement with the reality of life around me."'7 That reality ranges from the rugged New Zealand land- "' MY WORK EMERGES OUT OF scape to the tiny Pacific atolls. AN ENGAGEMENT WITH THE REALITY White is an artist who has re- OF LIFE AROUND ME."' sponded intensely to the world. Her home, her immediate envi ronment, and people who are important to her are the starting points of much of her work. Her art is known for its clear images, strong colors, and clean lines; in her search for clarity, there is a drive toward simplification and stylization. Form and shape are important. In. White's portrait of her mother, called Florence and Harbour Cone (1975) (fig. 7), the shape of Harbour Cone is reflected in the "V" of her mother's arms and hands. "And you can trace the diagonal connections between the diagonals of my mother's arms and clothing and the diagonals of the hills," White explains. "These are inner structural devices that harmonize the various elements of the work."
6. The tibuta is a loose, sleeveless, waisr-lengrh corron blouse worn by women; ir derives irs shape from rhe full-lengrh "Mocher Hubbard" dresses that missionari es and colonizers forced on I-Kiribati women. LavaLava, common throughour the Pacific, consists oF a single length of fabric wrapped around rhe body. Men wear it as a loin cl oth; women wear it in conjuncrion with the tibuta. 7. Robin White, quoted in Hugh Barlow, "An arrisr's fam il y comes ro visi t," Wairarapa Times-Age, 15 June 2002.
14 World Order, 2004-05, Vol. 36, No. 2 ISLAND LIFE
I
Fig.6. Aran te aine aei Florence (The name of this girl is Florence) ( 1983, woodcur print) published in Be ginners Guide to Gilbertese.
I Fig. 7. Florence and Harbour Cone (1975, silk screen).
White also has the ability to infuse straightforward observations with personal and spiritual significances. In her series Black Standard over Victory Beach (1981) the silk-screen prints resulted from charcoal drawings that she made in 1981 during a series of visi ts to Victory Beach on the Otago Peninsula, the site of pre-European intertribal warfare and a place of death and betrayal. 8 "At that time," White explains, I was getting over the death of my mother and, in addition to this, I was reflecting on the divisions in New Zealand society over the issue of an all-white rugby team visiting from South Africa, plus the harrowing news that we were receiving about the persecution of the Bahi'is in Iran. On top of all this, my husband and I received a letter from the National Spiritual Assembly of New Zealand asking us if we would consider going to live in Kiribati to be of voluntary assistance to the Baha'i community there. 9
8. In an e-mail message to Dr. Berry J. Fisher, March 9, 2005, White explained that Victory Beach is "situated close to where I lived on the Otago Peninsula." It is named for the steamship Victory, which, in 1861, wrecked off the peninsula whil e carrying mail, cargo, and passengers from Melbourne, Australia, to Dunedin, New Zealand. "Owin g to th e unique phys ical features of the area, its pre-European history, and its contemporary name," W hite said , "Victory Beach held compelling reso nances for me in rel ation to the co nceptual basis of the Black Standard se ries and other art works I was producing in 1981." 9. The rwo years leading up to the 1981 Black Standard over Victory Beach were eventfu l for White. In December 1979 her mother died. The 1979 Revolurion in Iran led to the serious persecution (and many deaths) of Bahi'fs living in the country. In 1981 the National Spiritual Assembly of the Baha'fs of New Zealand (the nine-member national governing body of the New Zealand Baha'fs) asked White and her family to settl e in Kiribati to help consolidate the growing Baha'i community on the island of that nation. I World Order, 2004-05, Vol. 36, No. 2 15 ADRIENNE JERVIS
White says the drawings made at Victory Beach (figs. 8, 9, and 10) turned into works that were about that moment in life when choices have to be made. She took as her reference the passage by Baha'i historian Nabll, in his narrative The Dawn Breakers, where the words of Mulla J:Iusayn, the first to believe in the Bab, the founder of the Babf religion, are recounted. Presenting the Babfs with a choice of whether to follow him to Fort Tabarsf and face death, or whether to turn back, Mulla J:Iusayn proclaimed: "'We stand at the parting of the ways."' 10 White states that sometimes there is no middle ground: " The Black Standard is, of course, the flag carried by the Babfs and, in the screen prints, is represented as a dark cloud. The tent, echoing the shape of the pyramid-like hill at Victory Beach, is a reminder of the transient nature of this life." 11 Other spiritual and social teachings of the Baha'i Faith, such as the equality of women and men, have influenced White's life and have found expression in her work. Women, including her mother Florence, her friends, even the artist herself, are portrayed in bold colors and defined lines, making strong statements in the Island Life exhibition. "When people "WHEN PEOPLE APPEAR IN MY PAINTINGS," appear in my paintings," explains EXPLAINS WHITE, "THEY'RE ALWAYS PEOPLE White, "they're always people for FOR WHOM I HAVE A SPECIAL FEELING, whom I have a special feeling, feel close to, and like," and such FEEL CLOSE TO, AND LIKE." portraits often explore relation ships between people and places. Indeed, White's focus on the depiction of specific people and New Zealand localities is said to place her work firmly within the trad itions of Regionalism and Representation in New Zealand painting. Glenda at Portobello (1977), a watercolor similar in style and appearance to White's screenprints, not only reveals the subject of the portrait but also the landscape depicted in the background of the painting-namely, the specific New Zealand locality of Portobello, Otago. The artist's familiarity with the sitter is suggested by Glenda's natural pose and by her relaxed, indirect gaze. Glenda's uniqueness is detailed in her pendant and shirt, the patterning of her embroidered Indian blouse recalling Rita Angus' paintings of goddesses in which printed and stitched textiles are emphasized to convey a symbolic meaning of strength and beauty. The char acteristic features of the Otago Peninsula are illustrated by the barren hills that emerge from the sea. The female strength asserting itself in White's New Zealand work is also evident in her series of fourteen hand-colored woodcut prints Twenty-eight Days in Kiribati (1985) . White says that "In 1984 a New Zealand artist friend of mine, Claudia Eyley,
10. Nabfl-i-'Aµm [MuJ:iammed-i-Zarandi], The Dawn-Breakers: Nabil's Narrative of the Early Days of the Baha'i Revelation, trans. and ed. Shoghi Effendi (Wilmette, IL, USA: Baha'i Publishing Trust, 1932) 326. 11. Viccory Beach is a coastal area of Aar marshy land rimmed by sudden, sreep cliffs, giving the impression of being somerhing like an amphirhearre. Several rocky outcrops srand our in disrincr co nrrasr co rhe otherwise Aar area bordering rhe beach, and, since rhey are shaped somewhar like a pyramid, rhey are known as "the pyramids."
16 World Order, 2004-05, Vol. 36, No. 2 ISLAND LIFE
Fig. 8. Fig . 9. We stand at the Parting of the Ways (1981, silk We shall await His decree (1981, silk screen) from screen) from Black Srandard over Vicrory Beach Black Srandard over Vicrory Beach series. se nes. together with her fourteen-year-old daughter Brigid, visited us in Kiribati and stayed for four weeks. Brigid was, at the time, under the influence of the then popular punk culture, and in drawings and photographs I recorded her response to the very different culture and environment in Kiribati. This visual record formed the basis for the woodcut series Twenty-Eight Days in Kiribati." 12 As a recorder of the reality of locales, White's New Zealand paintings have evolved from the areas in which she lived: land and sea, hill and harbor, house and building. Her 1972 watercolor Sky, Land and Sea provides two stacked views of sections of the Portobello Peninsula, the undulating forms taking on a more abstract quality, and the patches of bush and macrocarpa hedging appearing as patterning against a background of uniform green. In the 1974 silk-screen print Mangaweka (fig. 11), the small settlement of Manga weka, 63 kilometers north of Bulls and 22 kilometers south of Taihape, was often visited by poet Sam Hunt, who once owned the building that is now known as the Puha Palace, a two-storied house built in 1895. It is the subject of his 1972 poem, "A Mangaweka Roadsong":
12 . Robin Whire, e-mail message ro Dr. Berry J. Fisher, March 12 , 2005.
World Order. 2004-05. Vol. 36. No. 2 17 ADR IE NN E JERVIS
Fig. 10. Whoever is unprepared (1981, silk screen) from Black Standard over Victory Beach series.
Fig. 11. Mangaweka (1974, silk screen)
No place more I'd like to bring you than this one-pub town approached in low gear down the gorges through the hills. 13 Harbour Cone, a recurrent motif in White's work from the period between 1972 and 1980, appears in White's Harbour Cone from Hooper's Inlet (1975). The screen print depicts an almost perfect cone, formed around a plug of volcanic basalt. The circular shape of the print suits its form. There is a lack of aerial perspective, and the only indication of the relationship of distance that exists between the hill at the end of the inlet and the cone is a change in color from foreground to background. The cone spreads itself a little to encompass the hill in front, giving the overriding impression of orderliness and control and a natural geometry in the landscape. The artist's close involvement with the landscape is evident, and yet she has taken liberty with her environment and has used it to her own ends. White's New Zealand and Kiribati experiences so richly documented in the exhibition Island Life-Robin White in New Zealand and Kiribati have obviously colored her palette for capturing life and beauty in a variety of formats. In her artistic journey that embraces thirty years of work, through the intimacies of personal stories, a sense of spirituality pervades, universal themes predominate, and a nar rative quality to her work endures. Etching her mark on the Pacific region, her works are recognizably "Robin White."
13. Sam Hunr, "A Mangaweka Roadsong," in Sam Hunr, Sam Hunt Collected Poems, 1963-1980 (New York: Penguin, 1980).
18 World Order, 2004-05, Vol. 36, No. 2 Nude
Is she lying there where light falters in rectangles of brown and bone as maiden? Is she courtesan, sister, slave, wife, student? Has she been paid to recline so, falling asleep like a creature in the afternoon sun, ankle a point of light piercing? Is she somehow nothing of these- new and capacious in sleepy defiance? Against history, then, so the eye for once suffers amnesia. She is not desire, not mother, not even bits of negative and positive space, color and shadow. No, not animal. Is she meek? Is she fearsome then? Where does the mind's eye wander in this numb space? Is this her new redolence? She does not exist on the side of any boundary, nor in the definitive, nor for the man's eye upon her nor the woman's field of esteem. And while there is all this limiting, all this blinking out and blanking, something enormous fills the landscape, pure abundance. So it is with all we give away at great cost: paradise rushes toward emptiness.
-VALERIE MARTINEZ
Copyright © 2005 by Valerie Martinez
VALERlE MARTINEZ, who holds a B.A. degree from Vassar Coll ege and an M.F.A. in poecry from the Un iversicy of Arizona, is currencly an assistant professor of English and creative writ ing at the College of Santa Fe in New Mexico. Her first book of poetry, Absence, Luminescent ( 1999) won chc Larry Lev is Prize and a Greenwall Gram from the Academy of Amer ican Poets. Her translations of Uruguay's Delmira Aguscini (1886-- 1914) will be published by Sutton Hoo Press in May 2005. Her essay about Joy Harjo (together with poems by Harjo and herself) wil l appear in a 2005 anthology, Women, Sisters, and Saints: Women Poets and Their Mentors, published by Wesleyan.
World Order, 2004-05, Vol. 36, No. 2 19
LYNNEA YANCY
Rethinking "There Goes the Neighborhood"
Paula Henderson, a Baha'i and an artist in 2003 exhibited at the Linda Warren Gallery in Chicago a series of twelve large-scale paintings called The Next Migration. 1 Begun before and completed while she was working on a Master of Fine Arts degree from the University of Chicago, the paintings capture the demolition of the buildings making up Chicago's Robert Taylor Homes, a large public-housing project, and the chaos the demolition has fostered in the lives of the residents of the Homes. Thus the Next Migration paintings seek to address difficult questions raised by the new housing initiative: Are the residents being uprooted to integrate them more fully into the life of Chicago and to ensure a better life? Or is the housing initiative up-rooting the residents and turning them into an unwilling new generation of migrants? Henderson's Next Migration paintings have generated conflicting responses. Chicago Sun-Times writer Lisa Lenoir has commented on Henderson's use of modernist grids, flat planes, and receding spaces as vehicles that transform "irreducible grids into screaming forms," aesthetically symbolic of "failed social policy." 2 However, some of Henderson's colleagues have criticized her approach to the subject matter, couch ing their remarks in phrases such as "'Well, people don't necessarily want to be all together"' and asking her not to have the paintings '"give us so much information.'"3
Copyright© 2005 Lynnea Yancy. Opposite page: The Next Migration If! (70 inches by 48 inches, oil and wax on canvas) from Paula Henderso n's The Next Migration series of paintings. 1. Since 1994 Henderson has been the lead artist in the painting programs for young adults at Gallery 37 in Chicago. Her most recent solo exhibition, Schematic Patterns, appeared at the Linda Warren Gallery from February 25 through April 2, 2005. Some of her paintings from her Schematic Patterns, Re-Mix, and The Next Migration se ries may be seen at
LYNNEA YANCY who is working on a liberal-arts degree from Indiana University has interests ranging from geology, astronomy, African-American history, prairie restoration and preservation, world culture, travel. and cowboy poetry to water-color painting, textile and fiber arts. and making hand-woven beadwork and sculptures from recycled computer parts.
World Order. 2004-05. Vol. 36. No. 2 21 LYNN EA YANCY
"But," Henderson says, "generally people understand what the paintings are about" and "have no problem with what I am trying to say." Though controversial, at least in some quarters, Henderson's Next Migration paintings raise compelling issues, with bold imagery, about social policy and con tinuing efforts to provide adequate housing for all, while confronting and trying to resolve racism in America.
The Neighborhood Comes Calling Although Henderson's paintings, over many years, have often dealt with issues of unity and equality, in The Next Migration series, the neighborhood literally came calling. The title of the series alludes both to the Great Migration of African Americans to Chicago beginning in the early part of the twentieth century and to their forced movement out HENDERSON'S NEXT MIGRATION PAINTINGS of the inner city imposed RAISE COMPELLING ISSUES by the razing of public ABOUT SOCIAL POLICY AND CONTINUING EFFORTS housing in the late twenti TO PROVIDE ADEQUATE HOUSING FOR ALL eth century. WHILE CONFRONTING AND SOLVING RACISM When the demolition of the Robert Taylor Homes IN AMERICA. project began under the auspices of the Chicago Housing Authority (CHA), Henderson was working for the Erikson Institute under an Annenberg grant to provide teacher training at two Chicago grammar schools on the South State Street corridor that serves the Homes. She began to question whether she was witnessing progress-or something else entirely-for some of the children she was teaching would be transferring to other schools and the lives of other students would be complicated by their having to take public transportation to get to school from great distances. Disturbed by the underlying implications of the razing of the buildings, and the corresponding upheaval in the lives of her students, Henderson was inspired to start The Next Migration series. The works-rendered in acrylic and watercolor on paper and oil and wax on canvas-urge the viewer to consider the humane consequences of insensitive and failed social systems, segregation, and the loss of familiar touchstones in the lives of African-Americans in Chicago. To appreciate Henderson's works fully one must revisit the historical processes that led to the building of the Robert Taylor Homes and to their subsequent demolition.
The Great Migration, 1890-1970 In the 1890s the lives of many African Americans living in the southern part of the United States had not improved much since the 1863 Emancipation Proclama tion freed them from slavery. During the fifty years after the 1861-65 Civil War, the majority of Southern African Americans lived and farmed in rural areas where they contended with boll-weevil infestations that ruined cotton crops, falling world cotton prices, and severe flooding that caused farmers and sharecroppers to sink into debt. Some lost everything. Economic hardship, combined with lynchings and Jim
22 World Order, 2004-05, Vol. 36, No. 2 RETHIN KING "THERE GOES THE NEIGHBORHOOD"
Crow laws, created a de facto slavery for Southern African Americans.4 Hence they began leaving the farms-some moving to the western part of the United States, and others relocating to Southern cities, but the vast majority migrating to Northern U.S. cities to seek urban jobs. The exodus of African Americans from the South, which became known as the Great Migration, relocated nearly two million people to Northern cities between the 1910s and the 1930s, creating the first large THE EXODUS OF AFRICAN AMERICANS urban black communities there.5 FROM THE SOUTH Because Chicago had an established RELOCATED NEARLY TWO MILLION PEOPLE African-American community dating to TO NORTHERN CI TIE S BETWEEN THE the years before the Civil War, tens of 19 10s AND THE 1930s. thousands migrated to the Windy City to start new lives. Chicago was beset with racial discrimination, yet the prospect of living where they could have access to voting rights and better schools-and the absence of Jim Crow laws-was appealing to African Americans. Adding to the impetus toward settling in Chicago was the circulation in the South of the Chicago Defender, a black newspaper published by Robert S. Abbott, which urged '"all to come north."' Abbott went so far as to set the date of May 15, 1917, as the time for a "'Great Northern Drive.'"6 World War I, ironically, helped to make it possible for African Americans to find employment in Chicago because it drastically slowed European immigration, caus ing that labor source to dry up. Furthermore, the entry of American armed forces into the war in 1917 pulled white workers out of factories, meat-packing houses, railroad yards, steel mills, and other industries. Between 1916 and 1919 some fifty thousand to seventy-five thousand African Americans relocated to Chicago. Once employed, however, they found that they were rarely allowed to rise above semi-
4. See Stanley K. Schultz and William P. Tishler, "The Great Migration: Blacks in W hite America," American Hisrory 102: C ivil War ro the Present, Spring 2005 Semester, Lecture 9, Department of Hisrory, Universi ry of Wisconsin-Madison, World Order, 2004-05, Vol. 36, No. 2 23 LYNNEA YANCY skilled positions.7 Schools, too, became problematic for the newly relocated African Americans, for the Chicago Board of Education redrew school district lines to keep white and African-American children as segregated as possible. The result was overcrowded schools in African-American neighborhoods. 8 Housing for the new migrants was limited to ghetto areas on Chicago's South and West Sides. The educational redistricting combined with other types of institutional segregation created a city within the city where substandard education, underemployment, and unemployment fostered poverty that was difficult, if not impossible, for most to escape. Northward migration continued unabated through the World War II years and after, up to about 1970. The overcrowding resulting from the influx of new African American residents into Chicago in the decades following World War I resulted in deteriorating housing that worsened into unsightly slums and gave rise to the social problems associated with urban, inner-city environments: crime, unemployment, drug abuse, and increased downward spiraling poverty. Housing Solutions of the 1950s and 1960s In the 1950s and 1960s the Chicago Housing Authority built housing projects to replace the substandard slum housing.9 One of these projects, the 4,300 unit Robert Taylor Homes built in 1962, was "considered the largest public housing development in the world when it was com THE OVERCROWDING RESULTING FROM THE IN FLUX pleted." It contained twenty OF NEW AFRICAN-AMERICAN RESIDENTS eight sixteen-story high-rise INTO CHICAGO RESULTED IN DETERIORATING HOUSING apartment buildings covering AND GAVE RISE TO THE SOCIAL PROBLEMS a two-mile long and quarcer ASSOCIATED WITH URBAN, mile wide section of the Bronzeville neighborhood in INNER-CITY ENVIRONMENTS . Chicago. 10 Intended to serve as a stepping-stone for the poor, the various redevelopment projects, while new, clean, and safer than the slums they replaced, effectively shelved poor African Americans into boxed, segregated inner-city neighborhoods, widely known as "the projects." 7. See Grossman, "Chicago and rhe 'Grear Migrarion,"' !llinois History Teacher 3:2 (1996) : 35, online version at 24 World Order. 2004-05, Vol. 36, No. 2 RETHINKING "THERE GOES THE NEIGHBORHOOD" A "Plan for Transformation" In 1996 the Chicago Housing Authority, reacting to the slums it had unwittingly created by allowing the buildings to deteriorate, enacted its "Plan for Transforma tion," a program designed to redevelop or rehabilitate some twenty-five thousand apartments by the end of 2009, to end public-housing residents' isolation by placing public housing in mixed-income communities, and to provide disciplined manage ment of the properties. The development plan, which will provide "one-third public housing, one-third affordable housing, and one-third market-rate homes," includes new mixed-income housing for some 6, 100 families, some 9,500 rehabilitatJ units for senior citizens, and 9,400 reconstructed or rehabbed apartments. 11 But with the demolition of the existing public housing to make way for ' trans formed" housing, "tens of thousands" of "low-income and predominantly rican American residents" are being relocated to places that also are "being transformed by large-scale economic and social changes, such as the rede- THE NATIONAL CENTER ON POVERTY LAW velopment of Chicago's indus- SUGGESTED THAT THE CHICAGO HOUSING AUTHOR ITY trial and manufacturing sectors COULD JUST AS EASILY CALL ITS and new patterns of ethnic mi- "PLAN FOR TRANSFORMATION" A gration." 12 Consequently, the '"PLAN FOR DECIMATION ."' transition foisted on public-hous- ing residents involves far more than packing and moving belongings. The relocation is also separating them from a known neighborhood, however inadequate, and a "collective identity" and has initiated for them "a period of great social, psychologi cal, and emotional change." 13 The master redevelopment plan for the Robert Taylor Homes, a part of the CHA's "Plan for Transformation," called for "construction of 2,388 mixed-income rental and homeownership units, community facilities, and new retail space"; bur only some 851 of the units are designated as "public housing replacement units." 14 Thus the living space of the original 4,300 Robert Taylor Homes is being reduced by more than 80 percent, and people who have lived in a community that has been their home for generations are being both relocated and dislocated-with no plan, for the most part, for bringing the residents back together. The Sargent Shriver National Center on Poverty Law suggested that the Chicago Housing Authority could just as easily call its "Plan for Transformation" a "'plan for decimation"' because "virtually all aspects of redevelopment and management" 11. CHAnge, "The CHA's Pl an for Transformation," 2003, World Order. 2004-05. Vol. 36. No. 2 25 LYNNEA YANCY were transferred to private, profit-motivated businesses, which would not benefit the neediest tenants and could "screen out tenants considered less 'desirable"' who would no longer have "federal protections under the private management." 15 The National Center on Poverty Law also criticized the CHA Plan for eliminating "14,000 of CHA's 29,000 family (nonelderly) units"; doing "nothing to meet the desperate demand for affordable housing"; bowing to pressure "not to designate all 24,000 units as very low-income" due to "legislative and regulatory income-mixing requirements" that will bring in "higher-income families not currently living in CHA"; and ignoring "some 30,000 low-income families" that "languish on CHA's waiting list." 16 The Next Migration It is against the backdrop of the Great Migration and the long history in Chicago of inadequate housing for African Americans that the human side of the Robert Taylor Homes redevelopment IN MANY OF THE PAINTINGS story becomes so poignant. IN THE NEXT MIGRATION SERIES Moving from one's house is THE STACKED AND BROKEN FORMS stressful under the best of REVEAL THE WAREHOUSE-LIKE QUALITIES conditions, but forced migra OF PUBLIC HOUSING AND EXPOSE THE UPHEAVAL tion is traumatic. Chicago's INHERENT IN THE TENANTS' RELOCATION. public-housing residents faced some irreplaceable losses over which they had no control-loss of familiar neighborhoods, loss of relationships with nearby friends and family, loss of the comfort of schools and churches where they had put down roots. When the demolition crews opened up the buildings, Henderson was struck by a kind of world within that compelled her to address in her art what she was seeing at the demolition sites. She felt that she had found an opportunity she "could not avoid in which something architectural speaks ro a huge challenge of race unity and justice." The artist says that her Next Migration works challenge viewers to study the destruction inherent in poverty through seemingly abstract shapes that "embody the essence of modernism's reification of form over content," a detached view of art that she compares to "society's distanced position toward the underclass." In many of the paintings in The Next Migration series-for example, The Next Migration (34.5 inches by 24 inches, oil on canvas collage) and The Next Migration 15. Sargent Shriver National Center on Poverty Law, "CHA's plan would cut 14,000 units, displace thousands of families a 'plan for decimation,'" Dec. 1999, 26 World Order, 2004-05, Vol. 36, No. 2 RETHINKING "THERE GOES THE NEIGHBORHOOD" Fig. 1. Fig. 2. The N ext M igration from Paula Henderson's The The Next Migration Vil! from Paula Henderson's Next Migration series. The Next Migration series. VIII (70 inches by 48 inches, oil and wax on canvas)-grids and shelves dominate the canvases (figs. 1 and 2). The stacked and broken forms reveal the warehouse like qualities of public housing and expose the upheaval inherent in the tenants' relocation. Of the experience of living in public housing, Henderson commented: "I don't know what that life is. I know people who live there, but it's never been my experience. That doesn't mean that I shouldn't try to talk about the forces that created that and why it didn't work." Henderson remarked about the Robert Taylor Homes: "There was this grand utopian vision that some had to create a better living [for the disenfranchised]. These structures were considered great. Then what happened was that people were isolated. They were warehoused. Their plight became worse. When people are isolated, they only have each other, and there's no one who can show them the ropes." She continued: "Ironically, in their raw and partially exposed substructures, these towers were awesome forms-beautiful forms. The paintings also show how the substruc tures are beautifully tragic and how they portray an agenda that is unfinished." "The dominant theme that runs through the arrwork," said Henderson, "is the oneness of humankind, but how do we find language to talk about that? We have to fight against our fears. It's this business of what is our relationship to one another. What is our responsibility to one another? We're not going to get it at a distance. We're only going to get it [by getting] closer. So what are we afraid of? Let's get going!" She added: "As an artist I'm interested in doing work that makes people World Order. 2004-05. Vol. 36. No. 2 27 LYNNEA YANCY Fig.4. !JYou Lived Here fl! from Paula Henderso n's The Next Migration series. Fig. 3. If You Lived Here II from Paula Henderson's The Next Migration series. think and keeps the issues of race unity and justice on the table." As a Baha'i, Henderson believes that the subject of decent housing is everyone's business. ''As an artist," she observed, "your work stems from your experience. And so if you're white, you can't really be talking about things from a black perspective. But I'm not doing that." When she was asked by someone, "How do you feel about speaking for others?" she replied, 'Tm speaking to us about what we don't see. I'm speaking about our unfinished agenda of racial justice and unity." To her University colleagues' request for less information in her Next Migration paintings, Henderson responded with a wry group of paintings within The Next Migration series titled If You Lived Here. Of these works, Henderson explained that "with the newest version I let the medium do the demolition. I just let the paint drip down as opposed to painting the rebar and the wire. I kept these architectural structures with the incredible Mondrian-like, Modernist grids with red, blue, white, and black planes of color trickling down. So it's clear that there is something wrong. It's more abstract than what I was doing." In If You Lived Here II (81 inches by 59 inches, acrylic on paper) and If You Lived Here Ill (58 inches by 56 inches, watercolor on paper), the dripping paint against the abstract forms lends additional emotional impact to the images, seemingly implying tears, wasting away, or a resigned yielding to some inevitable conclusion (figs. 3 and 4). But the message is the same: What is being lost in the new housing initiative? What, if anything, is being gained? Does the social policy behind the CHA's Plan for Transformation truly provide adequate housing for all, and does it contribute to confronting and solving racial issues? 28 World Order. 2004-05. Vol. 36. No. 2 RETHINKING "THERE GOES THE NEIGHBORHOOD" About her critics, Henderson observed that "their discomfort was that I was white talking about race. If I had been black talking about race, it would have been fine." She continued: I'm trying to create a sense of urgency for all of us who consider ourselves informed, liberal. By focusing on what many see as marginal (the tear-down), I saw an opportunity for us to think about how the underclass came to be, about the history of our segregation, and about the isolation of our neighborhoods both black and white. I question the impact of ignoring communities until real estate begins to gentrify them because of their proximity to downtown. The residents of such neighborhoods, where most white people would not formerly go, are pressured to leave, and most, not owning their homes, are moved like pawns in a game over which they have no control. We know now that they've been resegregated again, and there's yet another lawsuit about it by the former residents. "People kept referring" to The Next Migration paintings as "political," said Henderson, "but I say they are really social. My perspective is a universal one. I'm not pushing a political agenda. I'm pushing a human agenda of art addressing our unfinished business. I think it's es- pecially important that people who THE BAHA'f WRITINGS STATE THAT THE look like me feel it's their business PREJUDICES EMBODIED IN RACISM, NATIONALISM, to take care of because, otherwise, RELIGION, OR PO LI TICS FORM A we don't do anything. We just move BREEDING GROUND FOR TRAGEDY in and take over and make it white. AN D "STRIKE AT THE VERY ROOT And along with the whites moving OF HUMAN LIFE ." in come tremendous anger and loss and grieving [of the displaced] . Redevelopment m a city is good-provided it considers the welfare of everyone-but not when the changes are made at the expense of those at the bottom of the social strata." Henderson concluded that, through The Next Migration series of paintings, she hoped she could "talk about unity in a way that [people] will hear me." Her aim is to "engage critical discussion toward understanding that utopia is not something that we've tried and failed, and we have given up on." Henderson smiled as she recalled frequently being criticized by her peers as being "such an idealist." Then she said: "Yeah! I am." The poverty and discrimination that led to the Great Migration did not lead African Americans to any promised land but to cities where, for the vast majority, their condition was only moderately ameliorated. Confronted by inequities in education, employment, and opportunities for advancement similar to those experienced by their forebears, the descendants of those first migrants, now residents of public housing projects, are now themselves being forced to become migrants. The social, political, and spiritual implications of this next migration, captured in Henderson's Next Migration paintings, are significant. The marginalization of any part of the human population prevents the rest of the population from enjoying the full well-being that could be theirs. The Bahi'f writings state that the prejudices embodied in racism, nationalism, religion, or politics form a breeding ground for World Order, 2004-05, Vol. 36. No. 2 29 LYNNEA YANCY tragedy and "strike at the very root of human life." 17 They explain that the "root cause of prejudice is blind imitation of the past-imitation in religion, in racial attitudes, in national bias, in politics," warning that "so long as this aping of the past persisteth, just so long will the foundations of the social order be blown to the four winds, just so long will humanity be exposed to direst peril." 18 Paula Henderson's artistic response in The Next Migration series of paintings to America's unfinished business of achieving racial unity and justice is a timely re minder that everyone is responsible for what happens to their neighbors. Her observation that such goals will not be achieved if people keep their distance from each other is a call to action. So what are we afraid of? Let's get going and lend our voices to the debate and our moral will to the hard choices that create neigh borhoods providing voices, unity, justice, and a place for all to flourish. 17. 'Abdu'l-Baha, Selections from the Writings of 'Abdu'l-Bahd, comp. Research Department of the Universal House of Justice, trans. Committee at the Baha'i World Centre and Marzieh Gail (Haifa, Israel: Baha'i World Centre, 1997) 249 (No. 102.10). 18. 'Abdu'l-Baha, Selections 247 (No. 202.3) . The Grudge After a wry smile, a curt verbal reassurance snaps through frozen air. A shared center turns frosty, brittle. In numbing indulgence, one covert hand clutches a snowball packed pounded hard icy a hidden rock inside. -PAUL MANTLE Copyr ight © 2005 by Paul Mantle PAUL MANTLE, a frequent contributor ro World Order, is resea rchi ng the life and writings of Richard St. Barbe Baker (1889- 1982), known as rh e "Man of che Trees" for his environmenral work, for a websice and a book. 30 Worl d Order, 2004-05, Vol. 36, No. 2 Crystalizing a Beauty That vision seemed to come in bits and pieces: over cheesecake and coffee on cold Canadian evenings, in stories about birds flying over Akka; from the lips of a mother I loved, from lounge-rooms filled with a strange concatenation of people who would never go away, only change their names and would continue to haunt me forever, in a fire whose roaring flame kept my mind unquiet as I wandered across the face of the earth getting alternatively burnt or frozen. The vision stayed gradually crystallizing a beauty that was my very food and drink. - RON PRICE Copyrigh c © 2005 by Ron Price RON PRICE, who holds degrees in ed ucac ion, mulcicultural and religious edu carion, educac ional adminiscrarion, and personnel management and industrial relations, has taught for many years in Canada, Australia, and Tasmania. He is a prolific poet and an avid inlern er correspondent. World Order, 2004-05, Vol. 36, No. 2 31 SUSAN McLAREN Temple Storm Wilmette, Illinois, 1998, and M aracaibo, Venezuela, October 2001 It caught us half asleep, our lamps all but out. Wind gave the first warning, scurried leaves across the steps, gusted drops in our face. We hurried up to shelter from the distant drums. The temple is empty, hushed, save for the echo of a cough, the squeak of our soles on polished floors of earthy red heart muscle eager to pump those Words of God on the stone walls through the columns and carved arches, out to the world. Indigo sky flickers gray. The wind groans, beating its breast to the high whine of mourning women. Trees thrash their arms, panicked at the thunder of distant guns. The temple's great beacons illumine crystal bead curtains of rain pearling down the panes. Veils of water dance from the parapets, billow in the gale, revealing manic currents of light crackling across the sky. Inside, the podium light is out. Brass sconces wait in shadows for a gleaming torch to set them afire. Above, in the temple's darkened dome, the alabaster glow of the Greatest Name sends haloes of dusky rainbows down her walls toward the nine stone curtains lifted on the theater of the world. Lightening flashes all around. We hold the high ground. 32 World Order. 2004-05. Vol. 36. No. 2 TEMPLE STORM The wind keens desperation, a wolf howls its way in through the cracks. Mighty cataracts of water crash over her walls. Sheltered in this cave, we watch the torrents pound and errant waves of rain slash her garden paths-gleaming runways, guiding the fearful to refuge, the wanderer to his home. Inside, in the eye of the storm, the twin trees stand, green, rounded, perfect, their tiny oranges fragrant with hope, calling the world to a new garden that blossoms in every hue. The storm dwindles to drips from a scaffold's underbelly, a distant roll of drums. This time, it passes on. In a swash of luminous calligraphy, a Divine Hand writes across the grayed night sky: "There is no refuge save God." The temple waits, poised, relucent, empty. -SUSAN McLAREN Copyright © 2005 by Susa n McLaren SUSAN McLAREN, who holds a Bachelor's degree from Stanford Universiry, a Master of Fine Arcs degree from New York U niversiry , and a M aster of Educati on degree from Fram ingham (Massachusetts) Scare College, lives in Venezuela, where she translates for che universiry (LUZ) in Maracajbo and fo r various businesses. For the Bah:i.'fs in Venezuela, she is helping to develop a ten-year curriculum for the spiricual education of chi ldre n. World Order, 2004-05, Vol. 36, No. 2 33 ANNE GORDON PERRY The Art of Romare Bearden The first response one might have to the exhibition The Art of Romare Bearden, organized by the National Gallery of Art in Washington, D.C., is astonishment at the sheer number of works it includes and the rich variety of styles, forms, and working methods the artist employs. Any American, but particularly those of or sensitive to the African-American culture, might ask themselves, upon seeing the exhibit, how it was that Bearden's extensive career escaped their prior notice, if, indeed, it had. As an instructor in humanities and a dabbler in art history, I had been somewhat aware of Bearden's work. I had shown students a videotape on Bearden's art that correlated his collages to jazz music. I had taken student groups to the African American Museum in Dallas and pointed our paintings (three, at the time) by Bearden and Jacob Lawrence. But I was not prepared for the evidence of aesthetic formalism and excellence that I saw in work after work when I viewed a special traveling exhibit called The Art of Romare Bearden. 1 It took four visits to the Dallas Museum of Art, a lecture, and some reading to absorb what I saw. This is not to say that one would not appreciate Bearden's work in a single visit but rather that the array of content and contexts warranted multiple encounters. Romare Bearden, born in Charlotte, North Carolina, in 1911 or 1912 , spent at least a decade in Harlem and is associated with other places where the blues and jazz proliferated-Chicago, Kansas City, New Orleans, and the Louisiana bayou though it is not certain he visited all of these places. His paintings and collages Copyright © 2005 by Anne Gordon Perry. 1. The Art of Romare Bearden was shown at five venues: the National Gallery of Arr, Washington, D.C., September 14, 2003-January 4, 2004; the San Francisco Museum of Modern Arr, February 7- May 16 , 2004; rh e Dallas Museum of Art, June 20-Seprember 5, 2004; rhe Whimey Museum of American Art, New York, October 14, 2004-January 9, 2005; and the High Museum of Art, Atlanta, January 29-April 24, 2005. ANNE GORDON PERRY whose "The Unveiling in the West of Iran's Distinctive Cinematic Presence" appeared in World Orders Vol. 35, No. l, is a lecturer at the University of Texas at Arlington, where she teaches literature, creative writing, and film studies. Her Ph.D. in aesthetic studies and humanities included work on the intersection of art and religion. She is the editor of ORISON, an arts journal affiliated with the Association for Baha'f Studies, and has published essays, fiction, poetry, a nd historical biography in numerous publications. World Order, 2004-05, Vol. 36, No. 2 35 ANNE GORDON PERRY suggest various particular sites but are also characterized by a sense of event or activ ity. He was a person of rare curiosity, humanism, skill, and ability to touch others through his life and work. His long and stellar career included U.S. President Ronald Reagan's awarding him a National Medal of Arts in 1987, at least ten successful solo museum exhibitions, and participation in more than 150 group exhibitions before his death in 1988. Bearden's working methods were varied and complex, and his subject matter was rooted in both classical mythology and African-American culture. He was known as someone who engaged in dialogue with Africa as well as the avant-garde; who straddled both representation and abstraction; and who bridged a gap with his "double-consciousness" of BEARDEN' S WORKING METHODS the African-American com WERE VARIED AND COMPLEX, munity and mainstream art. AND HIS SUBJECT MATIER WAS ROOTED IN BOTH National Gallery of Art Cur CLASSICAL MYTHOLOGY ator Ruth Fine comments: AND AFRICAN-AMERICAN C ULTURE. "Whatever conflicts this may have presented to daily liv ing, Bearden's art manages to control and bond this two-ness to create a world view far richer than just one aspect of his identity would have permitted."2 Rich, indeed, is the plethora of color and form that greets the viewer's eye in the exhibit of Bearden's works. In the words of one critic: "His images form a pul sating rhythm, color and movement, vividly akin to modern jazz while simulating a pictorial 'folk song of American life."'3 Bearden's work reflects an integration and finesse oddly achieved through jagged edges, flat planes, and fragmented forms. One is struck by the multiplicity of influences-those of European artists (both traditional and modernist), of African and Caribbean art, of Byzantine mosaics, of Mexican muralists, of Christian iconography, of magical realism, of some sort of voodoo-like ritual, of documentary film, of the dichotomy of traditional rural life juxtaposed with contemporary urban living (with photography and advertising as strong elements), of the tension between abstraction and representation so prevalent in the twentieth century, of cubism, of dada and surrealism, of Asian art. One moves from large works to small, from watercolors to densely painted surfaces, from complexly layered, colorful collages to photographic, black-and-white enlargements of the same collage (these creating yet another kind of canvas from which Bearden speaks), from works reflecting textile arts such as quilting to program designs and studies for the theater or ballet. We are simultaneously on the outside and inside 2. Ruth Fine, "Romare Bearden: The Spaces Between," in Ruth Fine with contributions by Mary Lee Corlett er. al, The Art of Romare Bearden (Washington, D.C.: Catalogue of the Exhibition, National Gallery of Arr, 2003) 10. See also M. Bunch Washington, The Art of Romare Bearden: The Prevalence of Ritual (New York: Abrams, 1972; New York: Snowfire, 1999) ; Washington, a Baha'i, was a good fri end of Bearden. 3. 'A (Artinomis),' "In the Galleries: Bearden at Cordier & Ekstrom," Arts Magazine 44.5 (March 1970): 57, quoted in Abdul Goler, "A Refracted Image: Selected Exhibitions and Reviews of Bearden's Work," in Fine, Art of Romare Bearden 202. 36 World Order. 2004-05, Vol. 36, No. 2 THE ART OF ROMARE BEARDEN of buildings; we sense a connection between the universal human experience and what is particularly American or African American. We see religious figures, cityscapes, domestic scenes, representations of the family. A "conjur woman" appears, haunt ingly, in a number of works, guised as angel, sorceress, earthy muse. Exotic and ordinary animals interact with humans. We are taken to realms both sensual and metaphorical. Somewhere along the way we realize that Bearden deserves our highest respect for his persistence as well as for his craft. For each individual viewer of the exhibition, different works will stand out. One of the first to catch my attention was an early work-A "Walk in Paradise Gardens (1955). This oil on fiberboard, abstract but with a hint of walking figures, is a study in color, geometry, and thickly worked, textured surfaces. Its energy and dynamic quality lie entirely in its painted play of the meshing of abstract WE CAN ALMOST HEAR THE SOUNDS human form and background, OF BEARDEN' S ORCHESTRA AND SINGER, providing a contrast to the rep- KNOWING THAT HE HIMSELF resentational quality of most of IS NOT JUST A MERE OBSERVER OF THE MUSIC. the collages. Next to it in the exhibit is another abstraction-North of the River (1962). This canvas collage with oil, watercolor, ink, and graphite on canvas is striking in its modernist concern with texture, form, line, and reduction of color to gray, black, orange-red, and subtle neutral tones. The two paintings together convey Bearden's ability to use abstraction as an expressive element in different ways. Perhaps Bearden's most well-known works are those depicting the blues and jazz. 4 Mural projects, album covers, and individual works depict his longstanding fasci nation with music as a subject. In The Blues (1975), a collage of various papers with paint, ink, and graphite on fiberboard, one sees on the left a dense collage of images-male faces and hands, a clarinet, a saxophone, a keyboard, drums, bits of sheet music (fig. 1). Ears and teeth, a wide-nostriled nose, and dark skin tones remind us of the primal connection of African-American musicians to the music they engendered. A diagonal line suggesting stage lights separates the right side of the visual field, which is filled with a female vocalist leaning away from a microphone in an attitude of movement against an exotic and abstracted colorful background. As we take in his composition, we can almost hear the sounds of Bearden's orchestra and singer, knowing that he himself is not just a mere observer of the music. Another collage, entitled] Mood (1985), simply depicts a male horn player against an abstract background, a female figure dancing out of his horn as if she is both muse and music personified. A star gleams from the player's eye and from the rim of the horn near the dancer's foot. The flat, clear forms and brilliant color of Bearden's jazz world 4. Jazz musician Branford Marsalis performed in co njunction with at least two of the openings of The Art of Romare Bearden (in Dallas and in Arlanra), and Marsalis' compact disc Romare Bearden Revealed is on sale, together with other exhibit items, in museum bookstores, emphasizing Bea rden's connection with jazz and che resonance jazz musicians continue co have with Bearden's life and arc almost twenty years after his death. World Order. 2004-05, Vol. 36, No. 2 37 ANNE GORDON PERRY Fig. l. Fig. 2. The Blues, 1975, collage of various papers wirh The Piano Lesson, 1983, collage of various papers painr, ink, and graphire on fib erboard. Arr © wirh paim, ink, and graphire on fiberboard. Arr Romare Bearden Foundarion/Licensed by VACA, © Romare Bearden Foundarion/Licensed by New York , NY. VACA, New York, NY. suggest only sparkle, life, style, and showmanship-not the smokey and perhaps grim world of the club scene he depicted. Another theme important to Bearden is his abiding sense of the beauty of the black woman-as mother, grandmother, sister, friend, daughter, nude, muse, lover, healer. She is often at the center of his works, generally strong and self reliant, sometimes sensuous and mysterious. In Mother and Child (c. 1972), one of his collage works celebrating the ANOTHER THEME IMPORTANT TO BEARDEN mother-child relationship, he IS HIS ABIDING SENSE OF THE BEAUTY depicts a mother seated next to OF THE BLACK WOMAN. her daughter, both poring over a book under a lighted lamp, their eyes bright, their hands poised similarly. Large blocks of color are punctuated with small details: a hair comb, a wedding ring, an earring. The subjects of his works stand out like well-remembered characters in a play-often with the same kind of intensity and power. No doubt Bearden's work will increasingly influence generations of visual artists and viewers. Artists in other media have and will continue to embrace him as well. For example, August Wilson's plays Joe Turner's Come and Gone and The Piano Lesson are both inspired by Bearden collages, the latter of which by the same name (1983- fig. 2) is one of the most memorable works in the exhibition. To celebrrate The Art of Romare Bearden exhibition, Garth Fagan choreographed in 2002 a dance based on Bearden's 1979 screenprint Conjunction {Island Paradise), which is based 38 World Order, 2004-05, Vol. 36, No. 2 THE ART OF ROMARE BEARDEN on the 1971 Conjunction. Bearden himself married a dancer and occasionally com posed music; he cowrote the hit song "Seabreeze" recorded by jazz legends Dizzy Gillespie and Billy Eckstine. 5 Novelist and social critic Ralph Ellison remarked that Romare Bearden ... is an artist whose social consciousness is no less intense than his dedication to art; his example is of utmost importance for all who are concerned with grasping something of the complex interrelations between race, culture and the individual artist as they exist in the United States .. . . Bearden's art is thus not only an affirmation of his own freedom and respon sibility as an individual and artist, it is an affirmation of the irrelevance of the notion of race as a limiting force in the arts. These are works of a man possessing a rare lucidity of vision."6 Indeed, as we partake of Romare Bearden's lucidity of vision, as we dip into his world of image and integration, we can become both more humane and more ennobled. 5. See Paul Trachrman, "Romare Bearden: Man of Many Pans," Smithsonian (Feb. 2004): 65. 6. Ralph Ellison, Paintings and Projections (Albany, NY, USA: Art Gallery, State U of New York, 1968) quored in Galer, "Refracred Image," in Fine, Art of Romare Bearden 201-02. The Baha'f Faith grows The Bahi'f Faith grows. Civilization bestows a new life that glows. -JANET TOMKINS Copyright © 2005 by Janet Tomkins JANET TOMKINS, a homemake r and a poet, is interested in reading and music and in cnvironmemal issues dea ling wirh th e effecci ve management of feraJ car colonies. World Order, 2004-05, Vol. 36, No. 2 39 B. BARRY DARUGAR Out of Iran Out of Iran is a nonfiction account based on interviews with Bahi'fs who escaped from Iran. Some of the dialogue and some of the scenes are reconstructed as the author has imagined them. Names have been changed to protect the individuals involved and family members still living in Iran. - THE EDITORS Nu ri sat in front of me. His scarred face reminded me of smallpox victims' faces I had seen in Iran. It looked as if he had been burned deeply by hot pebbles in a tanur. His nose, large as a fried drumstick, supported his rimmed glasses . Nuri is married to my niece Zhalih . She was only two years old when I left Iran during the reign of the Shah. Zhalih was the first grandchild of my parents. I used to lift her up on the palm of one hand, and she would stand up like an acrobat and giggle with excitement-her arms extended, her palms toward the sky as if an angel. Now, forty years later, Zhalih has grown into a beautiful woman with two children. Nuri caressed Zhalih's hand lovingly and said, "Uncle Kuros wants to hear the story of our escape from Iran. Would you mind preparing supper while we talk." "I lived through it once; I don't want to relive it again." Zhalih walked away as Nuri started to tell the story of their escape. The first rime I tried to escape persecution in Iran was after I was fired from my job as a professor at the Tehran Institute of Technology. Not only was I fired, but I was also asked to pay back all salaries I had received during my employment. Copyright © 2005 by B. Barry Daruger. 8. BARRY DARUGAR a retired general and vascular surgeon, holds a Master of Fine Arts degree in creative writing from Georgia College and State University in Milledgeville, Georgia, where he won a prose award in 2004 for a nonfiction work called "Hammon." Dr. Darugar is an assistant professor of surgery at Mercer College in Macon, Georgia. Iran, the Iranian Bah6'f community, and his family's trials while attempting to escape persecution inform much of his fiction. Wo rl d Order, 2004-05, Vol. 36, No. 2 41 B. BARRY DARUGAR "You are an infidel. You had no right to the salaries you have received," the clergyman, who was investigating my case, said. I fell off my motorcycle in the Lut Desert while I was trying to escape, and I had to go back to the city of Zahedan. I was captured near the Afghan border and jailed in Evin Prison with communists, Fadifyyan, and Bahi'is. The scars on my face and deformed nose are the result of injuries in the desert and beatings in the pnson. After three and a half months of imprisonment and the payment of one hundred thousand tumdn, I was released. I found a job in an Italian company in Bandar e-Abbas on the Persian Gulf, and I married a Baha'i woman named Zhalih from Tehran. Our marriage was a Baha'i ceremony that was not recognized by the government. In Iran, after the 1979 Revolution, even a small gathering of Baha'fs or a Baha'i feast had to be camouflaged. The return of a family member from a serious operation at Sina Hospital was our cover story. Revolutionary guards were appeased by the explanation and bribed by plates of che!o-kabab and a large sum of money. A year later our daughter Yasemin was born. Since Bandar-e-Abbas was extremely hot and humid, we purchased a house in Tehran near Zhalih's parents. She and the baby lived there, and I commuted berween the rwo cities. We were spreading our wings and feeling comfortable when a new wave of turmoil shook our foundation. Members of Baha'i administrative institutions as well as rabbis and adherents of other religions were seized and killed. Some disappeared without a trace. The Islamic government initiated new restraints on schools run by minorities. Islamic principles had to be part of every school. A portion of medical and tech nology schools' curricula had to be devoted to verses from the Qur' an and Imam Khomeini's teachings. Medical students spent equal time on differential diagnosis of diseases and reciting Qur'anic verses. Also, many who opposed Islam were ar rested, tortured, and executed. My family began to receive calls inquiring about my whereabouts. It was only a matter of time before the police would incarcerate me and leave my child an orphan and my wife a widow. Many had already suffered such losses, and many had fled the country either wesrward through the Zagros Mountains and Kurdistan into Turkey or easrward through the Lut Desert and Afghanistan into Pakistan. For us, my wife and myself, with a fifteen-month-old child, it was impossible to negotiate the western mountain paths riding on mules. We looked for a guide familiar with the Lut Desert. At that time, the Shiite revolutionary government discriminated against the Sunni sect of Islam and was particularly ruthless toward Baha'is and other minorities. Baluchi and Afghans did not feel any allegiance toward the government of Iran and could, for the most part, be trusted. At times unsus pecting refugees were deceived by imposters and either lost money or life-at times both-at the hands of unscrupulous charlatans who pretended to be honest Baluchi but who were, in fact, informers or undercover agents for the Revolutionary Guards. Extreme caution was essential, and only those guides referred by reputable sources could be trusted. Through friends and fam ily, I located a Sunni Baluchi to help us escape the Revolutionaries' tightening grip. I grew a beard and wore the robes of a clergyman to pass through periodic army 42 World Order. 2004-05. Vol. 36. No. 2 OUT OF IRAN blockades. I was told that, once we got to the eastern Lut Desert, I should discard the clergy robes since the population there were so fed up with the Ayatollah that they might easily kill me and my family. I met our guide toward the end of the summer in Tehran. He did not want to meet in public and came to our house after dark. "Are you Mr. Nuri?" he asked. "Yes, I am." "My name is Rashid. Your friend Karim sent me here." "Come in, please. Let me get you some tea and a piece of cake." "I can't stay long. They are watching all the Baha'fs." I knew his information was correct. By now the secret police had the names of all Baha'fs, and, since I was a member of the Baha'i National Youth Council, it was probable that my activities were being monitored. He got to the point. "I need fifty thousand tumdn now and twenty-five thousand at the Lut Desert and another fifty thousand at the border of Pakistan." "Give me a few days, and as soon as I get my hands on that money, I'll call you." "No! I'll call you in one week." I took my savings out of the National Bank, sold my house at a bargain price, and my furniture at a garage sale. I borrowed from family and friends against my wife's and my family jewelry. "Do you have the money," Rashid asked on the telephone. "I have it." "Be ready with only one backpack for each of you; pack only absolute necessities." My friends had advised us to take a few cans of concentrated milk, tuna, dry food, diapers, and water for Yasemin. We flew to Mashhad by Iran Air. I wore the robe and beard of a clergyman. My wife was clad in her chddur, and her face was covered with her ~ijdb. Our baby slept in a covered hand carrier. In Mashhad we prayed at Imam Ric;la's Shrine and met Rashid at its gate. He took us to hide in the basement of a friend's house. "Hotels are under surveillance. A priest with a wife and baby would stand out, and your cover will be blown." "We need to clean up, wash our clothes, and rest before our long trip." "The dirtier you are the safer you'll be." I did not understand his logic until later. The bus from Mashhad to Zabol was crowded with Baluchi and Afghans. The highway was a narrow road with potholes. The driver, like a kamikaze pilot, did not fear the oncoming cars nor the slower traffic that he passed on the wrong side. There were no midline markers or sidelines to observe anyhow. In Zabol we looked like dusty zombies covered from head to toe with plumes of sand from the Lut. From Mashhad to Zabol the bus stopped at several checkpoints, but soldiers and police looked over us as if they did not see us. I wondered if God rendered us invisible to their eyes. They never questioned: Who are you? What are you doing among these Afghans and Baluchi? Where are you going? What is your business in Zabol? Zabol is a dusty and dirty city at the edge of the Lut Desert. I had taken off my clergy robe. In the middle of a strange city, I was standing with my wife and our fifteen-month-old daughter, tired, dirty, and hungry. I feared World Order. 2004-05, Vol. 36, No. 2 43 B. BARRY DARUGAR that Revolutionary Guards might discover us and hoped that the Guards or the police would not arrest us. After an hour, which seemed to us like half a day, Rashid drove up in a jeep with a covered roof and an enclosed cabin. "We'll go out of the city limits. It is dangerous here," Rashid said. "Why?" I asked. "Too many nosy secret police." "Can't we get some food or wash off?" "No! This is a border city. Any stranger here is a potential refugee." " .. . and in danger of arrest and imprisonment," I finished his sentence. Rashid drove us to the edge of the desert to where the Baluchi had their large tents. The Baluchi were his tribesmen, and they welcomed us into their tents. We washed and changed cloches. In spite of their meager possessions, they prepared a feast for us. They sacrificed a lamb and barbecued its meat and added fresh bread, baked in the tanur, dates, and bananas. We hesitated to eat as everybody else was standing around. Rashid said, "Go ahead and eat. It's our custom, which is similar to chat of Persians, that guests be welcomed and eat first." I saw many hungry children, grown men, and women around who let us, the hungry strangers, as their guests, eat and drink first. Once we had had our fill, they made quick work of the rest of the food. This tribe of mostly illiterate and poor but traditionally hospitable people offered us food and shelter in a country that had failed us all. Their source of income was their herds and what they hunted. We stayed two days in those tents until Rashid contacted his counterparts across the border in Pakistan. Baluchi men, women, and children were kind and hospitable. They wore colorful cloches. Women did not wear shrouds, as it was impractical with their active life style to be tied down with chddurs and l;ijdbs. They ate simple food: bread that they baked, fresh milk, cheese, cream, and meat. They had sun-dried fruits such as dates, bananas, plums, and apricots. Their herds of sheep and goats were an integral part of their livelihood. Their horses and camels were their mode of transportation across the desert. A few jeeps and land rovers belonged to people who had alternative sources of income, either, like Rashid, transporting refugees to safety or smuggling opium and hashish from Pakistan and Afghanistan to Iran and then to Europe and the United States. At dawn we set out in a jeep sedan toward Zahedan. Zhalih and I rode with the baby between us in the backseat. Rashid and a driver named Amir, a young handsome Baluchi, were in front. Not far from the Baluchi tents, we noticed another jeep following us at high speed. After a frantic chase, our driver managed to hide our jeep behind a sand dune near an abandoned village where we all ran and hid in an underground shelter. Rashid and Amir were familiar with the area. As it turned out, the other jeep probably was chasing a different group and did not pursue us. "This is not a good day to travel. Soldiers are on the prowl," Rashid said. We spent the night with the Baluchi tribe again. The next day at dawn we drove to the same abandoned village where Rashid and Amir extracted three drums full of gasoline from their underground storage and loaded it in the back of the jeep. Full of passengers and gasoline, the jeep sped down the narrow, potholed, dirt road. 44 World Order, 2004-05, Vol. 36, No. 2 OUT OF IRAN Our turbulent ride combined with the Baluchi smoking in the front seat, gasoline drums in the back, and the three of us in the middle reminded me of an old movie I had seen, The Wlige of Fear, featuring Yves Montand carrying nitroglycerine explosives by truck on a dangerous road where his friend driving a similar truck blew up. Yasemin came down with vomiting and diarrhea. Apparently in the tent, where we slept, she had picked up and eaten something on the ground that was contami nated with animal feces. We had no medication, and she could not hold down any food or water. Yasemin was hot, and whatever she drank went through her. We could not stop, nor did we dare go to a clinic or hospital, for surely the police or border patrol would have been informed. We drove hard until dark toward Zahedan, parallel to the border of Afghanistan. The road was narrow, and there were no midlines to separate the two-way traffic. Caution was thrown out of the window. The driver passed other cars at high speeds, honking loudly as he passed. Midway to Zahedan our driver turned off his lights. I was worried that we might have an accident, but there was no traffic on the road. Suddenly, at a remote area, Amir turned our jeep into the desert, driving eastward at high speed. It was almost dark. We went on for what seemed many miles, me with a sick baby in my arms, retching all over me, or losing everything inside in her diapers. Then we saw lighted border guardhouses at equal distances on either side of us. We were driving toward Afghanistan between two checkpoints. "There are no natural boundaries between Iran and Afghanistan, just Kavir-e Lut. Desert and more desert," Rashid said. "Are we going to stop anywhere?" Rashid turned toward the backseat, looking at me with his piercing black eyes, "Not here. We have to get well inside Afghanistan before we stop." It was dark. We could not see anything. The desert seemed never ending. I asked, "Why don't you turn your headlights on?" "Border guards will notice our lights and come after us. They are watching the desert as we speak," Amir said with a long stern face. It was dark, and only a half moon lighted the desert. Rashid got in front of the jeep, and the driver followed his silhouette closely. Rashid was running in front, and we were following. A few times the jeep's bumper hit his backside as he stopped at a ditch and was knocked down. But he was tough, and he got up, again and again, and ran on with the jeep following him until almost midnight. By then we were well inside Afghanistan. Zhalih and I wondered if our baby could survive. We stopped to rest. We had no beds or pillows, but it didn't matter. We couldn't have slept with our baby getting sicker by the minute. I sat in the car staring into the dark of the desert. I could hear muffled noises and shadows all around us in the moonlight. Occasionally I saw a flicker of a light far off. I asked Rashid, "What are those shadows and noises? Are soldiers coming to get us? " "Be quiet. They are either other refugees or smugglers and bandits carrying contraband opium to sell in Iran and Turkey destined for Europe and America." I recalled the history of the Silk Road. In ancient times silk and other goods were World Order, 2004-05, Vol. 36. No. 2 45 B. BARRY DARUGAR carried from the Far East and India through Afghanistan and Iran to Europe. "Why is everybody so quiet?" I asked. "We can't risk our lives. There are no laws in the desert-only the survival of the fittest," Rashid said. "Baluchi and Afghans seem to be friendly, and most of them seem to know you. Why all the caution?" I asked. "These smugglers are armed with automatic weapons and machine guns. They may just kill us and take all our belongings especially our jeep and fuel." In the morning Yasemin's breathing was heavier and labored. Her skin was gray, and her eyes were sunken deep. Her hands and feet were like dried dates, wrinkled and dark. Her abdomen was concave. She still could not eat. Whatever we gave her, she either vomited or passed through her. "What are we going to do?" I asked. "We have to wait here for the truck from Pakistan to take you there," Rashid answered. "My baby is going to die by then," Zhalih cried. I looked at Amir, our handsome driver, sitting on the mound of sand, his face chiseled, his body angular and strong. When the rays of sun reflected on his face, I noticed tears dropping on the sand. Suddenly he got up and mixed some dirt with water and covered the jeep's Iranian tag and its bumpers and windows. "Let's go," he said, turning to Rashid. "Are you crazy? This is a suicide," Rashid replied. "I can't watch this beautiful baby die. We are going toward Pakistan. I know where we can get some medicine," Amir said. He ordered Zhalih to sit by the left window with the baby in her arms. I sat inside, a barrel of gas and our luggage by the right window and two Baluchi in front. Amir drove on the left side of the road in the English tradition. We passed two checkpoints and a roadblock. Soldiers and police talked to Rashid and Amir but never talked to us, or they would have known we were refugees. They never looked at Zhalih or talked to her. "I especially arranged for your wife to sit on the left by the window," Amir said. "I know a Muslim will not look at or talk to a strange woman." They did not even look beyond her or take a second look to notice me. Amir continued driving hard through Afghanistan toward Pakistan. Between Kuh-i-Soltan, the high ground, and Rudbar, the small town in the valley, there was a rural clinic, a small mud-brick building with white plaster walls, where Amir knew the doctor and the nurse. It consisted of three rooms-a waiting area with two wooden benches, an examination room with a simple table, a chair, and two roughly finished cabinets, and a storage room for supplies and medicine. The man who met us at the clinic door said, "This baby is very sick. I don't know much about babies, but I have some medications here. Let us find something to help her." Zhalih came forward, "My father is a doctor. I have worked with him, and I know what we need. Do you mind if I look?" The man took us to the clinic's supply room. Zhalih found some Kaopectate and 46 World Order, 2004-05, Vo l. 36, No. 2 OUT OF IRAN sulfa suspension. I offered money, but the man would not accept it. As it turned out, he was a physician's assistant. Grateful for his help, I thanked him. As we were leaving, he handed us a Pepsi and some boiled water and advised us to mix the Pepsi with water first and give it to Yasemin. That remedy stopped her vomiting miracu lously, and Kaopectate and sulfa stopped her diarrhea. Yasemin began drinking and holding her head up. Zhalih smiled, her tense facial muscles relaxed. I slept a while as we drove toward Quetta on the border between Afghanistan and Pakistan. Rashid called his contacts, and on an isolated stretch of the road we waited. After a couple of hours a small army-type truck with a covered back appeared. I noticed its headlights turn off and on three times. Amir flipped his light on and off also. Two Baluchi got out and greeted Amir and Rashid. I shook Rashid's hand and gave him the balance of his money, most of which he handed to the truck drivers. The truck turned and headed toward Quetta, and the jeep sped toward the Afghan border. By the time we arrived in Quetta, our faces were covered by mud, a mixture of dirt and sweat, our hair white, our faces dark brown, and our eyelids covered with powdery plumes of dust and sand from Kavir-e-Lut. The dirty Hotel Dusti, its hot bath, and our meal of rice and kabob were heavenly. Yasemin was so weak she could only drink milk and eat soft cereal. We had hot tea and cake later. It was our first decent meal in about four days. All we had in the desert was bread, cheese, and honeydew melon perfumed by gasoline. At UNHCR, the United Nations High Commission for Refugees, we received our temporary I.D. cards. The Director of the Refugee Camp interviewed me in Lahore to ascertain whether I was a Bahf i refugee. At that time, many communists fleeing Iran into Pakistan to gain eligibility for immigration to United States, claimed to be Baha'is. "Are you a Bahf i?" the man at the Refugee office asked. "Yes, Aqa, I am." "Chant a Baha'i prayer." I chanted a prayer. A Muslim or even a communist may go to the trouble of mem- orizing a short chant, I thought. He must have read my mind. "Name some of the Prophet Bab's disciples," the man commanded. "I can't remember all eighteen of them." "Name three or four." I named four, including Tahireh, the only female among those whom the Bab called Letters of the Living. The man was assured that I was a Baha'i. No communist and most Muslims would not know those names. At the Refugee Camp I saw men and women who could hardly walk from hip and pelvic injuries they had suffered after prolonged camel rides. I saw young men and women who had fled on motorcycles and had fallen off in the desert sand and had came in battered and traumatized. Some refugees who trusted unscrupulous guides never made it. They were abandoned in the desert to die. I saw women, their World O rder. 2004-05, Vol. 36, No. 2 47 B. BARRY DARUGAR heads low with shame, after their bodies had been violated by some of the ruffians. I saw children who suffered irreversible physical and psychological damage. I saw men desperate and worried about tomorrow, unable to change their destiny-lost in a strange land, exiled from their country but easing their pains with opium as their souls shouted amidst the fumes, "Fly me out of here." Nuri looked at me. I'd flown, in spirit, back to Iran. Even after forty years away from home, I had tears in my eyes. My heart ached as if I, too, were hurt and violated along with my people. "Aqa, in Iran everyone pays one way or the other," Nuri said. As he talked, I envisioned a dark room with stagnant fumes impregnating the air. I could see in the shadowy light filtering through the tiny windows, shaded by weeping willows, the silhouette of little children inside with fragile fingers creating beautiful rugs. Their souls bursting in bright colors while their eyes and rosy cheeks, by osmosis, became part of the shiny silk carpets they were weaving. Their arms open, their palms up in the air like hallowed wings of angels. 48 World Order, 2004-05, Vo l. 36, No. 2 Religion • Society • Polity • Arts Help World Order continue to break new ground. The magazine is accepting submissions (ar The magazine is also soliciting individual ar ticles, poems, and reviews of books, films, and ticles on the theme topics and other issues of exhibits) for several theme issues: broad social concern, including: The UN at Sixty Religion Conflict Prevention History Africa Development Sustainable Development Science Theoretical, Philosophical, and Spiritual Ecology Dimensions of Law and of Unity Education The Elimination of Racism and Sexism Architecture Urban Planning And More All submissions should advance the magazine's purpose, which is to "stimulate, inspire, and serve its readers in their search to understand the relationship between contemporary life and contemporary religious teachings and philosophy." Manuscript Submission Information For a copy of the World Order style sheet for preparing a manuscript (and other tips), send an e-mail to Vol. 36, No. 1-Brown v. Board of Education Vol. 35, No. 4-Postnationalism revisited and "Radical Black Feminism" Vol. 35, No. 3-A roundtable discussion on Making the Crooked Straight Vol. 35, No. 2-lnternational Cinema, Part 2 Vol. 35, No. 1-lnternational Cinema, Part l and many more issues For information Call the Baha'i Distribution Service 1-800-999-9019 (United States and Canada) or 1-404-472-9019 (all other countries). Or write the Baha'i Distribution Service 4703 Fulton Industrial Boulevard Atlanta, GA USA 30336-2017 or e-mail the Baha'i Distribution Service at [email protected] ISSN 0043-8804